CHAPTER VII

Departure for Spain--Journey from Paris to Bayonne--The treasure--Order of march of the convoy--M. du Saillant--M. de Cotadilla--Irun--Ernani--Salinas--The battalion of _écloppés_ (cripples)--Madame Hugo's supplies of provisions--The forty Dutch grenadiers--Mondragon--The precipice--Burgos--Celadas--Alerte--The queen's review

As we are about to see, it was then a great business to travel to Madrid. First, there was France to cross from Paris to Bayonne. This was merely a question of time. A century ago it took five weeks, and forty years ago it took nine days, to cover a distance that, later, was accomplished in fifty hours, and now is done in fifteen or eighteen. One used to sleep at Blois, at Angoulême and at Bordeaux. Then there was Spain to cross, from Bayonne to Madrid. In due course, we shall see what an uncomfortable business it was to cross Spain from Bayonne to Madrid in the year of grace 1811, in the seventh year of the reign of Napoleon. Madame Hugo hired the whole diligence to take herself, her children and her servants across France. Diligences, at that time, and during the whole of the period, bore the emperor's livery; they were large coaches, painted green; the interior held six and the _cabriolets de cuir_ three seats--a total of nine places. The whole of the luggage was put behind and above. Six persons only occupied the vast ark, which started on its journey at the accustomed hour, and rolled heavily away towards the frontier. At Poitiers, two passengers wished to take their seats in the coach, a Frenchman and a Spaniard. They were told that the whole diligence was taken by a French lady; but they appeared to be so disappointed that Madame Hugo offered both of them seats on condition that they did not pay anything, and they accepted her offer. Madame Hugo kept the interior of the coach for herself, Abel, Eugène, the servant and her chambermaid; Victor declined to be dispossessed of his seat on the cabriolet, and he stayed there with the two strange passengers. He kept an ineffaceable recollection of one of the travellers whose name was Isnel, because he stuffed him and his brothers with cakes and sweetmeats the whole of the journey. At last, on the ninth day, they reached Bayonne; but there they were obliged to stop: they could not go into Spain with what was called treasure. This is a curious bit of history. Joseph was King of Spain, but his sovereignty was confined to Madrid, and to those parts occupied by the French army. All the remaining portions of the country were in a state of insurrection. When any army corps entering the country made an inlet through the insurrectionary forces, the latter, after opening before it, closed up behind it again, and the army became a sort of floating island--a Delos, constantly buffeted by the waves of revolt. There are no means of levying contributions under such circumstances. So the King of Spain and of the Indies, who, in reality, was no more in possession of Spain than of the Indies, not only was unable to maintain the splendours of his court, but would even have died of starvation at Madrid, if Napoleon had not sent this prefect of the empire _his income_ four times a year. King Joseph's income was 48,000,000 francs. Therefore, every three months they sent him a consignment of 12,000,000 francs. And this was called the _treasure._ Of course, it will be readily understood that this treasure trove was lovingly coveted by Spanish guerilleros, and a strong escort had therefore to accompany it, to keep these gentlemen as much at a distance as possible. Travellers who had to go to Madrid put themselves under the protection of this escort just as pilgrims to Mecca put themselves under the protection of caravans. But, in spite of every precaution, and the escort of two or three thousand men, the treasure and the pilgrims were not always safe; the preceding convoy had been attacked, pillaged and slain at Salinas, with frightful atrocity. General Lejeune, if I remember rightly, painted a picture of this attack, which was exhibited in the Salon of 1824 or 1825. Notwithstanding this, however, it was much safer to go with the convoy, and our party therefore waited nearly a month for it at Bayonne. It arrived about the end of April.

Meantime, Madame Hugo had had plenty of time to complete her preparations; she had purchased a carriage, the only one, moreover, there was for sale in Bayonne. It was one of those large trunk-like conveyances only to be seen nowadays in the drawings of Piranesi and also, perhaps, occasionally in the procession of a pontifical gala in the streets of Rome. Picture to yourself an enormous chest, hung between two poles, upon colossal straps, with steps united to these poles, so that you began to climb over the pole, and ended by descending into the carriage. This vehicle had one advantage, however, since, at a push, it could be converted into a fortress, its sides being shot-proof, and only destructible by bullets or grape-shot. Before starting, grave dispute arose concerning the course to take during the march. There were about three hundred carriages and five or six hundred passengers waiting, like Madame Hugo, for the reassuring escort; and it was no easy matter to enforce rules of etiquette in such a crowd as this, composed, besides, almost exclusively of men or women attached to the highest offices in the State, or members of the oldest families of Spain.

Casting a glance over the order of the march, it will be seen that the desirable places, concerning which everyone put forth his own special claims, possessed a value which make the persistency with which they were quarrelled for excusable. This is how the march of the convoy was arranged, with its escort of a detachment of three thousand men:--

First, at the head as advance-guard, marched five hundred men, with loaded arms. Next came the waggons containing the treasure, twenty-five or thirty carriages, surrounded by a thousand men placed five deep. Then came the travellers, according to their rank, title, grade and, especially, according to the seniority of their titles to nobility. These travellers who, as we have said, might easily number some six hundred, filled three hundred carriages, some drawn by four and some by six mules, forming a line a league in length. This line could not be defended so energetically as the treasure; it would have needed ten thousand men instead of three to protect it. So the carriages were only guarded by a single line of soldiers, instead of five abreast. Finally, the convoy was completed by five hundred more men dragging a piece of cannon forming the extremity of this immense reptile, which could bite with its head, and sting with its tail. The consequence of this disposition was that, to be properly guarded, you had to be quite sure you were of that portion of the convoy which was immediately behind the waggons containing the treasure. Therefore, it was not simply a question of etiquette, who came first, second or third, but a matter of life or death.

Madame Hugo, who had to protect herself and her three children at the same time, advanced her claim not as a fearful woman, but as an anxious mother. Several grand ladies of Spain of very old family, and, among them, the Duchess of Villa-Hermosa, had a right, if they had chosen to enforce it, of taking precedence over Madame Hugo; but as Madame Hugo was the wife of a French general, aide-de-camp to the king, she took precedence of all others and went first, in spite of the protests, recriminations and complaints of the grandees of Spain, male and female, her superiors. She had, also, been wonderfully helped in her claim by the arrival at Bayonne of an aide-de-camp from her husband, M. le Marquis du Saillant, son of that sister of Mirabeau whom the famous orator loved and held in sufficiently high esteem to acquaint with his political sayings and doings, in one of the most curious letters he has written.

The escort was commanded, first, by the Duc de Cotadilla, a man of noble name, great fortune and huge appetite, who had thrown in his lot with Joseph; and, secondly, by Colonel de Montfort, a young man of thirty, who looked charming in his hussar's uniform, and belonged to the race of curled darlings who were nevertheless brave young colonels; amongst whom were Colonels Lefèvre, Bessières and Moncey--all sons of marshals who had been left killed or mutilated on the battlefields of the Empire; Colonel Moncey was, probably, the only one who survived that ten years' tempest of shot and shell, and saw the Restoration. The Duke of Cotadilla and M. de Montfort produced a very different impression on the youthful imagination of the future poet. Twenty years later we find a reminiscence in _Claude Gueux_ of the impression made by the Duc de Cotadilla's appetite.

"Claude Gueux was a great eater; it was a peculiarity of his constitution; he possessed a stomach made in such a fashion that the food supply for two men was hardly sufficient to last him one day. M. de Cotadilla had a similar appetite and laughed at it: but what may be a matter of mirth to a grand-duke of Spain who possessed 500,000 sheep is a burden to a working man and a misfortune to a prisoner."

There is no other mention either before or after this paragraph of the Duc de Cotadilla in _Claude Gueux_; so we see that this illustrious Spanish grandee left a very special mark on Victor Hugo's memory.

I do not know whether Hugo has anywhere spoken of Colonel Montfort; but he will do so, some day or other, for the earliest memories of childhood are bound to break forth sooner or later.

The Marquis du Saillant was a man of fifty or fifty-five, who loved taking life easily, always courageous, but bravest of all if anyone disturbed him at a meal or during his sleep, since nothing being more disagreeable to him than to be disturbed, he thereupon did his very best to make the enemy suffer for disturbing him.

Well, at last the huge cavalcade was set in motion and crossed the Bidassoa in view of the isle des Faisans, the famous political and matrimonial island. The first night they slept at Irun. The child's mind was vividly impressed by the fresh style of architecture, strange manners and different tongue. He ever remembered that halt at Irun, and revisited it in his poetical dreams, as well as the towns of Burgos, Vittoria and of Valladolid, noted in other ways:--

"L'Espagne me montrait ses couvents, ses bastilles; Burgos, sa cathédrale aux gothiques aiguilles; _Irun, ses toits de bois_; Vittoria, ses tours; Et toi, Valladolid, tes palais de familles, Fiers de laisser rouiller des chaînes dans leurs cours.

Mes souvenirs germaient dans mon âme échauffée; J'allais chantant des vers d'une voix étouffée, Et ma mère, en secret observant tous mes pas, Pleurait et souriait, disant: 'C'est une fée Qui lui parle et qu'on ne voit pas!'"

The manner of travelling, too, made a deep impression on the brain of the child who, as a man, was to possess the descriptive faculty in the very highest degree! How well one can picture the five hundred men who formed the advance-guard; the thousand escorting the heavy, noisy waggons; the great carriage with its gilding half worn off, that came next, drawn by six mules, reinforced, in difficult places, by two and even four oxen, led by a _mayoral_,[1] escorted by two _zagales!_[2] Think of the burning sun, the parching dust, the arms sparkling in the glowing atmosphere, of villages laid waste and the hostile and threatening populations, the unspeakably terrible and bloody recollections which seemed to belong rather to the isles of the Pacific than to a European continent!--and we shall have some idea of scenes which we cannot attempt to describe, which only Hugo himself could relate.

The first day they went three leagues! The second day, they halted for the night at the village of Ernani. In the poet's recollections, the name of the village is changed to that of a man. Everyone knows the romantic bandit, lover of Doña Sol, adversary of Charles V., and rival of Ruy Gomez. On the third day, a curious spectacle met the travellers' gaze: a battalion of _écloppés._ A battalion of _écloppés_ was a gathering of soldiers of all arms, the débris of a score of combats, or, may be, of a single battle; for, in those days, battles were barbarously conducted: often, two, three or four regiments were wiped out; as many as a thousand, fifteen hundred or two thousand wounded would be picked up from the field of battle; a leg would be cut off here, an arm there, a bullet extracted from one, splinters pulled ont of another. All these would go to the rear and, when cured, or nearly so, from the débris of four or five different regiments would be formed a battalion of _écloppés_ (cripples), which was sent back to France and left to defend itself on the way thither. The poor fellows had to extricate themselves from the terrible game of war as best they could.

Our cortège, then, met one of these battalions at Salinas. It was composed of Light Infantry, Cuirassiers, Carabineers and Hussars. Not a man among them but had lost an arm or a leg, a nose or an eye; but they were gay, and sang and shouted "Vive l'empereur!" The children were particularly struck by the fact that every man carried a parroquet or a monkey on his shoulder or at his saddle-bow; some even had both. They had come from Portugal, where they had left their limbs behind them, and whence they had brought this menagerie.

At Mondragon, two or three leagues before Salinas, thanks to the devotion of the soldiers, they escaped a very serious danger. By "they," I mean Madame Hugo and her three children. But a slight explanation will be necessary before giving an account of this incident. The soldiers received their rations every three days; according to their usual custom, they consumed the three days' rations in the first twenty-four hours, or flung away what food burdened them; so that the whole cortège usually fasted one day, at least, out of three. This fast was the more painful to bear--especially in the matter of liquids, which were not thrown away but usually consumed prematurely--as they journeyed over arid plains, under a burning sun and in suffocating air. They started at break of day, to avail themselves of the cool air, halted at noon, to eat and drink and then they set off again and travelled till nightfall. The soldiers camped round the waggons; the officers and travellers lodged in the villages or towns on billet; Madame Hugo was generally lodged with the Alcade. There, her distribution of rations was made her every night: it was the same allowance as that given to her husband when he was on campaign, namely, twenty rations. Now these portions were very large; great mountains of bread and meat and more wine than she could possibly consume, were piled up before her every night. The soldiers who marched to right and left of her carriage, by the side of the six mules and the immense chariot, amounted to about forty men. They were Dutch grenadiers; for the French army, at that time, like the Roman legions of the time of Augustus, was a mixture of all the nations of Europe. These forty men shared the rations of Madame Hugo, who had no need of twenty portions of bread, meat and wine for herself, her children and her servants, since she and they were nearly always supplied with meals by the host with whom they lodged; neither did the _mayoral_ and the two _zagales_ need any, since they lived on a glass of water, a piece of bread smeared with garlic and the smoke of their cigarettes. The forty Dutchmen were accordingly deeply grateful to Madame Hugo, and their gratitude found expression on two occasions. We will relate the first at once: the second will come in due course.

Mondragon is left by a dark and steep tunnel which forms the gate of the town; the roadway through this tunnel takes a sudden turn on the right, by the side of a precipice. Some slight palings were placed at the edge of the roadway to give any vehicles being carried over the abyss a last chance to pull themselves up, if they happened, by chance, to knock up against one of these barriers. Whether the _mayoral_ and _zagales_ were unacquainted with the geography of the district, or whether they were unable to control the heavy coach, when the vehicle came out of the dark tunnel it was advancing at a rapid pace, carried away by its own weight, towards the precipice, when the Dutch grenadiers, perceiving Madame Hugo's danger, rushed to the heads of the mules and, forcing them quickly to turn round, stopped the carriage just as one of the wheels had begun to roll over the edge of the precipice. For one instant the travellers were literally suspended between life and death. But life gained the day. Two or three soldiers were nearly flung off by the shock; but some of them clung to the traces and others to the poles. And, as it happened, the only injuries were a few bruises and sores, which did not prevent them making merry that night with Madame Hugo's distribution of rations. The Duc de Cotadilla, who was very gallant, in spite of his sixty years, and who cantered by Madame Hugo's carriage door throughout the journey, added some bottles of rum to that distribution, and there was a regular feast.

After about twelve or fourteen days' journey, they reached Burgos. They had had frequent alarms since they left Bayonne, but had often found that what they took for guerilleros were only quiet mule-drivers, united into bands for their own protection. This mistake was easily made, since the mule-drivers were armed almost like soldiers and could not be distinguished from such, on account of the dust raised round them, except at close quarters, when it would be seen they rode mules, not horses. At Burgos a halt of three or four days was made, and Madame Hugo took the opportunity these days offered to show her children the cathedral, that wonderful pile of Gothic architecture, the gate of Charles V. and the tomb of the Cid.

Of the tomb of the Cid, the soldiers had made a rifle-target. The child left Burgos dazed and breathless with wonder. Young as he was, he already possessed a passionate admiration for the _chefs-d'œuvre_ of architecture; and the cathedral of Burgos, with its sixty or eighty bell-towers, is, indeed, a masterpiece of its kind. By a strange coincidence, General Hugo, who was in command of the Spanish retreat in 1813, knocked down three of these bell-towers when he blew up the citadel of the town of Burgos, of which he was the last governor.

The farther they advanced, the more frequent did traces of destruction become apparent. After Burgos, they stopped at a village which had once been Celadas; it was a heap of ruins from one end to the other; and, as though it had been feared that the place might revive, the ruins had been thoroughly set fire to. Nothing could be sadder than to see that fire-destroyed village in the middle of the sunburnt plains. A few wall sides stood crumbling and roofless and, of these, the children belonging to the caravan made a fortress, soon dividing their small party into besiegers and besieged. War, which was, in those days, the trade of the fathers, was the play of the children. Little Victor and his two brothers formed part of the besieging party. Just when they were scaling a breach to enter the town, and Victor, who always loved high places, was running along the top of a wall, doubtless to make a diversion during the attack, he lost his footing and fell head foremost from the top of the wall into an uncovered cellar, and his head struck against the corner of a stone with such violence that he was stunned and lay where he fell. No one had seen him fall: his descent had been effected too rapidly for him to cry out. So the assault was carried on as though the besiegers had not lost one of their number. When the town was taken, vanquishers and vanquished counted their numbers, and only then did they discover that one of them, young Victor Hugo, was left gloriously on the field of battle. They began to search for him, Abel and Eugène at the head, and so carefully did they hunt into every nook and corner, that they soon discovered the wounded victim in the depths of a cellar. They thought he was dead, as he did not give any signs of life, and they rushed off with him amidst great lamentations to Madame Hugo, who soon saw he was still alive.

We have forgotten to mention that there were specimens of all kinds of humanity in the convoy, including six or eight Councillors of State, whom Napoleon was sending ready-made to his brother! So a doctor was easily found. The doctor attended to the child and, luckily, the shock had been worse than the actual blow; the wound was therefore more terrifying to look at than dangerous and, although the mark of the cut can even to-day be plainly seen, where Hugo parts his hair, by the next day the child had forgotten all about it; and like Kléber after the capture of Alexandria, he was ready to take part in besieging a fresh town.

So far, nothing serious had disturbed the march of the caravan. Occasionally, a bullet from a hidden guerillero would bury itself in the thickness of the panels of one of the carriages, or break the glass of a door; and Colonel Montfort would send a score of hussars to search among the undergrowth from whence the stray shot had come; but it was easy enough in that part of the country through which the travellers were then passing for the culprit to slip down the sides of a ravine or gain a mountain gorge and put himself beyond reach.

One night, however, they had a genuine alarm, and expected this time that they were really face to face with a formidable enemy. They had traversed nearly two-thirds of their way and had reached the small town of Valverde, a collection of sombre-looking houses with high walls and no windows, looking like a nest of fortresses of the time of Louis XIII. As usual, the escort had set up its camp at the entrance to the town, sentinels had been posted in all directions and the travellers and officers had received their billeting papers for the houses of the principal inhabitants. Madame Hugo, as usual, lodged with the Alcade. As he left her, the Duc de Cotadilla said--

"Be on your guard, madame; we are in the heart of the insurrection, and your host has not only a very bad reputation but also a very evil-looking face."

Madame Hugo could only judge of the face, and her opinion thereon entirely coincided with that of the Duc de Cotadilla. Moreover, the inside of the house accorded with the appearance of the town and with her host: doors were barred with iron and lined with sheet-lead; there were severe-looking vestibules as dark as the passages in a convent, huge bare-walled rooms with only the earth for flooring on the ground floor and bricks on the first floor; and the furniture was composed of wooden benches and leather arm-chairs. When Madame Hugo had seen over the whole house to select the rooms that suited her best, she decided on an immense low room on the ground floor, lighted by a branch of pinewood burning in an iron hand which was attached to the wall; she drew ont her bed from the immense portmanteau which enclosed it during the day, and put the children to sleep on a dozen sheepskins, placed M. du Saillant in a recess adjoining the large room and, when night fell, awaited what might happen. The outlook was not a cheerful one; the events that might be expected were terrible to contemplate, for the Spanish had been steadily gaining a reputation for ferocity since the beginning of the war; and the tortures they invented for the wretched Frenchmen who fell into their hands were unmentionably horrible. Among primitive peoples, who are wholly savage, like the Turks, for instance, you know what to expect; it will be one of their three methods of torture and execution--chopping off heads, strangulation or impalement; and the imagination of the executioners does not exceed those three ways of killing. But with a civilised people like the Spanish, who had their Charles V., Philip II. and the Inquisition, it is another matter: the miserable man under sentence of death may be roasted over a slow fire, sawed between two planks, put on the rack, hung by the feet; or have his entrails unravelled like a skein of cotton; or his body slashed in slices like a sixteenth-century doublet; or his eyes put out, his nose, his tongue or his hands cut off. Spanish executioners are men of resource! Besides, if they had exhausted their own imagination, there remained the resources of the Inquisition, for it should be borne in mind that the men who fought against us were Catholics first and foremost, priests and saints!

In spite of reflections like these, dispiriting enough to a mother who is answerable to her husband for the safety of herself and their three children, Madame Hugo began to fall asleep, envying the tranquillity of Colonel du Saillant, who had been asleep a long time in the recess they had discovered adjoining this low room, when, suddenly, the cry "To arms!" and the noise of sharp firing roused her. She had gone to bed with very few clothes off, especially after the warning she had received, and she was up in an instant. The fusillade went on continuously, though somewhat irregularly directed, and the cries "To arms!" redoubled. In the midst of these cries, someone knocked on the outside shutters of the large low room, loud enough to be heard, but meant evidently to be reassuring. Madame Hugo opened the shutter. It was Colonel Montfort, who had knocked on the shutters with the hilt of his sword.

"It is I, madame," he said, "Colonel Montfort, who have the honour to address you. The enemy has attacked us, but we have taken measures to give it a warm reception, therefore be tranquil. In any case, please barricade yourself in here, and only open to the Duc de Cotadilla or to myself."

Madame Hugo thanked Colonel Montfort for his attentive care; M. du Saillant went out to him, and she shut the door fast behind him, barricaded it, with every available precaution, and waited further developments. The firing continued for some time, and even occasionally seemed to increase; finally it decreased and gradually died out. Which had been victorious? French or Spaniards? She did not know as yet, but she had good hopes that the French had won, and soon there came a fresh rapping on the shutters, and, amidst shouts of laughter, which Madame Hugo recognised as coming from the Duc de Cotadilla, Colonel Montfort and her husband's aide-de-camp, she was asked to open the great door. This done, the three officers entered.

A trumpeter of the hussars had discovered, just outside the town, a bit of meadow where he thought that his horse, to which he was greatly attached, could find a little fresh grass when the sentinels had been placed, he had picketed his horse in this tiny oasis. A peasant had noticed and wondered at this confidence and, when night fell, he had slipped from bush to bush, in order to steal the horse; the animal had allowed him to approach until he felt the picket detached, when, with a violent shake, he freed himself from his thief, and rushed off neighing and rearing back to the French camp. The sentinel advanced shouting, "Who goes there?" And the horse, of course, went past him without replying. The sentinel fired and fell back on the first outpost, crying, "To arms!" The first outpost fired and cried, "To arms!" and then the soldiers in their turn had run to their piled and loaded muskets, fired and shouted, "To arms!" Hence the alarm, the firing, the fearful tumult, which for an hour had filled the little town of Valverde with fire, smoke and noise.

Nobody dreamt of trying to sleep again for the remainder of that night, so Madame Hugo and the three officers spent it together, and next morning, at daybreak, they continued their march.

The following day, another scene almost as grotesque as the alarming incident of the previous night, was in preparation for the travellers, under the rays of the hot noontide sun. They were halting at that hour in the middle of a great plain. The soldiers were covered with dust, and streaming with perspiration, under a sun of 35 degrees Centigrade, having finished their meal, when a courier arrived for the Duc de Cotadilla, to announce that the queen, who was also on her way under an escort to rejoin her husband, would soon pass by the cortège. The Duc de Cotadilla thanked the courier for his information and, when he had learnt the time that they were likely to meet the queen, and found they could still count on nearly an hour, he sent the courier on his way. Then he went to the door of Madame Hugo's coach, where, we know, he was accustomed to hold converse.

"Madame," he said, "I venture to ask you to lower your blinds, first on account of the sun, and next because of the sights you would see going on among the escort. The queen is going to pass by in an hour's time, and I desire to show her due deference by making my men dress themselves in parade attire; and, to do this, they will have to change everything, from their collars to their leggings. During this transformation, which will be even more extensive than I have described, there will be evolutions which may be all right for a general or a colonel to see, but which are more unseemly for a lady to look upon. I have warned you, madame, and I am now going to warn the Duchesse de Villa-Hermosa and the other ladies."

And, with his usual politeness, the Duc de Cotadilla took leave of Madame Hugo and issued his commands. Madame Hugo drew down her blinds.

The orders of the Duc de Cotadilla were that the men should at once put on parade dress to line the route for the queen. The men quickly formed single line along the whole of the roadside, piled arms, opened knapsacks and began their toilet. They had just reached the most delicate part of their toilet, on account of which the Duc de Cotadilla had cautioned the ladies to lower their carriage blinds, when a huge cloud of dust appeared on the top of a mountain five hundred feet off, and cries of "The queen! The queen!" rang through the air. The queen had come half an hour sooner than the courier had announced. A stronger head than that of the Duc de Cotadilla might have been upset by such an accident as this; moreover, in no book on the art of warfare had provision been made for such a contingency. So he kept silence, and, left to their own inspiration, the drums beat the call to arms, the soldiers shouldered their weapons and the non-commissioned officers yelled, "Fall in!"

Thus it fell ont that the Queen of Spain held a review such as no other queen or empress, were she even Marguerite of Burgundy or Catherine II., had ever held; and, as she learnt later that M. de Cotadilla had been forewarned of her arrival, nothing removed the idea from her mind that the nakedness of those three thousand men was a joke which the illustrious duke had prepared for her.

The queen went by, and, as the parade dress was of no further use, they resumed their everyday uniform, restored their fine clothes to their knapsacks, the signal for starting was given and the journey was resumed.

[Footnote 1: Translator's note.--Spanish leader of a mule-team.]

[Footnote 2: Young shepherds.]