Juana | Page 5

reasoning or
calculating. Variable as the beauty of a fair woman, Diard was a great
boaster and a great talker, talking of everything. He said he was artistic,
and he made prizes (like two celebrated generals) of works of art,
solely, he declared, to preserve them for posterity. His military
comrades would have been puzzled indeed to form a correct judgment
of him. Many of them, accustomed to draw upon his funds when
occasion obliged them, thought him rich; but in truth, he was a gambler,
and gamblers may be said to have nothing of their own. Montefiore

was also a gambler, and all the officers of the regiment played with the
pair; for, to the shame of men be it said, it is not a rare thing to see
persons gambling together around a green table who, when the game is
finished, will not bow to their companions, feeling no respect for them.
Montefiore was the man with whom Bianchi made his bet about the
heart of the Spanish sentinel.
Montefiore and Diard were among the last to mount the breach at
Tarragona, but the first in the heart of the town as soon as it was taken.
Accidents of this sort happen in all attacks, but with this pair of friends
they were customary. Supporting each other, they made their way
bravely through a labyrinth of narrow and gloomy little streets in quest
of their personal objects; one seeking for painted madonnas, the other
for madonnas of flesh and blood.
In what part of Tarragona it happened I cannot say, but Diard presently
recognized by its architecture the portal of a convent, the gate of which
was already battered in. Springing into the cloister to put a stop to the
fury of the soldiers, he arrived just in time to prevent two Parisians
from shooting a Virgin by Albano. In spite of the moustache with
which in their military fanaticism they had decorated her face, he
bought the picture. Montefiore, left alone during this episode, noticed,
nearly opposite the convent, the house and shop of a draper, from
which a shot was fired at him at the moment when his eyes caught a
flaming glance from those of an inquisitive young girl, whose head was
advanced under the shelter of a blind. Tarragona taken by assault,
Tarragona furious, firing from every window, Tarragona violated, with
dishevelled hair, and half-naked, was indeed an object of curiosity,--the
curiosity of a daring Spanish woman. It was a magnified bull-fight.
Montefiore forgot the pillage, and heard, for the moment, neither the
cries, nor the musketry, nor the growling of the artillery. The profile of
that Spanish girl was the most divinely delicious thing which he, an
Italian libertine, weary of Italian beauty, and dreaming of an impossible
woman because he was tired of all women, had ever seen. He could still
quiver, he, who had wasted his fortune on a thousand follies, the
thousand passions of a young and blase man--the most abominable

monster that society generates. An idea came into his head, suggested
perhaps by the shot of the draper-patriot, namely,--to set fire to the
house. But he was now alone, and without any means of action; the
fighting was centred in the market-place, where a few obstinate beings
were still defending the town. A better idea then occurred to him. Diard
came out of the convent, but Montefiore said not a word of his
discovery; on the contrary, he accompanied him on a series of rambles
about the streets. But the next day, the Italian had obtained his military
billet in the house of the draper,--an appropriate lodging for an
equipment captain!
The house of the worthy Spaniard consisted, on the ground-floor, of a
vast and gloomy shop, externally fortified with stout iron bars, such as
we see in the old storehouses of the rue des Lombards. This shop
communicated with a parlor lighted from an interior courtyard, a large
room breathing the very spirit of the middle-ages, with smoky old
pictures, old tapestries, antique "brazero," a plumed hat hanging to a
nail, the musket of the guerrillas, and the cloak of Bartholo. The
kitchen adjoined this unique living-room, where the inmates took their
meals and warmed themselves over the dull glow of the brazier,
smoking cigars and discoursing bitterly to animate all hearts with
hatred against the French. Silver pitchers and precious dishes of plate
and porcelain adorned a buttery shelf of the old fashion. But the light,
sparsely admitted, allowed these dazzling objects to show but slightly;
all things, as in pictures of the Dutch school, looked brown, even the
faces. Between the shop and this living-room, so fine in color and in its
tone of patriarchal life, was a dark staircase leading to a ware-room
where the light, carefully