CHAPTER XIV.
No intelligence arrived, and early next morning we set out to seek the foe. M. le Tisanier was up betimes to see us off. “Expect to see me return,” said I, “in a state of absolute exhaustion and immense inanition, with heels hanging down over the Padre’s shoulders. In pity have a good dinner ready.”
“I shall be prepared for you,” said M. le Tisanier.
“Of course you feel easy,” said I to the Padre as we went along, “respecting the four Frenchmen.”
“No fear about them,” replied the Padre. “They know it is their safety to keep quiet; and if they come to any harm, it will be their own act. If they attempt to move, or even show themselves abroad, they will be shot down luego, luego.”
Our ramble proved well worth taking for its own sake; but we saw no Frenchmen, and very little game. The Padre was fortunate, and bagged a fox. My success was but scanty in respect to hares and partridges. After a long detour through a wild and very thinly inhabited district, and a few calls at scattered cottages or rather hovels, the abode of a rough and noble peasantry, all of whom received the Padre with profound veneration, and me as his companion with high Spanish courtesy, we reached at length a village which we had agreed to make the extreme limit of our excursion. Still obtaining no intelligence, we set out, after resting, on our return. We now, however, took the direct route over the plain, and found our journey homeward far more agreeable than our journey out. There was a point on which I deemed it requisite to obtain information, and the Padre being in a remarkably conversable vein, the present seemed a good opportunity.
“You mentioned,” said I, “that the proprietors of your abode were worthy people. I should be sorry, for their sakes, if the house received damage from the enemy.”
He. “It is not altogether for their sakes that I wish to preserve the house.”
I. “Of course, not altogether. Your own property—your own effects——”
He. “I have no property; I have no effects; I have nothing. It is a rule of my order. I am under a vow of poverty. No, no; my wish springs from a principle of honour.”
I. “Just what I should feel towards my own landlord. But you say it is not on your landlord’s account.”
He. “It is on account of the fraternity of which I am an unworthy member.”
I. “Oh, oh! then your fraternity have an interest in the premises?”
He. “Not exactly in the building itself, but in its contents. The fact is, our convent——but I forget. You, as a heret——pardon me; you, as an Englishman, can have no acquaintance with our regulations. I will just explain. Our poor indigent community has some trifling property in lands, principally vineyards. I am their factor. That house is one of our depôts.”
I. “Very good wine, too, the growth of your estates. Little did I imagine, while seated with you at table, or puffing a cigar, that we were sipping the property of the Church.”
He. “You may say smoking as well as sipping. The cigars also are the property of our humble fraternity.”
I. “Well, I like that idea of a vow of poverty amazingly. You don’t intend to convert me?”
He (benignantly). “One thing at a time. As to the wine we drink, you mistake, however, if you suppose that is the wine we grow. The wine grown on our lands is the ordinario sort—abundant, indeed, as to quantity, and in that respect valuable; but not of a sort fit to be drunk by my order. No, no; we exchange it for better. For example, what you have been drinking I trust you will admit is a good sound wine.”
I. “As good a Spanish red wine as I ever tasted;”—and it was no compliment.
He. “Yes, yes; and we sometimes exchange for foreign wines. Would that you had been here before the branch convent, which is now your hospital, was ransacked by the French. Have I not good reason for shooting a Frenchman whenever I can? Ah, I would have given you such a bottle of bordeaux! And port! As good port as you can drink in the Peninsula, and far better than you ever are likely to drink in your own country.”
I. “And so it is you who have the management of all this. Surely it must give you no end of trouble.”
He. “Trouble? It is my business. Besides that, it is a duty I owe my fraternity, consequently a duty of my profession. As to trouble, my only real trouble is in running foreign goods from the coast, or across the frontiers. I certainly do sometimes find a little trouble in that. But why should I complain? After all, it is exciting, and so far a pleasure. A man of my cloth ought always to be contented.”
I. “French goods?”
He. “French goods and English. French, across the Pyrenees; English, from the shores of the Mediterranean and Bay of Biscay. We sell again at a very fair profit—moderate as becomes our order, but fair nevertheless.”
I. “A heavy deduction, though, the fiscal exactions of your government, no doubt.”
“Fiscal?” he exclaimed, frowning horribly. “Fiscal? Do you think me, in managing the concerns of my venerable brotherhood, capable of such a dereliction of principle—do you consider me such an ass as to permit any deduction like that? Why, if we conducted our little business subject to fiscal obstructions, we might as well have no management at all. Señor Capitan, although this conversation was brought on by a remark on your part, the subject is one on which I have long wished to confer with you confidentially, and I thank you for the opportunity. And now let me bespeak your kind, benevolent offices on behalf of my self-denying humble brethren. As I said before, we profess poverty, we have nothing. Charitable laics, touched by our dependent and destitute condition, have from time to time bequeathed us trifles of landed property, which we frugally farm to the best advantage, taking the chance—you know it is a toss-up—of profit or loss. The produce, when realised, we turn to account as well as our poor opportunities permit; and my object is to supplicate your best offices in behalf of our little store in the village, which, as well as one or two others in different localities, is under my charge and responsibility. Some damage our store has suffered already. After the plunder of the convent by the French, your own troops, on their arrival in the village, found their way into the cellar of the house, and were beginning to make free with the wine, when you happily arrived, and order was soon restored. All I ask is, that as long as you remain here, or have influence in this neighbourhood, you will kindly give our depôt the benefit of your protection, so far as you may be able. I ask it, not only on my own account, but for the sake of my venerable brethren. Our wants are few. The French silks and English prints we sell for what we can get. We also drive a trifling business in English cutlery, and French quincaillerie. The poor must do something to live. As to the convent in Vittoria, I forward to it from time to time, as best I can, and when I have got them, only little supplies of such common necessaries as bordeaux, port, champagne, sherry, French brandy when I can get it good, sardines, gruyère cheese, caviar, vermicelli, macaroni, spicery, Dutch herrings, maraschino, Hamburg sausages, and a few other little knicknackeries not worth enumerating. Our wants are few.”
Had liberal Spain, when she laid hands on the property of the religious orders, gone through as she began, made a clean work of it, and reformed ALL that we consider the errors and abuses of Romanism, I, as an ardent Protestant, should have cordially rejoiced. But merely to confiscate endowments, and to leave other things as they are, is a different thing. There can be no doubt of it, that at the beginning of this century, when Napoleon I. attempted to make Spain a province of France, the Spanish clergy, by their influence with the nation, and by their success in maintaining the spirit of national resistance, were the saviours of their country. That these have been made the victims, and the only victims of reform, is hard indeed.
I walked on, listening to the Padre’s discourse with so much interest, that we arrived close upon our village before I recollected his promise of a lift, and my own fixed purpose of taking it out of him. We were now not a quarter of a mile from our journey’s end; and I was beginning to muse, with complacent anticipation, on the capital dinner which M. le Tisanier was to have ready on our arrival, when we noticed Francisco coming down the lane to meet us.
As he approached with hasty strides, his visage was clouded. He made an angry gesture, as if signalling us to halt.
“That endiablado doctor,” said he, “(may his soul never see the inside of purgatory!) has armed the four Frenchmen, seized all the ammunition in the village, and barricaded the house!”