The meat fell back from this high standard. Steaks, fried in fat and chilli; goats' flesh, in a gravy of chilli, a hot, thick, tomato-colored gravy. To neither of these did I incline. But the frejollis, or beans, were good, and the tea and coffee excellent. So I reveled, quite Spartan-like, in the hall of Montezuma, and all for four reals, or fifty cents. As I took my seat at the table, beggars came and took their stand at the door-way, first an old man, then an old woman. Very decrepit, but very obstinate, was the old lady. She was going to march immediately on the enemy's works; but the old man held her in. So she squatted at the door-way and talked with him, waiting my outgoing. She grabbed my legs with her skinny clutch. I surrendered, and gave her a cuartillia, on condition she would give the old man half. This she promised, but I fear failed to keep her word, for he came to me afterward and said she had not given him his share. He was not the first victim of misplaced confidence, especially of man in woman. How can beggars be charitable? Perhaps, however, she gave him his share, and he pretended she had not in order to get a duplicate from me. Who can trust who here?
There is a fine stone monument in the plaza to Montezuma, and some of the buildings are pretty. The fields about are green, and in the cool of the day there are a good many worse places than Montezuma.
I leave these beggars, who look old enough to be the very contemporaries of the unfortunate ruler, and get inside the coach, having all the three seats to myself. I stretch upon them all, and sleep as soundly as if on a bed, more soundly than on my too fully occupied bed last night at the San Luis Hotel. As I rolled softly along, I felt the superiority of this sort of travel over the tossing and sea-sick steamer, and was adapting Saxe to the occasion:
"Bless us, this is pleasant,
Riding in the stage."
Even when the dust and heat grew dense and potent, I found relief in that sublime line of Cowper, and changed this cloud into that grand vision:
