"Let me die like a soldier," replied the young officer, as the
question was thus put to him, before the open court, as to the mode
of death which he chose.
"You are condemned, then, Lorenzo Bezan," said the advocate of the
court, "to be shot by the first file of your own company, upon the
execution field."
This sentence was received with a murmur of disapprobation from the
few spectators in the court, for the condemned was one of the most
beloved men in the service. But the young officer bowed his head
calmly to the sentence, though at close observer might have seen a
slight quiver of his handsome lips, as he struggled for an instant
with a single inward thought. What that thought was, the reader can
easily guess,--it was the last link that bound him to happiness.
Lorenzo Bezan had no fear of death, and perhaps estimated his life
quite as lightly as any other person who made a soldier's calling
his profession; but since his heart had known the tender promptings
of love, life had discovered new charms for him; he lived and
breathed in a new atmosphere. Before he had received the kind
considerations of the peerless daughter of Don Gonzales, he could
have parted the thread of his existence with little regret.
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