"He is yours—he has always been ready with his life and money. Believe me, for I know it. Nay, more! doubt not that there are hundreds in Bogota—though they be not here—who, like him, will be ready whenever they hear the summons of your trumpet. Nor will the women of Bogota be wanting. There will be many of them who will take the weapons of those who use them not, and do as brave deeds for their country as did the dames of Magdalena when they slew four hundred Spaniards". [5]
"Ah! I remember! A most glorious achievement, and worthy to be writ in characters of gold. It was at Mompox where they rose upon the garrison of Morillo. Girl, you are worthy to have been the chief of those women of Magdalena. You will be chief yet of the women of Bogota. I take your assurance with regard to them; but for the men, it were better that thou peril nothing even in thy speech."
The last sarcasm of the Liberator might have been spared. That which his eloquence had failed to effect was suddenly accomplished by this child of beauty. Her inspiration and presence were electrical. The old forgot their caution and their years. The young, who needed but a leader, had suddenly found a genius. There was now no lack of the necessary enthusiasm. There were no more scruples. Hesitation yielded to resolve. The required pledges were given—given more abundantly than required; and raising the slight form of the damsel to his own height, Bolivar again pressed his lips upon her forehead, gazing at her with a respectful delight, while he bestowed upon her the name of the Guardian Angel of Bogota. With a heart bounding and beating with the most enthusiastic emotions—too full for further utterance, La Pola disappeared from that imposing presence, which her coming had filled with a new life and impulse.
It was nearly dawn when the Liberator left the city. That night the bleaching skeleton of the venerable patriot Hermano was taken down from the gibbet where it had hung so long, by hands that left the revolutionary banner waving proudly in its place. This was an event to startle the viceroy. It was followed by other events. In a few days more and the sounds of insurrection were heard throughout the province—the city still moving secretly—sending forth supplies and intelligence by stealth, but unable to raise the standard of rebellion, while Zamano, the viceroy, doubtful of its loyalty, remained in possession of its strong places with an overawing force. Bolivar himself, under these circumstances, was unwilling that the patriots should throw aside the mask. Throughout the province, however, the rising was general. They responded eagerly to the call of the Liberator, and it was easy to foresee that their cause must ultimately prevail. The people in conflict proved themselves equal to their rulers. The Spaniards had been neither moderate when strong, nor were they prudent now when the conflict found them weak. Still, the successes were various. The Spaniards had a foothold from which it was not easy to expel them, and were in possession of resources, in arms and material, derived from the mother country, with which the republicans found it no easy matter to contend. But they did contend, and this, with the right upon their side, was the great guaranty for success. What the Colombians wanted in the materials of warfare, was more than supplied by their energy and patriotism; and however slow in attaining their desired object, it was yet evident to all, except their enemies, that the issue was certainly in their own hands.
For two years that the war had been carried on, the casual observer could, perhaps, see but little change in the respective relations of the combatants. The Spaniards still continued to maintain their foothold wherever the risings of the patriots had been premature or partial. But the resources of the former were hourly undergoing diminution, and the great lessening of the productions of the country, incident to its insurrectionary condition, had subtracted largely from the temptations to the further prosecution of the war. The hopes of the patriots naturally rose with the depression of their enemies, and their increasing numbers and improving skill in the use of their weapons, not a little contributed to their endurance and activity. But for this history we must look to other volumes. The question for us is confined to an individual. How, in all this time, had La Pola redeemed her pledge to the Liberator—how had she whom he had described as the "guardian genius of Bogota," adhered to the enthusiastic faith which she had voluntarily pledged to him in behalf of herself and people?
Now, it may be supposed that a woman's promise, to participate in the business of an insurrection, is not a thing upon which much stress is to be laid. We are apt to assume for the sex a too humble capacity for high performances, and a too small sympathy with the interests and affairs of public life. In both respects we are mistaken. A proper education for the sex would result in showing their ability to share with man in all his toils, and to sympathize with him in all the legitimate concerns of manhood. But what, demands the caviler, can be expected of a child of fifteen; and should her promises be held against her for rigid fulfillment and performance? It might be enough to answer that we are writing a sober history. There is the record. The fact is as we give it. But a girl of fifteen, in the warm latitudes of South America, is quite as mature as the northern maiden of twenty-five; with an ardor in her nature that seems to wing the operations of the mind, making that intuitive with her, which, in the person of a colder climate is the result only of long calculation and deliberate thought. She is sometimes a mother at twelve, and, as in the case of La Pola, a heroine at fifteen. We freely admit that Bolivar, though greatly interested in the improvisatrice, was chiefly grateful to her for the timely rebuke which she administered, through her peculiar faculty of lyric song, to the unpatriotic inactivity of her countrymen. As a matter of course, he might still expect that the same muse would take fire under similar provocation hereafter. But he certainly never calculated on other and more decided services at her hands. He misunderstood the being whom he had somewhat contributed to inspire. He did not appreciate her ambition, or comprehend her resources. From the moment of his meeting with her she became a woman. She was already a politician as she was a poet. Intrigue is natural to the genius of the sex, and the faculty is enlivened by the possession of a warm imagination. La Pola put all her faculties in requisition. Her soul was now addressed to the achievement of some plan of co-operation with the republican chief, and she succeeded where wiser persons must have failed in compassing the desirable facilities. Living in Bogota—the stronghold of the enemy—she exercised a policy and address which disarmed suspicion. Her father and his family were to be saved and shielded, while they remained under the power of the viceroy, Zamano, a military despot who had already acquired a reputation for cruelty scarcely inferior to that of the worst of the Roman emperors in the latter days of the empire. The wealth of her father, partly known, made him a desirable victim. Her beauty, her spirit, the charm of her song and conversation, were exercised, as well to secure favor for him, as to procure the needed intelligence and assistance for the Liberator. She managed the twofold object with admirable success—disarming suspicion, and under cover of the confidence which she inspired, succeeding in effecting constant communication with the patriots, by which she put into their possession all the plans of the Spaniards. Her rare talents and beauty were the chief sources of her success. She subdued her passionate and intense nature—her wild impulse and eager heart—employing them only to impart to her fancy a more impressive and spiritual existence. She clothed her genius in the brightest and gayest colors, sporting above the precipice of feeling, and making of it a background and a relief to heighten the charm of her seemingly willful fancy. Song came at her summons, and disarmed the serious questioner. In the eyes of her country's enemies she was only the improvisatrice—a rarely gifted creature, living in the clouds, and totally regardless of the things of earth. She could thus beguile from the young officers of the Spanish army, without provoking the slightest apprehension of any sinister object, the secret plan and purpose—the new supply—the contemplated enterprise—in short, a thousand things which, as an inspired idiot, might be yielded to her with indifference, which, in the case of one solicitous to know, would be guarded with the most jealous vigilance. She was the princess of the tertulia—that mode of evening entertainment so common, yet so precious, among the Spaniards. At these parties she ministered with a grace and influence which made the house of her father a place of general resort. The Spanish gallants thronged about her person, watchful of her every motion, and yielding always to the exquisite compass, and delightful spirituality of her song. At worst, they suspected her of no greater offence than of being totally heartless with all her charms, and of aiming at no treachery more dangerous than that of making conquests, only to deride them. It was the popular qualification of all her beauties and accomplishments that she was a coquette, at once so cold, and so insatiate. Perhaps, the woman politician never so thoroughly conceals her game as when she masks it with the art which men are most apt to describe as the prevailing passion of her sex.
By these arts, La Pola fulfilled most amply her pledges to the Liberator. She was, indeed, his most admirable ally in Bogota. She soon became thoroughly conversant with all the facts in the condition of the Spanish army—the strength of the several armaments, their disposition and destination—the operations in prospect, and the opinions and merits of the officers—all of whom she knew, and from whom she obtained no small knowledge of the worth and value of their absent comrades. These particulars, all regularly transmitted to Bolivar, were quite as much the secret of his success, as his own genius and the valor of his troops. The constant disappointment and defeat of the royalist arms, in the operations which were conducted in the Province of Bogota, attested the closeness and correctness of her knowledge, and its vast importance to the cause of the patriots.
Unfortunately, however, one of her communications was intercepted, and the cowardly bearer, intimidated by the terrors of impending death, was persuaded to betray his employer. He revealed all that he knew of her practices, and one of his statements, namely, that she usually drew from her shoe the paper which she gave him, served to fix conclusively upon her the proofs of her offence. She was arrested in the midst of an admiring throng, presiding with her usual grace at the tertulia, to which her wit and music furnished the eminent attractions. Forced to submit, her shoes were taken from her feet in the presence of the crowd, and in one of them, between the sole and the lining, was a memorandum designed for Bolivar, containing the details, in anticipation, of one of the intended movements of the viceroy. She was not confounded, nor did she sink beneath this discovery. Her soul seemed to rise rather into an unusual degree of serenity and strength. She en couraged her friends with smiles and the sweetest seeming indifference, though she well knew that her doom was certainly at hand. She had her consolations even under this conviction. Her father was in safety in the camp of Bolivar. With her counsel and assistance he would save much of his property from the wreck of confiscation. The plot had ripened in her hands almost to maturity, and before very long Bogota itself would speak for liberty in a formidable pronunciamento. And this was mostly her work! What more was done, by her agency and influence, may be readily conjectured from what has been already written. Enough, that she herself felt that in leaving life she left it when there was little more left for her to do.
La Pola was hurried from the tertulia before a military court—martial law then prevailing in the capital—with a rapidity corresponding with the supposed enormity of her offences. It was her chief pang that she was not hurried there alone. We have not hitherto mentioned that she had a lover, one Juan de Sylva Gomero, to whom she was affianced—a worthy and noble youth, who entertained for her the most passionate attachment. It is a somewhat curious fact, that she kept him wholly from any knowledge of her political alliances; and never was man more indignant than he when she was arrested, or more confounded when the proofs of her guilt were drawn from her person. His offence consisted in his resistance to the authorities who seized her. There was not the slightest reason to suppose that he knew or participated at all in her intimacy with the patriots and Bolivar. He was tried along with her, and both condemned—for at this time condemnation and trial were words of synonimous import—to be shot. A respite of twelve hours from execution was granted them for the purposes of confession. Zamano, the viceroy, anxious for other victims, spared no means to procure a full revelation of all the secrets of our heroine. The priest who waited upon her was the one who attended on the viceroy himself. He held out lures of pardon in both lives, here and hereafter, upon the one condition only of a full declaration of her secrets and accomplices. Well might the leading people of Bogota tremble all the while. But she was firm in her refusal. Neither promises of present mercy, nor threats of the future, could extort from her a single fact in relation to her proceedings. Her lover, naturally desirous of life, particularly in the possession of so much to make it precious, joined in the entreaties of the priest; but she answered him with a mournful severity that smote him like a sharp weapon,
"Gomero! did I love you for this? Beware, lest I hate you ere I die! Is life so dear to you that you would dishonor both of us to live? Is there no consolation in the thought that we shall die together?"