The excessive height to which the gabelle had carried the price of salt acted as one of the greatest encouragements to those Spanish smugglers, who have in all times frequented the various passes of the Pyrenees, and distinguished themselves by a daring and reckless courage, and a keen penetrating sagacity, which might have raised them individually to the highest stations of society, if employed for the nobler and better purposes of existence.
It unfortunately happens in the world, that talent is less frequently wanting than the wisdom to employ it; and many men, who, to my knowledge, might have established their own fortune, served their country, and rendered their name immortal, have wasted grand abilities upon petty schemes, and heroic courage upon disgraceful enterprises. So was it, though in a minor degree, with many of the Spanish smugglers that were continually passing to and fro in our immediate neighbourhood; and a braver or more ingenious race of men never existed.
Of course they were not without their aiders and abettors on the French side of the mountains; and it was very generally supposed that the mill, near which I had fallen into the water, was a great receptacle for the contraband goods which they imported. However, nothing of the kind was to be discovered, although the officers of the gabelle, called Gabellateurs, and the Douaniers, or custom-house officers, had visited it at all times and seasons. The mill had ever been found clear and fair, and the miller, a quiet, civil sort of person, who let them look where they listed, and took it all in good part.
Notwithstanding all this fair appearance, which baffled even the keen eyes of those interested in the discovery, and deceived completely all who were not interested in the smuggling itself, whenever my father wanted some good Alicante wine, or Xeres, or anything else of the same nature, he sent to the miller, who was always found ready to oblige Monseigneur le Comte. Often also, in my childhood, did I visit the mill in company with the old maître d'hôtel, whose predilection for the good things of this life, especially in the form of liquids, would have led him to cultivate the acquaintance of the Devil himself, if he had appeared with a bottle of wine under his arm. Many was the curious scene that I thus saw, now floating faintly before my memory as a remembered dream; and many were the means employed to make the amiable practice of smuggling palatable to the taste of the heir of Bigorre. Oranges, and pomegranates, and dates, were always brought forward to gratify the young Count, and my bold and daring spirit, even as a child, excited the admiration and delight of many of the dark smugglers, who used, in return, to tell me long stories of their strange adventures, which, heightened by the barbarous yet picturesque dialect that they spoke, excited my fancy to the utmost, and sent me away with my brain full of wild imaginations.
Very often, if any of these men had something peculiarly rare or curious to dispose of, they went so far as to bring it up to the Château de l'Orme, where my father generally became a purchaser, notwithstanding a remonstrance which my mother would occasionally venture to make against the encouragement of persons habitually infringing the law of the land. Our family thus acquired the reputation amongst the smugglers of being their patrons and benefactors; and violent in all their passions, whether good or bad, their gratitude was enthusiastic in proportion. One of them, named Pedro Garcias, deserves more particular notice than the rest on many accounts. When I first knew him, he was a man of about forty, perhaps more; but time and danger, and excited passion and fatigue, had made as little impression upon him as the soft waves of some sheltered bay do upon the granite rocks that surround it. He was born at the little village of Jacca, on the other side of the mountains, the son of a wealthy farmer, who afforded him an education much superior to his rank in life. The blood of his ancestors, they said, was mingled with that of the Moors; but instead of feeling this circumstance as a stain upon his race, like most of his countrymen, he seemed rather to glory in his descent from a valiant and conquering people, and to exult in the African fire that circled in his veins.
His complexion was not peculiarly swarthy, though his long stiff black hair, and flashing eyes, spoke out in favour of his Moorish origin. In height he was nearly six feet three inches; but instead of any of the awkward disproportion which we sometimes see in tall people, his form was cast in the most exquisite mould of vigorous masculine beauty.
There existed between his mind and person that similarity which we more frequently find amongst the uncultivated children of nature, than where education has changed the character, or impeded its development. His intellect and all his perceptions were strong, powerful, and active, with a certain cast of fearless grandeur about them, that gave something great and fine even to the employment he had chosen. His disposition also was quick, hasty, and unsparing, but full of a rude enthusiastic generosity, that would have taught him to die for those he considered his friends, and also a bold dignity, which led him to trust to daring more than cunning. He had in his nature much of the beast of prey, but it was of the nobler kind.
Heaven knows how, with so many qualities of mind and person--qualities calculated to raise him above, rather than sink him below, the station in which he was born--Heaven knows how he fell into the perilous but inglorious life of a simple contrabandisto between France and Spain.
This man was one of the smugglers who most frequently visited the château, and it sometimes happened that the intermediation of the old maître d'hôtel was dispensed with, and that he would be admitted to an audience of my father himself, which generally lasted a considerable time; for Garcias possessed that sort of natural eloquence which, mingled with a degree of caustic humour, was sure to command attention, and to engage without wearying. There was something, too, in his very appearance that attracted and interested. Certainly never was a more picturesque, I may say, a more striking figure seen, than he presented, as I have beheld him often, coming down amongst the mountains, whose child he seemed to be: his long black hair gathered into a net under his broad sombrero; his cloak of chequered cloth, mantling all the upper part of his figure, and only leaving free the left hip, with the steel hilt of his sword, and the right arm ready to make use of it; while his legs, whose swelling muscles told of their gigantic strength, appeared striding underneath, covered to the knees with the tight elastic silk breeches of the Aragonese mountaineers. The rest of his dress generally consisted of a brown cloth jacket, a crimson sash round his waist, containing his pistols and long knife, white stockings, and a pair of mountain sandals, made of untanned cowhide, laced up to his ankle.
Such were the various persons that surrounded me in my youth; and such indeed were the only ones with whom I had any communication, except the young Jean Baptiste Arnault, who used to come frequently to see his sister. Her father troubled himself very little about her, after she was once fairly under the protection of my mother; but her brother was not so remiss, and, whenever he came, was received with kindness by all the family, nor suffered to depart without some little token of regard. For my own part, the memory of the service he had rendered me remained ever upon my mind, and showed itself in every way that my youthful imagination could devise; till, at length, the good simple-hearted lad, from the person obliging, began to feel himself the obliged, and both feelings mingling in his heart together, produced towards me the most generous and disinterested attachment.