"Thank you, comrades."
The company was dismissed, and carefully kept its promise: not a waist-buckle was stolen by these half-naked men, who for four months had been suffering the most horrible privations.
The count's condition, however, instead of becoming better, grew worse daily, in spite of the anxious attentions of the doctor and Father Seraphin, who had posted himself by his bed, and never left him. In Don Louis the mind wore out the body. Since Don Cornelio's departure he had received no news either of the Spaniard or Valentine. Two faithful men, sent to the Hacienda del Milagro, had not returned, and neither Don Rafaël nor Doña Angela gave a sign of life.
This silence became incomprehensible. On the other hand, the situation of the company was growing daily more serious. The count, master of a powerful city, found himself more isolated than before; the pueblos that should have risen did not stir; the man to whom the count had written, and who had pledged himself to give the signal for revolt, gave no reply to the appeal, and remained indifferent to the repeated entreaties Don Louis made him.
Unfortunately dysentery is one of those frightful diseases which completely annihilate a man's faculties, and for a very long period the count was incapable of attending to anything. Señor Pavo had come at full speed from Guaymas to Hermosillo, ostensibly to felicitate the count on his gallant exploit, but in reality to be able to betray him with greater facility.
Don Louis was alone, without friends in whom he could trust, lying on a bed of pain, internally devoured by a mortal restlessness, and a prey to a profound despair at seeing himself reduced to a state of powerlessness, and losing the fruits of his toil and fatigues.
Captain de Laville, the only man in whom he could have trusted at the moment, was attacked by the same illness as his chief, and, like him, was incapable of acting. Señor Pavo skilfully profited by this state of affairs to sow seeds of disaffection among the Frenchmen. The count was the soul of the company—the only tie that rendered it compact and united: in his absence from his duties all went wrong.
A system was then organised in the shade by Don Pavo. This system consisted in continual demonstrations on the part of the adventurers, who at every hour of the day came one after the other to lay before the count the most absurd grievances, and threaten to leave him. At last matters reached such a pitch that it was necessary to come to some decision.
Two courses offered themselves: the first, to give up the results of the victory of Hermosillo, and retreat on Guaymas. This was suggested to the count by the French representative, Señor Don Antonio Mendez Pavo. The second was to await at Hermosillo, while holding their ground by force and risking a siege, the succours which must speedily arrive from California, where they were being rapidly organised. So greatly had the news of the brilliant victory gained by the count electrified the minds of the adventurers, and inflamed their imagination.
These two courses were equally repugnant to the count. The first seemed to him shameful; the second impracticable. Still the situation was growing every day more and more intolerable, when at this moment a strange event occurred, which, had we been writing a romance instead of a history, would have seemed to us too startling for credibility.