lmost as if their march
lay through an oven. Nor were his perplexities by any means at an end;
the thirst, occasioned by the heat, was excessive, and at every venta,
in the villages through which they passed, the men called loudly for
liquor; but the hot, fiery Spanish wine was, as Eustace had already
been cautioned by Father Waleran, only fit to increase the evil, by
inflaming their blood. It was the Holy Week, which was to him a
sufficient reason for refraining entirely, contenting himself with a
drink of water, when it could be procured, which, however, was but
rarely. He would willingly have persuaded his men to do the same, but
remonstrance was almost without effect, and his dry lips refused to
utter a prohibition, which would have been esteemed at once cruel and
unreasonable. In his persuasions to Gaston he was, however, more in
earnest, representing to him that he was increasing the fever of his
wound; but the Squire was perfectly impracticable. At first, he
answered in his usual gay, careless manner, that the scratch was
nothing, and that, be what it might, he had as soon die of a wound as
of thirst; but as the day wore on, it seemed as if the whole nature of
the man were becoming changed. Sometimes he was boisterously loud in
his merriment, sometimes sullen and silent; and when Eustace,
unwearied, reiterated his arguments, he replied to him, not only with
complete want of the deference he was usually so scrupulous in paying
to his dignity, but with rude and scurril taunts and jests on his
youth, his clerkly education, and his inexperience. Eustace's patience
would scarcely have held out, but that he perceived that d'Aubricour
was by no means master of himself, and he saw in his flushed brow, and
blood-shot eye, reason to fear for the future effect of the present
excess. There was suppressed laughter among the men at some of his
sallies. Without being positively in disorder, the troop did not
display the well-arrayed aspect which had always hitherto distinguished
the Lances of Lynwood; and poor Eustace, wearied and worn out, his
right-hand man failing him, dispirited by Chandos's reproach, and
feeling all the cares of the world on his shoulders, had serious
thoughts of going to the Prince, and resigning the command for which he
was unfit.

At last he beheld the Cathedral of Burgos rising in the midst of the
Moorish fortifications of the town, and, halting his men under the
shade of a few trees, he rode