the whole party with studied politeness.  Captain Don Alonzo Melendez, with a handsome person, a swaggering air, and a costume more foppish than military, looked more like a majo of Seville than a soldier and a gentleman.  His companions had much the advantage of him there, but he beat them hollow in assurance.  Learning that curiosity alone had brought them to Badajoz, he at once took the post of guide.  Finding that Lady Mabel knew enough of Spanish to make a good listener, he placed himself by her side.  Cranfield escorted her on the other, and thus they walked forth.  L’Isle, thrust into the background, accompanied Mrs. Shortridge and the rest of the party.

As they drew near the works, many marks of injury and devastation on the adjacent houses, brought the late siege prominently to their minds.  Don Alonzo Melendez at once began to discourse grandiloquently on the subject.  His narrative was so copious and inaccurate, that Cranfield soon lost all patience, and found it hard to keep from interrupting and contradicting him.  Lady Mabel, detecting this, encouraged the Spaniard to the uttermost by displaying rapt attention, and full faith in his glowing narrative.

“I never before heard,” said she to Cranfield, “so graphic an account of the siege and storming of Badajoz.”

“If our friend here talks about it much longer,” said Cranfield, in English, “he will forget that we had any thing to do with it.  The siege was, however, in one sense, the work of the Spaniards.  If the traitor Imaz had not sold it to Soult for a mule load of gold, we would not have had to buy it back at the cost of so many thousands of lives.  Nor were any of them Spanish lives,” he added bitterly; “though some were Portuguese—­for the only Spaniards at the siege were the renegades who aided Philippon and his Frenchman to keep us out.”

“Every Spaniard is not traitor or coward,” said L’Isle from behind.  “If the brave Governor Menacho had not been killed in defending the place, his successor Imaz could not have sold it a few days after to the French.”

As they strolled along the ramparts, Don Alonso, with a strange forgetfulness of events within the year, lauded the impregnable strength of the works, as if Badajoz were still a virgin fortress.  Cranfield, by way of rebuking him, pointed out to Lady Mabel the restorations he had made of the breached walls.  She replied that “the patchwork character of his repairs were but too evident, as he had invariably omitted to use materials of the same color with the original works.”

As they rambled through the city, Don Alonso failed not to point out the superior size and style of the buildings over those of Elvas, and Lady Mabel remarked that “in cleanliness, too, it far surpassed its neighbor.”  Leading them to the cathedral, their guide compelled them to inspect minutely this heavy and cumberous building, while he eulogized it in terms that might have been suitable to St. Peter’s, at Rome.  “I am sorry,” said he, “you cannot see it in all its splendor; but the gorgeous furniture of the altar and the rich ornaments of the shrines are not now exhibited.”