“La rueda de la fortuna anda mas lista que una rueda de molino, y que los que ayer estaban en pinganitos, hoy estan por el suelo.”[145]—
Don Quijote.
IT was at Castrò el Rio that we last met Don Carlos; it is now eleven years since,—rather more, but still I have a perfect recollection of it. My memory, indeed, is the only thing that has served me well through life. Friends have abandoned—riches corrupted—success has hardened—ambition disappointed me; and now, as you see, my very limbs are failing me, but memory—excepting for one short period, when my brain was affected—has never abandoned me. I cannot flee from it—it pursues me incessantly: it is as impossible to get rid of, as of one’s shadow in the sun’s rays, and seems indeed, like it, to become more perfect, as I too proceed downward in my rapidly revolving course.
Alas! it often brings to mind the words of my good father, addressed, whilst I was yet a child, to my too-indulgent mother:—“If we consult the happiness of our son, we must not bring him up above the condition to which it has pleased Providence to call him.” It was my unhappy lot, however, to become an educated pauper. I grew up discontented, and became a profligate: I coveted riches, to feed my unnatural cravings, and became criminal: I scoffed at religion, and came to ridicule the idea of a future state of rewards and punishments. And as I thus brought myself to believe that I was not an accountable creature, nothing thenceforth restrained me from committing any act which gratified my passions. What is man, I argued, that I should not despoil him, if he possess that which I covet? What should deter me from taking his life, if he stand between me and that which I desire? Crime is a mere word,—a term for any act which certain men, for their mutual advantage, have agreed shall meet with punishment. But what right have those men to say, this is just, and that is unlawful?
Such were my feelings at the time I met and related to you the adventures of my early life; adventures of which I was then not a little proud, though, nevertheless, I slurred over some little matters that I thought would not raise me in your opinion. Well was it for me that I was not cut off in the midst of my iniquitous career, but have, on the contrary, been allowed time, by penance and prayer, to make what atonement is in my power for my former sinful life.
My journey to Castrò had been undertaken at the desire of the political chief of ——, for the purpose of watching the proceedings of the Royal Regiment of Carbineers, which, as you may remember, was at that time quartered there.
I soon, under pretence of being a stanch royalist, wormed myself into the confidence of the officers, and learnt that they were in communication with the King’s Guards at Madrid, and were plotting a counter-revolution, to reestablish Ferdinand on a despotic throne. The advice I gave them, and the information I furnished the government, led to the unconnected and premature developement of their treason, and to the vigorous steps which were taken by the executive to meet and put it down.
These, however, are matters of history, on which it is unnecessary to dwell; suffice it, therefore, to say, that my good services on the occasion were rewarded by promotion to a more lucrative corregimiento. I did not long enjoy this new post, for, on the French columns crossing the Pyrenees the following spring, I threw up my civil employment, and, collecting a small band of guerrillas, flew to the defence of my country; joining the traitor Ballasteros, then entrusted with the command of the army of the south.
The deplorable events which followed deprived me of a home; but, leaving my wife and infant son (the only child, of three, whom it had pleased Providence to spare us) at the secluded little town of Cañete la Real, perched high up in the Sierra de Terril, I wandered about the country with a few adherents, seeking opportunities of harassing the French during their operations before Cadiz.
They afforded us no opportunities, however, of attacking their convoys with any chance of success, and my followers could not be brought to engage in any daring enterprise without the prospect of booty. The feeling of patriotism appeared, indeed, to be extinct in the breasts of Spaniards, and after a few weeks my band, which was nowhere well received, having been induced to commit excesses in some of the villages situated in the open country about Arcos, several parties of royalist volunteers were formed to proceed in quest of us; and so disheartened were my followers, that I shortly found my band reduced to a dozen desperadoes, who, like myself, had no hopes of obtaining pardon.