"I am listening to you, Señor."
"His Majesty has not only resolved to place under your immediate orders a body of two hundred men of regular cavalry, commanded by myself and other officers of the army, but also he authorises you, by a decree duly signed by him and registered in the chancellor's office, to take for the corps placed under your orders the title of the Faithful Corps of Mountain Chasseurs, to hoist the royal standard quartered with Castile and León, and to place the Spanish cockade on the hats of your soldiers."
"His Majesty accords me these signal favours?" interrupted Dou Pablo, with a joyous trembling in his voice.
"Moreover," impassively continued Don Antonio Zinozain, "his Majesty, considering that, up to the present time, guided solely by your devotion and your inviolable fidelity, you have sustained the war at your own risk and peril, dispensing and compromising your own fortune for his service, without hope of regaining these enormous disbursements—his Majesty, I say, whose high wisdom nothing escapes, has thought fit to give you a proof of his high satisfaction at this loyal conduct. He has consequently ordered that a sum of 100,000 piastres should be immediately placed at your disposal, in order to cover a part of your expenses. Moreover, he authorises you to take in advance, from all the war contributions that you shall impose on the towns which fall in your power, a tenth, of which you shall dispose as you think fit, as being entirely your own property, and this to the amount of another 100,000 piastres. His Majesty, besides, charges me, through his Excellency the Viceroy, his delegate and bearer of full powers, to assure you of his high satisfaction and of his desire not to limit to what he has done today the reward that he reckons to accord to you in the future."
"So," said Don Pablo, standing erect with a proud smile, "I am now really a war chief."
"His Majesty has so decided," coldly answered Don Antonio.
"¡Vive Dios!" cried the partisan with a menacing gesture; "his Majesty has done well, for I swear that of all those who now fight for his cause, I shall be the last to lay down arms if I die for it. Never will I consent to treat with the rebels, and this oath I will keep, ¡rayo de Cristo! Even if heaven and earth should league against me to weigh me down, I hope that, a century hence, the grandchildren of the men that we now fight should still tremble at the memory of my name."
The ferocious partisan had risen as he uttered this terrible imprecation; he had bowed his tall figure, thrown back his head, and placed his hand on the pommel of his sabre, whilst he cast at those around him a look of inexpressible arrogance and of savage energy.
The assembly were moved by these bold words; an electric shock appeared to run through them, and suddenly the whole room burst out into cries and exclamations; and then, the partisans warming by degrees through their own excitement, soon reached a paroxysm of joy and delirium.
Primitive natures are easy to draw out. These men, half savages, felt themselves recompensed by the honours accorded to their chief; they were proud of him, and manifested their joy in their own way—that is to say, by bawling out and gesticulating.