“But what was there left to fill their pockets with?” Lady Mabel asked.

“There must have been a plenty left,” said Mrs. Shortridge.  “One does not know the wealth of a country till you plunder it.  Even some of our fellows, though they came as friends, still continue occasionally to pocket a useful thing.  The officers cannot put a stop to it altogether, do what they may.”

“But, with some exceptions,” said L’Isle, “each French general levied contributions on his own account.  Some idea of the amount may be formed from the fact, that at the Convention of Cintra, Junot, who had probably not brought baggage enough into Portugal to load five mules, demanded five ships for the conveyance of his private property.  Yet Soult’s accumulations in Andalusia are said to exceed Junot’s.  Whatever may be the result of the war, many a French officer will have made his fortune here.  Well did they obey the injunction—­

           “’See thou shake the bags
  Of hoarding abbots; angels imprisoned
  Set thou at liberty.’

“This last, though, in a sense different from the poets; in Lisbon alone, turning thousands of nuns into the streets, that their convents might be converted into barracks.  In obedience to the imperial decree, all the gold and silver of the churches, chapels, and fraternities of the city were carried off to the mint; and, in this day of sweeping confiscation, individuals did not forget themselves.  Indeed, throughout the country, the French soldier proved that he had the eye of a lynx, the scent of a hound, and the litheness of a ferret after booty, trained to it by the system which makes the war support the war.  But Evora has been particularly unlucky.  It not only bore its full share of the first burden imposed on the country, but the year after, when the Portuguese, rising too late in armed resistance, lost a battle before the town, the French, entering with the fugitives, massacred nearly a thousand persons, many of them women and children, including some forty priests, a class they made the especial objects of their vengeance; and they plundered the town so thoroughly, that the very cracks in the walls did not escape their search.  The best excuse that can be made for their plunderings is, that in the confusion of their own revolution they so completely lost the idea of property, that though they have recovered the thing, they have not yet remastered the idea of it.”

A number of friars now coming out of the church attracted Mrs. Shortridge’s attention.  But Lady Mabel had an English woman’s ear for French atrocities, and continued the conversation: 

“I can understand that a needy and ignorant soldiery may perpetrate such robberies amidst scenes of violence, and under the temptations of want; but we expect better things from the men who lead them.”