part, known by the name of the Impedradillo, does not form one compact cuadra. On the southwest side of the Cathedral, a narrow lane runs into the Impedradillo; this is the Callejon del Arco. It is like one of those caverns which the sea sometimes hollows out in the face of a cliff. When still blinded by the over powering rays of the sun with which the square is flooded, and which beat in all their intensity on the white walls and granite pavement, the eye, at first dazzled by the glare, sees only after a few moments another street cutting this one at right angles, and forming with it a dark cross-road. There, as in the caverns by the sea-shore, you cannot hear the noise without, except it be a dull, mournful hum, which resembles as much the wail of the wind-tossed waves as the tumult of a populous city. A few rope-spinners' shops, their massive doors fast closed, and here and there a few dark passages, are the only signs which remind you that you are in a city, and in the midst of inhabited houses. Water is constantly oozing out of the walls; a perpetual moisture reigns everywhere; and scarcely, even at midday, at the time of the summer solstice, does a sunbeam visit this dismal den. A little new life then begins to stir, till the sun has advanced into the winter solstice, when it relapses into its former gloom and silence.
It was there, then, in one of these sinister-looking houses, that I was to meet a man able to settle a piece of business for me from which all the other lawyers in Mexico had recoiled. I stopped some moments to gaze with wonder and amazement upon the situation chosen for the office of the lawyer; but had not the episode, which I had witnessed a short time before, already prepared me for the eccentricities of Don Tadeo?
