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1834.]

neck. I, furiously indignant, half in
unconsciousness of what I was do-
ing, and equally in iguorance of where
I was going, sprang away, and rush-
ed through smoke and flame; I sup-
pose, with some vague idea of getting
out of the palace, raising the coun-
try, and returning to the rescue with
some ten or twenty thousand gallant
peasants resolved to die for their
chief and the realm. In fact, I was
precisely in that state of excitement,
which the French tenderly term
Monomania, and the English more
simply pronounce, fit for nothing but
a cell, straw, and a strait-waistcoat.
Yet this is the true condition and tone
of heroism; and Alexander, when he
passed the Granicus, or Cæsar the
Rubicon, would have had a narrow
escape from a British jury impa-
nelled on the statute, De Lunatico
inquirendo.

Still on I rushed. All was now
thick darkness, except when some
gust blew up the embers outside. I
felt my lungs withered; my limbs
tottered. I tried to roar. The at-
tempt was a failure. The degenerate
thought once passed through my
brain-what, in the name of all ab.
surdity, had brought me into this
scrape atall? But it was not a thought
of the heart. I expelled it summa-
rily, and it never dared to return.
In my fury, I struck about me with
my carbine. It fell heavy on an un-
The door flew open.
seen door.
Imagine my surprise Within, sat
quietly, as so many Dutch burgo-
masters, a dozen valets, smoking
their cigars, and playing a game of
Lansquenet, pour passer le temps,
till the palace was burned. I raved
against the lazy poltroons. I had now
recovered my voice. I flung their
cards out of the window, threatened
to send the players after the cards,
and ordered them to follow me, with
a solemn promise, which I believe I
would not then have much hesitated
in executing, to send the contents of
my firearm into the midst of the
group, on the slightest symptom
of mutiny.

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
see any thing, but that finding war
was useless, they had retired to the
servants' hall to wait till affairs took
another turn, or "till they heard the
ring of the Conde's bell!" I burst
into an involuntary roar of laughter,
in which the whole circle sympathe-
tically joined. But a new thought
The hall was in the
struck me.
wing of this immense building. A
glance outward shewed me the crowd
of robbers and patriots, at least a
hundred yards in advance, evidently
crushing nearer to the banqueting
room, which they had already so
completely cleared of its defenders.
There was Catalina still; for I knew
that she would never desert her
feeble charge. The first impulse
was, to hurry back at the head of the
valets, defend her, and play the
lover. But should I have time, my
next was to advance, take the scoun-
drels in flank and rear, and play the
The question was decided
general.
with military promptitude. I made
every man reload, with a double
charge of bullets, hammer his flint
in my presence, and pledge himself,
as a man of honour, not to fire with-
Those
out bringing down his man.
principles of tactics settled, I sallied
into the gardens.

What a contrast all there was to
all that I had left behind. Every fra-
grance of flower and field breathed
on me; the night air was absolutely
intoxicating with odour, fresh, cool,
dewy, delicious. I never knew what
"the breath of life" meant until now.
Above, a single star looked down,
blue and benignant, like the eye of a
guardian spirit, watching the slum-
bers of the world. But the sudden
glare of torches, and a shout evi-
dently denoting that an entrance had
been made into the scene of conflict,
I ranged my
awoke me at once.
little troop in line, and ordering them
to fire only by one-half at a time,
levelled their firelocks, one by one,
and gave the word " fire." The ef-
fect was indescribable. If a thun-
derbolt had dropped among them,
my discharge need not be ashamed
of the comparison, so far as effect
went. The whole multitude, by this
time some hundreds, were stagger-
ed; I saw their mass heave and shake
as if they were on the deck of one
of their own chebecks. My marks-

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
canzonet, the spirits, white, black
and grey,
that work such tempests
in the world of man ; yet had passed
heart whole. Not a feather of my
tranquillity had ever been ruffled by
the fairest of them all. Not a bottle
of claret or an ortolan the less had
excited my sensorium; not a dream
of chariots winged with doves, or
matrimonial balloons, despising the
world below, and sweeping along,
with their freight of happiness to the
evening star, had for five seconds
ever favoured the quiet currents of
my fancy. If there was on earth a
being stamped with "single blessed
ness," bound in the triple steel of
resolute bachelorism, a sworn anti-
hymenist, I was the man, six hours be-
fore. And now, a time scarcely longer
than an Englishman takes to eat his
dinner, or a Frenchman to curl his
ringlets, had upturned my whole
microcosm, and metamorphosed un
malgre into a Rinaldo, or an Amadis
de Gaul.

But I had then no thoughts to
waste upon my own transformations;
or rather I had no thoughts at all;
for the conviction that Catalina, in-
nocent, fond, high-hearted, and beau-
tiful,-Catalina, with all her rosy
smiles, and all her sparkling perfec-
tions, had been trampled into one
of the masses of death and gore, that
seemed to thicken round me, had
been too much for my frame, warm
as it was with the fever and fatigue
of the night. I sank at once, and
sank into total insensibility. How
long I thus remained, I knew not,
but by the discovery, on opening my
eyes, that I was lying under the nose
of a very handsome Arabian horse,
which seemed to be prodigiously ill
reconciled to my company. Day
was streaking the roof of the stable,
now my bed-chamber; and by the
snoring of a groom lying doubled up
on a heap of straw beside me, I ascer-
tained, alone, that I was yet in the
land where sunshine is the staff of
life, a cloak serves for every integu-
ment of the human frame, and the
breath of man's nostrils has been
poured in only for the purpose of
being puffed out again through a
cigar. Stiff with weariness, and
stained with blood, much of others,
and a little of my own, I left the
Arabian, and the inferior rational

brute at his feet, to settle their pre-
cedency, and tottered out into the
open air. It was one of the finest
mornings of the finest season in the
world-a Spanish Spring. All was
lucid, lustrous, balmy; a globe of
clouds, the living colour of crimson,
from which a Venus might have de-
scended within the last five minutes,
and which seemed waiting for her,
until she had paid a morning visit
to Adonis, lay on a sky of molten
lapis lazuli; every tree was dropping
fragrance and dew, and every dew-
drop was a diamond that might have
set the King of Visapour in battle
array against the King of Golconda.
actually found it
For the moment,
impossible to bring back the recol-
lections of the night. There was
that around me which was "enough
to cheer all sadness but despair."
But I was soon to be awakened.
On forcing my way through a thicket
of roses, that covered me with buds
and otto, the whole scene lay before
me. And what a scene of sorrow.
The conflagration had nearly died
away, but it was not until it had
done its work with terrible effect.
Of the entire magnificent pile but
one wing stood; buttress and battle-
ment had fallen, and were falling;
the flame had sunk only after cal-
cining the huge walls into dust, and
scattering the enormous beams in
ashes. Every gust of the morning
wind that swept away the white and
suffocating cloud which constantly
arose from the ruins, shewed some
new overthrow, and let the light in
on some new vista of mirrors, pic-
tures, and costly furniture, gradually
melting down into the flames that
still spread and gnawed the vitals of
the building below, like an army of
wolves. Shattered walls, cleft from
top to bottom by the fury of the
flame; painted windows, illumina-
ted, and dissolving in the partial
blaze within, and the delicate flowers
and traceries of the Gothic architec-
ture, reddening, bursting off with the
heat, or whitening into smoke and
decay, were all that remained f
the princely habitation, that the last
sunset had seen the seat of beings
worthy of the habitation, hearts ge-
nerous and dignified, accomplished
intellects, and forms which birth and
beauty had sealed with a signet, not
to be counterfeited by kings.

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

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