While the Chapel-master was writing and posting this letter, Admet-el-Abdoun was gathering¹ together in a bundle all his wearing apparel and household belongings², consisting of three old hooded³ mantles⁴, two cloaks of goat's wool, a mortar⁵ for grinding alcazuz, an iron lamp, and a copper⁶ skillet full of pesetas, which he dug up from a corner of the little yard of his house. He loaded with all this his one wife, slave, odalisque, or whatever she might be, a woman uglier than an unexpected piece of bad news, and filthier⁷ than her husband's conscience, and issued forth⁸ from Ceuta, telling the soldier on guard at the gate opening on the Moorish⁹ country that they were going to Fez for change of air, by the advice of a veterinary; and as from that day—now more than sixty years ago—to this no one in Ceuta or its neighborhood has ever again seen Manos-gordas, it is obvious that Don Bonifacio Tudela y Gonzalez had not the satisfaction of receiving from his hands the translation of the document, either on the following, or on any other day during the remainder of his existence; which, indeed, cannot have been very long, since, according to reliable information, it appears that his adored Pepita took to herself, after his death, another husband, an Asturian drum-major residing in Marbella, whom she presented with four children, beautiful as the sun, and that she was again a widow at the time of the death of the king, at which epoch¹⁰ she gained, by competition in Malaga, the title of gossip and the position of matron in the custom-house.

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