This Shop Was Situated In The Calle Del Principe, A
Respectable And Well-Frequented Street In The Neighbourhood Of The
Square Of Cervantes.
I furnished it handsomely with glass cases
and chandeliers, and procured an acute Gallegan of the name of Pepe
Calzado, to superintend the business, who gave me weekly a faithful
account of the copies sold.
"How strangely times alter," said I, the second day subsequent to
the opening of my establishment, as I stood on the opposite side of
the street, leaning against the wall with folded arms, surveying my
shop, on the windows of which were painted in large yellow
characters, Despacho de la Sociedad Biblica y Estrangera; "how
strangely times alter; here have I been during the last eight
months running about old Popish Spain, distributing Testaments, as
agent of what the Papists call an heretical society, and have
neither been stoned nor burnt; and here am I now in the capital,
doing that which one would think were enough to cause all the dead
inquisitors and officials buried within the circuit of the walls to
rise from their graves and cry abomination; and yet no one
interferes with me. Pope of Rome! Pope of Rome! look to thyself.
That shop may be closed; but oh! what a sign of the times, that it
has been permitted to exist for one day. It appears to me, my
Father, that the days of your sway are numbered in Spain; that you
will not be permitted much longer to plunder her, to scoff at her,
and to scourge her with scorpions, as in bygone periods.
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