"Excellent, my dear doctor! I see but three objections to making one large enough to convey the whole army:—First, that we have no timber to make it of;—secondly, we have no horses to draw it;—and thirdly, the roads are not wide enough to admit it."
"Balloons would do, but we have them not," resumed the doctor, still profoundly cogitating, with his eyes fixed upon the ground, and his hands in his breeches-pockets.
"What think you of packing the soldiers up in bombs, and shooting them out of mortars?" asked Roderick.
"Your Majesty is pleased to jest," observed the doctor, gravely; "but ridicule is not argument."
"Certainly not," replied the King; "and you mistake me greatly if you thought I meant to ridicule your plan. I only wished to remark that I feared it would be rather difficult to put it in execution."
"That which can be accomplished without difficulty," said the doctor, solemnly, "is scarcely worth the trouble of undertaking, and quite below the consideration of a man of genius. Difficulties to a man of science are but incentives to action."
"Most sensibly observed, my dear doctor," cried Roderick; "however, as we have now reached our tent, I must leave you to contrive some plan to bring us back from Madrid, as I am afraid we cannot wait now to put your designs in practice to enable us to get there: we must march with the dawn. Of course you will accompany us."
"Certainly!" returned the doctor, still musing; then muttering to himself—"I don't much like the plan of shooting off the soldiers, it would take such large mortars and so much gunpowder:—however, there is no knowing what might be done: I will think of it:"—he retired to his tent, though no sleep visited his eyes that night, so completely had the idea of packing up the soldiers in bombs taken possession of his imagination.
Roderick's arrangements were soon made, for Nature had certainly intended him for a general. His intelligent mind foresaw every thing, and provided against every contingency. Brave in the field, and prudent in council, the only fault of Roderick as a soldier was that he sometimes suffered himself to be carried away by his ardour when it would have been wiser to delay. But this very impetuosity had its charms in the eyes of his soldiers, as he never hesitated to expose himself to the same dangers or to undergo the same privations as themselves, and they would all have followed him willingly into the very jaws of destruction.
After arranging every thing for the morning's march, the Irish hero snatched a few hours of repose. With the dawn, however, the drums beat the reveillée, and the Irish army left Andalusia to advance by rapid marches upon Madrid.