"Why did you not tell us all this at first?" asked the muleteer Ignacio Noain.
"Well, even Madrina, I suppose, does not like to be sharply taken by the bridle," said Quentin, smiling, and feeling considerably relieved in his mind.
"No more does she, the old beauty, she would lash out at her own madre. You have somewhat overshot the way, senor, for a mile or two along the Figuero; however, you shall not leave us yet awhile. Dine with us at the old puebla—the French have not left many stones of it together. Ay de mi! it was a jovial place once; many a bolero and fandango I have danced with the girls here, and where are they all now? We have only bacallao (dried ling) and biscuits, with a mouthful of good wine—real vino de Alicant—to offer you."
"Thanks, senores, but evening is almost at hand."
"It will be nightfall when you reach the base of yonder mountain," said Ramon, pointing to a lofty hill, whose granite brows were all empurpled by the sunshine; "there Gil Llano, a poor vinedresser, lives—a Portuguese, who for my sake, if not for your own, will gladly give you shelter; be sure, however, to show him this."
With these words, Ramon disengaged from one of the four dozen of brass bell buttons, with which his jacket was adorned, one of the many consecrated copper medals that hung thereat, and placed it in Quentin's hand, just as they entered the ill-fated puebla (village), which was totally roofless and ruined. Fragments of charred furniture, broken crocks, cans, and plates strewed the now untrodden street, where the grass was springing. The broad-leaved vines grew wild about the crumbling walls and open windows; and a rude cross here and there marked the hastily made graves of the slaughtered villagers.
There, as elsewhere, the wings of the Imperial Eagle, like those of a destroying angel, had spread desolation and death!
"When," asked the poor Portuguese, in one of their manifestoes after the horrors of Coimbra, "did the laws of man authorize the outrage of women, the slaughter of aged and other defenceless inhabitants of places which made no resistance; the assassination of men who were accounted rich, only because they could not furnish that quantity of treasure of which it was said they were possessed!"
Halting by the old village well, the muleteers attended first to the wants of Madrina and her sleek companions.
"Arre, arre, old woman," said Ramon, "thou shalt have a deep cool draught at last; arre, arre!"