“Be it so,” replied Cranfield.  “It is lucky for your patriot that he was not here.  However, the troops, with bugles sounding, advanced up yonder street into this square, and we captured several mules going with ammunition to the trenches.  But the square was empty and silent as the streets, and the houses as bright with lamps; a terrible enchantment seemed to be in operation; for we saw nothing but light, and heard nothing but the low whispers around us, while the tumult at the breach was like the crashing thunder.  There, though the place was already carried on two sides, by Picton’s column and ours, the murderous conflict still raged; we still heard the shots, and shouts, and infernal uproar, while hundreds and hundreds fell and died after fierce assault and desperate resistance were alike vain.  We pushed on that way to take the garrison in reserve, but our weak battalion was repulsed by their reserve, and some time elapsed before the French found out that Badajoz had changed hands.”

“But it was ours!” exclaimed Lady Mabel, “though too dearly bought.”

“The carnage was dreadful,” said Cranfield; “and when the full extent of that night’s havoc became known to Lord Wellington, the firmness of his nature gave way for a moment, and the pride of conquest yielded to a passionate burst of grief at the loss of his gallant soldiers.—­Then came the voe victis,” continued Cranfield.  “We do not like to dwell on the wild and desperate wickedness which Badajoz witnessed on becoming ours.  By the by, just where we stand stood the gallows.”

“The gallows!” Lady Mabel exclaimed, stepping back from the polluted spot.  “You could not hang the French.  Did you hang the Spaniards who had fired on you.”

“No; but Lord Wellington was compelled to hang some of his own heroes for making too free with what was theirs by right of conquest.”

The young surgeon, who had been listening to Cranfield, now thought it time to lay some of his coloring on this picture of the siege, storming and sack of this unhappy city.  He told some curious and thrilling incidents, but his profession getting the mastery of him, he soon got to the hospital, and, amidst ghastly wounds, horrid disfigurations, and dismembered limbs, began to bandage, slash, and saw, until Lady Mabel sickened at the tale.  “Pray stop there; you make me shudder at your hospital scenes, which, in their endless variety of suffering are too like the Popish pictures of souls in Purgatory.  I prefer going to dine at the posada, to stopping here to sup full of horrors.”

They now returned to the posada and had their Spanish friends to dine with them—­Lady Mabel seating Don Alonso beside her, and losing not a word of his grandiloquence.  After the meal the party dispersed—­most of them taking a siesta in order to get rid of two or three hot hours of the afternoon before they set out on their way back to Elvas.  Their Spanish friends however, returned and persuaded them to postpone their ride until they had taken an evening promenade on the bridge, the favorite resort of the ladies of Badajoz and their cavaliers during the hot weather.  Here they enjoy an extended prospect, and the cooling breezes that attend the current of a great river.