At half-past four on the morning after our arrival in the mountains, I was roused from a profound sleep by the sound of the bugle. A solitary performer was blowing spiritedly into his instrument; what piece of music he was trying to execute I could not make out, but that his primary object was to "murder sleep" was evident, and he succeeded. Losing all note of time and place, I thought for a moment I was in London, and that this was a visit from the Christmas waits. But there was a liveliness in the tones incompatible with the season when the clarionet, trombone, and cornet-à-piston form a syndicate of noise, and parade the streets for halfpence. The bugle was in a jocular mood. Judge of my astonishment when I learned that this merry melody was the Carlist's reveille! The insurgents had got so far with their military organization that they had actually buglers and bugle-calls. Nay, more, they had drummers and a brass band!
Now I think of it, there is an inadvisability in my calling them insurgents while in their power; but what phrase am I to employ? In the pass in my pocket I am recommended to "the Chiefs of the Royal Army of his Catholic Majesty Charles VII.," as an inoffensive "corresponsal particular," to whom aid and protection may be safely extended. But then there are the Republicans, and if they catch me giving premature recognition in pen-and-ink to the Royalist cause, they may rightly complain that a British subject is flying in the face of the great British policy of non-intervention. I think I have discovered an escape from the dilemma. The Carlists speak of themselves as the Chicos, "the bhoys," so Chicos let them be for the future, and their opponents the troops--not that it is by any means intended to be conveyed that the troops so called are much more martial than the Chicos.