I had now sauntered for a long time in the Merchants' Arcades, when the sight of a writer's stall reminded me of my business there. Among the working population of the _Portales_, the public writers form a considerable portion of the community. You must remember that in Mexico primary instruction is not at all general, and that the office of a public writer, among this illiterate population, has lost nothing of its primitive importance. The tractable pen of the _evangelists_ (that is the name they bear) is required for a thousand commissions, more or less delicate, and often of the most equivocal character--from the venal love-letter down to the note sent by a bravo to lure his intended victim to some secret ambuscade. The evangelist whom I had remarked among the rest of his tribe was a little squat fellow, his head almost bald, scarcely encircled with a few gray hairs. What principally drew my attention to this man was an expression of sardonic joviality which shone in his otherwise insignificant face. I was just about to make some inquiries of him about Don Tadeo, when an incident made me suddenly pause, and continue to look on in silence. A young girl came to the stall of the evangelist. The long wavy hair, which escaped in plaits from her open _rebozo_, her complexion of a slight umber tint, the brown shoulders that her chemise of fine linen, fringed with lace, left almost bare, her slender figure, which had never been deformed by stays, and, above all, the three short petticoats of different colors, which fell in straight folds over her pliant haunches, all pointed out the young woman as a genuine specimen of the _China_.[22]
"I don't doubt that, since you come to me," replied Tio; and, fancying he had divined the message she was going to send, he began complaisantly to fold a sheet of rose-tinted vellum paper, highly glazed, and embossed with cupids. But she made a gesture of impatience with her little brown hand.
"What," said she, "would a man, who is almost breathing his last, care for your rose-tinted billet-doux?"
"The devil!" said the scribe, in a passionless tone, while the girl wiped her streaming eyes with one of her long plaits: "is it a farewell epistle, then?"