“So I told my good friend the prior, when he came to me to borrow the thousand crowns. It was Heaven's will. Unexpected like the thunderbolt, and to be borne as such. Every man must bear his own burden. How could I lend him aught?”
“Your holiness's money had been all carried off by them before,” said the intendant, who knew, and none better, the exact contrary.
“Just so—all my scanty savings! desolate in my lone old age. Ah, senors, had we not had warning of the coming of these wretches from my dear friend the Marquess of Santa Cruz, whom I remember daily in my prayers, we had been like to them who go down quick into the pit. I too might have saved a trifle, had I been minded: but in thinking too much of others, I forgot myself, alas!”
“Warning or none, we had no right to be beaten by such a handful,” said the sea-captain; “and a shame it is, and a shame it will be, for many a day to come.”
“Do you mean to cast any slur, sir, upon the courage and conduct of his Catholic majesty's soldiers?” asked the colonel.
“I?—No; but we were foully beaten, and that behind our barricades too, and there's the plain truth.”
“Beaten, sir! Do you apply such a term to the fortunes of war? What more could our governor have done? Had we not the ways filled with poisoned caltrops, guarded by Indian archers, barred with butts full of earth, raked with culverins and arquebuses? What familiar spirit had we, sir, to tell us that these villains would come along the sea-beach, and not by the high-road, like Christian men?”
“Ah!” said the bishop, “it was by intuition diabolic, I doubt not, that they took that way. Satanas must need help those who serve him; and for my part, I can only attribute (I would the captain here had piety enough to do so) the misfortune which occurred to art-magic. I believe these men to have been possessed by all fiends whatsoever.”
“Well, your holiness,” said the colonel, “there may have been devilry in it; how else would men have dared to run right into the mouths of our cannon, fire their shot against our very noses, and tumble harmless over those huge butts of earth?”
“Doubtless by force of the fiends which raged with them,” interposed the bishop.