CHAPTER III.
THE SIX DRUNKARDS OF BRUSSELS.
A moment after, as Chester presses the ring upon his little finger, a young Spaniard, almost a boy, with dark fiery eyes and ornamented by an incipient mustache that he attempts to curl fiercely, in full uniform with breastplate and plumed steel cap, enters the apartment and says briskly: “I am the officer deputed to escort you from the Citadel, señor. Permit me to present myself as Ensign José de Busaco, of Mondragon’s Arquebusiers.”
“And in return,” answers Guy, throwing on his boat cloak and preparing to follow the young man, “I beg to announce myself as the Capitan Guido Amati, of Romero’s Musketeers.”
“Of the Middelburg garrison, I presume,” remarks the ensign, as they leave the house together. “I suppose you have run up for a little roistering at Antwerp. Middelburg is a desperately sleepy place; I was quartered there three years ago. Brabant is slow also now since we smashed Louis of Nassau up at Jemmingen. I cut ten German throats there,” adds the boy very fiercely and very proudly. [[36]]
“Diablo! You are a fighter,” mutters Guy.
“Pooh! these German burghers and townspeople were nothing against us Spanish veterans,” replies Ensign de Busaco. “We killed eight thousand, you remember, and lost only eight men. That was Alva’s generalship. He has put up a big monument to himself over there,” and the boy points across the great enceinte of the citadel through which they are passing on their way to the main gate leading to the city.
Following his gesture in the gloom Chester can see the pedestal of that great statue made of the cannon taken at Jemmingen, which the pacificator and ravager of the Netherlands is erecting to his own honor and glory, greatly to the disgust of Philip of Spain, who does not care to have his generals too famous.
“Jake Yongling has made a great figure of the Viceroy. It is sixteen feet high, and with the pedestal nearly thirty. Here’s the last one of the arms,” continues the boyish warrior, giving a careless kick to the representation in iron of his general, lying on the ground. Then he whispers mysteriously: “They say this statue has a secret. What does the Duke with his tenth penny tax, eh; where does he put the money?”