The kitchen of the posada at Vinaroz offered a scene of unusual confusion.  The hostess was no other than the mother of Pepe, a very decent-looking Catalan woman, who, I understood, had been sent there the year before by the Diligence Company, which is concerned in all the inns at which their coaches stop throughout the line.  She had already been told of the probable fate of her son, and was preparing to set off for Amposta in the deepest affliction; and yet her sorrow, though evidently real, was singularly combined with her habitual household cares.  The unusual demand for breakfast by fourteen hungry passengers had created some little confusion, and the poor woman, instead of leaving these matters to take care of themselves, felt the force of habit, and was issuing a variety of orders to her assistant; nor was she unmindful of her appearance, but had already changed her frock and stockings, and thrown on her mantilla, preparatory to departure.  It was indeed a singular and piteous sight to see the poor perplexed woman changing some fish that were frying, lest they should be burnt on one side, adjusting and repinning her mantilla, and sobbing and crying all the while.  When the man came, however, to say that the mule was in readiness, every thing was forgotten but the feelings of the mother, and she hurried off in deep and unsuppressed affliction.

We may as well add here the catastrophe of this tragical tale.  From information received by the Lieutenant, after his arrival in Madrid, it appears that poor Pepe breathed his last about eight hours after the attack, and long before his widowed mother could arrive to close the eyes of her child.  The mayoral lingered for about a week, and then shared the fate of Pepe.  The three robbers were detected and taken into custody; two of them were townsmen, and all three acquaintances of Pepe, whom they had doubtless murdered to prevent discovery.  We ourselves passed over the scene of the robbery between two and three years after the event:  there were two crosses to mark the bloody spot.  The mayoral and the zagal of our diligence, the successors of those who had been murdered, pointed to the crosses with the sang froid with which Spaniards, from long habitude, contemplate mementos of the kind.  The mayoral showed the very place where his predecessor had been beaten to death.  On our expressing horror at the detail he readily concurred, though he appeared more indignant at the manner in which the crime had been committed than at the crime itself.  “It is the ugliest thing (lo mas feo) that has been done in this neighbourhood for a long time past.  Look you, sir, to shoot a man with a blunderbuss, or to stab him with a knife, is quite another kind of business; but to beat his brains out with a stone is to treat him, not like a Christian, but a dog!” It was evident that a frequent occurrence of such scenes had rendered the mayoral a critic in the art of murder.

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