Thoughts of the poetry, of the beauty, and romance of Spain came thronging on his memory, and we must confess they formed an odd chaos of cloaked cavaliers with guitars and rapiers; dark eyed donnas in balconies, fluttering fans and veils; lurking rivals, with mask and dagger; mountain robbers in high-crowned hats, with their legs swathed in red bandages, after the orthodox fashion of all melodramatic banditti. These, together with the solid splendour and wonderful stories of the Alhambra, the wars of the high-spirited Moors of Granada, ending so sadly in el suspiro del Moro, when the warriors of Ferdinand and Isabella rent the banner of the Prophet from the weak hand of Boabdil el Chico, not unnaturally made up his stock ideas of the sunny land he looked upon.
But it was the land of the Cid Campeador—he at whose name the eyes of even the most unlettered Spaniard will lighten—for he was the veritable and redoubtable Wallace of Castile against the enemies of Christianity and the Christian's God. Such memories as these rushed on Quentin's mind as he looked down on Estremadura; nor could he forget, though last not least, that it was the native land of him "who laughed Spain's chivalry away"—the illustrious Cervantes, the one-handed soldier of Lepanto.
A distant but unmistakeable sound of musketry reverberating among the mountain peaks on his left, roused him somewhat unpleasantly from his dream, bringing him all at once from the romance of the past to the reality of present Spanish life.
Several shots he heard distinctly pealing through the air; others followed, and after an interval, two dropping shots, but at a greater distance, as if they proceeded from some flying skirmishers. Then all became still, and he heard only the voices of the birds as they wheeled aloft in the sunshine or twittered among the arbutus leaves.
The road, a narrow and rugged path now as it descended, passed through a dark grove of wild pines; on issuing from which, Quentin's nerves received somewhat of a shock on seeing a French light dragoon, in pale green uniform, lying on his back quite dead, with the foam of past agony on his lips, and the blood of a recent wound still oozing from his left temple, through which a musket shot had passed. Crushed, apparently by a horse's hoof, his light brass helmet lay beside him. A few yards off lay another Chasseur à cheval, and further off still lay a third, who seemed to have been dragged some distance by his horse ere his foot had been disengaged from the stirrup, for a bloody and dusty track was visible from where Quentin stood to where the Chasseur lay.
Quentin paused, for his heart beat wildly, and instinctively he looked to the flints and pans of his pistols, his hands trembling as he did so—with an excitement justifiable in one so young—but not with fear.
These three unfortunates were the first Frenchmen—the first slain—and, in fact (save the dead gipsy in the vault of Kilhenzie) they were the first dead men he had looked upon; thus he glanced timidly, and while his heart swelled with pity, from one to the other.
There they were, three smart and handsome young men, clad in showy light cavalry uniforms, each perhaps a mother's pride and father's hope, left dead and abandoned to the ravens, in that wild place, with their white faces and glazed eyes staring stonily at the glorious noonday sun, while the little birds came hopping and twittering about them.
Quentin's gentle soul was stirred within him; he was new to this butcherly work, and war seemed wicked indeed! Those three rigid figures—those three pale faces with fallen jaws, and those bloody wounds, made a scaring and terrible impression upon him; but as he continued hastily to descend the hill, and left them behind, he foresaw not the callous heart and time that use and wont would bring.