“I won’t give it,” I returned.
‘“You are wrong, my friend,” replied the voltigeur: “nothing can result from your refusal but personal annoyance. You will be sent into La Mota, and, I regret to say, there the prisoners are miserably inconvenienced. Think of it well, O’Halloran; escape from the fortress is nearly hopeless; why, then, add to the desaremens of captivity? Courage!—an application has already been made in your fwour: why not, at least, wait patiently until an answer is returned by the minister of war?”
“My dear Cammaran,” I replied, “the reasons why I should not be patient are manifold. In the first place. I am in love, and wish to return home; in the second place, I am sick of San Sebastian, and very weary of contemplating the surly features of my host Senhor La Pablos, agreeably diversified, it is true, with an occasional visit from an old Leonora, deaf as a door-post, and the attentions of an interesting male attendant, who, if he be not hanged within a twelvemonth, why I’ll forswear physiognomy for ever.”
“Oh! indeed, and you’ll have no occasion,” observed Mark Antony: “the gallows is written in his face, and, as they say in Connaught,—Master Pedro is sure ‘to spoil a market.’”
“Bah! my good friend, I have a remedy for all,” returned Cammaran; “one poison neutralizes another—you must find another mistress: and if you are tired of your quarters, why we can look out for others which may prove more agreeable.”
I shook my head.
“Well—well—don’t refuse rashly. Tell them you will consider it for a day or two—and trust to the soldier’s best dependence,—you call it, happily, in English,—‘the chapter of accidents.’ Farewell!—I will call early to-morrow.”
“And the birds will be flown,” added the fosterer, as Cammaran closed the door and bade us, as we then believed, “a last good morrow.”
I never felt so impatiently as on that last day when I remained a prisoner in San Sebastian. The sun went gloomily to the ocean, the sea began to rise and break upon the beach, and with the evening as it closed, the weather became worse, and a very skyey appearance heralded a coming storm. Darkness came—the lamps were lighted—the ill-favoured attendant laid supper on the table, uncorked a flask of wine, and, as he always did, vanished without making a remark.
“I never will have anything but a poor opinion of that Senhor Pablos,” observed the fosterer; “he’s an inhospitable divil, or on the last night he had the honour of entertaining two gentlemen, he would have had the common manners to have introduced them to his wife, and taken a dock an durris with them afterwards. No matter—here’s luck!—and who knows where we’ll drink the same toast to-morrow evening?”