How queenly she looks, nevertheless. I had much rather be
refused by such a woman, to my own mortification, than to succeed
with almost any other, if only for the pleasure of looking into
those eyes, and reading in silent language her poetical and ethereal
beauty-I might be happy but for this fellow, this Captain Bezan; he
troubles me. Though there's no danger of her loving him, yet he
seems to stand in my way, and to divert her fancy. Thank Heaven,
she's too proud to love one so humble."
Thus musing and talking aloud to himself, General Harero walked back
and forth, and back and forth again in his apartment, until his
orderly brought him the evening report of his division. A far
different scene was presented on the other side of the great square,
in the centre of which stands the shrubbery and fountain of the
Plaza. Let the reader follow us now inside the massive stone walls
of the Spanish barracks, to a dimly lighted room, where lay a
wounded soldier upon his bed. The apartment gave token in its
furniture of a very peculiar combination of literary and military
taste. There were foils, long and short swords, pistols, hand pikes,
flags, military boots and spurs; but there were also Shakspeare,
Milton, the illustrated edition of Cervantes's Don Quixote, and a
voluminous history of Spain, with various other prose and poetic
volumes, in different languages.
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