Her son was a muleteer, who traded between Pampalona and Passages—a young man of about twenty-three years of age: he was employed by others, as well as on his mother's account, who was a widow left in a considerable business, to manage for herself and infant son, whom she bred up to industrious habits; and she had succeeded in laying by a small provision for the future, when Napoleon's ambition, which, in 1808, sent a French army into Spain, extended its baneful effects even to her humble dwelling. The house in which this widow dwelt, was situated at the extremity of the village. It must have once been a most enchanting little home to an unambitious mind; for even at the time I saw it, ruin as it was, its garden trodden down, its trees broken and torn up, its fences destroyed, and its walks disfigured—a charm lingered over it that caught every passenger's attention. The scenery around gave it a peculiar beauty: the blue mountains, the dark valleys, the luxuriance of foliage, the deep green dell, the falling water, and the clear sky still remained;—these the soldiers of France could not destroy, and from such scenery did the wreck of the widow's cottage derive its rural halo. It reminded me of the fair Ophelia in her ruin,—so beautiful, so scathed and sorrowful! If a picture of the spot were painted by a Salvator Rosa, it would afford a melancholy pleasure to every beholder; but the reality—the poor widow and her breaking heart, gave too much pain to render a visit to her cheerless home at all enviable. To have seen her sitting in the only tenantable apartment of her once comfortable cottage, thinly but cleanly clad—a white apron and kerchief covering the half worn out black stuff gown; two broken chairs, a crazy table, a straw pallet, and a few earthen panella's,[9] forming all her furniture; to have contemplated the fixed melancholy of her thin, worn, but once handsome countenance, her gentle manners, and her patient submission to the will of Heaven, under the deepest affliction—and yet to have been unable to alleviate her distress, could give no pleasure to the heart, unless to those who love to sympathise with grief and drop a tear with the unfortunate. Yet even such would have involuntarily said, on quitting the melancholy scene, “I wish I had not heard the poor old widow's story.” Her son Diego the muleteer, when the French first entered Spain, under the orders of Buonaparte, was about twenty-two years of age, and had the reputation of being an exemplary young man, obedient, and affectionate to his mother—his only relation, except an uncle, who also resided in Ernani, and whose farm the young muleteer no doubt would have inherited, after his death, had he survived him.