"Poor Jacques Chataigneur was in the same wretched condition, and lay opposite to me, kennelled on a bed of straw, under the gothic canopy which covered the grave perhaps of some long-bearded hidalgo of old Castile. "We alone recovered. "The gay Chevalier de Vivancourt and his three comrades of la Garde Imperiale died; so did poor Jean Graule and all our servants; for the little fury Virginia had administered part of her infernal potion to them too. So to this hour, my friend, I entertain such a horror of all kinds of prepared wine, that I may safely say, 'tis not in the power of man, or even woman, with all her superlative cunning and witchery, to make me taste a single drop that is not pure as when it came from the wine-press." "And the ladies--what became of them?" "Donna Elvira," continued my garrulous friend, "disappeared from Madrid on that very night, taking with her the unlucky Virginia, and for a time we heard no more of them, save in the columns of the 'Moniteur' and 'El Espanol,' where, the Lord knows, our malheur made more than noise enough! May mischief dog their heels as two revengeful vixens. But I afterwards learned that the girl assumed another name, and, bestowing her hand on a certain hidalgo of Alava, actually had the happiness to give me shelter one night on the retreat from Vittoria. My whiskers had grown, and she did not recognise me; sacre bleu, if she had! I was never discovered, and blessed my stars that I was sound, wind and limb, when I left her mansion in the morning--Ouf! let me think no more of it, for altogether 't is a story that makes me shudder." "Excuse me, Captain St. Florian," said I, when he had ceased; "but on my honour, you make me blush for the army of France." "Morbleu!" said he; "they were only Spaniards." "But I have heard many an episode of horror blacker even than that of Donna Elvira, for I was one of those who followed up the retreating army of Massena, from the frontiers of Portuguese Estremadura, through desert fields and desolate cities, marked by fire and blood, and all that the wantonness and wickedness your devastators could inflict on a poor, a prostrate, and a defenceless people. I am warm, monsieur, but I pray you pardon me----" "Ah! he was a stern old routier, Massena, and handled the dons so roughly, that the Emperor named him rightly the 'child of rapine.' I care not for being his apologist, as I never either loved or admired him, and once positively hated the old pagan, for reprimanding me in general orders, because, on our retreat from the lines of Torres Vedras, I neglected to destroy the house of a poor old hidalgo near Santarem, who had been so kind to me, that I omitted him in the list of devastations to be made by my foragers. Ouf! I got a lecture that was printed in the 'Moniteur,' and read at the head of every regiment in the division. But in revenge, that very night I affixed a scroll to the door of the marshal's quarters, saying--