"Dismounting, I quitted my horse, rushed down an alley, where I saw the door of a bodega open, and plunged down into it unseen, scrambled over the borrachio skins into a dark corner and crept behind a heap of them. There I lay panting and breathless, dreading the proprietor (but he had been hanged that morning as a spy), and also the French, armed parties of whom passed and repassed, swearing and threatening; and from what they said, I learned that I had not killed the general——"
"Not killed him? what the devil, Padre!—I thought you always struck home!"
"So I do, and so I did, but the knife had reached only the heart of his military secretary."
"Well, then, 'tis one more Frenchman gone the downward road, the way we hope to send them all. And you——"
"I lay for some time in the cool wine vault, among the cobwebs and dirty borrachio skins. One of them—for the temptation was too great—I pierced with my yet bloody knife, and a long, long draught of the vino de Alicante, cold, dry, mellow, delicious, golden-coloured——"
"Ha, ha, ha! Bravo Padre Trevino!" chorussed all the laughing listeners, as they clattered away with their musket-butts in applause of his atrocious narrative.
"Thou wert revived, no doubt?" said Baltasar, impatiently.
"Amiga mio, I should think so; it brightened my intellects; it gave me new ideas—I drew inspiration from that beloved borrachio skin. I cast away my ample wig, drew from my wallet shaving apparatus, and in a trice I was shaven to the eyes, as you see me. Abandoning my cloak, I concealed my dagger in my left sleeve, took a wine skin under my arm, and walking deliberately to the officer in command of the guard at the south gate, offered the wine for sale at half its value, seeming to all appearance a very quiet citizen, anxious in these hard times to do a little business, even with the enemy. He took the skin from me, bid me go to the devil for payment; the sentinel opened the wicket, and I was thrust out of Valencia—the very thing I wanted. I said nothing about my poor wife or starving little ones, lest their hearts might relent, but turned my face to the mountains, and I am here."
This savage story met, we have said, with great applause, and Quentin, after the scene he had witnessed in the street of the puebla, felt no surprise that it did so; but his horror of the Padre was great, and he felt his repugnance for the guerillas increase every moment.
Policy and necessity forced him to dissemble; yet, in that mountain village there seemed such an atmosphere of blood, dishonourable warfare, and patriotism gone mad, that he longed intensely to be out of it, and once again in the more congenial and civilized society he had left.