<p><SPAN name="chap22"></SPAN></p>
<h3> CHAPTER XXII. <br/><br/> PEREZ, THE POTTER; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF A NIGHT. </h3>
<p>"When Massena retired before the impetuous
advance of Lord Wellington, and left behind the
boasted lines of Torres Vedras, you may remember
that he selected the position of Santarem as one
admirably adapted to keep in check the advance of
your troops through the Portuguese frontier. While
his division occupied their trenches on the hill above
the Tagus, I was one day despatched on duty to the
officer commanding the Cuirassier Brigade at Torres
Novas, a town five leagues from Santarem, situated in
the middle of a beautiful plain. It is surrounded by
walls, and is overlooked by the castle with the nine
towers, from which it takes its name.</p>
<p>"I rode without an orderly, or other followers, for
the whole country was covered with our troops, and I
had no dread of molestation, though desired by
Marshal Massena to take with me a section of
dragoons, as part of the country through which I had to
pass was rendered very unsafe by the residence and
outrages of a certain Don Julian d'Aviero, a half-mad
student of Alcala, who had gathered a band of
deserter guerillas, and become a captain of robbers
in the woods of Santarem. There his name had
become terrible through all the Spanish and
Portuguese Estremaduras, Alentejo and Beira. His
midnight expeditions and attacks upon the detached
houses and solitary quintas of friend and foe were
characterised by singular and wanton cruelty; and in
a state of warfare, where the country was possessed
by two hostile armies, the pretexts of treason and
espionage were never wanting.</p>
<p>"A wild yell informed the inmates that their
dwelling was surrounded by the banditti of Don
Julian; the doors were dashed in; the men, half-starting
from their beds, were hewn to pieces; their
wives and daughters were dragged away to suffer
worse than death; the houses were pillaged, and
then reduced to ashes. And many of these atrocities
were doubtless attributed by us to you, and by you to
us. Captives were carried off daily, but they were
generally ransomed; if not, a shot from a carbine,
or a stab from a poniard, and all was over!</p>
<p>"I thought of all these things as I pursued my
solitary way by the foot of the mountains that skirt
the plain of Torres Novas; but it was with less of
alarm than pleasure. To me there seemed something
charming in the lonely and knight-errant-like
fashion in which I had thus ridden forth, in a strange
country, among dangerous ways, and an unscrupulous
people, with neither friend nor ally save my sabre
and horse.</p>
<p>"The sun was verging towards the darkening
mountains of Alentejo; but the atmosphere was still
exceedingly close and sultry, for, hot and bright, the
rays of the western sun were poured from a clear
and cloudless sky, scorching with their warmth the
waving corn, and the myriads of wild flowers that
covered the beautiful plain of Torres Novas.</p>
<p>"I was still far from the lines of Massena: the
country seemed desolate and depopulated. I had no
guide, and became apprehensive of losing my way,
and wandering towards the British outposts. Once
or twice I questioned a passing peasant, but was
provoked by their sullenness and ignorance of their
own locality.</p>
<p>"'Señor,' said I, to a paisano, whom I met driving
two mules harnessed in a rude cart, which was simply
composed of the rough stem of a tree, from which
two branches in the form of a fork rested, one on
each wheel, and formed the axle—'Señor, how many
leagues is it from this place to Santarem?'</p>
<p>"'Three, señor Caballero,' replied the man,
holding up three fingers.</p>
<p>"'Bueno! are they long or short?'</p>
<p>"'Short, señor.'</p>
<p>"There is, I know not why, a difference in the
length of the Spanish leagues, as many a time and
oft we found on the long line of march. After riding
four or five miles further, and, being still uncertain,
on meeting another peasant driving a borrico (an ass),
laden with kid-skins of the mountain-wine, I inquired
of him the distance from Santarem on the Tagus.</p>
<p>"'Five long leagues, señor,' he replied, displaying
four fingers and a thumb.</p>
<p>"'Diable!' I muttered, and spurred on, for the
sun had now sunk behind the blue waving line of the
western Sierra.</p>
<p>"Near a roadside fountain I passed the bodies of
three or four French soldiers, who had been wounded
in a recent encounter with the outlaws of Julian
Aviero, and had crawled there to quench their thirst
and die. They had been completely stripped by the
Spaniards, and their gory but honourable scars were
blackening in the heat of the sultry day.</p>
<p>"On the velvet turf that bordered the road I softly
drew up my horse, on observing behind the pedestal
of the fountain a villanous son of Israel practising
dental surgery, by robbing the jaws of the dead; for
the soldiers being generally young men, their teeth
brought a good price in the dentist shops of Paris
and Madrid. I had frequently heard of this revolting
practice, but never till that moment had ocular proof
that such existed.</p>
<p>"The operator was a man about forty, lean and
hollow-visaged, with the brow of a villain, the eyes of
a snake, the nose of an eagle, and beard like a
cossacque; he was enveloped in a loose blue gown, and
his head was surmounted by a steeple-crowned
sombrero, that had long lost every trace of its original
colour. Near him lay a square mahogany box, like a
pedlar's wallet, in which he carried his instruments
and stock of dental wares.</p>
<p>"He was so busy with the relaxed jaws of a
young soldier that he did not perceive my approach.</p>
<p>"You know how jealous we soldiers are of the
treatment given to the remains of our dead comrades.
Maladetto! my blood boiled. Dashing spurs
into my horse, I plunged him right upon the dog of
an Israelite; a kick from a hoof laid bare his skull,
and stretched him prostrate on the earth. As he fell
backwards I obtained a glimpse of his wallet, which
bristled with poniards and pistols, from which I
concluded him to be a robber of the living as well as of
the dead; and I soon discovered my conclusions to
be just.</p>
<p>"This rencontre occurred near a great olive wood,
which was known to be the haunt of Aviero; and I
rode as fast as possible to leave it behind before
nightfall; but I had not gone half-a-mile from the
fountain, when a sharp rifle shot whistled from a
grove of olives on my right. My horse gave a snort
of agony, and fell heavily forward, stone dead. A
bullet had pierced his brain. I disengaged myself
from the stirrups, and drew my sabre, but ere I
could strike one blow in my defence, a hundred
hands were upon me, and I was a prisoner, in the
power of a band of savage frontier guerillas—half
soldiers, half robbers, and wholly demons. Diable! my
life hung by a hair.</p>
<p>"Some wore broad hats, embroidered jackets, and
yellow scarfs, with plush breeches; others had little
other garment than their olive skins, and wore their
flowing hair of the deepest black, gathered in netted
cauls; but all were armed with rifles, daggers, and
pistols, or with all manner of military weapons
gathered from the fields of those battles which were
every day fought in their vicinity.</p>
<p>"Oh, Monsieur! what a moment of misery was
that when I found myself so completely at the mercy
of those ruffian Spaniards, whom I equally despised
and abhorred.</p>
<p>"Many a knife was drawn and many a blow
struck at me; but in their very fury and anxiety
to destroy me these wretches retarded, impeded, and
wounded each other.</p>
<p>"'Down with him! down with the Frenchman!
Death to the Buonapartist! Maladetto!' was the
cry on every side.</p>
<p>"'Caramba!' cried one in a voice of thunder,
'I will blow out the brains of the first that injures
him. Frenchman and dog as he is, our laws must
be respected. Away with him to the mountains, for
Don Julian d'Aviero must decide his fate.'</p>
<p>"Aviero! my heart sunk; I was then quite in the
power of the devil.</p>
<p>"Amid a storm of growling and swearing, and
even fisticuffs, I was conducted through the wood,
which was almost pathless and covered the face of
the Sierra by which we ascended, to an old and ruined
villa, belonging to the Duke of Aviero. It stood on
the edge of a precipice that overhung the Tagus, and
there Don Julian had for the present established his
head-quarters. A recent attempt had been made, by
a detachment of ours, under Jacques Chataigneur, to
dislodge him; these had been repulsed with great
slaughter; and on approaching the villa, I could
discern vivid traces of the conflict—traces which its
amiable and philosophical inmates cared not to
trouble themselves as yet in removing.</p>
<p>"This noble residence of Don Julian's ancestors,
with its marble vestibule and stately portico, its
frescoed chambers and arcades of columns, round which
the vine and the rose were clambering, had been
no way improved by his occupation thereof. A
balustraded terrace encircled it, and within and around it
the dead French and guerillas were lying across each
other in scores—many of them yet grasping their
adversaries, just as they had fallen, without their
hold relaxing, or the fierce expression which
distorted their features at the hour of death passing
away.</p>
<p>"Many of these men were my comrades, grenadiers
of the 23rd, whom I could recognise, notwithstanding
the alteration of their features.</p>
<p>"In the assault and defence, the doors and windows
of this beautiful villa had all been blown to
pieces; the walls were studded with bullets and
spattered with blood, which appeared to have run
like a rivulet down the staircase, to mingle with the
waters of a shattered jet d'eau in the vestibule. At
the head of the stair a barricade had been formed by
a sideboard, a piano, and other furniture, wedged with
bolsters and pillows, and books; and this point of
assault had been fought for, like any breach in the glacis
of Badajoz. Everywhere the bills and axes of the
pioneers had been at work; but Chataigneur had
been repulsed, and Don Julian remained impregnable
and triumphant.</p>
<p>"In a noble apartment, the windows of which
overlooked the Tagus and the vast plain that spread
in its beauty towards the castle and city of Torres
Novas, the ramparts of which were tipped with the
last gleam of the set sun, Don Julian, with several
of his desperadoes, sat over their cups of country
wine, muffled in their mantles, and enjoying paper
cigars, while their feet rested on a great copper
brassero of charcoal that stood in the centre of the
marble floor.</p>
<p>"Don Julian, a remarkably handsome young man,
but with a bold, reckless, and ferocious cast of
features, received me with a low bow, which I could
perceive to be partly ironical. His jacket of green
velvet was richly brocaded and fastened with silver
clasps; his breast was displayed by an open shirt,
and had a crucifix engraven on it by gunpowder. He
wore yellow breeches girt by a sash, red stockings
and abarcas; but had no weapons save his sabre.</p>
<p>"When he addressed me, I expected to hear but
my death warrant; judge how agreeably I was
surprised by his saying,—</p>
<p>"'Señor, though you are a Frenchman, and I
might this moment put you to death as an invader
of Spain, and as a revenge in some sort for the recent
attempt made by your ruthless marshal on my
residence here, I know you to be the officer who spared
the mansion of old Don Juan Lerma, when
empowered by your orders to destroy it. Don Juan is
the only man for whom a lingering feeling of
humanity has left in my breast an atom of regard, for
he loved the old cavalier, my father, well. Being
anxious to requite to you the kindness so lately done
to him, and to prove whether his gratitude surpasses
that of a robber, I request that you will write to him
from this, my Villa of Aviero, and beg the ransom of
one hundred dollars to free you from my troop, as I
question very much if the state of Massena's
commissariat will enable you to have so much loose cash
about you.'</p>
<p>"'You are right, señor; a hundred dollars!
Diable! I never had so much money at any time. But
what if the cavalier Lerma refuses?'</p>
<p>"'You must die.'</p>
<p>"'Morbleu!' said I, shrugging my shoulders.</p>
<p>"'Such is the law of capture to which we have
bound ourselves, by such oaths as men seldom hear.
You will be accommodated with writing materials;
address a letter to the Cavalier Don Juan Lerma,
and one of my people will convey it immediately to
the city of Santarem.'</p>
<p>"Upon this, I wrote a hurried but anxious note to
the old hidalgo, begging him to consider the
kindness I had done him, the danger by which I was
menaced, and pledging my honour to repay the
hundred duros out of my first prize money. This
system of kidnapping and extortion had become so
common that, being doubtful of the answer, I saw
the messenger depart with an anxiety which I
laboured in vain to conceal by folding my arms and
planting my feet on the brassero, by smoking a cigar,
sipping the Lisbon vino, and joining in the half
frivolous and wholly ruffian chit-chat of Don Julian
and his squalid myrmidons.</p>
<p>"In the midst of this I was a little startled to find
my acquaintance, the Jew dentist, enter, with his
box under his arm, a bloody cloth encircling his
head and half concealing his basilisk eyes, which
bent on me a demoniacal scowl of recognition; and
I discovered to my consternation that this worthy, in
virtue of being a greater fiend than his fellows, was
no other than the lieutenant of Julian d'Aviero. But,
without seeming to observe me, he advanced to the
side of the latter, and whispered a few words in his
ear.</p>
<p>"'Ha,' said Don Julian, 'is it so? then our
hellish compact must be observed. I am sorry for
the little paisana, but there is no remedy. Hold,
there, cammarados! bring in the prisoners of
Santarem—the potter Perez and the girl who was
captured with him last night by our worthy Teniente
Isacco Zendono.'</p>
<p>"'The girl is his sister,' growled the Jew robber,
in husky Spanish, as he threw off his blue gown and
revealed his gaudy Spanish dress, and sash bristling
with pistols and knives, 'and a fair sample of mother
Eve's flesh she is—Bueno!'</p>
<p>"'Curses blast you! bring them in, or'—and
Julian, who always assumed the blustering ruffian to
his own people, grasped a pistol.</p>
<p>"The lieutenant quitted his presence; but almost
immediately returned, dragging in a stout peasant
about three or four and twenty years of age. He had
all the lofty air, the well-knit and erect figure of those
peasantry on frontiers where the Portuguese are
improved by intermarriage with the Spaniards. He
wore a brown vest with loose sleeves, and breeches of
bright yellow cotton, tied about the middle by a red
silk scarf. His long raven hair was gathered in a
wide silk netting, and hung in a heavy mass upon his
neck. His hands were tightly pinioned by a cord,
but he gazed about him with an air of reckless defiance,
which, however, failed to intimidate the thieves,
or to encourage his sister, a pretty-looking girl of
sixteen, or thereabout, who clung to his arm in the
utmost terror.</p>
<p>"Her coal-black hair was plaited somewhat after
the fashion of the Basque women, in two gigantic
braids, and reached below the flounces of her yellow
skirt, which was short enough to expose, half-way up
to the knee, her very handsome legs, encased in
bright scarlet stockings which were elaborately
covered with white braiding. Her little feet and
ankles were equipped with open cut abarcas,
interlaced with thongs of morocco leather, like the hose
of your Highland soldiers. Her teeth and lips were
a miracle, and her terror made her dark eyes glitter
like diamonds. Ah! merci, monsieur, she was
excessively captivating, that little paisana.</p>
<p>"Though such a little beauty is not uncommon in
Spain, the robbers of Don Julian gazed upon her
with gloating eyes of evil admiration and longing;
many of them licked their huge blubber lips with
grim and grotesque glee, as if anticipating kisses;
while the poor sinking girl shrunk from their bold
and villainous gaze, as she would have done from the
eyes of so many serpents or fiends.</p>
<p>"'Teresa, hold up your head, my dear girl; do not
droop before these base ladrones, stained as they are
by a thousand atrocities. Dios! should innocence
quail before guilt?' said the young peasant with a
fearlessness that at once gained him my sympathy
and admiration; and for a time I forgot my own
troubles in those of the strangers. 'Be bold of heart,
my sweet sister! We are possessed of that which can
touch even the hearts of these bad men, and unlock
the doors of their prison-house.'</p>
<p>"'You are mistaken in this idea, Señor Perez el
Cantarero,' said Don Julian, with a quiet sneer, while
his band crowded round with lowering brows and
gloating eyes. 'Quite mistaken, allow me to inform
you. Your honest uncle, the abagado (O most honest
lawyer of Santarem!) has refused to ransom you. Our
messenger, the very reverend rabbi, Isacco Zendono,
has come back just now empty-handed.'</p>
<p>"The girl shrieked and hid her face in the bosom
of her brother, who gazed around him with a look of
rage, astonishment, and stupefaction.</p>
<p>"Isacco, the Jew, burst into an uncontrollable fit
of laughter, in which Don Julian and his comrades
joined.</p>
<p>"'Out upon ye, villains,' exclaimed Perez the potter,
shaking his clenched hand at them.</p>
<p>"'O Perez, por amor de mi,' urged his sister, in a
breathless voice.</p>
<p>"'Teresa, my poor Teresa,' muttered the brother
through his hard-set teeth, 'I had doubts, dreadful
doubts; but I expected not this. Answer, Señor Don
Julian d'Aviero, does this black-hearted slave of
Mammon, this villain of an abagado, forget that he
retains in his repositories the inheritance left us by
old Gil Perez, the alcalde of Santarem?'</p>
<p>"'In truth, most blustering señor, most valiant
cavalier of crocks and cans, your father's honest
brother has not forgotten that important fact,' replied
Julian d'Aviero, in his cool, dry way. 'The abagado
will act true to his trade, by deceiving those who trust
him. His trade! May the great Devil confound it,
for it has stripped me of as fair an heritage as ever
came from a miserly sire to a spendthrift son. Well,
Señor Perez, in short, to possess himself of your two
thousand dollars, and practise a little profitable
conveyancing, your relative the lawyer has stoutly
declined to ransom you, saith our messenger, swearing
by the bones of St. James, he would not yield the
hundredth part of a pezzo to save you from the jaws
of hell.'</p>
<p>"'Be it so,' muttered Perez, between his clenched
teeth; 'in the world that is to come, he will meet with
his reward.'</p>
<p>"'Were it but to provoke the abagado, I would
willingly set you free, Señor Potter; but the laws of
this free community say nay.'</p>
<p>"'But my sister——'</p>
<p>"'Has found no more favour than yourself. Santos!
You are a strange fellow, Señor Perez. Who the
devil ever expects to find an apostle in the carcase of
an abagado?'</p>
<p>"'Madre de Dios! my poor Teresa!' said the
young man, folding his sister to his breast; while she
responded by an agony of grief and terror, such as I
had never before witnessed.</p>
<p>"On her knees she bent before Julian d'Aviero,
imploring him to spare her only brother, and to slay
her, if he pleased; but her piteous cries and
supplications, rendered yet more plaintive by the beautiful
language of Spain, were drowned by the brutal
jests, and whoops, and yells of the Portuguese robbers.</p>
<p>"When the hubbub subsided, 'Señor Cantarero,'
said Don Julian, in his wonted cold and sarcastic
manner, 'I have said that your ransoms are
refused.'</p>
<p>"'And what then, Señor Ladrone?' asked the
paisano sternly.</p>
<p>"You must die—that is all," replied the captain,
quietly knocking the ashes from his fragrant cuba.</p>
<p>"'Die!'</p>
<p>"'Si, morir, Micer Perez el Cantarero,' said he,
with an ironical bow.</p>
<p>"''T is hard to die thus, and unrevenged,' said the
peasant, looking round as if for a weapon; 'but I am
content, so that you release my sister, and swear upon
the crucifix that she shall receive no harm.'</p>
<p>"At this demand there was another horrid laugh;
and the Jew, turning up his eyes, swore something in
Hebrew at a request so unreasonable.</p>
<p>"'Keep your mind quite at ease, Perez, amigo
mio,' said Julian d'Aviero, whose potations were now
affecting his brain, and imparting to his manner a
strange mixture of ferocity and jocose cruelty—'do
not be alarmed; your sister shall not die. Maladetto! dost
think we have no taste or discrimination?'</p>
<p>"'The Holy Virgin thank you!' said the potter,
with an odd mixture of fervour and ferocity; 'my
dearest Teresa, will——'</p>
<p>"'Fall to the lot of the fortunate rascal to whom
the happy dice assigns her,' said the Jew lieutenant of
the gang, pushing forward and jostling me, with such
insolence that I had some difficulty in keeping my
hands from his throat.</p>
<p>"'Hark you, Master Potter,' he continued, in his
husky Spanish, which I cannot imitate. 'We cast
lots for the women we capture, if they be young and
handsome. The men we poniard, if they cannot
ransom their heads and hides, and then we bury them
honourably in the chasm of the Tagus. The bones
of some stout fellows are bleaching there, so you will
find yourself in good company, I promise you I owe
you a grudge for the stroke your 'cajado' dealt on my
pate yesterday, and so claim the first blow to-day.
Arrojarse, camarados! fall on!'</p>
<p>"He unsheathed his poniard and grasped the potter
by the collar of his buckram doublet; but the
descending blow was arrested by the uplifted arms of
Teresa, who hung upon the villanous dog of Israel
with the determination, if not with the strength, of a
tigress, and poured forth a succession of cries and
threats, which astonished even the intended assassin;
then, sinking upon her knees, the winning girl
pressed the murderer's hideous paw to her beautiful
lips, beseeching him, in those accents to which a
woman in deadly terror can alone give utterance, to
spare her brother, her Perez, her dear and only
brother, and she would become the servant, the slave,
of the robber for her whole life.</p>
<p>"'Oh, spare my brother; spare him! O Señor
Judio; O Señor Don Julian, Caballeros, gracias,
bandidos, por Nuestra Señora Santissima!'</p>
<p>"'My slave? Demonios!' chuckled the ruffian
Jew; 'that you may be at all events, or I may make
short work with you, and so disappoint some honest
fellow here. Off, off with you!' and he shook her
from him with so much violence, that on sinking
to the floor, the blood gushed from her mouth and
nostrils.</p>
<p>"The Jew again raised his dagger, but Perez, filled
with fury at the treatment of his sister, snapped, as if
it had been a straw, the cord that bound him, and,
grappling with the athletic ruffian, dashed him on the
floor where he placed a foot upon his breast, and trod
him down as one would do a serpent. The blood of
the potter was up; grasping another by the sash, he
hurled him back with such force that the bandit was
instantly slain; for, on staggering, his head came so
violently in contact with an angle of the wall, that in
a moment his brains were dashed out, and he presented
a dreadful spectacle as he lay, breathless and
quivering, with his battered skull empty, as if struck
by a grapeshot, and his blood and brains forming an
oozy pool beside him.</p>
<p>"Even the banditti seemed struck with horror for
a moment, and a stillness ensued. They glared at
their dead comrade and at each other, heedless of the
groans and struggles of the half-stifled Zendono.
The voice of the girl was again heard supplicating,
for I had raised her up; and she implored me to save
her brother, for he had done no wrong, but shed
blood only in his own defence, and now remained
motionless and terrified at his own temerity. The
faint and half-articulate voice of Teresa recalled the
band from the spell which, as I have said, their
comrade's death had cast around them; and
simultaneously they rushed with their knives upon the poor
potter, and, pierced at once by innumerable and
reiterated wounds, he sunk lifeless among their feet;
and long after the last vital spark had fled, they
continued to stab and slash, and otherwise mutilate
the corpse until its bloody garments hung about it
in tatters.</p>
<p>"'Tonnere!' thought I, 'if my friend the hidalgo
has neither the cash nor the inclination to ransom
me, I shall be in a bad way.'</p>
<p>"By order of Don Julian, who had watched this
scene of butchery with folded arms and an immovable
aspect, the body was tossed over the window,
from whence I heard it falling heavily from rock to
rock before it reached the deep, dark water of a
tributary of the Tagus, that struggled through a
chasm in the cliffs, two hundred feet below.</p>
<p>"While the half-drunken banditti cursed and
yelled like fiends, they cast the dead body of their
comrade after that of the unfortunate potter, then
wiped and sheathed their poniards; and all traces of
the horrible occurrence disappeared, save the red
blood gouts upon the floor, which these European
Thugs never thought of cleansing; but trampled to
and fro among that frightful puddle as heedlessly
as if it had been so much spring water spilt by
accident.</p>
<p>"Teresa had swooned, and hung on my arm in a
happy state of insensibility.</p>
<p>"Isacco Zendono, who had suffered severely in
the melée, during his prostrate position on the floor,
now scrambled up, his heart burning with fury, and
his body smarting with pain. He was plastered
with the gore of the slain men; and its dripping
from his sable beard and matted hair no way
improved his personal appearance, or increased the
benevolence of his features.</p>
<p>"Growling at the weight of his comrades' heels,
he demanded in a stentorian voice that lots should
be cast for possession of the Señora Teresa; a
proposition at once acceded to.</p>
<p>"Dice were produced, and the beetle-browed banditti
crowded round a table, where they rattled and
threw the dice in succession.</p>
<p>"The Jew uttered a yell.</p>
<p>"He had won!</p>
<p>"Diable! how like a victorious fiend he seemed,
as, with a shout of villanous joy, he snatched the
poor insensible victim from my arms, and with his
poniard menacing any man who dared to follow,
bore her off, bent double over his left arm, as easily
as he would have done a folded mantle.</p>
<p>"Poor Teresa! she was so slight and young.</p>
<p>"Monsieur, I am not quite such a bad or wild
fellow as, perhaps, you may think me; and I do assure
you that I then felt my impetuous blood tingling in
every vein. I sprang after the dog Zendono, but
was restrained by the powerful and perhaps friendly
arm of Don Julian d'Aviero.</p>
<p>"'Señor!' he exclaimed, in a whisper, 'are you
mad? Remember your life is at stake, and ponder
well on the helplessness of your condition among
us.'</p>
<p>"The truth of this came bitterly home to my
heart; I gave the speaker a fierce and reproachful
glance, and folded my arms in silence.</p>
<p>"My heart bled for the unhappy girl.</p>
<p class="t3">
* * * * * *</p>
<p>"Frequently in that long and dreary night, when
the mountain blast howled drearily through the
shattered villa of Aviero, and moaned in the gorge
through which the Tagus wound, I heard the cries
and lamentations of the miserable girl, and the
oaths and revelry of those to whom she was now
abandoned.</p>
<p>"Ere daybreak her cries had ceased. Mille
Baionettes! they nearly drove me mad.</p>
<p>"What became of her I know not, as I never saw
her again.</p>
<p>"Next day, an old Padre of Santarem came with
a message from the hidalgo Don Juan Lerma, whose
mansion I had spared. The priest had volunteered
on this errand of mercy, as no other man in
Santarem would venture within the reach of the terrible
Aviero, to whom he paid two hundred pillared
dollars, and I was conducted to within a few toises of
the advanced sentinels of our out-piquets, by Don
Julian in person, and we bade each other adieu with
a very good grace, but without either tears or regret
on my side, as may be well assumed; and so ended
my mal-adventure in the wood of Santarem."</p>
<p class="t3">
—————</p>
<p>The Captain St. Florian concluded his story.</p>
<p>"Parbleu!" said he, "how dry my throat is with
speaking so long, and I dare say I have tired you to
death. But let us have one more bottle of Janette's
champagne, and then we shall decamp soberly to
look for more adventures. But I must be cautious,
being for guard at the chateau to-morrow. You
cannot mean to return to Lagny to-night?"</p>
<p>"I must; and 't is high time we were off, Captain
St. Florian; besides, I see Janette is decidedly
sleepy."</p>
<p>"Ah! poor girl, yes."</p>
<p>"My horse is at an hotel in a street leading from
the Champ Elysées."</p>
<p>"Ouf! a devil of a way from this. There is a
church clock striking five. Nombril de Belzebub,
't is morning!"</p>
<p>We hurriedly rose to depart. Janette had fallen
fast asleep in the bar, and St. Florian kissed her
brow as he passed and deposited the reckoning in
her lap. The portière of the cabaret let us out, and
we sallied through the street to find my hotel.</p>
<p>At the chateau, as the Parisians name the palace,
I bade adieu to the captain, and getting forth my
horse, rode off.</p>
<p>The trumpets of the Austrian cavalry and the English
drums were ringing on the early morning wind,
as the reveille roused the soldiers of the allied host
in their several camps and cantonments.</p>
<p>The patrols of the gensd'armes were retiring to
their quarters; the sun was coming up in his glory,
and ruddily in his morning light, amid the morning
smoke of Paris, shone the huge façade of Notre
Dame, and the burnished dome of the Hotel des
Invalides.</p>
<p>Paris, with its tented parks and guarded barriers,
was left behind; and I dashed at full gallop along the
dusty road that under the shadow of many a vine
trellis, and many an apple bower, led to my
cantonments at Lagny on the Marne.</p>
<p><br/><br/><br/></p>
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