satisfactory one I could not have wished, and I have something of
a connoisseur's eye. To be sure, the triangular flapway narrowed the
picture, and although the upstanding rock and castle fell admirably
within the frame, it cut off an animated scene on the left, where their
distant shouts and laughter told me that French and British were bathing
together in the river below and rallying each other on the battles yet
to be fought. For during these weeks, and indeed through the
operations which followed up to the moment of fighting, the armies
behaved less like foes than like two teams before a cricket-match, or
two wrestlers who shake hands and afterwards grin amicably as they move
in circles seeking for a hitch. As I lay, however, the bathing-place
could only be brought into view by craning my neck beyond the tent-door:
and my posture was too well chosen to be shifted. Moreover, I had a
more singular example of these amenities in face of me, on the rock of
Rueda itself.

The cliff, standing out against the sun's glare like ivory beneath the
blue, and quivering with heat, was flecked here and there with small
lilac shadows; and these shadows marked the entrances of the caves with
which Rueda was honeycombed. I had once or twice resolved to visit
these caves; for I had heard much of their renown, and even (although
this I disbelieved) that they contained wine enough to intoxicate all
the troops in the Peninsula. Wine in abundance they certainly
contained, and all the afternoon men singly and in clusters had been
swarming in and out of these entrances like flies about a honeypot.
For whatever might be happening on the Trabancos under Lord Wellington's
eye, here at Rueda, on the extreme right, discipline for the while had
disappeared: and presumably the like was true of Marmont's extreme left
holding the bridge of Tordesillas. For from the bridge a short roadway
leads to Rueda; and among the figures moving about the rock, diminished
by distance though they were, I counted quite a respectable proportion
of Frenchmen. No one who loves his calling ever quite forgets it: and
though no one could well have appeared (or indeed felt) lazier, I was
really giving my eye practice in discriminating, on this ant-hill, the
drunk from the sober, and even the moderately drunk from the incapable.

There could be no doubt, at any rate, concerning one little Frenchman
whom two tall British grenadiers were guiding down the cliff towards