"Promotion is quick in this army," murmured Russell. "I served all my active life under the suns of India, and here I am only a major at the close. Leader joined the Carlists less than three months ago, and he is already my equal in rank."
"The fortune of war, Russell," said I; "don't be jealous. I was offered command of a brigade under the Commune, but I declined the tribute to my merit, or I would not be here to-day. I met a man in Bayonne yesterday, and he was ready to assume control of the entire insurrectionary forces."
"No," I answered; "catch 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 depôt, 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."