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The Spaniard who has a novia, a guitar, a cigarillo, and the knowledge that he has enough to pay for a seat at the bull-fight, possesses all that he can possibly need. He will eat a plateful of gazpacho or puchero, a sardine, half a roll of bread, and drink clear water as often as wine. Food is always of secondary importance: he ranks it after his novia, after his cigarillo, after the bulls.

You vill sure have grand plaisir to see un fandango Mexicain?" "Not I, Gode. My countrymen are not so fond of dancing as yours." "C'est vrai, monsieur; but von fandango is tres curieux. You sall see ver many sort of de pas. Bolero, et valse, wis de Coona, and ver many more pas, all mix up in von puchero.

It consisted of puchero, a stew consisting of a piece of beef, cabbage, sweet-potatoes, salt pork, sausage-meat, pigs' feet, yuccas, bananas, quinces, peas, rice, salt, and an abundance of Chili peppers. This had been cooked for six hours and was now warmed up. Two bottles of excellent native wine, a flask of spirits, and some water were also put on the table.

There was a puchero simmering at the fire, half full of bacon, garbanzos, and other provisions; this was emptied into a large wooden platter, and out of this Antonio and myself supped; the other Gypsies refused to join us, giving us to understand that they had eaten before our arrival; they all, however, did justice to the leathern bottle of Antonio, which, before his departure from Merida, he had the precaution to fill.

The roll of the waves inconvenienced him. He wrote thus for some time. As he wrote, the doctor remarked the gourd of aguardiente, which the Provençal tasted every time he added a grain of pimento to the puchero, as if he were consulting it in reference to the seasoning.

The Provençal in the caboose was blowing up a turf fire under an iron pot, and making broth. The broth was a kind of puchero, in which fish took the place of meat, and into which the Provençal threw chick peas, little bits of bacon cut in squares, and pods of red pimento concessions made by the eaters of bouillabaisse to the eaters of olla podrida.

"They are gone on some business of Egypt," I said to myself, "and will return anon." I gathered together the embers of the fire, and heaping upon them sticks and branches, soon succeeded in calling forth a blaze, beside which I placed the puchero, with what remained of the provision of last night.

There was no speculation, it seemed, in that dull placid countenance, save what related to ells of cloth and steady money-getting. Beyond his business, a well-seasoned puchero and an evening game at loto, might have been supposed to fill up the waking hours and complete the occupations of the worthy cloth-dealer.

It was a repetition of dinner, which the family had taken according to custom at two o'clock. The wife of Don Jose, and her maiden sister and three daughters, pretty, palefaced, black-eyed girls, with hair like the raven's wing, were present, as were the family priest and two gentlemen, cousins of our host. We first had an insipid kind of soup, and then their principal dish, called puchero.

He lived soberly, like a Spaniard, in some hut in the nearest of the villages, with an old woman who swept the earth floor and cooked his food at an outside fire his puchero and tortillas and rolled for him his provision of cigarettes for the day. Every morning he marched up to the Casa, like a courtier, to attend on his king. I never saw him eat or drink anything there.