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For some time things remained quiet, except that the French and British batteries, on the top of the two Hermanitos, kept up a duel with each other. During the pause, the French cavalry had again crossed the Tormes, by one of the fords used in the night by the British; and had taken post at Aldea Tejarda, thus placing themselves between the British army and the road to Ciudad.
The road they followed ran almost parallel to the Tormes, all the bridges over that river being, as they learned, held by strong parties of French troops; posted there to prevent any bodies of the Spaniards crossing it, and placing themselves between Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo.
About ten o'clock, our division was ordered to stand to their arms, and then moved into position, with our left resting on the Tormes, and our right extending along a ridge of rising ground, thinly interspersed with trees, beyond which the other divisions were formed in continuation, with the exception of the third, which still remained on the opposite bank of the river.
"Egad, Jack," said Gay, "you should write your adventures. They would be quite as entertaining as the histories of Guzman D'Alfarache, Lazarillo de Tormes, Estevanillo Gonzalez, Meriton Latroon, or any of my favourite rogues, and far more instructive." "You had better write them for me, Mr. Gay," rejoined Jack. "If you'll write them, I'll illustrate them," observed Hogarth.
"Besides these, we have another messmate, who is a French chevalier, an odd sort of a man, a kind of Lazarillo de Tormes, a caricatura; he wears a long beard, pretends to be a great poet, and makes a d -ed fracas with his verses.
Taken altogether, his physiognomy resembled one of those vagabond heads which Murillo delighted to paint, and for which Guzman d'Alfarache, Lazarillo de Tormes, or Estevanillo Gonzalez might have sat: faces that almost make one in love with roguery, they seem so full of vivacity and enjoyment.
Wellington kept up their illusions by feints at several points, while he prepared to thrust a mighty force over the fords of the Tormes and Esla. He completely succeeded. While Joseph and Jourdan were haltingly mustering their forces in Leon, the allies began that series of rapid flanking movements on the north which decided the campaign.
At that time Toledo possessed, and indeed to the present day can boast of, but one good inn a picturesque old house in the Plaza de Zocodover, overhung by the mighty Alcazar. Here Cervantes must have eaten and Lazarillo de Tormes no doubt caroused. Here those melancholy men and mighty humorists must have delighted the idler by their talk.
His line was a long one, and it would have been impossible to withdraw, without running the risk of being attacked while in movement, and driven back upon the Tormes. Ignorant of Marmont's precise intentions for the main body of the French army was almost hidden in the woods Wellington could only wait until their plans were developed.
The Renaissance took up the old epic-romantic materials and made out of them works of art; but works of art which, as I said before, were playthings gets written for its delectation the comic-tragic novels of rapscallions, panders, prostitutes, and card-sharpers, which, from "Lazarillo de Tormes" to "Gil Bias," and from "Gil Bias" to "Tom Jones," finally replace the romances of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, and Orlandos.
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