Neither my friend nor myself escaped unhurt. We were shot “all over”; but, fortunately, no bones were broken, and neither of us was converted into a cripple.
And then came the “piping times of peace”, and Clayley and I spent our days in riding out upon the Jalapa road, watching for that great old family-carriage, which, it had been promised, should come.
And it came rumbling along at length, drawn by twelve mules, and deposited its precious load in a palace in the Calle Capuchinas.
And shortly after, two officers in shining uniforms entered the portals of that same palace, sent up their cards, and were admitted on the instant. Ah! these were rare times! But rarer still—for it should only occur once in a man’s lifetime—was an hour spent in the little chapel of San Bernardo.
There is a convent—Santa Catarina—the richest in Mexico; the richest, perhaps, in the world. There are nuns there—beautiful creatures—who possess property (some of them being worth a million of dollars); and yet these children of heaven never look upon the face of man!
About a week after my visit to San Bernardo, I was summoned to the convent, and permitted—a rare privilege for one of my sex—to enter its sacred precincts. It was a painful scene. Poor “Mary of Mercy”! How lovely she looked in her snow-white vestments!—lovelier in her sorrow than I had ever seen her before. May God pour out the balm of oblivion into the heart of this erring but repentant angel!
I returned to New Orleans in the latter part of 1848. I was walking one morning along the Levée, with a fair companion on my arm, when a well-known voice struck on my ear, exclaiming:
“I’ll be dog-goned, Rowl, if it ain’t the cap’n!”
I turned, and beheld Raoul and the hunter. They had doffed the regimentals, and were preparing to “start” on a trapping expedition to the Rocky Mountains.
I need not describe our mutual pleasure at meeting, which was more than shared by my wife, who had often made me detail to her the exploits of my comrades. I inquired for Chane. The Irishman, at the breaking up of the “war-troops”, had entered one of the old regiments, and was at this time, as Lincoln expressed it, “the first sargint of a kump’ny.”