Ducos saluted, and wheeled impassive. He knew that in a few days Marshal Lannes was to supplant this maniac.
* * * * *
Up and away amongst the intricate ridges of the mountains, where the half-unravelled knots of the Pyrenees flow down in threads, or clustered threads, which are combed by and by into the plains south of Saragossa, a dusky young goatherd loitered among the chestnut trees on a hot afternoon. This boy’s beauty was of a supernal order. His elastic young cheeks glowed with colour; his eyebrows were resolute bows; his lips, like a pretty phrase of love, were set between dimples like inverted commas. And, as he stood, he coquetted like Dinorah to his own shadow, chasséd to it, spoke to it, upbraiding or caressing, as it answered to his movements on the ground before him—
“Ah, pretty one! ah, shameless! Art thou the shadow of the girl that Eugenio loved? Fie, fie! thou wouldst betray this poor Anita—mock the round limbs and little feet that will not look their part. Yet, betray her to her love returning, and Anita will fall and kiss thee on her knees—kiss the very shadow of Eugenio’s love. Ah, little shadow! take wings and fly to him, who promised quickly to return. Say I am good but sad, awaiting him; say that Anita suffers, but is patient. He will remember then, and come. No shadow of disguise shall blind him to his love. Go, go, before I repent and hold thee, jealous that mine own shadow should run before to find his lips.”
She stooped, and, with a fantastic gesture, threw her soul upon the winds; then rose, and leaned against a tree, and began to sing, and sigh and murmur softly:
“ ‘At the gate of heaven are sold brogues
For the little bare-footed angel rogues’—
Ah, little dear mother! it is the seventh month, and the sign is still delayed. No baby, no lover. Alack! why should he return to me, who am a barren olive! The husbandman asks a guerdon for his care. Give me my little doll, Santissima, or I will be naughty and drink holy-water: give me the shrill wee voice, which pierces to the father’s heart, when even passion loiters. Ah, come to me, Eugenio, my Eugenio!”
She raised her head quickly on the word, and her heart leaped. It was to hear the sound of a footstep, on the stones far below, coming up the mountain side. She looked to her shirt and jacket. Ragged as they were, undeveloped as was the figure within them, she had been so jealous a housewife that there was not in all so much as an eyelet hole to attract a peeping Tom. Now, leaving her goats amongst the scattered boulders of the open, she backed into the groves, precautionally, but a little reluctant, because in her heart she was curious.
The footsteps came on toilfully, and presently the man who was responsible for them hove into sight. He wore the dress of an English officer, save for the shepherd’s felt hat on his head; but his scarlet jacket was knotted loosely by the sleeves about his throat, in order to the disposition of a sling which held his left arm crookt in a bloody swathe. He levered himself up with a broken spear-shaft; but he was otherwise weaponless. A pistol, in Ducos’s creed, was the argument of a fool. He carried his ammunition in his brains.
Having reached a little plateau, irregular with rocks shed from the cliffs above, he sat down within the shadow of a grove of chestnut and carob trees, and sighed, and wiped his brow, and nodded to all around and below him.