"Excuse me, Monsieur le Capitaine; but I must pronounce your comrade to have been a finished rascal."
"Peste!" muttered the Frenchman, half angrily; and then he continued, while laughing and twirling his moustache, "Opinion is the queen of the world—'t is a proverb we have, and a true one. But poor Chataigneur is gone now, and I must not hear him abused.
"But, to continue. The excitement of the preceding day's fighting, and the quantity of wine we had drunk, rendered us insensible to the distresses of these poor women; and with shame and sorrow I now remember that we permitted Chataigneur, by dint of many a savage threat, to compel them to assume their guitars and sing in accompaniment, while we chaunted a bacchanalian ditty suited only for the meridian of the lowest cabaret in the faubourg St. Antoine.
"What they sang Heaven only knows, for, nom d'un Pape! my comrade, the horrible catastrophe to this little supper has fairly driven all minor incidents from my memory. And there they sat and sang to us—sang with shame on their brows, and rage, and grief, and agony in their hearts—while a husband and three sons, a father and three brothers, were lying dead in their harness by the walls of the Retiro.
"We drank bumpers to Virginia, and made the ceiling shake with our mad laughter and revelry. In the midst of this, unluckily, the Chevalier de Vivancourt called for a bumper of mulled port. What fiend prompted a request so useless I cannot imagine: but we all joined in his demand vociferously; and the old dame, who appeared to have somewhat recovered her equanimity, desired her daughter to prepare it. She spoke in Basque Spanish, which we did not understand, but which should have been sufficient to kindle our suspicions; and I could perceive that a wild and almost insane expression flashed in the eyes of the little Donna Virginia as she flung aside her guitar and rose to execute the order.
"With some trouble she extricated herself from Chataigneur, whose arm was round her waist. He was very angry, and growled like a bear at the chevalier, swearing by the sabre de bois that he would put him under arrest for the trouble he occasioned.
"While he was yet speaking, Virginia returned with the prepared wine in a crystal vase, from which, with her own fair hands, she filled our long, carved glasses. We drank to her, draining them to the dregs; and, with a grim smile on her pallid lips, our youthful cupbearer replenished our glasses. The flavour of the wine was so exquisite, that Chataigneur embraced Virginia with drunken ardour, and desired her to bring us more.
"'You will require no more!' she cried, with a shriek, as she flung the vase from her hands, and it was dashed into a hundred pieces.
"We rose in alarm, but instantly sank again on our seats; and at that moment a peculiar and horrible sensation came over me. Sacre! methinks I feel it yet. I looked upon my companions of the carousal, but read in their faces an expression that yielded me anything but comfort. Three had dropped their glasses, and reclined upon their chairs, with open mouths and fixed eyes, which gleamed with the vacant wildness of insanity. The Chevalier de Vivancourt sank prostrate on the floor, while Chataigneur, who seemed also about to sink, turned and stared with a powerless aspect of rage and alarm at Donna Elvira.
"Virginia had sunk upon her knees and hid her face in the skirt of her torn dress; but her mother stood erect, and, with her arms outstretched towards us, shrieked in a frightful voice between a moan and a yell, while a murderous rage, alike fiendish and terrible, caused her tall form to tremble, her proud nostrils to dilate, and her large dark eyes to gleam like those of a rattlesnake.