“Adjutant, tell Colonel Saint-Prosper I wish to see him.”

The adjutant saluted and turned on his heel, while General Scott bent over the papers before him, studying a number of rough pencil tracings. Absorbed in his task, the light of two candles on the table brought into relief, against the dark shadows, a face of rugged character and marked determination. Save for a slight contraction of the brow, he gave no evidence of the mental concentration he bestowed upon the matter in hand, which was to lead to the culmination of the struggle and to vindicate the wisdom and boldness of his policy.

“You sent for me, General?”

An erect, martial figure stood respectfully at the entrance of the tent.

“Yes,” said the General, pushing the papers from him. “I have been studying your drawings of the defensive works at San Antonio Garita and find them entirely comprehensive. A council of officers has 437 been called, and perhaps it will be as well for you to remain.”

“At what time shall I be here, General?”

“It is about time now,” answered the commander-in-chief, consulting his watch. “You have quite recovered from your wounds?” he added, kindly.

“Yes, thank you, General.”

“I see by the newspapers you were reported dead. If your friends read that it will cause them needless anxiety. You had better see that the matter is corrected.”

“It is hardly worth while,” returned the young man, slowly.

The commanding general glanced at him in some surprise. “A strange fellow!” he thought. “Has he reasons for wishing to be considered dead? However, that is none of my business. At any rate, he is a good soldier.” And, after a moment, he continued: “Cerro Gordo was warm work, but there is warmer yet in store for us. Only Providence, not the Mexicans, can stop us. But here are the officers,” as General Pillow, Brevet-General Twiggs and a number of other officers entered.

The commander-in-chief proceeded to give such information as he had, touching the approaches to the city. Many of the officers favored operating against San Antonio Garita, others attacking Chapultepec. Saint-Prosper, when called on, stated that the ground before the San Antonio gate was intersected by many 438 irrigating ditches and that much of the approach was under water.

“Then you would prefer storming a fortress to taking a ditch?” said one of the generals, satirically.

“A series of ditches,” replied the other.

“Colonel Saint-Prosper is right,” exclaimed the commanding general. “I had already made up my mind. Let it be the western gate, then.”

And thus was brought to a close one of the most memorable councils of war, for it determined the fate of the City of Mexico.

Saint-Prosper looked older than when seen in New Orleans, as though he had endured much in that brief but hard campaign. His wound had incapacitated him for only a few months, and in spite of the climate and a woful lack of medical attendance and nourishing supplies, his hardy constitution stood him in such stead he was on his feet and in the saddle, while his comrades languished and died in the fierce heat of the temporary hospitals. His fellow-officers knew him as a fearless soldier, but a man reticent about himself, who made a confidant of no one. Liked for his ready, broad military qualities, it was a matter of comment, nevertheless, that no one knew anything about him except that he had served in the French army and was highly esteemed by General Scott as a daring and proficient engineer.

One evening shortly before the skirmish of Antigua, a small Mexican town had been ransacked, where were found cattle, bales of tobacco, pulque and 439 wine. At the rare feast which followed a veteran drank to his wife; a young man toasted his sweetheart, and a third, with moist eyes, sang the praises of his mother. In the heart of the enemy’s land, amid the uncertainties of war, remembrance carried them back to their native soil, rugged New England, the hills of Vermont, the prairies of Illinois, the blue grass of Kentucky.

“Saint-Prosper!” they cried, calling on him, when the festivities were at their height.

“To you, gentlemen,” he replied, rising, glass in hand. “I drink to your loved ones!”

“To your own!” cried a young man, flushed with the wine.

Saint-Prosper gazed around that rough company, brave hearts softened to tenderness, and, lifting his canteen, said, after a moment’s hesitation:

“To a princess on a tattered throne!”

They looked at him in surprise. Who was this adventurer who toasted princesses? The Mexican war had brought many soldiers of fortune and titled gentlemen from Europe to the new world, men who took up the cause more to be fighting than that they cared what the struggle was about. Was the “tattered throne” Louis Philippe’s chair of state, torn by the mob in the Tuileries? And what foreign princess was the lady of the throne? But they took up the refrain promptly, good-naturedly, and a chorus rolled out:

“To the princess!”

Little they knew she was but a poor stroller; an 440 “impudent, unwomanish, graceless monster,” according to Master Prynne.

After leaving the commanding general’s tent, Saint-Prosper retired to rest in that wilderness which had once been a monarch’s pleasure grounds. Now overhead the mighty cypresses whispered their tales of ancient glory and faded renown; the wind waved those trailing beards, hoary with age; a gathering of venerable giants, murmuring the days when the Aztec monarch had once held courtly revels under the grateful shadows of their branches. The moaning breeze seemed the wild chant of the Indian priest in honor of the war-god of Anahuac. It told of battles to come and conflicts which would level to the dust the descendants of the conquerors of that ill-starred country. And so the soldier finally fell asleep, with that requiem ringing in his ears.

When daybreak again penetrated the mountain recesses and fell upon the valley, Saint-Prosper arose to shake off a troubled slumber. An unhealthy mist hung over the earth, like a miasma, and the officer shivered as he walked in that depressing and noxious atmosphere. It lay like a deleterious veil before the glades where myrtles mingled with the wild limes. It concealed from view a cross, said to have been planted by Cortez––the cross he worshiped because of its resemblance to the hilt of a sword!––and enveloped the hoary trees that were old when Montezuma was a boy or when Marina was beloved by the mighty free-booter.

The shade resting on the valley appeared that of a mighty, virulent hand. Out of the depths arose a flock of dark-hued birds, soaring toward the morbific fog; not moving like other winged creatures, with harmony of motion, but rising without unity, and filling the vale with discordant sounds. Nowhere could these sable birds have appeared more unearthly than in the “dark valley,” as it was called by the natives, where the mists moved capriciously, yet remained persistently within the circumference of this natural cauldron, now falling like a pall and again hovering in mid air. Suddenly the uncanny birds vanished among the trees as quickly as they had arisen, and there was something mysterious about their unwarranted disappearance and the abrupt cessation of clamorous cries.

While viewing this somber scene, Saint-Prosper had made his way to a little adobe house which the natives had built near the trail that led through the valley. As he approached this hut he encountered a dismal but loquacious sentinel, tramping before the partly opened door.

“This is chilly work, guard?” said the young man, pausing.

“Yis, Colonel,” replied the soldier, apparently grateful for the interruption; “it’s a hot foight I prefer to this cool dooty.”

“Whom are you guarding?” continued the officer.

“A spy, taken in the lines a few days ago. He’s to be executed this morning at six. But I don’t 442 think he will moind that, for it’s out of his head he is, with the malaria.”

“He should have had medical attendance,” observed the officer, stepping to the door.

“Faith, they’ll cure him at daybreak,” replied the guard. “It’s a medicine that niver fails.”

Saint-Prosper pushed open the door. The interior was so dim that at first he could not distinguish the occupant, but when his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he discovered the figure of the prisoner, who was lying with his back toward him on the ground of the little hut with nothing but a thin blanket beneath him. The only light revealing the barren details of this Indian residence sifted through the small doorway or peered timorously down through a narrow aperture in the roof that served for a chimney. As Saint-Prosper gazed at the prostrate man, the latter moved uneasily, and from the parched lips fell a few words:

“Lock the doors, Oly-koeks! Hear the songsters, Mynheer Ten Breecheses! Birds of prey, you Dutch varlet! What do you think of the mistress of the manor? The serenading anti-renters have come for her.” Then he repeated more slowly: “The squaw Pewasch! For seventeen and one-half ells of duffels! A rare principality for the scornful minx! Lord! how the birds sing now around the manor––screech owls, cat-birds, bobolinks!”

The soldier started back, vivid memories assailing his mind. Who was this man whose brain, independent 443 of the corporeal shell, played waywardly with scenes, characters and events, indissolubly associated with his own life?

“Do you know, Little Thunder, the Lord only rebuked the Pharisees?” continued the prostrate man. “Though the Pharisee triumphs after all! But it was the stroller I wanted, not the principality.”

He stirred quickly, as if suddenly aware of the presence of another in the hut, and, turning, lifted his head in a startled manner, surveying the figure near the doorway with conflicting emotions written on his pallid countenance. Perhaps some fragment of a dream yet lingered in his brain; perhaps he was confused at the sight of a face that met his excited look with one of doubt and bewilderment, but only partial realization of the identity of the intruder came to him in his fevered condition.

Arising deliberately, his body, like a machine, obeying automatically some unconscious power, he confronted the officer, who recognized in him, despite his thin, worn face and eyes, unnaturally bright, the once pretentious land baron, Edward Mauville. Moving toward the door, gazing on Saint-Prosper as though he was one of the figures of a disturbing phantasm, he reached the threshold, and, lifting his hand above his head, the prisoner placed it against one of the supports of the hut and stood leaning there. From the creation of his mind’s eye, as he doubtlessly, half-conscious of his weakness, designated the familiar form, he glanced at the sentinel and shook as though 444 abruptly conscious of his situation. Across the valley the soldiers showed signs of bestirring themselves, the smoke of many fires hovering earthward beneath the mist. Drawing his thin frame proudly to its full height, with a gesture of disdain for physical weakness, and setting his keen, wild eyes upon the soldier, Mauville said in a hollow tone:

“Is that really you, Mr. Saint-Prosper? At first I thought you but a trick of the imagination. Well, look your fill upon me! You are my Nemesis come to see the end.”

“I am here by chance, Edward Mauville; an officer in the American army!”

“And I, a spy in the Mexican army. So are we authorized foes.”

Rubbing his trembling hands together, his eyes shifted from the dark birds to the mists, then from the phantom forests back to the hut, finally resting on his shabby boots of yellow leather. The sunlight penetrating a rift in the mist settled upon him as he moved feebly and uncertainly through the doorway and seated himself upon a stool. This sudden glow brought into relief his ragged, unkempt condition, the sallowness of his face, and his wasted form, and Saint-Prosper could not but contrast pityingly this cheerless object, in the garb of a ranchero, with the prepossessing, sportive heir who had driven through the Shadengo Valley.

Apparently now the sun was grateful to his bent, 445 stricken figure, and, basking in it, he recalled his distress of the previous night:

“This is better. Not long ago I awoke with chattering teeth. ‘This,’ I said, ‘is life; a miasma, cold, discomfort,’ Yes, yes; a fever, a miasma, with phantoms fighting you––struggling to choke you––but now”––he paused, and fumbling in his pocket, drew out a cigarette case, which he opened, but found empty. A cigar the other handed him he took mechanically and lighted with scrupulous care. Near at hand the guard, more cheerful under the prospect of speedy relief from his duties, could be heard humming to himself:

Watching the smoker, Saint-Prosper asked himself how came Mauville to be serving against his own country, or why he should have enlisted at all, this pleasure-seeking man of the world, to whom the hardships of a campaign must have been as novel as distasteful.

“Are you satisfied with your trial?” said the soldier at length.

“Yes,” returned Mauville, as if breaking from a reverie. “I confess I am the secret agent of Santa Anna and would have carried information from your lines. I am here because there is more of the Latin than the Anglo-Saxon in me. Many of the old families”––with 446 a touch of insane pride––“did not regard the purchase of Louisiana by the United States as a transaction alienating them from other ties. Fealty is not a commercial commodity. But this,” he added, scornfully, “is something you can not understand. You soldiers of fortune draw your swords for any master who pays you.”

The wind moaned down the mountain side, and the slender trees swayed and bent; only the heavy and ponderous cactus remained motionless, a formidable monarch receiving obeisance from supple courtiers. Like cymbals, the leaves clashed around this armament of power with its thousand spears out-thrust in all directions.

The ash fell from the cigar as Mauville held the weed before his eyes.

“It is an hour-glass,” he muttered. “When smoked––Oh, for the power of Jupiter to order four nights in one, the better to pursue his love follies! Love follies,” he repeated, and, as a new train of fancy was awakened, he regarded Saint-Prosper venomously.

“Do you know she is the daughter of a marquis?” said Mauville, suddenly.

“Who?” asked the soldier.

“The stroller, of course. You can never win her,” he added, contemptuously. “She knows all about that African affair.”

Saint-Prosper started violently, but in a moment 447 Mauville’s expression changed, and he appeared plunged in thought.

“The last time I saw her,” he said, half to himself, “she was dressed in black––her face as noonday––her hair black as midnight––crowning her with languorous allurement!”

He repeated the last word several times like a man in a dream.

“Allurement! allurement!” and again relapsed into a silence that was half-stupor.

By this time the valley, with the growing of the day, began to lose much of its evil aspect, and the eye, tempted through glades and vistas, lingered upon gorgeous forms of inflorescence. The land baron slowly blew a wreath of smoke in the air––a circle, mute reminder of eternity!––and threw the end of the cigar into the bushes. Looking long and earnestly at the surrounding scene, he started involuntarily. “The dark valley––whar de mists am risin’––I see yo’ da, honey––fo’ebber and fo’ebber––”

As he surveyed this prospect, with these words ringing in his ears, the brief silence was broken by a bugle call and the trampling of feet.

“The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall arise,” said the prisoner, turning and facing the soldiers calmly. “You have come for me?” he asked, quietly.

“Yes,” said the officer in command. “General Scott has granted your request in view of certain circumstances, and you will be shot, instead of hanged.”

The face of the prisoner lighted wonderfully. He drew himself erect and smiled with some of the assumption of the old insolence, that expression Saint-Prosper so well remembered! His features took on a semblance to the careless, dashing look they had borne when the soldier crossed weapons with him at the Oaks, and he neither asked nor intended to give quarter.

“I thank you,” he observed, courteously. “At least, I shall die like a gentleman. I am ready, sir! Do not fasten my hands. A Mauville can die without being tied or bound.”

The officer hesitated: “As to that––” he began.

“It is a reasonable request,” said Saint-Prosper, in a low tone.

Mauville abruptly wheeled; his face, dark and sinister, was lighted with envenomed malignity; an unnaturally clear perception replaced the stupor of his brain, and, bending toward Saint-Prosper, his eye rested upon him with such rancor and malevolence the soldier involuntarily drew away. But one word fell from the land baron’s lips, low, vibrating, full of inexpressible bitterness. “Traitor!”

“Come, come!” interrupted the officer in command of the execution party; “time is up. As I was told not to fasten your hands, you shall have your wish. Confess now, that is accommodating?”

“Thanks,” returned Mauville carelessly, relapsing into his old manner. “You are an obliging fellow! I would do as much for you.”

“Not much danger of that,” growled the other. “But we’ll take the will for the deed. Forward, march!”

After the reverberations, carried from rock to rock with menacing reiteration, had ceased, the stillness was absolute. Even the song-bird remained frightened into silence by those awful echoes. Then the sun rested like a benediction on the land and the white cross of Cortez was distinctly outlined against the blue sky. But soon the long roll of drums followed this interval of quiet.

“Fall in!” “Attention; shoulder arms!” And the sleeping spirit of the Aztec war-god floated in the murmur which, increasing in volume, arose to tumultuous shout.

“On to Chapultepec! On to Chapultepec!” came from a thousand throats; arms glistened in the sun, bugles sounded resonant in the air, and the pattering noise of horses’ hoofs mingled with the stentorian voices of the rough teamsters and the cracking of the whips. Like an irresistible, all-compelling wave, the troops swept out of the valley to hurl themselves against castle and fortress and to plant their colors in the heart of the capital city.