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As to my mother, she had a stoical
soul in her frail body. Half-covered by a costly shawl, she was lying
on a rustic seat by the side of an ornamental basin whose fountain had
ceased to play for ever on that night.
"I had hardly had time to embrace them all with transports of joy when
my chief, coming along, dispatched me to the ravine with a few soldiers,
to bring in my strong man, as he called him, and that pale girl.
"But there was no one for us to bring in. A landslide had covered the
ruins of the house; and it was like a large mound of earth with only the
ends of some timbers visible here and there--nothing more.
"Thus were the tribulations of the old Royalist couple ended. An
enormous and unconsecrated grave had swallowed them up alive, in their
unhappy obstinacy against the will of a people to be free. And their
daughter was gone.
"That Gaspar Ruiz had carried her off I understood very well. But as
the case was not foreseen, I had no instructions to pursue them. And
certainly I had no desire to do so.


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