"The old man also offers you the whole of his fortune if you will pardon his young son."
"Really!" said the general. "His goods already belong to King Joseph; he is under arrest." His brow contracted scornfully, then he added: "I will go beyond what they ask. I understand now the importance of the last request. Well, let him buy the eternity of his name, but Spain shall remember forever his treachery and its punishment. I give up the fortune and his life to whichever of his sons will fulfil the office of executioner. Go, and do not speak to me of it again."
Dinner was ready, and the officers sat down to table to satisfy appetites sharpened by fatigue.
One of them only, Victor Marchand, was not present at the banquet. He hesitated for a long time before he entered the room. The haughty family of Leganes were in their agony.
He glanced sadly at the scene before him; in this very room, only the night before, he had watched the fair heads of those two young girls and those three youths as they circled in the excitement of the dance. He shuddered when he thought how soon they must fall, struck off by the sword of the headsman. Fastened to their gilded chairs, the father and mother, their three sons and their two young daughters, sat absolutely motionless.
Eight serving-men stood upright before them, their hands bound behind their backs. These fifteen persons looked at one another gravely, their eyes scarcely betraying the thoughts that surged within them. Only profound resignation and regret for the failure of their enterprise left any mark upon the features of some of them.
The soldiers stood likewise motionless, looking at them, and respecting the affliction of their cruel enemies. An expression of curiosity lit up their faces when Victor appeared. He gave the order to unbind the condemned, and went himself to loose the cords which fastened Clara to her chair. She smiled sadly. He could not refrain from touching her arm, and looking with admiring eyes at her black locks and graceful figure. She was a true Spaniard; she had the Spanish complexion and the Spanish eyes, with their long curled lashes and pupils blacker than the raven's wing.
"Have you been successful?" she said, smiling upon him mournfully.
Victor could not suppress a groan. He looked, one after the other, at Clara and her three brothers. One, the eldest, was aged thirty; he was small, even somewhat ill made, with a proud, disdainful look, but there was a certain nobleness in his bearing; he seemed no stranger to that delicacy of feeling which elsewhere has rendered the chivalry of Spain so famous. His name was Juanito. The second, Felipe, aged about twenty; he was like Clara. The youngest was eight, Manuel; a painter would have found in his features a trace of that Roman steadfastness which David has given to children's faces in his episodes of the republic. The old Marquis, his head still covered with white locks, seemed to have come forth from a picture of Murillo.
The young officer shook his head. When he looked at them, he was hopeless that he would ever see the bargain proposed by the general accepted by any of the four; nevertheless, he ventured to impart it to Clara.