The earth rocked at times under his feet.

IX

With movements of mechanical care and an air of abstraction old General Santierra lighted a long and thick cigar.

“It was a good many hours before we could send a party back to the ravine,” he said to his guests.  “We had found one-third of the town laid low, the rest shaken up; and the inhabitants, rich and poor, reduced to the same state of distraction by the universal disaster.  The affected cheerfulness of some contrasted with the despair of others.  In the general confusion a number of reckless thieves, without fear of God or man, became a danger to those who from the downfall of their homes had managed to save some valuables.  Crying ‘Misericordia’ louder than any at every tremor, and beating their breast with one hand, these scoundrels robbed the poor victims with the other, not even stopping short of murder.

“General Robles’ division was occupied entirely in guarding the destroyed quarters of the town from the depredations of these inhuman monsters.  Taken up with my duties of orderly officer, it was only in the morning that I could assure myself of the safety of my own family.  My mother and my sisters had escaped with their lives from that ballroom, where I had left them early in the evening.  I remember those two beautiful young women—­God rest their souls—­as if I saw them this moment, in the garden of our destroyed house, pale but active, assisting some of our poor neighbours, in their soiled ball-dresses and with the dust of fallen walls on their hair.  As to my mother, she had a stoical soul in her frail body.  Half-covered by a costly shawl, she was lying on a rustic seat by the side of an ornamental basin whose fountain had ceased to play for ever on that night.

“I had hardly had time to embrace them all with transports of joy when my chief, coming along, dispatched me to the ravine with a few soldiers, to bring in my strong man, as he called him, and that pale girl.

“But there was no one for us to bring in.  A landslide had covered the ruins of the house; and it was like a large mound of earth with only the ends of some timbers visible here and there—­nothing more.

“Thus were the tribulations of the old Royalist couple ended.  An enormous and unconsecrated grave had swallowed them up alive, in their unhappy obstinacy against the will of a people to be free.  And their daughter was gone.

“That Gaspar Ruiz had carried her off I understood very well.  But as the case was not foreseen, I had no instructions to pursue them.  And certainly I had no desire to do so.  I had grown mistrustful of my interference.  It had never been successful, and had not even appeared creditable.  He was gone.  Well, let him go.  And he had carried off the Royalist girl!  Nothing better.  Vaya con Dios.  This was not the time to bother about a deserter who, justly or unjustly, ought to have been dead, and a girl for whom it would have been better to have never been born.