Loud vivas rang through the room as Arcos brought his oration to a close. It was no surprise to Jack to hear such a speech from the lips of an ordinary café-keeper—every Spaniard is an orator,—but he by no means shared the speaker's assurance. The influx of so many people from the country must have swelled the population far beyond its normal limit. Overcrowding involved disease; the encroachments of the French must constantly narrow the habitable region; in the exposed parts only the vaults and cellars would be safe from bombardment; and while the operations of war claimed their full tale of victims, Jack feared that pestilence would carry off still more. But he said not a word of his apprehensions, and soon afterwards, bidding his host and the company a cordial adieu, he left with Tio Jorge and Pepito.
They passed the Franciscan convent beyond the Coso, cut through narrow tortuous side streets, each barricaded and guarded, passed the Capuchin nunnery, and came at length to the district of Santa Engracia, in which a few days before the French had gained a lodgment by sapping and mining and direct assault. As they passed along a street from which the French had been driven at the point of the bayonet, but which was now a mere heap of charred and smoking ruins, Jack saw a young lady standing before the smouldering embers of one of the houses. By her side was a little boy. The lady, who could not have been more than twenty-five years of age, was pale and haggard, and gazed upon the ruins of her home like a very statue of sorrow. As Tio Jorge and Jack came up to her, they heard her talking to the boy in low fierce tones.
"It is the Doña Mercedes Ortega," said Tio Jorge half to himself. "What is the matter, Señora?" he asked.
She turned and threw back her mantilla. Jack had never seen a face in which utter woe and desolation was so piteously imprinted. Her eyelids were swollen with weeping; her eyes blazed out of dark sunken rims; her lips were quivering.
"That was my home," she said in an agony of grief that Jack never forgot. "My husband lies there, and my father. My brothers died on the ramparts; my little girl died of fever in my arms. Only Juanino is left, only Juanino, he and I; we are alone—alone—alone!"
Jack turned away; there was a mist before his eyes. Then suddenly the woman's tone changed from grief to rage. Her next words seemed to bite into Jack's soul.
"Stay, Señor!" she cried; "stay, Tio Jorge! I call you to witness what I teach my Juanino. Yes, I teach him; he will never forget; it is for a mother to teach her son his duty. He shall be a scourge to all the accursed race. He shall kill, kill, kill, knowing no rest till he join his father—his father whom the French have killed!"
The boy looked up in her face with eyes of terror.
"Put your hands together," she continued, "and swear that henceforth, in war or peace, at home or abroad, in the street or in the field, you will kill every Frenchman you may meet, kill without mercy or ruth, and thus avenge me and all your house. Swear, Juanino!"
Jack shuddered as he heard the little fellow, whose age was perhaps seven years, repeat the terrible oath his frantic mother demanded of him. At that moment the horrors of war were brought home to Jack's mind more forcibly than ever before; nothing in the terrible retreat to Corunna had been so terrible as the picture of the young widow's desolate grief and passionate longing for vengeance.