Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/280

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
260
CARMELITE CONVENT.

belonging to the Señora Doña Matilde F——, given on such a day to the charge of Maria Josefa." Constantly the nurse had lost this paper, and impossible for her to remember more than her own name; as to who gave her the baby, or when she got it, was entirely beyond her powers of calculation. However, then stept forward the fiadora Doña Tomasa, a sensible-looking village dame, grave and important as became her situation, and gave an account of the nurse and the baby, which being satisfactory, the copper was swept into the nurse's lap, and she and her baby went away contented. It was pleasant to see the kindness of the ladies to these poor women; how they praised the care that had been taken of the babies; admired the strong and healthy ones, which indeed nearly all were; took an interest in those who looked paler, or less robust; and how fond and proud the nurses were of their charges; and how little of a hired, mercenary, hospital feeling existed among them all. . . .

A judge in the village, who comes here frequently, a pleasant and well-informed man, amused us this evening by recounting to us how he had once formed a determination to become a monk, through sudden fear. Being sent by government to Toluca, some years ago, to inquire into the private political conduct of a Yorkino, he found that his only means of remaining there unsuspected, and also of obtaining information, was to lodge in the convent of the Carmelite Friars. The padres accommodated him with a cell, and assisted him very efficaciously in his researches. But the first night, being alone in his cell,