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 

 Cadaques ; " 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 Cadaques 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 Cadaques ; 



