"I consent," said the general; "but I make you responsible for them."
"The marquis offers you his whole fortune, if you will consent to pardon one of his sons."
"Really!" exclaimed the general. "His property belongs already to King Joseph."
He stopped. A thought, a contemptuous thought, wrinkled his brow, and he said presently,--"I will surpass his wishes. I comprehend the importance of his last request. Well, he shall buy the continuance of his name and lineage, but Spain shall forever connect with it the memory of his treachery and his punishment. I will give life and his whole fortune to whichever of his sons will perform the office of executioner on the rest. Go; not another word to me on the subject."
Dinner was served. The officers satisfied an appetite sharpened by exertion. A single one of them, Victor Marchand, was not at the feast.
After hesitating long, he returned to the hall where the proud family of Leganes were prisoners, casting a mournful look on the scene now presented in that apartment where, only two nights before, he had seen the heads of the two young girls and the three young men turning giddily in the waltz. He shuddered as he thought how soon they would fall, struck off by the sabre of the executioner.
Bound in their gilded chairs, the father and mother, the three sons, and the two daughters, sat rigid in a state of complete immobility.
Eight servants stood near them, their arms bound behind their backs.
These fifteen persons looked at one another gravely, their eyes scarcely betraying the sentiments that filled their souls. The sentinels, also motionless, watched them, but respected the sorrow of those cruel enemies.
An expression of inquiry came upon the faces of all when Victor appeared. He gave the order to unbind the prisoners, and went himself to unfasten the cords that held Clara in her chair. She smiled sadly.
The officer could not help touching softly the arms of the young girl as he looked with sad admiration at her beautiful hair and her supple figure. She was a true Spaniard, having the Spanish complexion, the Spanish eyes with their curved lashes, and their large pupils blacker than a raven's wing.
"Have you succeeded?" she said, with one of those funereal smiles in which something of girlhood lingers.
Victor could not keep himself from groaning. He looked in turn at the three brothers, and then at Clara. One brother, the eldest, was thirty years of age. Though small and somewhat ill-made, with an air that was haughty and disdainful, he was not lacking in a certain nobility of manner, and he seemed to have something of that delicacy of feeling which made the Spanish chivalry of other days so famous. He was named Juanito. The second son, Felipe, was about twenty years of age; he resembled Clara. The youngest was eight. A painter would have seen in the features of Manuelo a little of that Roman constancy that David has given to children in his republican pages. The head of the old marquis, covered with flowing white hair, seemed to have escaped from a picture of Murillo. As he looked at them, the young officer shook his head, despairing that any one of those four beings would accept the dreadful bargain of the general. Nevertheless, he found courage to reveal it to Clara.
The girl shuddered for a moment; then she recovered her calmness, and went to her father, kneeling at his feet.
"Oh!" she said to him, "make Juanito swear that he will obey, faithfully, the orders that you will give him, and our wishes will be fulfilled."
The marquise quivered with hope. But when, leaning against her husband, she heard the horrible confidence that Clara now made to him, the mother fainted. Juanito, on hearing the offer, bounded like a lion in his cage.
Victor took upon himself to send the guard away, after obtaining from the marquis a promise of absolute submission. The servants were delivered to the executioner, who hanged them.
When the family were alone, with no one but Victor to watch them, the old father rose.
"Juanito!" he said.
Juanito answered only with a motion of his head that signified refusal, falling back into his chair, and looking at his parents with dry and awful eyes. Clara went up to him with a cheerful air and sat upon his knee.
"Dear Juanito," she said, passing her arm around his neck and kissing his eyelids, "if you knew how sweet death would seem to me if given by you! Think! I should be spared the odious touch of an executioner. You would save me from all the woes that await me--and, oh! dear Juanito! you would not have me belong to any one--therefore--"
Her velvet eyes cast gleams of fire at Victor, as if to rouse in the heart of Juanito his hatred of the French.
"Have courage," said his brother Felipe; "otherwise our race, our almost royal race, must die extinct."
Suddenly Clara rose, the group that had formed about Juanito separated, and the son, rebellious with good reason, saw before him his old father standing erect, who said in solemn tones,--"Juanito, I command you to obey."
The young count remained immovable. Then his father knelt at his feet.
