m mouth to mouth.

"Vigilancia!" repeated the pregonero; "_gracias_, thanks, Senoras y
Senores," added he, with a laugh and a slight bow, and then was lost in
the crowd. There was a movement round the ghastly group upon the cart,
which the next instant disappeared; and when the alguazils, by the aid
of their staves, had forced themselves a passage to the spot where the
pageant had been, no trace of it remained save fragments of wood and
pasteboard, that were showered from all sides upon their detested heads.
The crowd itself separated and dispersed in different directions; no
inconsiderable portion of it entering the hotel, in front of which the
scene had passed.

This hotel or _fonda_, the first in Mexico at that time, was then, as
now, a great resort of the highest and lowest classes of the
population--that is to say, of the greatest luxury and most squalid
misery that the world can show. The ground floor was used as a sort of
bazar, in which various articles of Mexican manufacture were exposed for
sale; while the rooms on the upper story were appropriated to the
reception of guests, and furnished with a sumptuousness that contrasted
strangely with the appearance of the majority of those who frequented
them.

In the first of these rooms stood a long and broad table, somewhat
resembling a billiard-table, but upon which, instead of balls and cues,
were piles of silver and gold, amounting to thousands of dollars; while
the wardrobe of the players, who sat and stood around, did not appear to
be worth as many farthings. Excepting the jingle of the money, and the
words _Senor_ and _Senoria_, occasionally uttered, scarcely a sound was
heard; but upon the excited and eager countenances of the gamblers,
which varied with every change in their luck, might be read the flushed
exultation of the winners, and the suppressed fury of the less
fortunate--a fury that, to judge from their fiery glances and set teeth,
might momentarily be expected to break out into fierce and deadly
strife.

The occupants of the second saloon were, if possible, still more
repulsive than those of the first. Men, women, and children--some half
naked--some with the most loathsome rags for a covering--were lying,
sitting, squatting, and crouching in every part of the room--some sunk
into a kind of doze--others, on the contrary, actively engaged in
ridding their own and their children's heads of those inhabitants that
seemed to constitute the sole wealth