"Where, where?" cried one. "On
our cart," said another. "Who is he?" said a third. "A French
officer; I saw his cap and his boots." They all roared with
laughter. "I was looking out of the window of the posada and I
saw him spring into the cask like a toreador with a Seville bull
at his heels." "Which cask, then?" "It was this one," said the
fellow, and sure enough his fist struck the wood beside my head.
What a situation, my friends, for a man of my standing!
I blush now, after forty years, when I think of it.
To be trussed like a fowl and to listen helplessly to the rude
laughter of these boors--to know, too, that my mission had come
to an ignominious and even ridiculous end --I would have blessed
the man who would have sent a bullet through the cask and freed
me from my misery.
I heard the crashing of the barrels as they hurled them off the
waggon, and then a couple of bearded faces and the muzzles of two
guns looked in at me. They seized me by the sleeves of my coat,
and they dragged me out into the daylight.
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