Notwithstanding the satisfactory assurance on the part of the dame, a doubt continued still to hang on the mind of the man in the petticoat; and as "the mind disturbed denies the body rest," so was every attempt of his to close an eye, met by the vision of a pair of shrivelled leathers, until at length in a fit of feverish excitement he started from his couch determined to know the worst; and throwing open the door of the kitchen, he, to his no small astonishment, beheld his leathers not only filled, but well filled too, by the landlady herself, who there stood in them, toasting and turning round and round; neither so gracefully nor so fast as Taglioni, perhaps, but still she kept turning all the same; and it, most probably, was the smoke arising from the lawyer's wet leathers which Tom Moore saw curling so gracefully above the green elms when he wrote the Woodpecker.
But to return to the Peninsula. While it must be admitted that the hidalgo's evil is the lesser, I could, nevertheless, wish that the good old Spaniard would march a little more with the spirit of the times, for by the ordinary use of a small-tooth comb, he might be enabled to limit his hair hunting to the sports of the field.
The day after our arrival at Fuentes I was amused to hear one of our soldiers describing to a comrade his last night's fare in the new quarter. Soon after his taking possession of it, three days' rations had been served out to him, and his landlady, after reconnoitring it for a while with a wistful eye, at length proposed that they should mess together while he remained in their house, to which he readily assented; and by way of making a fair beginning, he cut off about a pound of the beef which he handed over to her, but at the same time allowing her about as much play with it as a cat does to a mouse—a precaution which he had reason to rejoice in, for he presently found it transferred to a kettle then boiling on the fire, containing, as he said, thirteen buckets of water, in which his pound of beef was floating about like a cork in the middle of the ocean! "Hilloah, my nice woman, says I, if you and I are to mess together I'll just trouble you to take out twelve buckets and a half of that water, and in place thereof, that you will be pleased to put in a pound of beef for every mouth which you intend shall keep mine in company—and if you choose to give some butter or a slice or two of bacon in addition, I shall not object to it, but I'll have none of your gammon!" The dispute ended in the rifleman's being obliged to fish out his pound of beef and keep it under his own protection.
Our repose in Fuentes was short. The garrison of Almeida was blockaded with a fortnight's provision only, and two companies of ours under Colonel Cameron were immediately dispatched to shoot their bullocks while grazing on the ramparts, which still further contracted their means of subsistence.
Lord Wellington had in the mean time hurried off to the south in consequence of the pressing importance of the operations of the corps under Marshal Beresford, leaving the main army for the time being under the command of Sir Brent Spencer. In the afternoon of the 16th of April we were hastily ordered under arms, and passing through Gallegos we were halted behind a hill on the banks of the Agueda, when we found that the movement had been occasioned by the passing of a convoy of provisions which the enemy were attempting to throw into Ciudad Rodrigo, and which was at that moment with its escort of two hundred men shut up in some inclosures of stone walls within half a mile of us surrounded by our dragoons.
I don't know how it happened, but we were kept there inactive for a couple of hours with eight thousand men sending in summonses for them to surrender, when a couple of our idle guns would have sent the loose wall about their ears and made them but too happy to be allowed to do so. But as it was, the garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo came out and carried them off triumphantly from under our noses.
"There's nae luck about the house,
There's nae luck ava;
There's nae luck about the house,
When our gude man's awa."
This was the most critical period of the whole war; the destinies not only of England but of Europe hung upon it, and all hinged on the shoulders of one man,—that man was Wellington! I believe there were few even of those who served under him capable of knowing, still less of appreciating, the nature of the master-mind which there, with God's assistance, ruled all things; for he was not only the head of the army but obliged to descend to the responsibility of every department in it. In the different branches of their various duties, he received the officers in charge, as ignorant as schoolboys, and, by his energy and unwearied perseverance, he made them what they became—the most renowned army that Europe ever saw. Wherever he went at its head, glory followed its steps—wherever he was not—I will not say disgrace, but something near akin to it ensued, for it is singular enough to remark that of all the distinguished generals who held separate commands in that army throughout the war Lord Hill alone (besides the commander-in-chief) came out of it with his fame untarnished by any palpable error. In all his battles Lord Wellington appeared to us never to leave any thing to chance. However desperate the undertaking—whether suffering under momentary defeat, or imprudently hurried on by partial success—we ever felt confident that a redeeming power was at hand, nor were we ever deceived. Those only, too, who have served under such a master-mind and one of inferior calibre can appreciate the difference in a physical as well as a moral point of view—for when in the presence of the enemy, under him, we were never deprived of our personal comforts until prudence rendered it necessary, and they were always restored to us again at the earliest possible moment. Under the temporary command of others we have been deprived of our baggage for weeks through the timidity of our chief, and without the shadow of necessity; and it is astonishing in what a degree the vacillation and want of confidence in a commander descends into the different ranks.