The Actress in High Life Part 15

"But, with some exceptions," said L'Isle, "each French general levied contributions on his own account. Some idea of the amount may be formed from the fact, that at the Convention of Cintra, Junot, who had probably not brought baggage enough into Portugal to load five mules, demanded five ships for the conveyance of his private property. Yet Soult's acc.u.mulations in Andalusia are said to exceed Junot's.

Whatever may be the result of the war, many a French officer will have made his fortune here. Well did they obey the injunction--

"'See thou shake the bags Of h.o.a.rding abbots; angels imprisoned Set thou at liberty.'

"This last, though, in a sense different from the poets; in Lisbon alone, turning thousands of nuns into the streets, that their convents might be converted into barracks. In obedience to the imperial decree, all the gold and silver of the churches, chapels, and fraternities of the city were carried off to the mint; and, in this day of sweeping confiscation, individuals did not forget themselves. Indeed, throughout the country, the French soldier proved that he had the eye of a lynx, the scent of a hound, and the litheness of a ferret after booty, trained to it by the system which makes the war support the war. But Evora has been particularly unlucky. It not only bore its full share of the first burden imposed on the country, but the year after, when the Portuguese, rising too late in armed resistance, lost a battle before the town, the French, entering with the fugitives, ma.s.sacred nearly a thousand persons, many of them women and children, including some forty priests, a cla.s.s they made the especial objects of their vengeance; and they plundered the town so thoroughly, that the very cracks in the walls did not escape their search. The best excuse that can be made for their plunderings is, that in the confusion of their own revolution they so completely lost the idea of property, that though they have recovered the thing, they have not yet remastered the idea of it."

A number of friars now coming out of the church attracted Mrs.

Shortridge's attention. But Lady Mabel had an English woman's ear for French atrocities, and continued the conversation:

"I can understand that a needy and ignorant soldiery may perpetrate such robberies amidst scenes of violence, and under the temptations of want; but we expect better things from the men who lead them."

"That supposes these men to be of a different cla.s.s, with different education and habits from the common soldier. The revolution and conscription has leveled all those distinctions. Many a youth of good birth and education is made to bear his musket in the ranks, and does not elevate his comrades to his standard, but is soon degraded to the level of their sentiments and habits. Many a French general, for instance Junot, has been raised from the ranks. Military merit or accident has elevated them to command without a corresponding elevation of sentiment or principles. It is not easy to make a gentleman in one generation: somebody says, it takes three."

"What a moderate man that somebody was!" said Lady Mabel; "I thought that the gentry of a country were like its timber, the slow growth of centuries, and that the beginning of n.o.bility must be lost in the dark ages, unless you can find some great statesman, warrior, or freebooter of later date to start from."

"But," said L'Isle, laughing, "we find men whose pedigree fulfills your requisitions, who are not gentlemen in their own persons. The son of a gentleman is too often one only in name."

"I think," said Lady Mabel, reflecting, "I have myself met with more than one gentleman rogue."

"That is impossible," said L'Isle, "for a gentleman is a superstructure which can be built on only one foundation--an honest man."

"We had better stop defining the gentleman," said Lady Mabel, "lest between us we narrow down the cla.s.s, until there are not enough left to officer a regiment, or for any other useful purpose."

"This is a fine old building," said Mrs. Shortridge, peeping into the church, "and it will be a convenient time to look at it, for it seems quite empty."

"It is not much worth seeing," said L'Isle, "but there is something beyond it which I would like to show you."

They walked into it; but Moodie at first hung back, and hesitated to enter this idolatrous temple, until, luckily remembering the prophet's permission to Naaman the Syrian to accompany his master to the house of Rimmon, he swallowed his scruples, and followed Lady Mabel.

Pa.s.sing through the church, they came to an archway, over which was inscribed--

Nos os ossos que aqui estamos Pelos vossos esperamos.

Pa.s.sing through it, they found themselves in a huge vault, its arched ceiling supported by large square piers, which, with the walls, were covered with human skulls, set in a hard cement. By the dim light they saw on all sides thousands of ghastly human heads, grinning at them in death; the only signs of life being a few crouching devotees, prostrate before an illuminated shrine at the extremity of this Golgotha.

Both ladies paused, awe-stricken. Lady Mabel turned pale, and Mrs. Shortridge, after gazing round her for a moment, uttered a little shriek, and covered her face with her hands. To face these objects was painful enough, but to have them grinning on her, as in mockery, behind her back, was more than she could stand. So seizing old Moodie by the arm, he being beside her, she rushed out of this charnel house, and impatiently called to the others to join her in the church.

With an effort Lady Mabel stifled her contagious terror, and, advancing further into the gloomy repository, inspected it on all sides. There was little room left on the walls for more memorials of mortality. Having in silence sated her curiosity and her sense of the horrible, feeling all the while a strange reluctance to break the deathlike stillness of the place by uttering a word, she at length rejoined Mrs. Shortridge. After taking another look into this apartment of death, her eye rested on the inscription over the arch.

L'Isle translated it:

Our bones, which here are resting Are expecting yours.

"G.o.d forbid that mine should find so gloomy a resting place,"

exclaimed Mrs. Shortridge, with a shudder.

"It is a weakness," said Lady Mabel; "yet we must shrink from this promiscuous mingling of our ashes, and are even choice in the selection of our last resting place. We hope even in death to rejoin our kindred dust in the ancestral vault, or at least to repose under some sunny spot, in the churchyard hallowed to us in life. Is not this your feeling?" she said, appealing to L'Isle.

L'Isle looked grave. "It is a natural feeling clinging to our mortal nature, and doubtless has its use. But I must not indulge it. The soldier is even less at liberty than other men to choose his own grave. The fosse of a beleaguered fortress, a shallow trench in a well-fought field, the ravine of a disputed mountain pa.s.s, the strand of some river to be crossed in the face of the enemy--all these have furnished, and will furnish graves for those who fall, and have the luck to find burial; the wolf and the vulture provide for the rest. We have a wide graveyard," he added, more cheerfully, "stretching from hence to the Pyrenees, and, perchance, beyond them. It embraces many a lovely and romantic spot, only the choice of our last resting place is not left to ourselves."

Lady Mabel shuddered at this gloomy picture, and his foreboding tone. She knew how many of her countrymen had fallen, and must fall, in this b.l.o.o.d.y war. Yet, somehow or other, she had always thought of L'Isle as one who was to live, and not to die prematurely, cut off in youth, health, the pride of manhood, his hopes, powers, aspirations, just in their bloom. She looked at him with deep, painful interest, as if to read his fortune in his face. What special safeguard protected him? The next moment her conscience p.r.i.c.ked her, when her father's image rose before her, grown gray in service, and seamed with scars, yet no safer by all his dangers past than the last recruit, and she walked slowly forth from the Franciscan church with sadder and more solemn impressions of the reality and imminence of death than could be generated by all that vast array of grinning skulls.

It was growing late, and they turned toward the _estalagem_. As they strolled on, L'Isle, in the same strain of thought which had last occupied them, said: "War is essentially a greedy thing, a great and speedy consumer of what has been slowly produced in peace. We hear of veteran armies, but an army of veterans does not, perhaps never existed. We collect materials and munitions of war, expecting to expend them in military operations; but we are not aware, until we have tried it, how close a parallel there is between the fates of the inanimate and the living const.i.tuents that furnish forth an army for the field. It is not the sword chiefly that kills; the hospital swallows more than the battle-field. After a few campaigns, what has been falsely called the skeleton, but is, in truth, the soul of an army, the remnant of experienced officers and tried soldiers, only remains, and new flesh, blood, and bones must be provided for this soul, in the shape of new levies. When we see an old soldier glorying in his score of campaigns, we should call to mind the score of youths prematurely covered by the sod."

"Few, then," said Lady Mabel, "can enjoy Gonsalvo of Cordova's fortune. On retiring to a monastery, he avowed that every soldier needed for repentance an interval of some years between his life and his death."

"The great captain's conscience must have p.r.i.c.ked him," said L'Isle, "when he made that speech. An unjust war, or a war unjustly waged, lay heavy on him. A soldier knows the likelihood of his dying in his vocation. If he think it criminal, let him abandon it. Up to this day my conscience has not troubled me on that score. War, always an evil, is often a necessity; and I wonder whether, after an hundred years of peace, we would not find nations worse and more worthless than they now are."

Mrs. Shortridge now called their attention to the number of storks in the air. The sun had set, and these grave birds were seeking their roosts; every tower of church and monastery affording a domicil to some feathered family, with the full sanction of the biped denizens below.

"The social position of these long-legged gentry all over the peninsula," said L'Isle, "is one of the characteristics of the country. It is astonishing what an amount of respect, and an immunity from harm, they enjoy. I am afraid they would fare worse at the hands of the more brutal part of our English populace. They are useful, too; but are more indebted for their safety, and the respect shown them here, to the clerical gravity of their demeanor."

They had now reached their lodgings, and were soon after joined by the commissary, who came in rubbing his hands, and exclaiming: "Capital bargains to be made here! Corn plenty, and bullocks that would make a figure in Smithfield. Some farmers have not threshed last year's crop. A curious country this: one province starving, and plenty in the next. It is all owing to the want of roads. But, luckily, Elvas is not far off."

"Yet the Romans," L'Isle remarked, "had once netted over the whole Peninsula with roads."

"When they went away," said the commissary, "the first thing the people of the country did, I suppose, was to let them go to ruin in true Portuguese fashion."

Shortridge now said that he must spend some days in the neighborhood of Evora, and that the party would have to return to Elvas without him. This being agreed to, Lady Mabel suggested that they should find their way back by a different route, and, on consulting the muleteer, they found that it could be done without much lengthening their journey.

CHAPTER XI.

Led with delight they thus beguile the way * * * *

When weening to return whence they did stray, They cannot find that path, which first was showne, But wander to and fro in ways unknown, Furthest from end then, when they nearest weene, That makes them doubt their wits be not their own, So many paths, so many turning seene, That which of them to take in diverse doubt they been.

Faerie Queene.

The party mustered early the next morning to continue their journey, and after breakfast L'Isle called for the innkeeper to pay him his bill. This worthy, acting on the natural supposition that the English had come into the country to indemnify the Portuguese for their losses at the hands of the French, at once named the round sum of sixty _crusados_. On L'Isle looking surprised, he began to run over so long a list of articles furnished, and items of trouble given, that L'Isle, who was annoyed at the interruption of an agreeable conversation with Lady Mabel, was about to pay him in full to get rid of him, when Shortridge peremptorily interfered. The demand was extortionate and aroused his indignation. Perhaps he looked upon the fellow as usurping a privilege belonging peculiarly to the commissary's own brotherhood. He abused the man roundly in very bad Portuguese, and insisted that L'Isle should pay him but half the sum.

The innkeeper, a dark, sallow man, with a vindictive countenance, glared on him as if fear alone withheld him from replying with his knife. When he found his tongue, he began to answer with a bitterness that was fast changing into uncontrollable rage; but the commissary, who was a master in the art of bullying, cut him short.

"This fellow," said he, addressing L'Isle, but still speaking Portuguese, "has three fine mules in his stable. I shall need a great many beasts to carry corn to Elvas, and will apply to the _Juiz de Fora_ to embargo them among the first."

The innkeeper turned as pale as his golden skin permitted at the bare suggestion. The French had made a similar requisition on him four years ago, and when he followed his cattle to reclaim them after the required service, he got only sore bones and a broken head for his pains.

"You may do as you please in that matter," said L'Isle, throwing on the table half the sum demanded, and leaving their host to swallow his anger, and take it up, if he pleased.

The muleteer, having come in for the baggage, on finding out the nature of the controversy, now poured out a flood of vociferous eloquence on the extortioner, denouncing him as a disgrace to the nation, and no true Portuguese, but a New Christian, as might be seen in his face; and he was urgent with Shortridge to let him show him the way to the house of the _Juiz de Fora_ without loss of time.

L'Isle's commanding air and contemptuous indifference overawed the innkeeper quite as much as Shortridge's threats. So, sweeping the money into his pocket, he went out hastily to find a safe and secret hiding place for his mules.

"Pray," said Lady Mabel to L'Isle, while they were waiting for their horses, "what is a New Christian?"

"The explanation of the term does not tell well in the history of the country," said he. "When Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain, many of them took refuge here, where John II. gave them shelter, on condition that they should quit the kingdom in a limited time. This king endeavored to keep faith with them. Nevertheless, in his and the following reign, they were subjected to unceasing persecutions, being required to become Christians, or leave the country; at the very time every obstacle was put in the way of their escape. At length their children were taken from them to be reared in the Christian faith, and numbers abjured Judaism in order to recover possession of their own offspring. But such a conversion failed not to furnish for many a generation a crowd of hapless inmates for the 'Tremendous House of the Inquisition' in every town. Even in the last century, no diversion delighted the Lisbon mob like the burning of a relapsed Jew. The usage of them of old still influences the condition of the country and the term New Christian is yet a by-word common in the mouths of people."