Don Alonzo Melendez at once began to discourse grandiloquently
on the subject. His narrative was so copious and inaccurate, that
Cranfield soon lost all patience, and found it hard to keep from
interrupting and contradicting him. Lady Mabel, detecting this,
encouraged the Spaniard to the uttermost by displaying rapt attention,
and full faith in his glowing narrative.
"I never before heard," said she to Cranfield, "so graphic an account
of the siege and storming of Badajoz."
"If our friend here talks about it much longer," said Cranfield, in
English, "he will forget that we had any thing to do with it. The
siege was, however, in one sense, the work of the Spaniards. If the
traitor Imaz had not sold it to Soult for a mule load of gold, we
would not have had to buy it back at the cost of so many thousands of
lives. Nor were any of them Spanish lives," he added bitterly; "though
some were Portuguese--for the only Spaniards at the siege were the
renegades who aided Philippon and his Frenchman to keep us out."
"Every Spaniard is not traitor or coward," said L'Isle from
behind. "If the brave Governor Menacho had not been killed in
defending the place, his successor Imaz could not have sold it a few
days after to the French.
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