ads. The costumes were
evidently intended to represent the Indian dresses of the days of
Montezuma, but they were rather modernized by the necessity of wearing
various articles of dress which would have been superfluous in old
times. They stationed themselves in the middle of the church, opposite
the high altar, and, to our unspeakable astonishment, began to dance
the polka. Then came a waltz, then a schottisch, then another waltz,
and finally a quadrille, set to unmitigated English tunes. They danced
exceedingly well, and behaved as though they had been used to European
ball-rooms all their lives. The spectators looked on as though it were
all a matter of course for these brown-skinned boys and girls to have
acquired so singular an accomplishment in their out-of-the-way village
among the mountains. As for us we looked on in open-mouthed
astonishment; and when, in the middle of the quadrille, the harp and
violin struck up no less a tune than "The King of the Cannibal
Islands," we could hardly help bursting out into fits of laughter. We
restrained ourselves, however, and kept as grave a countenance as the
rest of the lookers-on, who had not the faintest idea that anything odd
was happening. The quadrille finished in perfect order; each dancer
took his partner by the hand and led her forward; and so, forming a
line in front of the high altar, they all knelt down, and the rest of
the congregation followed their example; there was a dead silence in
the church for about the space of an Ave Maria, then everyone rose, and
the ceremony was over.[17]

Our young monk asked permission of his superior to take us out for a
walk, and we went down together to the convent-mill. There we saw the
mill, which was primitive, and the miller, who was burly; and also
something much more worth seeing, at least to our young acquaintance,
who tucked up his skirts and ran briskly up a ladder into the upper
regions, calling to us to follow him. A door led from the granary into
the miller's house, and the miller's daughter happened, of course
entirely by chance, to be coming through that way. A very pretty girl
she was too, and I never in my life saw anything more intensely comic
than the looks of intelligence that passed between her and the young
friar when he presented us. It was decidedly contrary to good monastic
discipline it is true, and we ought to have been shocked, but it was so
intolerably laughable that my companion bolted into the grana