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"He has managed," said Isidor Mirr, "to get safe out of Valenzia himself, and to save the best of his belongings, and get them loaded up upon mules. He has been expecting them all night, and has every reason to anticipate evil." Edgar marvelled at Don Rafaele's avarice, which seemed to render him oblivious of everything besides.
My house is occupied by the enemy, but you are in safety, for I swear to you that whatever happens I will rather let myself be buried under the ruins of Valenzia than betray you. Believe me in this."
It is matter of notoriety that a tremendous fire had been kept up on Valenzia for three days and nights with the most terrible effect, that all the terror and horror of this bombardment spread abroad in this city thronged to excess with people that the self-same populace, excited to fury by the Junta, after insisting that Blake should keep up the defence to the very utmost, turned round and demanded an immediate surrender under the most violent threats that Blake, with heroic self-command, drove the crowds asunder by Walloon Guards, and then made an honourable capitulation to Souchet.
Chance had brought this Colonel, just at the time of Germany's terrible degradation, to his uncle's house, where he himself was living, having had to abandon his military career. La Combe came from the south of France. "Edgar," cried the Colonel, "what has brought you to Valenzia?" It may be imagined how sorely the question embarrassed Edgar. He could make no reply.
He had only been struck by a spent ball, and soon recovered, so as to be able to join Don Joachim Blake's force, and enter Valenzia with it, after several engagements. Who does not know that the plain watered by the Guadalquivir, where stands the beautiful Valenzia with her stately towers, is an earthly paradise?
"Heaven!" he said, "seeing your goodness put courage into your heart a divine miracle, in my belief." It was much closer to Valenzia than he expected, or than the enemy probably were aware, that Edgar met the first troop of Guerillas, and to it he attached himself.
He immediately set to remedy the condition of affairs. He took away Don Rafaele, Emanuela, and the trusty Cubas, to a country estate belonging to his uncle. And in arranging this I was of some assistance to him. Edgar set out at once for Valenzia with the faithful Cubas. He saw his kind old nurse, Father Eusebio, again, and Don Rafaele's treasure was handed over to him.
With a cry of "Valenzia," Edgar rushed into the thickest mass of the enemy, and with the death-announcing roar of thirsting tigers the Guerillas dashed after him, planted their daggers in the breasts of the foemen, and felled them with the butts of their muskets. Well-directed bullets hit them in their headlong flight.
All the heavenly delightsomeness of a sky for ever fair penetrates and pervades the hearts and souls of the dwellers there, for whom life is an unbroken festa. And this Valenzia was now the theatre of a most bitter and bloody war.
I pass over in silence the warlike adventures which Edgar met with while fighting in company with the Guerillas although they were sufficiently romantic contenting myself with explaining that the talisman which Don Rafaele Marchez gave him when parting with him, was a little ring inscribed with mystic characters, which showed that he was an initiate in the most secret of the confederacies or societies; thus assuring him, wherever he might be, of the most absolute and unlimited confidence of those acquainted with those signs, and rendering all danger such as he had been exposed to in Valenzia impossible.
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