Such broken exclamations did he continue to pour forth from time to time, as fast as the jolts of his horse admitted, till we had placed a good many miles between us and Lerida. We were then obliged to slacken our pace, though we still heard occasionally the distant roaring of the cannon, proving incontestably that the struggle between the populace and the soldiery continued unabated. Though from very different motives, I was as glad to avoid taking any part in the transactions which, I had reason to believe, were going on at Lerida, as little Achilles himself. I had gathered from the conversation of Francisco and Garcias, that the Catalonian peasantry had been instigated to revolt, in no slight degree, by secret agents of the French government; and I had but little inclination to be identified with schemes which I could not look upon as highly honourable. To have been mistaken for one of these agents by the populace, would have placed me in a very embarrassing situation, unacquainted, as I was with the designs and measures of my own government; and I well knew, that to disclaim a character with which the multitude chose to invest one, was the surest way to provoke, without convincing them. I was therefore anxious on every account to reach Barcelona as speedily as possible, and to quit a country where no pleasing part was left me to play, before the first news of the insurrection caused an embargo to be laid upon the ports. But, unfortunately, our horses had by this time become so jaded, that I was obliged to slacken my pace and proceed more slowly, lest they should fail us altogether. About an hour more elapsed before we reached any place that could give shelter and rest for our horses; for I remarked here, as in the country near Saragossa, though Catalonia is better peopled than many parts of Spain, that the towns and villages are sadly distant from one another, when compared with the overflowing population of France.