These splendid soldiers carried themselves with a great pride, the moon glowed softly in their exquisite cuirasses, cuisses, greaves, and helmets, which were most carefully polished; these horsemen were the only Spaniards in the army.
After them rode two Italian generals and the engineers—a gorgeous group of officers in undress or jousting armour, and wearing caps adorned with jewels and heron's feathers.
Next came a carriage containing Spanish priests of high rank, then other of the Spanish horsemen, then the baggage mules and the women.
There were no less than four hundred of these on horseback—Spanish, Italian, and French beauties, lavishly dressed in silk and velvet, with flowing mantles and precious embroideries; some were veiled like modest women, while others rode with their rich locks hanging over their shoulders and their hard beautiful faces uncovered.
One or two were singing in rather a melancholy fashion, several sat wearily on their handsome saddles, but all, like their meaner sisters who went afoot, conducted themselves with order and decorum.
When they had passed, dazzling the eyes and bewildering the mind of the staring charcoal-burner, there was a short pause; then a company of light horse galloped up out of the night, and behind them, riding more slowly, came a single horseman.
He was about sixty years of age, tall, of a slight figure, but of an appearance of great energy and strength, controlled, however, by a considerable stiffness of deportment and an air of cold and repelling pride.
He wore a half-suit of plain blue armour, and black mantle, boots, and doublet; his face was extremely narrow, his features hard, his complexion dry yet flushed, his eyes small and dark and expressing nothing but arrogance; a plain velvet cap concealed his hair, a long beard of black frosted with white descended to his waist.
With his long thin body, small head, narrow countenance, and bright eyes he had a certain likeness to a snake; not in one lineament was there the least trace of any soft or pleasant emotion or sentiment; he seemed a man of ice and iron, haughty, cruel, and avaricious.
Without glancing to right or left, carelessly guiding his superb white Arab horse with one hand while the other fingered the plain cross that hung on his breast, this solitary rider, the great and terrible Duke of Alva, passed on towards the Netherlands.