The character of Fray Beltrán, as portrayed in this Canto, is meant to represent a portion of the extraordinary and irregular energies which the events of the French Revolution and Invasion produced in Spanish cloisters. It is with a view to impart variety to my subject, that I have dwelt upon love and madness as the shapes which Beltrán’s wild energy assumed, though political propagandism, patriotic denunciation of the French, and even taking up arms, were acts familiar to the Exclaustrados or expelled inmates of religious houses, violated by the ruthless invader--often for the purpose of converting cloisters into stables! In these transactions, the French took one way of realising Sir Thomas More’s “Happy Republic.” “In no victory do they glory so much, as in that which is gained without bloodshed.” They rejoiced to triumph by fraud, like the ancient Spartans, or liker perhaps the Egyptian Harami--incorporated for plunder. The monks and friars of the Peninsula were not all, however, helpless. Many fled to the mountains and marshalled or joined Guerrilla parties, and there was scarcely a Guerrilla throughout Spain during the War of Independence that had not some monks and friars incorporated with it. This system continues down to the present hour, and the accession of these clerical auxiliaries has ever thrown a sort of halo over the pursuit in a superstitious country. “_La Patria y la Religion!_” was a potent cry, and the life of perpetual adventure was in the highest degree exciting and romantic.