i24 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



had lowered her veil. She was the wife of General 

 Moreno de las Pefias, and she told me that her hus- 

 band had been denounced by the sergeants of the 

 regiments which had mutinied as the leader of the 

 movement. The court-martial had accordingly sen- 

 tenced him to be shot within the twenty-four hours 

 if he was captured. His wife came to implore me to 

 assist him in escaping, as 1 had done once before at 

 Barcelona, by embarking him on board a French man- 

 of-war which conveyed him to France. I told her thet 

 the situation was a very different one here, in the centre 

 of Spain, from what it was on the seaboard at Barce- 

 lona, but that I would see what could be done if she 

 would come back later in the day. As soon as it was 

 daylight I went to see my friend Narvaez, and was 

 much surprised at finding him come to open the door 

 himself, with a very disturbed look upon his face. I 

 explained in as few words as possible the object of my 

 early visit ? and he told me that he was afraid, when he 

 heard the bell, that the police had come to inform him 

 of the capture of Moreno, and that the latter had 

 been his companion at the military school and in the 

 great defensive struggle of 1808. He would, there- 

 fore, have been much pained if he had been compelled 

 to have him shot. I shook him heartily by the hand, 

 and it was accordingly arranged that I should avail 

 myself of the departure of a French family for 

 Bayonne that same day by the mail-coach to get the 

 General away with them. Orders were given to the 



