De Mesmai seemed to have recovered that buoyancy of temper so natural to Frenchmen, and he chatted on in this gay and unconnected manner, and sung snatches of military and tavern songs until they arrived, when evening was approaching, at Villa Macia, where it was necessary that they should halt for the night. Here they received information that Sir Rowland Hill, with the troops returning from Almarez, had passed through two days before. In so small a village there was no alcalde to order them a billet, and no inn at which they could procure one otherwise; and while standing in the street, irresolute how to act, they were surrounded by a crowd of swarthy villagers, who greeted Ronald with many a hearty _viva!_ but regarded the disarmed Frenchman with louring looks of hatred and hostility, to which he replied by others of defiance and contempt. _El cura_, the rector or curate of the place, a reverend-looking old churchman, with a bald head, a few grey hairs, and a wrinkled visage, approached them with his shovel-hat in his hand, and invited them to partake of the shelter afforded by his humble roof, to which the Gaul and the Briton were alike welcome. The horses were accommodated in an out-house behind the cottage, while the curate introduced his guests into his best apartment,—a room floored with tiles, which had just been cooled by the application of a water-sprinkler. Nets of onions, oranges, and innumerable bunches of grapes hung from the rude rafters of the roof, waving in the fresh evening breeze which blew through the open window. Drawings of various kinds, particularly landscapes, adorned the walls of the room, in which, if poverty was every where apparent, there was an extreme air of neatness and cleanliness, not often to be met with in houses of such a class in Spain. *CHAPTER XII.* *THE CURATE’S STORY.* "Loose me, sire! and ill betide thee! Curse upon thee! let me go! Wert thou other than my father, Heavens! I would smite thee low!" _The Cid_: a Spanish Romance. "_Te Deum laudamus!_ we shall have a rest at last!" exclaimed De Mesmai. "I thought I had forgotten my Latin; and yet my old rogue of a tutor rubbed it hard into me with a tough rod." He clattered through the room with his heavy jackboots and jangling spurs clanking on the floor; and seating himself in the curate’s easy chair, stretched out his legs, and half closing his eyes, contemptuously surveyed the place. He threw his heavy casque on the table, crushing the leaves of a large bible, which el cura had been reading.