"It belonged to Donna Elvira de Almeria, whose family had just been reduced to one daughter, by the unexpected deaths of her husband and three sons, who had fallen on the previous day sword in hand, as she told us, like true cavaliers, defending the palace of the Betiro, which had been breached by the cannon of the Marshal Duke of Belluno; but the ghastly gap had been defended with admirable resolution and bravery by the Spaniards; so the soldiers of the emperor, petulant at all times, were somewhat exasperated in consequence.
"We, ourselves, were ripe for mischief, and I cannot rehearse all the fine things we did in our ramble through the city that night: I beseech you to suppose them.
"The household of the Donna Elvira were, as may be imagined, overwhelmed with terror and grief by the misfortune which war had brought upon them; and their condition was in no way soothed or ameliorated by our appearance among them, blackened with powder and smoke, and bespattered with blood and dust, for we had hewn our way in by the breach at the Retiro.
"The ladies were both handsome, but more especially the daughter Virginia, a timid girl of about fifteen; and at these years a Spaniard is almost a woman. Her tears, I blush to say, made little impression on me, but her beauty had a great effect on as all. However, drunk as we were, we remembered Chataigneur was our senior officer, and that his pleasure must be known before the officer next in rank presumed to open the trenches; or, in other words, address the ladies in the language of gallantry.
"Jacques was a child of the revolution, an iron-hearted soldier, penetrable only to steel and lead--half fox, half wolf; to anything soft or sentimental, he was immovable as a cannon-ball. It was said in the 23rd, that he had done some terrible things in La Vendée, and certainly his more recent campaigns in Holland and Italy had taught him to view with the coolness of a stoic the blood of the bravest men and the tears of the most beautiful women.
"Peste! he was a true philosopher, and one might march from Dunkirk to Damascus without meeting such another. He was never troubled with any unpleasant qualms of conscience--not he, because, like most of those fierce soldiers, who had been trained and nurtured amid the horrors of the revolution, he believed in neither God nor devil, heaven nor hell, and, consequently, cared not a straw for any of them."