My wife does not mend. The doctors come daily, take their fee, and say all must be dejado a la Naturaleza. Of what use are they, then?
I am sorry you see so many clouds brewing for the Easter week, as we shall have a dull Carnival, and none of the Saints and Saintesses will come out in the streets. Even war will be better than the cholera.
I have no news here. The days glide on in a sort of far niente, with the tinkling of my wife’s guitar, and the crying of my nursery, all of whose teeth have taken to plague them and their parents. These are blessings you know not. Fortunati nimium.
Feb. 1 [1832], Sevilla.
Captain Martin and Eden are setting out for Badajoz and Lisbon, where they will probably get into some disagreeable scrape; rather a bad time to visit Portugal, to say nothing of the wet rain and cold Ventas.
We have an arrival of three officers from the garrison, two of which were of the party taken up into the mountains by José Maria, who wanted to rob them again, as, hearing they were at Xeres, he proceeded yesterday to rob the diligence, thinking to catch them; but they had luckily taken the steamer. This is a serious system for travellers, now he finds the English will pay handsome ransoms.
There is an order come here to prepare thirty cannon forthwith. The number they have quite ready, with men, mules, etc., is not above eight or ten; but I am told, if money was forthcoming, they could soon get ready above a hundred. No troops have moved from this place.
The Conde de los Andes has not arrived here yet; I heard from Don José [O’Lawlor], who is now performing the functions of Captain-General at Granada, that Dionysia is rather ailing.
We are all here going on in the usual humdrum way, sin novedad, and without any news. The weather mild and open. The swallows flying about, and the storks looking out for lodgings on the church towers, all of which, the learned say, is a sign that winter is over.
I am expecting Shirreff from Gibraltar, to occupy the Sala del Embajador in my Palacio, where I hope in the summer you will come and take up your quarters. They tell me this is a most delicious summer house, and that Seville and the Andaluças should be seen in the genial month of May or June.