II.
In the epoch to which the account of this incident, no less true than strange, reverts, the city of Toledo, for those who knew not how to value the treasures of art which its walls enclose, was, even as now, no more than a great huddle of houses, old-fashioned, ruinous, insufferable.
The officers of the French army who, to judge from the acts of vandalism by which they left in Toledo a sad and enduring memory of their occupation, counted few artists and archæologists in their number, found themselves, as goes without the saying, supremely bored in the ancient city of the Cæsars.
In this frame of mind, the most trifling event which came to break the monotonous calm of those eternal, unvarying days was eagerly caught up among the idlers, so that the promotion of one of their comrades to the next grade, a report of the strategic movement of a flying column, the departure of an official post or the arrival at the city of any military force whatsoever, became a fertile theme of conversation and object of every sort of comment, until something else occurred to take its place and serve as foundation for new grumblings, criticisms and conjectures.
As was to be expected, among those officers who, according to their custom, gathered on the following day to take the air and chat a little in the Zocodover, the dish of gossip was supplied by nothing else than the arrival of the dragoons, whose leader was left in the former chapter stretched out at his ease, sleeping off the fatigues of the march. For upwards of an hour the conversation had been beating about this event, and already various explanations had been put forward to account for the non-appearance of the new-comer, whom an officer present, a former schoolmate, had invited to the Zocodover, when at last, in one of the side-streets that radiate from the square, appeared our gallant captain, no longer obscured by his voluminous army-cloak, but sporting a great shining helmet with a plume of white feathers, a turquoise-blue coat with scarlet facings, and a magnificent two-handed sword in a steel scabbard which clanked as it struck the ground in time to his martial stride and to the keener, sharper clink of his golden spurs.
As soon as his former chum caught sight of him, off he went to meet him and bid him welcome, followed by almost all the officers who chanced to be in the group that morning and who had been stirred to curiosity and a desire to know him by what they had already heard of his original, extraordinary traits of character.
After the customary close embraces, and the exclamations, compliments and questions enjoined by etiquette in meetings like this; after discussing at length and in detail the latest news from Madrid, the changing fortune of the war, and old friends dead or far away, the conversation, flitting from one subject to another, came to roost at last on the inevitable theme, to wit, the hardships of the service, the dearth of amusements in the city, and the inconveniences of their lodgings.
Now at this juncture one of the company, who, it would seem, had heard of the ill grace with which the young officer had resigned himself to quartering his troop in the abandoned church, said to him with an air of raillery:
“And speaking of lodgings, what sort of a night did you have in yours?”
“We lacked for nothing,” answered the captain, “and if it is the truth that I slept but little, the cause of my insomnia is well worth the pains of wakefulness. A vigil in the society of a charming woman is surely not the worst of evils.”