“Limping and footsore already come my cursed rabble—there you are, white-livered Tuscan sheep! The bark of a dog will scare them; they would fear a thousand bogies in the dark. It is certain I must wait for them, and bivouac somewhere here in the plains.”
Indeed, the first of them came on as he spoke—a weary, stumbling body of laggards, trailing feet and muskets.
“Halte-là!” he thundered; and the men came to a loose-kneed stand, while the corporals went round prodding and cursing them into a form of discipline. De Regnac grumbled—
“Are we to have this cold grace to our loves? God’s name! my heart cries out for fire—fire within and without. These monks!”
“Shall I slip before, and sound them? You may trust me, for a Spanish girl, who has learned how to coax her confessor.”
“Ha! You!” He held her, biting his great lips. “What are you good for but deceit, rogue! No, no; we will go together.”
He called his staff about him, and they went forward in a body. Presently, topping a longish slope, they saw, sprung out of the plain before them, a huddled grey building, glooming monstrous in the dusk. Its barred windows stared blindly; twin towers held the portico between them, as it were the lunette of a vast guillotine; a solitary lamp hung motionless in the entrance. Far away across the flats a light or two twinkled over ruined Figueras, like marsh-candles over a swamp. The place seemed lifeless desolation embodied—Death’s own monument in a desert. Gaiety in its atmosphere shivered into silence.
But at length a captain rallied, with a laugh.
“Peste!” he cried; “a churchyard refuge! Let us see if the dead walk!”
He battered with his sword-hilt on the great door. It swung open, in staggering response, and revealed a solitary figure. Cowled, spectral, gigantic—holding, motionless, a torch that wept fire—the shape stood without a word. It was muffled from crown to heel in coarse frieze; the eyelets in its woollen vizor were like holes scorched through by the burning gaze behind—the very rims of them appeared to smoulder. Laville, the captain, broke into an agitated laugh.