While we thus continued to pass our time in gaiety and idleness, other divisions of the army had moved onwards towards Burgos, which was strongly held by a chosen garrison under the command of an experienced and skilful general of the name of Dubreton. Meanwhile we continued at Madrid, and either enjoying the amusement of the theatres, the luxuries of the hotel called El Fuente d'Oro, the hospitality of the good citizens, or the gay but noisy scenes at the Calle de Baimos, we passed our time as agreeably as men could do, considering the scanty amount of pay which was issued to us; for from the difficulty of getting a supply of animals sufficient to bring up specie from Lisbon, where there was an abundance, the army was at this period five months in arrear of pay, and except for the commissaries and some paymasters who cashed our bills (at seven shillings the dollar!) many of us would have been in a sad plight. Those who were enabled to raise money at this enormous percentage got on well enough, but others, who were limited in their resources, were obliged, per force, to be lookers-on at all that was passing. An event was now about to take place that engrossed much of the conversation of all Madrid, and created amongst the army no little curiosity. It was the condemnation to death, by the _garrotte_, of a Spanish priest named Diego Lopez. This ill-fated man, it appears, had been, for some time previously to his arrest, in the pay of King Joseph; he acted as a spy, and gave circumstantial information of all that was passing in our army. Accurately acquainted with his proceedings, the police agents narrowly watched his motions. For some days he had been missing from his lodgings in the Calle de Barrio Nuevo. No inquiry was made after him by the police, they being too conversant in their calling to raise any suspicion in his breast by a step that they knew would be abortive; but his return was eagerly looked for, carefully watched, and his apprehension made more certain. At length he did return.