Her
smattering of their tongue proved inadequate, and even her Spanish but
poorly served the purposes of conversation. Dona Carlotta Sequiera,
indeed, despising the peninsular tongues, would speak only French--but
such French! She had picked up most of it along Kellerman's officers,
when he held Elvas with a French garrison in 1808. This lady, like
some other renegade Portuguese, at that time assiduously courted the
Gaul; and she was anxious now to wipe out this blot, in the eyes of
her countrymen, by making much of their British allies. Lady Mabel,
tired of her efforts to converse with the other ladies, and sick of
Dona Carlotta's French,
"After the school of Stratford at bow,
For French of Paris was to her unknow"--
longed to see her self-appointed dragoman enter the room.
L'Isle had ridden out in the morning to a place on the borders,
equi-distant between Elvas and Badajoz, the scene of a serious outrage
by a party of marauders two nights before. A peasant, guilty of being
richer than his neighbors, had been punished by having his house
forced, his head broken, his premises sacked, and his family
ill-treated. Though there had been but little blood shed, there had
been much wine spilt, besides several plump goat-skins carried off
with the rest of the plunder.
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