The troops then defiled out of the square, the multitude dispersed, and by six o’clock in the evening not more than twenty persons were near the scaffold upon which the dead priest was still bound. The body was at length put into a cart, the platform was removed, and the spot which so short a time before was the theatre of this tragedy now bore no evidence of the horrid scene that had been acted upon it. CHAPTER XXIII Arrests at Madrid—Advantages of speaking French—Seizure of Don Saturio de Padilla by the police—The author effects his liberation—A bull day at Madrid—Private theatricals—French and English soldiers—Blowing up the Retiro—Retreat from Madrid—A pig hunt. The execution of the priest Lopez, narrated in the last chapter, was followed by many arrests. In eight days no fewer than one hundred and forty-nine persons were thrown into prison; some on good grounds, others on trivial circumstances, and many on the charge alone of having held employment under the late government. The consequence of this ill-judged severity was that all those who escaped arrest in the first burst of tyranny practised by the local authorities fled from Madrid, and scarcely a family was to be found who had not to lament the loss of some individual belonging to it, either by flight or imprisonment. Had the siege of Burgos been successful, and the French troops driven to Pampeluna, which would have been the natural result, a tragical scene would have been enacted, not only at Madrid, but throughout the whole of Spain. Yet all the time nothing but forgiveness for the past and promises for the future were to be heard of—except the daily and nightly imprisonments that took place! Two evenings after the execution of Lopez I met a number of Spaniards at the house of my _padron_, Don Miguel de Inza, who had himself been an engineer in the employment of the late King Charles IV.; different topics, as a matter of course, were discussed—the sieges of Rodrigo and Badajoz, the battle of Salamanca, and the triumphant entry of our troops into the capital of Spain. Most of the party seemed well inclined towards us, and towards the king we proclaimed, Ferdinand VII.; but there was little confidence amongst the party themselves, and there was some who would, if they dared, have spoken in favour of the French.