With a light step and exulting heart, Fonseca turned from the palace of Calderon. Naturally sanguine and high-spirited, visions of hope and joy floated before his eyes, and the future seemed to him a land owning but the twin deities of Glory and Love.
He had reached about the centre of the streets in which Calderon’s abode was placed, when six men, who for some moments had been watching him from a little distance, approached.
“I believe,” said the one who appeared the chief of the band, “that I have the honor to address Senior Don Martin Fonseca?”
“Such is my name.”
“In the name of the king we arrest you. Follow us.”
“Arrest! on what plea? What is my offence?”
“It is stated on this writ, signed by his Eminence the Cardinal-Duke de Lerma. You are charged with the crime of desertion.”
“Thou liest, knave! I had the general’s free permission to quit the camp.”
“We have said all—follow!”
Fonseca, naturally of the most impetuous and passionate character, was not, in that moment, in a mood to calculate coldly all the consequences of resistance. Arrest—imprisonment—on the eve before that which was to see him the deliverer of Beatriz, constituted a sentence of such despair, that all other considerations vanished before it. He set his teeth firmly, drew his sword, dashed aside the alguazil who attempted to obstruct his path, and strode grimly on, shaking one clenched hand in defiance, while, with the other, he waved the good Toledo that had often blazed in the van of battle, at the war-cry of “St. Iago and Spain!”