The Cosa was thronged with people welcoming the safe return of their fellow townsmen. Jacinta was soon in earnest conversation with Don Matias, while Isabella leant against a tree for support, as her gazing eyes vainly sought Don Pablo.
Soon the truth was learnt from Don Matias. After waiting about in the cover of houses and trees and hillocks for the insurgents for some time, they had come to an open engagement with them, in which they were in a short time entirely routed by the gallant Militia, who came off with only two killed and half a dozen wounded—but one of those two left for dead on the field was no other than Don Pablo! It needed all Isabella’s fortitude and self-command to avoid showing greater agony at this announcement than was consistent with her having no nearer tie than that of an intended sister-in-law, while Jacinta, who had no self-control, burst into a fearful excitement of grief.
Taking Isabella’s assumed calmness of manner for indifference towards the absent, the young officer within a few hours of his return began paying her attentions. Jacinta’s jealousy at this quenched all her light grief for Don Pablo, and Don Matias soon found that his suit would have far more chance of fortune with her. With characteristic fickleness he lost no time in urging it in the quarter where it met with favour, and pushed it so warmly that their marriage was fixed for an early day, being but a month from that on which Don Pablo was believed to have fallen.
To faithful Isabella’s intense disgust, not only was the wedding so hurried on, but all Zaragoza was invited to a grand ball to celebrate the occasion. Dressed in deep mourning she refused to have any thing to do with the festivity; but, on the contrary, ordered a funeral service to be celebrated in the church to the memory of her lost hero.
It was just at this juncture, while the music of the marriage-ball[2] was sounding merrily through the open windows of Don Froilan’s house, and the solemn doble[3] was ringing from a neighbouring church, that Don Pablo, healed of his wounds, and choosing the cool of the evening for his journey, came through the streets of Zaragoza, well wrapt up in his military cloak, intending to make straight for the house of his affianced bride. He stopped, however, at the barbiere’s to have his hair and beard, long neglected during the campaign, made presentable. The barbiere is an institution in Spain which almost supplies the place of an English club. Men go in to submit to the barber’s attentions, and while they are under his hands, or waiting their turn, they have leisure to discuss with each other the news and gossip of the day.
Don Pablo was, as we have said, a serious man; his habits were reserved and homely, he had never cared for the barber’s gossip, and his habit had been to manage his shaving arrangements at home, so he was no acquaintance of the barber. Accordingly, he came in on this occasion unrecognized.
“Strange are the vicissitudes of human life!” he exclaimed, as he seated himself in the barber’s chair—for he was somewhat of a philosopher. “Marriage-music and funeral-bells sounding at the same time—what a strange lesson!”
“Stranger still,” broke in the prattling barber, “if your worship knew what reference each bears to the same person!”
“To the same person!” rejoined Don Pablo; “how can that possibly be?”
“Why, the bells are for a funeral service for a distinguished officer, lost in the late encounter; and the merry music is for the marriage of his betrothed to a brother-officer!”