“You!” retorted the general in a tone of bitter irony.
“Alas!” Victor responded, “They are sad favours I ask. When the Marquis saw you plant the gallows, he hoped that you would change the punishment to be inflicted on his family, and begs you to cause the nobles to be beheaded.”
“Very well!” said the general.
“They ask also to be allowed the consolations of religion, and to be set free from their bonds; they promise not to attempt to escape.”
“I agree to that,” said the general; “but you are responsible to me for them.”
“The old man also offers you all his fortune, if you will pardon his youngest son.”
“Indeed!” replied the general. “His estate already belongs to King Joseph.” He stopped. A look of contempt wrinkled his brow, and he added: “I’ll do more than he desires. I understand the importance of his last request. Well, he shall purchase the eternity of his name, but Spain shall always remember his treachery and its punishment! I grant his fortune and life to whichever of his sons will take the place of the executioner. Go, and say no more about it.”
Dinner was served. The officers at table satisfied an appetite which fatigue had sharpened. Only one of them, Victor Marchand, was absent from the feast. After long hesitation, he entered the apartment where the haughty family of Leganés was languishing, and cast a sorrowful look on the spectacle now presented by the hall, where only the other evening he had seen the heads of the two young women and the three young men whirling round as they were borne along in the waltz: he shuddered as he reflected that in a little they must roll severed by the executioner’s sabre. Bound to their gilded chairs, the father and mother, the three sons and the two daughters, remained in a state of complete immobility. Eight servants were standing, their hands bound behind their backs. These fifteen persons looked at one another gravely, and their eyes hardly betrayed the sentiments by which they were animated. On some brows profound resignation and regret at the failure of their enterprise might be read. Some motionless soldiers guarded them, and respected the grief of those cruel enemies. An expression of curiosity animated their visages when Victor made his appearance. He gave the order to unbind the prisoners, and himself proceeded to unfasten the cords which held Clara a prisoner in her chair. She smiled sadly. The officer could not help coming in contact with the young woman’s arms, while he admired her black hair and her supple form. She was a true Spaniard: she had the Spanish complexion, the Spanish eyes, with long curved lashes and a pupil blacker than the raven’s wing.
“Have you succeeded?” she asked, addressing him with one of those mournful smiles in which there is still some vestige of the young girl.
Victor could not restrain himself from groaning. He looked at the three brothers and Clara one by one. The first, and he was the eldest, was thirty years old. Short, rather badly built, with a proud and disdainful expression, he was not without a certain nobility of manner, and seemed no stranger to that delicacy of sentiment which once rendered Spanish gallantry so celebrated. He was called Juanito. The second, Philip, was aged about twenty. He resembled Clara. The youngest was eight years old. In Manuel’s features, a painter would have found something of that Roman constancy which David has bestowed upon the children in his republican scenes. The old Marquis had a head covered with white hair, which looked as if it had come out of one of Murillo’s pictures. At the sight, the young officer shook his head in despair of seeing the general’s bargain accepted by any one of those personages; nevertheless he ventured to confide it to Clara. At first the Spaniard shivered, but in an instant she recovered calmness, and went and knelt before her father.