“Ha! Well, he must remain as he is until we find time to look into his case. How is it, Mr. What’s-your-name, Carlo, you suppressed his place of birth?”
“His mother was a French lady, Monseigneur, and fighting for one’s mother country is as good, any day, as fighting for a father’s.”
“True, in a measure, sir,” returned the knight. “What’s the prisoner’s name?”
“Hilo de Ladron.” This was said in no unusual tone, yet it seemed singularly to catch the commander’s attention, for he eyed the speaker keenly and then fell into a fit of musing, which lasted while he paced the deck between the officers of his suite. “M. de Haye,” he said at last, pausing before that officer and looking up, “you may be mistaken in your charges. They are grave ones and should be advanced when they can be examined at leisure, not at a hurried moment like this. I have need of every man in our too feeble squadron, and will take it upon myself to entrust the restoration of his character to M. de Ladron himself for the present.”
The gentleman addressed bowed, shrugged his shoulders, as well as a Frenchman could in a steel cuirass, and there the matter dropped.
Hilo laughed when the captain told him the favorable result of his application, and professed equal curiosity as to the commander’s motives—professions which honest Wolfang received as attempts to impose on his credulity—(he was probably touchy on the subject since his introduction to Doña Viola)—with less justice than usual, however, as Hilo, for a wonder, was telling the truth.
About this time the Sieur Cusson returned in his sloop from reconnoitering the island, and his report being that the Spanish squadron had not yet arrived, the little armament of De Chaste ran gallantly into the harbor, and came to anchor amidst a great firing of cannon and arquebuses from the Portuguese, who liked expending powder in this way much better than in front of an enemy, and besides, had lived in such daily dread of the descent of the Spanish fleet, that they could not sufficiently viva their delight at finding out who the new comers really were. The Viceroy, de Torrevedros, himself, came down to the water side to receive the commander, and made such a brave appearance in his embroidered surcoat and gilded harness, surrounded by other cavaliers equally well dressed, that the Frenchmen, walking with unsteady legs after their twenty-four days of stormy weather on shipboard, and in shabby doublets, presented nothing very imposing in their march through the streets.
But if the Portuguese gentlemen, riding on either hand, could scarce suppress their mirth at the ill looks of their allies, the ladies were anxious to propitiate men who would prove their main defence, and threw down showers of all sorts of gay flowers from the windows and balconies; some of the young señoritas even meeting the procession at unexpected corners, and flinging orange water into the knight’s face, who would have been more gratified by the ablution (it being a hot June day) had not the thought of his best ruff growing limper at each sprinkling interfered with the enjoyment.
“Better smell of gunpowder.” he said shortly, to a French gentleman from the court, whose nose was audibly expressing its delight at the fine perfume.
But the satisfaction of the Portuguese was as nothing compared with the joy of a few hundred Frenchmen, a remnant of the Strossy expedition of the year before, who had lost all hope of ever leaving the Azores again, and, having little money at the first, had been treated with any thing but hospitality by their unwilling hosts. These poor fellows mixed with the crowd in the streets, kept the commandant’s company in sight, and running into the quarters assigned the latter, met them with such antics and embraces as caused the Gallic army to suppose at first that they had fallen into an ambuscade of madmen. Their two captains gave De Chaste a full narration of their sufferings, which was impartial in the main, and tended very little to elevate the Portuguese residents in the eyes of their audience, whose fancy for that people was not great from the beginning.