My mind was full of the situation of my poor comrades, when one day as I was riding through the streets, I found myself accosted in good set English, by a "How do you, countryman; what make you here?" I looked about, and saw a dapper little fellow in a civilian's dress; who, following up his first salutation, approached, and made immediate acquaintance with me. He told me that his name was Smith--that his father had married a Frenchwoman, and now followed the French army as a sort of travelling bootmaker, and that, by every body of every nation who made trial of his skill, he was admitted to be a first-rate workman. "But, come to the house where my father and mother live," continued he, "and I will introduce you to scenes that will amuse, if they do not greatly edify."

"I'm the man for your father and mother," replied I; "depend upon it I shall visit you shortly," and so we parted.

I confess that I had forgotten my new acquaintance altogether, when on the following evening he visited me at the stables; and as I had nothing better to do, I agreed to accompany him to the paternal mansion. It was a very mean apartment, in a very mean street, through the excessive gloom of which, I could with difficulty discover three human beings seated, two of them upon stools, the third in an arm chair; two were men, who appeared so entirely engrossed with cobbling, that they scarcely lifted up their eyes when we entered; while the third was a woman--as curious a specimen of the genus, as these eyes of mine have ever beheld. I could not hope, by any description, to convey to the minds of others an idea, even partially just, of the squalor of her appearance. I say nothing of her filth, though that was extreme, nor yet of her complexion, in comparison with which, saffron deserves to be accounted pure; neither will I speak of her apparel, which no Jew from Rag Fair, whom I, at least, have ever encountered, would have admitted within the portals of his storehouse. But there was a strange intermixture of cunning and simplicity in her eye, which would have tickled me much, but for the tiger glance which from time to time superseded it.

"I've brought a countrymen to drink tea with us, mother," said Joe.

"He's welcome," was the reply; " make him sit down."

I sat down, and forthwith two broken cups were produced, by means of which, and a crazy teapot, we managed to discuss some pint or so of slops. It was not Joe's cue, however, to let the jollification end there. He gave me a hint, which I did not fail to take, by offering myself to stand treat for some brandy--to procure which, Joe, after a few modest denials on his mother's part, was sent abroad. Doubtless the reader has anticipated much of what is to follow. The old lady drank cupfuls of raw spirit, encouraging her husband and journeyman to do the same, till the two latter fairly rolled from their stools insensible, and she gave evident tokens of a rapid approach to the same state of helplessness. I looked disgusted and somewhat alarmed, but Joe only laughed at me. "Ply her well," said he; "she is a perfect bag of sand, and a good deal is needed to bring her to the proper point; but once there, and for as long as three or four weeks on a stretch, she will continue in a state of absolute helplessness. Here, mother, take another cup; it will do you good."

The old hag muttered something, drank, and was conveyed by her hopeful child to bed. She complained of thirst: he gave her a fresh dose; and she fell asleep in a moment, muttering something about a stocking all the while.

Joe clapped his hands, and laughed aloud, while he exclaimed, "Now, my boy--now, we have done it; and you, as well as I, shall have your reward." So saying, he drew from beneath the cushion of the arm-chair a stocking crammed with silver and copper coins, dollars, half-dollars, quarter-dollars, and I don't know all what. "This is nothing," said he, pouring some of them out; "at the bottom of all are certain doubloons and louis-d'ors, for which I think that I can find a far better use than any to which she dreamed of applying them. Come, friend, help yourself: don't be bashful; nobody ever throve in the world that could not help himself."

I positively refused to touch a stiver; at which Joe laughed heartily; and, when I proceeded to remonstrate with him, his mirth only increased. "Why, man," said he, "this sort of thing occurs regularly at stated periods. The old woman dearly loves both her money and the brandy-bottle: as long as she has resolution enough to keep the latter at a distance, the treasure accumulates, for she starves us all, and makes us work like galley-slaves; but, when the stocking becomes full, we always have a spree, which ends, as you see that this is going to do,by my making myself master of its contents. The old hag will not awake for these three weeks at least; that is to say, she will merely open her eyes and ask for drink--which I shall faithfully give her. And when she does get up, every thing will be forgotten, except that which I choose to tell her;--that she has spent all her savings in liquor. Why, then, should I scruple to enjoy myself, since nobody suffers?"

"But she is your mother," said I, in remonstrance; " how can you thus work upon her vices and abuse her infirmities?"

"She is as much my mother as she is yours," replied the hopeful; "and if she were, what then?"

My friend Joe's notions both of morals and manners were so very different from mine, that, with the termination of what he called "the spree," our intimacy ended. I frequently met him in my walks and rides, and learned from him that his mother kept to her time; that she slept soundly for three weeks, and rose at their termination a greater screw than ever. But neither his arguments nor his entreaties could prevail upon me to share with him in the amusements which the plunder of the stocking procured. On the contrary, I felt something like compassion for the wretched old couple; and there, again, was in due time taught that I had been exceedingly weak for my pains. When consciousness returned to that amiable family, they found themselves, as a matter of course, destitute. To work they accordingly set, and, very much to their satisfaction, the old man received an order to wait upon an officer of rank, and measure him for half-a-dozen pairs of boots. But Smith the elder was destitute even of a coat wherewith to cover his upper man; and I, in an evil hour, was persuaded by his help-mate to lend him a new cloak which I had purchased. I never saw the mantle again, except at a distance; and then it enshrouded the form of Madam Smith herself, while she sat in her little donkey-cart, and accompanied the army on its march from Salamanca to Valladolid. I would have taken it from her on the spot; but she saw me coming, and with rare skill contrived to hand it over to her husband, who, being on foot, glided round some of the baggage-cars, and was at once lost to my vision. At Valladolid I made another attempt to recover my property; but it proved equally unsuccessful; indeed, I was overwhelmed on this occasion with such a torrent of abuse, that I had not the courage to face a similar infliction, even if the recovery of the cloak had been ensured. Besides, the brutes had utterly soiled and misused it; for it was their coat by day and their bed by night. I therefore gave the beldame a hearty benediction, and went my way.

We had not long occupied our new quarters in Valladolid, when intelligence of a rising in Astorga reached us, and a considerable corps, of which my master's regiment formed a part, received orders to proceed, by forced marches, for the purpose of repressing it. If the forced marches of the French army be conducted at all times in the order which distinguished this, it must be confessed that they make but light of the sufferings both of man and beast. We were formed every morning, and actually en route by three o'clock. At eight we halted and breakfasted; at nine we again moved on, and halted again at two to dine, and a couple of hours were then afforded to refresh; but at the termination of these the column moved: and it was always eight--often as late as nine or ten--ere we halted for the night. The halt, however, was not, at least at all times, a season of rest. There were cattle to be procured, killed, and cooked, for the morrow. There was forage to be collected, and the horses to be fed. There was not unfrequently the process of baking to be carried through; for we depended everywhere upon the supplies which the country could afford for our maintenance. Many a time have we found ourselves so occupied, by the necessity of attending to these wants, that midnight came ere we could throw ourselves on the ground, and catch an hour's broken sleep beside our horses. Yet in some respects the march was not disagreeable; and it was replete with interest throughout. For example, we, of the cavalry, leaving the high-road to the infantry and the guns, struck into all manner of bypaths, which carried us through a succession of vineyards, of which the fruit hung in large clusters, ripe, and ready for gathering. Again, it not unfrequently happened that our rear and flank patrols had the satisfaction of maintaining a continued skirmish with bands of guerillas, who fired upon them from the broken ground, and hovered round them like vultures watching their prey.

Then, again, the towns and villages, but especially the latter, were all but deserted as we approached; and all sent forth, as soon as our backs were turned, fresh bodies of armed peasants to annoy us. At the same time we were invariably met at the entrance of the towns by the civic authorities, who professed either to adhere to King Joseph, or, at all events, to be neutrals in the contest; and who hoped, by these means, very generally in vain, to preserve their own and their townsmen's property from violation. For, in good sooth, the French were fearful plunderers. It struck me, too, that the officers never made so much as an effort to restrain them; and the results were, that places which we found comparatively prosperous on our arrival, we left with all the evidences of rapine and violence about them. And desperate was the revenge which the outraged Spaniard took, as often as an unfortunate French soldier fell into his hands. Neither wounds nor weakness roused his pity. He slew the straggler as if he had been a wild beast, and often added torture ere he ended him.

Sixteen days of constant marching brought us at length to Astorga; in and around which the corps proceeded to establish itself. The cavalry had quarters within the walls; the infantry and guns encamped outside; and strange and wild were the scenes which they alike enacted,--from which, as may be supposed, the ill-fated Spaniards were the sufferers. I must, however, in common justice observe, that the Spanish authorities brought the evil, in some measure, on themselves. They assured our general, for instance, that the town was destitute of stores, and that, unless he had the means of victualling his own troops, they ran great risk of starving. This was but sorry news for men who had not tasted a wholesome or regular meal for a fortnight, and were all but desperate in consequence. But a little exercise of the ingenuity habitual to our troopers soon refuted the declarations of the alcalde. Two doors from a large house which was assigned to the lancers as a barrack, there was discovered, in the lumbre, or ground-floor kitchen, a trap-door, by raising which a man introduced himself into a capacious cellar, well filled with all manner of stores, sufficient for the relief of one entire battalion. Tanned hides were there for making shoes, flitches of bacon, large bags of caravanceros, and skins of wine in abundance. As might have been expected, the success of this individual prompted many more to prosecute their researches; and our general had soon the satisfaction to know that he ran very little hazard of starving. Now, if he had been content to appropriate these stores, while at the same time he maintained strict discipline among his people, nobody could have blamed him. The troops must be fed--so must their horses; but he went much beyond this. The soldiers received a sort of unspoken licence to plunder; and terrible was the havoc which in their wantonness they occasioned. Moreover, the honour of the women, and here and there the lives of the men, fell a sacrifice not unfrequently. But let me not go on:--in the camp of the infantry you might see all manner of rich hangings converted into tents. The soldiers lay, or danced and sung among the tents, arrayed in priests' robes and ladies' dresses; while the lancers, in spite of Count Golstein's best exertions to prevent it, were not altogether free from similar atrocities. Of course the town became rapidly thinned of its inhabitants, of whom all who were capable of bearing arms went to swell the amount of the Spanish forces. Yet were the French not yet cured of their propensity to evil. They persisted in carrying on the war more like savages than civilized men; and they suffered in consequence all the outrages of which their own historians too much complain.