“He did his duty. You would have liked us all to be set down as cowards, I suppose?”
“Cowards, no—but prudent. It is as I say and repeat: the fleet ought never to have gone out of Cadiz just to humor the whims and conceit of Villeneuve.
“Every one here knew that Gravina, like the others, was of opinion that it ought to stop in the bay. But Villeneuve had made up his mind to it, intending to hit a blow that might restore him to his master’s favor, and he worked on our Spanish pride. It seems that one of the reasons Gravina gave was the badness of the weather, and that he said, looking at the barometer in the cabin: ‘Do you not see that the barometer foretells foul weather? Do you not see how it has gone down?’ And then Villeneuve said drily: ‘What is gone down here is courage!’ At such an insult Gravina stood up, blind with rage, and threw the French Admiral’s own conduct at Finisterre in his teeth. Some angry words were spoken on both sides and at last our Admiral exclaimed: ‘To sea then to-morrow morning.’
“But I say that Gravina ought to have taken no notice of Villeneuve’s insolence—none whatever; that prudence is an officer’s first duty, and particularly when he knew—as we all knew—that the fleet was not in a condition to fight the English.”
This view, which at the time seemed to me an insult to our national honor, I understood later was well-founded. Doña Francisca was right. Gravina ought not to have given way to Villeneuve’s obstinacy, and I say it almost dims the halo of prestige with which the popular voice crowned the leader of the Spanish forces on that disastrous occasion. Without denying Gravina’s many merits, in my opinion there was much exaggeration in the high-flown praises that were lavished upon him, both after the battle, and again when he died of his wounds a few months later.[3] Everything he did proved him to be an accomplished gentleman and a brave sailor, but he was perhaps too much of a courtier to show the determination which commonly comes of long experience in war; he was deficient too in that complete superiority which, in so learned a profession as the Navy, can only be acquired by assiduous study of the sciences on which it relies. Gravina was a good commander of a division under superior orders, but nothing more. The foresight, coolness, and immovable determination, which are indispensable elements in the man whose fortune it is to wield such mighty forces, he had not; Don Cosme Damian Churruca had—and Don Dionisio Alcalá Galiano.
[3] March, 1806.
My master made no reply to Doña Francisca’s last speech and when she left the room I observed that he was praying as fervently as when I had left him in the cabin of the Santa Ana. Indeed, from that day Don Alonso did nothing else but pray; he prayed incessantly till the day came when he had to sail in the ship that never comes home.
He did not die till some time after his daughter’s marriage with Don Rafael Malespina, an event which took place two months after the action which the Spanish know as “the 21st,” and the English as the battle of Trafalgar. My young mistress was married one lovely morning, though it was winter time, and set out at once for Medina-Sidonia where a house was ready and waiting for the young couple. I might look on at her happiness during the days preceding the wedding but she did not observe the melancholy that I was suffering under; nor, if she had, would she have guessed the cause. She thought more of herself every day, as I could see, and I felt more and more humiliated by her beauty and her superior position in life. But I had taught myself to understand that such a sweet vision of all the graces could never be mine, and this kept me calm; for resignation—honest renunciation of all hope—is a real consolation, though it is a consolation akin to death.
Well, they were married, and the very day they had left us for Medina-Sidonia Doña Francisca told me that I was to follow them and enter their service. I set out that night, and during my solitary journey I tried to fight down my thoughts and my feelings which wavered between accepting a place in the house of the bridegroom or flying from them forever. I arrived very early in the morning and found out the house. I went into the garden but on the bottom step I stopped, for my reflections absorbed all my energies, and I had to stand still to think more clearly; I must have stood there for more than half an hour.
Perfect silence prevailed. The young couple were sleeping untroubled by a care or a sorrow. I could not help recalling that far-off time when my young mistress and I had played together. To me she had then been my first and only thought. To her, though I had not been the first in her affections, I had been something she loved and that she missed if we were apart for an hour. In so short a time how great a change!