"'Down with him! down with the Frenchman! Death to the Buonapartist! Maladetto!' was the cry on every side. "'Caramba!' cried one in a voice of thunder, 'I will blow out the brains of the first that injures him. Frenchman and dog as he is, our laws must be respected. Away with him to the mountains, for Don Julian d'Aviero must decide his fate.' "Aviero! my heart sunk; I was then quite in the power of the devil. "Amid a storm of growling and swearing, and even fisticuffs, I was conducted through the wood, which was almost pathless and covered the face of the Sierra by which we ascended, to an old and ruined villa, belonging to the Duke of Aviero. It stood on the edge of a precipice that overhung the Tagus, and there Don Julian had for the present established his head-quarters. A recent attempt had been made, by a detachment of ours, under Jacques Chataigneur, to dislodge him; these had been repulsed with great slaughter; and on approaching the villa, I could discern vivid traces of the conflict--traces which its amiable and philosophical inmates cared not to trouble themselves as yet in removing. "This noble residence of Don Julian's ancestors, with its marble vestibule and stately portico, its frescoed chambers and arcades of columns, round which the vine and the rose were clambering, had been no way improved by his occupation thereof. A balustraded terrace encircled it, and within and around it the dead French and guerillas were lying across each other in scores--many of them yet grasping their adversaries, just as they had fallen, without their hold relaxing, or the fierce expression which distorted their features at the hour of death passing away. "Many of these men were my comrades, grenadiers of the 23rd, whom I could recognise, notwithstanding the alteration of their features. "In the assault and defence, the doors and windows of this beautiful villa had all been blown to pieces; the walls were studded with bullets and spattered with blood, which appeared to have run like a rivulet down the staircase, to mingle with the waters of a shattered jet d'eau in the vestibule. At the head of the stair a barricade had been formed by a sideboard, a piano, and other furniture, wedged with bolsters and pillows, and books; and this point of assault had been fought for, like any breach in the glacis of Badajoz. Everywhere the bills and axes of the pioneers had been at work; but Chataigneur had been repulsed, and Don Julian remained impregnable and triumphant. "In a noble apartment, the windows of which overlooked the Tagus and the vast plain that spread in its beauty towards the castle and city of Torres Novas, the ramparts of which were tipped with the last gleam of the set sun, Don Julian, with several of his desperadoes, sat over their cups of country wine, muffled in their mantles, and enjoying paper cigars, while their feet rested on a great copper brassero of charcoal that stood in the centre of the marble floor.