The appearance of my future host was not particularly prepossessing. Although stricken in years, his carriage was lofty and unbroken—and the expression of his countenance seemed that of a proud and daring spirit, obliged to bend for a time to circumstances, and stoop to a thraldom from which it secretly recoiled.
The Spaniard showed the way in—and I was placed on a comfortable bed, in an apartment very clean, but very plainly furnished. At the opposite side of the hall, a room had been provided for Mark Antony—for whose transit to these his new quarters, after I had been safely deposited, the stretcher and fatigue party were despatched.
“I will send you some linen—and that is more than many of our people could afford. In turn of duty, the escort of the convoy which marched for France on the 19th fell to my lot—and bitterly I lamented that I was not fated to witness the defeat, which we all considered as so certainly attendant on Lord Wellington’s advance upon Vittoria. The thing seems incomprehensible—and even yet we regard the king’s disaster almost as a dream. Well—let it pass—c’est fortune de guerre. The Emperor’s lieutenant is in the Pyrenees—and now, my Lord Wellington, look sharp!”
“Might not that cautionary hint, my dear Cammaran, be equally serviceable to your friend, the Duke of Dalmatia?” I replied, with a smile.
“No—no. From secret intelligence which has reached the fortress, a very few days will end your leader’s visionary prospects. What! enter France—carry the war over the frontier, and pollute the sacred soil! The thunderbolt is charged—and the hand is already present that will hurl it. But I must go. Duty will engage me the whole day, but in the evening I will visit you.”—Then turning to our host, Cammaran commended me and my companion to his especial attention.
“Let nothing in this case be wanted, Senhor—you stand already not very favourably with the Governor. Adieu, for a time, my friend”—and pressing my hand, the Frenchman took his departure.
I never saw a countenance on which scorn, hatred, and revenge, seemed struggling for mastery, until I noticed that of Don Francisco. When the door of the court-yard closed, he poured forth a torrent of anathemas—then turning to me, his features instantly relaxed—and approaching my couch he took my hand in his.
“Stranger, you are welcome. The name of Englishman I respect—and the Spaniard is an ingrate who does not. If my manner in receiving you was not as warm as it might have been, ascribe it to the true cause—the pestilential presence of yonder foreigner. The sight of these insolent oppressors turns my blood to gall—their very language is discord to my ears—I hate them with all a Spaniard’s hatred. But why display impotent rage in words?—‘Tis womanly—yet still, while the hand dares not strike a blow, the tongue finds some relief in venting the feelings of a surcharged breast—a maddened brain—in curses.”
I looked at La Pablos. His features were convulsed with passion. I had heard that many severities had been exercised by the French during the Peninsular conflict—and I concluded that Don Francisco had been one of the unhappy Spaniards who had suffered from the oppression of the invaders. The arrival of the fosterer, for that time, ended our conversation—the host quitting me to attend to this his second guest, and minister to the wants of Mark Antony.
Four days passed away—I had sufficiently recovered to be enabled to leave my room; and, leaning on the arm of a French soldier, who was daily in attendance on me by a special order from the Governor, I walked for a short distance every morning on the ramparts which overlooked the bay. My wound, though severe at the time that I received it, was one that healed rapidly—the bullet having slanted from the rib it struck against, and instead of taking what would have been otherwise a mortal direction, it inflicted a painful, but fortunately what proved a superficial injury, The fosterer was also convalescent—the ball had passed through his thigh without injuring the bone in its transit—his arm healed rapidly—and in a few days more the learned leach who attended us, announced that Mark Antony would be, as the fosterer termed it himself, “right upon his pins again.”