The sight of their gaunt ribs and
spavined legs gave me more delight than the whole two hundred and twenty
hunters of the Emperor which I have seen in their stalls at
Fontainebleau. In ten minutes the owner was harnessing them into the
coach, with no very good will, however, for he was in mortal dread of
this terrible Cuchillo. It was only by promising him riches in this
world, while the priest threatened him with perdition in the next, that
we at last got him safely upon the box with the reins between his
fingers. Then he was in such a hurry to get off, out of fear lest we
should find ourselves in the dark in the passes, that he hardly gave me
time to renew my vows to the innkeeper's daughter. I cannot at this
moment recall her name, but we wept together as we parted, and I can
remember that she was a very beautiful woman. You will understand, my
friends, that when a man like me, who has fought the men and kissed the
women in fourteen separate kingdoms, gives a word of praise to the one
or the other, it has a little meaning of its own.

The little priest had seemed a trifle grave when we kissed good-bye, but
he soon proved himself the best of companions in the diligence. All the
way he amused me with tales of his little parish up in the mountains,
and I in my turn told him stories about the camp; but, my faith, I had
to pick my steps, for when I said a word too much he would fidget in his
seat and his face would show the pain that I had given him. And of
course it is not the act of a gentleman to talk in anything but a proper
manner to a religious man, though, with all the care in the world, one's
words may get out of hand sometimes.

He had come from the north of Spain, as he told me, and was going to see
his mother in a village of Estremadura, and as he spoke about her little
peasant home, and her joy in seeing him, it brought my own mother so
vividly to my thoughts that the tears started to my eyes. In his
simplicity he showed me the little gifts which he was taking to her, and
so kindly was his manner that I could readily believe him when he said
he was loved wherever he went. He examined my own uniform with as much
curiosity as a child, admiring the plume of my busby, and passing his
fingers through the sable with which my dolman was trimmed. He drew my
sword, too, and then when I told him how many men I had cut down with
it, and set my finger on the notch made by the shoulder-bone of the
Russian Emperor's aide-d