CHAPTER X.
THE COURT-MARTIAL.
"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power, (power of herself
Would come uncall'd for,) but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear;
And because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence."
TENNYSON.
The court-martial assembled in a large and magnificent apartment of the Alva palace or castle, which stands in the centre of the town. It is in a good state of preservation, and the chamber usually occupied by the terrible duke, with all its ancient furniture, still remains there in its original state.
On the walls of the great apartment selected for the court hung the armour of the successive princes of the house of Toledo from a very remote period—indeed, from the mail shirts that had resisted the Moorish scimitars down to the steel caps and jacks of the war of the Spanish succession; and many of the breast-plates were emblazoned with the armorial bearings and trophies of those warlike dukes who boast of their descent from the Paleologi Emperors of the East, and who were first ennobled as peers of Leon by Alphonso VI., or the Brave, of Castile, in 1085.
As Quentin approached the great embattled door of this stately mansion, many soldiers of the regiment were crowding about it, and all these muttered their good wishes; many a hard but honest hand was held out to him, and many a forage-cap waved in silence, evincing emotions of good-will that stirred his heart with gratitude, and gave him new courage as he entered the court, attended by the provost-marshal.
He certainly looked wan and ill; traces yet remained of his recent illness at the Villa de Maciera; to these were added anxiety, lack of proper food and sleep, with the toil and exposure incident to the campaign, all of which served to give him interest in the eyes of many, for the court was crowded by spectators, chiefly officers of nearly every regiment in the division, and a few Spanish citizens and priests of Alva.
His young face appeared sorrow-struck in feature, and many read there, in the thoughtful brow, the quivering lip, and the sad but restless eye, indications of a proud but suffering spirit. Save these, and an occasional unconscious twitching of the hands, Quentin, though awed by the presence, and the hapless and novel predicament in which he found himself, was calm and collected in appearance.
He was simply clad in his unlaced and plain red coat, without a belt or accoutrement of any kind, to indicate that he was a prisoner; and he was accommodated with a chair and separate table, on which lay writing materials, but these he had not the slightest intention of using.
At the head of a long table of formidable aspect, whereon lay a Bible and the "Articles of War," and which was littered with pens, paper, letters, &c., sat the president of the court, Colonel Colquhoun Grant, in the gorgeous uniform of the 15th Hussars, blue faced with red, and the breast a mass of silver embroidery that might have turned a sword-cut. He wore the Order of Merit, given to every officer of his regiment by the Emperor of Germany fourteen years before, for their unexampled bravery in the affair of Villiers en Couche, a name still borne on the standard of the Hussars.