in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

Shakspeare.

As my mission was but temporary, and might be attended with personal
hazard, I had left Clotilde in England, much to her regret, and
travelled with as small a retinue as possible; and in general by
unfrequented ways, to avoid the French patroles which were already
spread through the neighbourhood of the high-roads. But, at Burgos,
the Spanish commandant, on the delivery of my passport, insisted so
strongly on the necessity for an escort, placing the wish on a feeling
of his personal responsibility, in case of my falling into the enemy's
hands, that to save the senor's conscience, or his commission, I
consented to take a few troopers, with one of his aides-de-camp, to
see me in safety through the Sierra Morena.

The aide-de-camp was a _character_; a little meagre being, who, after
a long life of idleness and half-pay, was suddenly called into
service; and now figured in a staff-coat and feather. His first
commission had been in the luckless expedition of Count O'Reilly
against the Moors; and it had probably served him as a topic, from
that time to the moment when he pledged his renown for my safe
delivery into the hands of the junta of Castile. He had three leading
ideas, which formed the elements of his body and soul,--his exploits
in the Moorish campaign; his contempt for the monks; and his value for
the talents, courage, and fame of Don Ignacio Trueno Relampago, the
illustrious appellative of the little aide-de-camp himself. He talked
without mercy as we rode along; and gave his opinions with all the
easy conviction of an "officer on the staff," and all the freedom of
the wilderness. The expedition to Africa had failed solely for want of
adopting "the tactics which _he_ would have advised;" and his public
services in securing the retreat would have done honour to the Cid, or
to Alexander the Great, had not "military jealousy refused to transmit
them to the national ear." His opinion of Spanish politics was, that
they owed their occasional mistakes solely to the culpable negligence
of the war-minister "in overlooking the gallant subalterns of the
national army." Spain he regarded as the natural sovereign of Europe;
and, of course, of all mankind--its falling occasionally into the
background being satisfactorily accounted for by the French descent of
her existing dynasty, by the visible de