“Nous sommes deja presque au bout.  When we arrived at the inn, the young man took me above, as you saw, and there for some time he could do nothing but weep and sob.  His story is soon told:- he returned from his travels, and the first intelligence which awaited him on his arrival in Spain was, that his father was drowned, his mother dead, and his brother hanged, and, moreover, all the possessions of his family confiscated.  This was not all:  wherever he went, he found himself considered in the light of a factious and discontented person, and was frequently assailed by the nationals with blows of sabres and cudgels.  He applied to his relations, and some of these, who were of the Carlist persuasion, advised him to betake himself to the army of Don Carlos, and the Pretender himself, who was a friend of his father, and remembered the services of his brother, offered to give him a command in his army.  But, mon maitre, as I told you before, he was a pacific young gentleman, and as mild as a lamb, and hated the idea of shedding blood.  He was, moreover, not of the Carlist opinion, for during his studies he had read books written a long time ago by countrymen of mine, all about republics and liberties, and the rights of man, so that he was much more inclined to the liberal than the Carlist system; he therefore declined the offer of Don Carlos, whereupon all his relations deserted him, whilst the liberals hunted him from one place to another like a wild beast.  At last, he sold some little property which still remained to him, and with the proceeds he came to this remote place of Colunga, where no one knew him, and where he has been residing for several months, in a most melancholy manner, with no other amusement than that which he derives from a book or two, or occasionally hunting a leveret with his spaniel.

“He asked me for counsel, but I had none to give him, and could only weep with him.  At last he said, ’Dear Antonio, I see there is no remedy.  You say your master is below, beg him, I pray, to stay till to-morrow, and we will send for the maidens of the neighbourhood, and for a violin and a bagpipe, and we will dance and cast away care for a moment.’  And then he said something in old Greek, which I scarcely understood, but which I think was equivalent to, ’Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die!’

“Eh bien, mon maitre, I told him that you were a serious gentleman who never took any amusement, and that you were in a hurry.  Whereupon he wept again, and embraced me and bade me farewell.  And now, mon maitre, I have told you the history of the young man of the inn.”