 | The works of Washington Irving |  |
THE VETERAN.
Among the curious acquaintances I
have made in my rambles about the fortrees,
is a brave and battered old colonel
of Invalids, who is nestled like a hawk
in one of the Moorish towers. His history,
which he is fond of telling, is a
tissue of those adventures, mishaps, and
vicissitudes that render the life of almost
every Spaniard of note as varied and
whimsical as the pages of Gil Blas.
He was in America at twelve years of
age, and reckons among the most signal
and fortunate events of his life, his having
seen General Washington. Since then
he has taken a part in all the wars of his
country; he can speak experimentally of
most of the prisons and dungeons of the
Peninsula; has been lamed of one leg,
crippled in his hands, and so cut up and
carbonadoed, that he is a kind of walking
monument of the troubles of Spain,
on which there is a scar for every battle
and broil, as every year was notched
upon the tree of Robinson Crusoe. The
greatest misfortune of the brave old cavalier,
however, appears to have been his
having commanded at Malaga during a
time of peril and confusion, and been
made a general by the inhabitants, to
protect them from the invasion of the
French. This has entailed upon him a
number of just claims upon government,
that I fear will employ him until his
dying day in writing and printing petitions
and memorials, to the great disquiet
of his mind, exhaustion of his purse, and
penance of his friends; not one of whom
can visit him without having to listen to
a mortal document of half an hour in
length, and to carry away half a dozen
pamphlets in his pocket. This, however,
is the case throughout Spain: every
where you meet with some worthy wight
brooding in a corner and nursing up
some pet grievance and cherished wrong.
Besides, a Spaniard who has a lawsuit,
or a claim upon government, may be
considered as furnished with employment
for the remainder of his life.
I visited the veteran in his quarters, in
the upper part of the Torre del Vino, or
Wine Tower. His room was small but
snug, and commanded a beautiful view
of the Vega. It was arranged with a
soldier's precision. Three muskets and
a brace of pistols, all bright and shining,
were suspended against the wall with a
sabre and a cane, hanging side by side,
and above them, two cocked hats, one
for parade, and one for ordinary use. A
small shelf, containing some half dozen
books, formed his library, one of which,
a little old mouldy volume of philosophical
maxims, was his favourite reading.
This he thumbed and pondered
over day by day: applying every maxim
to his own particular case, provided it
had a little tinge of wholesome bitterness,
Yet he is social and kind-hearted, and
provided he can be diverted from his
wrongs and his philosophy, is an entertaining
companion. I like these old
weatherbeaten sons of fortune, and enjoy
their rough campaigning anecdotes.
In the course of my visit to the one in
question, I learnt some curious facts
about an old military commander of the
fortress, who seems to have resembled
him in some respects, and to have had
similar fortunes in the wars. These particulars
have been augmented by inquiries
among some of the old inhabitants of the
place, particularly the father of Mateo
Ximenes, of whose traditional stories the
worthy I am about to introduce to the
reader, is a favourite hero.
| The works of Washington Irving | |