h Cabrera coming here. He is too much afraid of a
ruler who is no pretender. The renowned Commander-in-Chief of Aragon and
Valencia, Don Ramon the Rough and Ready, is Conde Something-or-other
now, a willing slave to petticoat government. He is to be seen any day
pottering about Windsor."

"And who is this speculator in bloodshed?"

"A foreign adventurer," I explained, "who does not know a word of
Spanish, much less Basque, is unacquainted with the topography of the
country, and has not the faintest inkling of the idiosyncrasies of the
lieutenants who would serve under him, or of the mode of humouring the
prejudices of the people of the different provinces in revolt."

"What answer did they give to his application for employment?"

"A polite negative. They told him they could not appoint him a leader
without offending the susceptibilities of adherents with claims upon
them men of local influence, and so forth. Behind his back, they laughed
at his entertaining temerity."

That Foreign Legion never came to maturity. Leader showed me a
commission authorizing him to organize it. Lesaca was to be the depot,
French the language of command, and Smith Sheehan the adjutant. It might
have developed into a very fine Foreign Legion, but no volunteers
presented themselves to join it but two young Englishmen, one of whom
was sick when he was not drunk, and the other of whom felt it to be a
grievance on a campaign that a cup of tea could not be got at regular
hours. How Sheehan did chaff this amiable amateur!

"You will have nothing to do but draw your pay, my lad," he said. "The
cookery is hardly A 1, but 'twill pass. Think of the beds, pillows of
hops under your head; and every regiment has its own set of
billiard-markers and a select string-band, every performer an artist."

After an arduous service of one day and a half that gentleman returned
to the maternal apron-strings, laden to the ground with the most
harrowing legends of the horrors of war. Leader was not a warrior of
this stamp--far from it; he had vindicated his manliness at Ladon
outside Orleans, where Ogilvie, of the British Royal Artillery, had met
his fate by his side, and there was something soldierly in the way he
bore himself in his vanity of dress. Not that I think the dandies are
the best soldiers--that is merest popular paradox. To me it is as
ridiculous for a man to array himself in fine clothes when he is going
to kill or be killed, as it would be for hi