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'To go on board the yacht, I answered. I thought they all seemed disconcerted at this; and the officer, with something of sharpness, asked me who I was. Now I had determined to conceal my name until I met Sir George; and the first name that rose to my lips was that of the Senora Mendizabal.
These gentlemen, however, finding themselves about this time exceedingly poor, and not seeing any immediate prospect of advantage from supporting Mendizabal; considering themselves, moreover, quite as good men as he, and as capable of governing Spain in the present emergency; determined to secede from the party of their friend, whom they had hitherto supported, and to set up for themselves.
He was enormously powerful, and Borrow decided to appeal to him direct; for, armed with the approval of Mendizabal, no one would dare to interfere with his plans or proceedings. Borrow made several attempts to see Mendizabal, who "was considered as a man of almost unbounded power, in whose hands were placed the destinies of the country."
"If you have no objection, I will myself deliver it to His Excellency," said he; whereupon I handed it to him and he withdrew. Several individuals were admitted before me; at last, however, my own turn came, and I was ushered into the presence of Mendizabal. He stood behind a table covered with papers, on which his eyes were intently fixed.
I hoped, therefore, for Mendizabal, but at Sedano I heard that Bonnet, after foiling an attack by him on a convoy above Burgos, had beaten him into the Asturias, where his scattered bands were now shifting as best they could among the hills.
THE SPANISH CLERGY—Their primitive state—Their subsequent organization—Barraganas—Immoral practices of the clergy—Their wealth, and its sources—Their territorial possessions—Their influence and incomes—Their opposition to the sciences—Their ultramontane principles—The “pass” of the Spanish sovereign necessary to the validity of the Pope’s bulls—Doctrine of the Jansenists favoured by the ministers of Charles III.—Port-Royal and San Isidro—Parish priests—Sources of their income—Many of them good men, but deficient in scriptural knowledge and teaching—Their preaching—Abolition of tithes by the minister, Mendizabal—Effects of that measure—Poverty and present state of the clergy—Their degraded character and unpopularity—Their timidity in recent times of tumult—Ecclesiastical writers of the Peninsula—Power of the Inquisition curtailed by Charles III.
Merino was in no better case, and my only hope rested on Mina, who after a series of really brilliant operations, helped out by some lucky escapes, had on the 7th with five thousand men planted himself in ambush behind Vittoria, cut up a Polish regiment, and mastered the same enormous convoy which had escaped the curate and Mendizabal at Burgos, releasing no less than four hundred Spanish prisoners and enriching himself to the tune of a million francs, not to speak of carriages, arms, stores, and a quantity of church plate.
He did not, however, scorn to make a favourable misrepresentation of his success, as for example in the interview with Mendizabal, which was reduced probably to the level of the facts in its book form.
'Did they tell you, I continued, 'that Madam Mendizabal is on the island? that, since her coming, they obey none but her? that if, this morning, they have received you with even decent civility, it was only by her orders issued with what after-thought I leave you to consider? 'Madam Jezebel? said he.
'She would do very well for my place of business in Havana, said the Senora Mendizabal, once more studying me through her glasses; 'and I should take a pleasure, she pursued, more directly addressing myself, 'in bringing you acquainted with a whip. And she smiled at me with a savoury lust of cruelty upon her face. At this, I found expression.
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