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availed himself more than once, to shake himself free of creditors who had been too pressing. "I don't know," he added, "a single person who will undertake your business, if the licentiate Don Tadeo Cristobal refuse: he has a heart of rock and a hand of iron; he is the man for you." I ran immediately to the Calle de los Batanes, where I was told he lived; but another check awaited me there. Don Tadeo had quitted that place, and no one could tell me his present abode. Wearied and dejected in the evening, after a whole day spent in running up and down to no purpose, I was walking listlessly to and fro in the Merchants' Arcades (Portales de los Mercadores), which stands on the grand square of Mexico. Despairing of success, I resolved to ask for some information about Don Tadeo from some of the numerous public writers, whose stalls under the gallery are so many public intelligence offices; but, once there, I completely forgot the motive which had brought me into this kind of bazar, the daily resort of all the idlers of Mexico, and my attention was completely distracted by the animated picture which was unrolled before my eyes. The spectator will be less astonished at this if he figure to himself the almost magical appearance the Plaza Mayor presents an hour before sunset. The Portales de los Mercadores occupy, in fact, almost one complete side of this immense square. The Cathedral, the Ayuntamiento, and the President's palace form, as the reader already knows, the other three sides. The most beautiful streets in Mexico debouch between those buildings; there is the street Primeria Monterilla, crowded with elegant shops; another, called los Plateros (the street of the goldsmiths), whose shops are almost exclusively occupied by jewelers or lapidaries, while the