Under the uncle's auspices, Diego had courted a young girl, nearly related to a respectable family, at the head of which was a clergyman residing in the convent of St. Ignatio de Loyola, but a few leagues from Ernani. The girl's father lived within a hundred yards of Diego and his mother, and from infancy the young couple became attached to each other. Although the employment of a muleteer is, in general, considered beneath the class to which Diego's sweetheart belonged, yet there was no objection to her marriage, on account of the excellent character the young man bore, and the expectations which he had of future success in life. The marriage would have taken place as soon as a house, which the muleteer's uncle was building, might be completed. In this house the young couple were to have resided, and to it was attached an excellent farm, to be managed by him for the uncle. These happy arrangements, alas! were broken by the columns of the French army. Like mountain torrents they poured over the Pyrenees, sweeping the rustic comforts of the peaceful Spaniards before them. Requisitions for cattle and carriages were enforced, and Diego, amongst many, was obliged to march with his mules along with the invading army, wherever his directors thought fit. Short was the time allowed for the sad yet endearing farewell of the lovers, and the interchange of blessings between the mother and the son. The uncle and the widow accompanied him a league beyond the village; but the poor girl, who now for the first time felt the bitterness of life, remained weeping at home, almost dead with grief; which was not alleviated by the return of Diego's mother and uncle, whose first care, after parting with the youth, was to go to her he loved so well. The house—the whole village was a place of mourning; for every family, in some way or other, had but too much cause for sorrow. Poor old woman! when she told me of the last moment she passed with her lost son, she sobbed as if her heart would have burst. “Oh!” said she, “I was giving my dear child a prayer-book and a silk handkerchief, for the sake of remembrance, when one of the dragoons struck him with the flat of his sword, and ordered him to go on; he could only say, ‘God bless you, mother!’... I never saw him again.” For six months after this separation, the family of Diego heard no tidings of him; for, no doubt, his letters, as well as theirs, were opened and destroyed by the invaders; however, at the end of that time, a muleteer, who had been pressed along with Diego, returned, by permission, to die from ill health, and he brought letters from him to the almost despairing friends. It appeared by these, that he was along with the army in the south of Spain, and had but little hopes of being able to return to his beloved Joanna, his relatives, and his projected farm-house, for at least another half-year; but he did not even at that period return—nor for upwards of a year after.