THE HOSPITAL.
The military hospital at Pampeluna was formerly the palace of the bishop, who fled to Don Carlos at the commencement of the war. Its spacious halls and corridors were converted into twelve large wards, four of them for wounded men, and four others for fever patients. Each ward contained about fifty beds, in which, upon dirty mattresses, Christino soldiers pined and suffered. Most of the sick of the foreign legion there gave up the ghost. The nurses were sisters of the Order of Mercy; but these, like nearly all Spaniards pertaining to the church, were adherents of the Pretender, and any thing but zealous in the discharge of their duty towards us. People spoke even of the poisoning of soups and drinks given to the patients—a thing certainly not impossible, all such matters being prepared by the sisterhood, whose proceedings were but carelessly superintended.
In each of these wards, during the dead hours of night, a single lamp burned, leaving the two extremities of the room in darkness. The hospital being close to the town wall, there was never a lack of night-birds, attracted to the windows by the smell of corpses. Day and night the sisters moved about the wards, in white veils and black dresses—a mass of keys, beads, and crucifixes, suspended at their side. And frequent were the visits of the episcopal chaplain, Don Rafael Salvador, preceded by bell-ringing urchins, and bearing the last sacrament to some expiring sinner.
Repeated bivouacs in inclement weather, and especially that of the 11th March, at the foot of the Dos Hermanas, laid me, on the 15th March 1837, seven months after the incident last related, upon a sick bed in this house of suffering.
Four bloodlettings within two days had done something towards calming the fever that burned in my veins, but still enough remained to beset my couch with delirious images. Grim and horrible visages, pale, mournful figures that seemed of moonshine, and vaguely reminded me of my home, scenes from my childhood, and others from the war in which I had been nearly two years a sharer, passed rapidly before me. Now it was the tailor from Regensburg, with froth on his lips, expiring on the mountain side; then old José, with sightless eyes and pierced by a dozen bullets, danced a ghastly fandango at my bed-foot; and then I beheld a colossal breast, white and beautiful, offering blood to drink to a host of thirsty soldiers.
From such visions as these I one night awoke and lay with my eyes fixed upon the lamp, which hung just opposite to me, revolving wild and melancholy fancies in my fevered brain. Do what I would, Manuela's image continually recurred to me, and with the strange pertinacity of delirium I repeated to myself that she would come and rescue me from my unhappy condition. In a bed behind me, an Andalusian prayed with the chaplain, who threw a red silk coverlid over his emaciated body, received his confession, and administered the holy wafer. At the window a screech-owl uttered its annoying cries. Upon a bed opposite to me a sick German sang—
"Jetzt bei der Lampe Dämmerschein
Gehst du wohl in dein Kämmerlein."
Further off another patient whistled a fandango; and next to me, upon my left hand, an unhappy creature, frantic with fever, and bound down upon his bed with leathern straps, wrought and strove till he got rid of his coverings, and wrenched the bandage from his arm, which forthwith sent up into the air a spout of blood from a recently opened vein. For a moment the German's kindly song soothed and calmed my perturbed ideas; but suddenly José gave a bound before me, and held up his fist with a frightful laugh, and yelled out like a lunatic, "Viva Carlos Quinto!" And Manuela wrung her hands till my two sisters came and consoled and prayed with her. Then suddenly her pale face, surrounded by a white veil, was bent down till it nearly touched mine; and she said, in soft and tender tones:—
Poor stranger, will you drink?"
"Yes," I replied, and looked her full in the face. Manuela it was. I well remembered the sweet countenance, first seen in Careta. I raised myself, and would fain have seized hold of her, but she moved slowly away, her rosary and golden crucifix and black gown rustling through the room. It was no deception. Again Manuela came, and brought me some cooling drink. Once more I looked her hard in the eyes. God! now I remembered! It was the same beautiful woman who distributed the wine at Hostiz and would fain have given me some. "Faugh!" I exclaimed, and raised myself in bed to call the Piedmontese to shoot her. But she bent soothingly over me, and laid hold of the ribbon upon which I wore Manuela's silver cross. I thought she was about to strangle me; but she smiled kindly, and showed me that she wore a similar cross upon her breast. And she gave me to drink, and then took away the little earthen jug, and disappeared at the dark end of the room. And I lay thinking how like she was to Manuela, the poor girl in Careta, who loved me and saved my life.