52 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FRANCIS ARAGO. 
The officer had got the watch from a third party, and 
could give no account of the fate of the person to whom 
it had originally belonged. 
The casemate having become necessary to the de- 
fenders of the fortress, we were taken to a little chapel, 
where they deposited for twenty-four hours those who 
had died in the hospital. There we were guarded by 
peasants who had come across the mountain, from various 
villages, and particularly from Cadaques. These peas- 
ants, eager to recount all that they had seen of interest 
during their one day’s campaign, questioned me as to the 
deeds and behaviour of all my companions in misfortune. 
I satisfied their curiosity amply, being the only one of the 
set who could speak Spanish. 
To enlist their good will, I also questioned them at 
length upon the subject of their village, on the work 
that they did there, on smuggling, their principal sources 
of employment, &c. &c. They answered my questions 
with the loquacity common to country rustics. The next 
day our guards were replaced ‘by some others who were 
inhabitants of the same village. “In my business of a 
roving merchant,” I said to these last, “I have been at 
Cadaqués ;” and then I began to talk to them of what I 
had learnt the night before, of such an individual, who 
gave himself up to smuggling with more success than 
others, of his beautiful residence, of the property which 
he possessed near the village,—in short, of a number of 
particulars which it seemed impossible for any but an 
inhabitant of Cadaqués to know. My jest produced an 
unexpected effect. Such circumstantial details, our 
guards said to themselves, cannot be known by a roving 
merchant; this personage, whom we have found here in 
such singular society, is certainly a native of Cadaqués ; 
