1834.] neck. I, furiously indignant, half in Still on I rushed. All was now But I did injustice to my Spanish recruits. They exhibited no hesitation whatever. Their spokesman told me that they were ready and willing to follow me to the world's end, and glad to find that I had escaped being a roti; that they had fired and fought as long as they could What a contrast all there was to men had kept their word; every bullet had told, and for one wretch that was hit, fifty were frightened. But they had not yet got enough. Some of the brawnier ruffians, hot with brandy, and mad for plunder, urged them on again. My remaining platoon fired, with a precision worthy of a Prussian parade. If a whole hemisphere of shot and shells had been rolled upon them from the sky, nothing could have been more conclusive. One universal howl tore the air. They burst away in all directions, kicking, trampling, and stabbing each other. The crowd who had made their way over the terrace, were now seen pouring back out of the casements like the reflux of a tide. All was a general rush to escape from the mansion, from the gardens, and from the grove. Some screamed out that the Royal Guards were come; others the Algerines; the majority, Satan, in the shape of a colossal park of artillery. All were sure of but one thing, and that was, that they would be massacred. At all events, they seemed determined not to undergo their fate in the grounds of the Conde. For a few minutes there was not a soul of them remaining, except some twenty legislators, whom our double charges had fairly disqualified from taking any active part in national affairs for some time to come. One half of them had discharged the only debt that they would ever have paid, and the rest were howling for mercy, when they saw me and my phalanx advancing at double quick time over the field of battle. However, I had other matters then to think of than knocking out the brains of a set of fools who had so little to spare; and at the head of my heroes I moved full speed on the mansion. The fire had been more persevering than the patriots. For it had laid hold on the massive framework of the doors and casements, and was tranquilly making its way to the tapestries and pictures. Ordering my troop to expel this invader, as it had done the rest, I rushed through the intolerable smoke, to find the treasure which I had left behind. After a search, by no means brief; for all round me was utter darkness. I stumbled against the sofa at last. To my horror I found it half burned, and a torch smouldering across the fragments; at another step, my foot plashed in a stream of some fluid on the floor. With an indescribable shudder I dipped my hand in it, and by the last spark of the torch, saw that it was blood. I felt sick at heart. The natural presumption was, that the same ruffian who had fired the sofa, had destroyed the unfortunate Conde. The torch fell from my hands, and was extinguished. I had not power to uttera word, much less to call for help to the further end of the vast hall where my followers were still busy in dragging down the burning tapestry. I Hung myself on the sofa, to do with my hands, what my eyes refused to do, and discover the remnants of my unhappy friend, and, my heart actually froze at the thought, of that loveliest of the lovely, who I knew would not stir from his side with life, and whom I, of course, concluded to have perished under the same dagger. In this moment the sofa fell into fragments, and I was thrown helplessly forward on. To this hour I feel the pang that shot through my whole frame; it stings me as I write the words; I fell upon a corpse. A stream of blood was flowing from the side. All but overcome with horror, I felt that it was the body of a man. My hand rested on a star of some order on its breast. All doubt was now at an end, the fate of the Conde was decided. With but one enquiry more to make, or one feeling to satisfy, I blindly felt for the last reliques of that gentle and noblehearted being, who had within so short a period exercised so extraordinary an influence over me. There, too, I was soon satisfied. In the dark I grasped the richly embroidered mantle which she had worn. Even the goblet which she held to the lips of the expiring man, was then lying on its folds! What became of me from that moment I know not. There never was born an individual less made to play the sentimentalist. I was now thirtysix, an age when the little incense that every man offers to the passions, had been fairly blown off my altar. I had passed through all the captivations of eyes, feet, and fingers, in a pilgrimage from Calais to Constantinople. I had seen all that could 1834.] be magical in glance, dance, and But I had then no thoughts to brute at his feet, to settle their pre- When I could collect myself, after the first shock of the sight, I looked round for the domestics, or tenantry, or any of the hundred or thousand human beings that might, I naturally concluded, have crowded to the spot of such a calamity. To my astonishment, not a soul was to be found. Terror, guilt, or superstition, had made every body fly, as if the place contained a pestilence. As a last resource, I returned to the groom whom I had left in my straw. He was now awake at last, and even sitting up; but drunk to the top of his bent. To my first word, he answered only by drinking my health, and suiting the action to the word, by putting a flask of aqua ardiente to his mouth, which he took from it again, only to let fall on the pavement, and to follow it there. In my indignation, I called him some name. It penetrated to the seat of his sensibilities, wherever that was. He opened his eyes wide, flung the flask at my head, and made a bound towards me, horsewhip in hand. I was tired, vexed, disgusted, dreamy, sick of the world. But the opportunity of at once doing an act of justice, inculcating a lesson of virtue, and relieving myself of a portion of my ennui, was too tempting to be resisted. I met him in full charge, wrested the flagellum from his nerveless hands, and, before he had time to fall asleep again, gave him a practical lecture on his outer man, which might make him sympathize, for all time to come, with any bela boured donkey, from Cadiz to the Pyrenees. I had now to make up my mind as to what were to be my further proceedings. With ruins before me, and with solitude round me, I was exactly in the condition in which a man has the finest opportunity of discovering what resources are in himself. The experiment did not 'succeed with me, more than with Pompey the Great. Yet I was sensibly the better for the horsewhipping I had given the drunken groom. The vice was not Spanish; and in punishing it, I had soared to the dignity of a national avenger. Many a man has died of dejection, who, if he had an act of public justice of this kind to execute, would have gathered up his faculties, and been alive at this hour. Like Antæus, instead of being strangled at his point of solitary elevation, he would have found himself much the better for the roughest contact with the level of humanity. Determining to make a courage, if I could not find one, and equally determining to resist the intolerable and diseased lassitude which I felt growing over my mind, much more than over my frame, I still had not power to leave the scene of destruction. I roved it from sunrise to sunset, and I had all the world to myself. Not a human being ever interrupted me by the sound of a human voice. Clustered cottages and village alehouses are matters unheard of in the remoter provinces of Spain. The palace stands in solemn solitude. The farmhouse stands equally clear of the contamination of meaner society. The peasant's hut buries itself in the fissure of some precipice, where its only visiting acquaintance must be the wolf or the vulture. land is all lines of circumvallation and contravallation. In the cities, society, on the contrary, is crowded like a camp. If the trader, lover, soldier, priest, scholar, lawyer, and noble, find room enough to stand in and sun himself to sleep, or room enough to lie down and smoke himself to sleep, his broadest ambition asks no more; and therein it shews its good sense, for no more could it get. Life is compression; the business of life is flirtation; the pleasure of life is gossip; the trial of life is having something to do; and the close of life is, to go out like an exhausted pipe, give its last smoke, and have its ashes shaken out by the hand of the sexton, to smoke no more. The The few huts which I detected in the forest were deserted; and famine at last made it necessary for me to think seriously of returning to the world again. There is no use in saying now, how loftily I then despised the world, and how contemptible all the bustlings of life seemed to me in comparison with thinking of the loss of the lovely and the young. But I had not the option. The fiercest of all instincts had begun to assert its supremacy; and after gazing at the smouldering palace for the thousandth time, exe crating the folly which had suffered me to lose sight of Catalina for a moment, and resolving thenceforth to shut my eyes, my ears, and my soul, to the sight, sound, and sense, of woman in her beauty, I sat down on the pedestal of a fallen statue, to ponder over the whole matter, and decide my decision again. In the moodiness of the time, I swung my foot against a small heap of dust, or fragments of the stone: it scat tered before me, and disclosed a little morocco case, which had probably been dropped by some of the plunderers in their flight. I opened it, and saw- -Catalina! I felt as if a stroke of lightning had fallen on me. The sensation was electric. There was the exquisite countenance, living, and illumined: her eyes were looking into the depths of mine. I could see the half-defined and delicate smile ripening on her lip. It was just half opening, and I could have listened for the words. The sweet, soft voice seemed to be sinking in my ear. But the dream was but for a moment, and it had its bitter reverse. A blast that came, heavy with the sulphurous vapours of the ruin, made me lift my eyes, and made me remember, too, that in the mass of wreck before me, the daughter of loveliness was now mouldering. Into what hideous shape might not that elegance of form have been crushed? What spire of flame, that from time to time shot up from the corners of the once proud fabric, might not be extinguishing the last remnant of all that was the charm of all eyes and ears? What cloud of those white ashes, that the gusts swept high and far, might not be dust once moulded into a form worthy only of the bright spirit it had enshrined,-dust that would have made every spot where it lay, sacred to my heart,-dust that would have reconciled me to lying down with it that hour in the grave. "You are an Englishman? Of course you are a friend of liberty. We Spaniards are rather late in the field, I acknowledge; but then we have the less time to throw away. So what are you for to-night? The club, the opera, the hazard table, or the bal paré at Madame Crescembini's ?" All this variety of delights was rat tled off the tongue of a dashing, darkbrowed, and very handsome Spaniard, young, volatile, and in boundless spirits. I had met with him at our ambassador's, he was to be seen everywhere, in the best company, and everywhere was the admiration of the ladies, and, of course, the envy, and, now and then a little, the hatred of the gentlemen. By what accident this showy personage attached himself, is matter of but a few words. One night, shortly after my arri val in Madrid, as I was returning from a fête at the Austrian ambassador's, my carriage, driving through one of those frightfully dark streets, which make the capital of the Castiles as perilous as the straits of Thermopylæ, ran down an unfortunate calèche coming with great rapidity in the opposite direction. As I did not feel myself qualified to use the privileges of a grandee of Spain, and break men's bones that I might arrive the earlier at my supper, I ordered my coachman to stop, and enquire what mischief he had done. I was not left long in doubt; for, by the light of the little lamp that twinkled before a little image of the Virgin, like the decaying piety of the people, I saw a gallant cavalier, in the uniform of the royal guard, extricate himself from the overturned calèche, and drawing his sabre, dart towards the carriage door, with all the appearance of a determination to wipe out the affront by sending me to the other world. It was in vain that I apologized, with all due consideration for the ill luck of so well-dressed a hero. He would hear of nothing but immediate war. As I had no liking for war in a dark street, at three in the morning, and with no other recorders to hand down the exploit to fame than a pair of postilions, I further attempted to explain, that if there had been any fault in addition to the misfortune, it was his own, and that he had only to drive more leisurely in future. But this did not prove a palliative. At length, a little tired of this dialogue, I told him that I was sleepy, cold, and only desired then to go to bed, but that in the morning I should be ready for his cartel. This was but throwing oil on the fire; he grew furious, and at length was hasty enough to use some flowers of the street vocabulary, which put |