Page:Peterson's Magazine 1842, Volume I.pdf/360

. the garrison, and supported by a furious cannonade from twenty-four and thirty-six pounders, and accompanied by a perfect storm of shot and shell, attacked and carried the bridge called the Huerba ; from whence the Arrongese, overwhelmed by superior numbers, fell back, and were pursued by the victors to the Monastery of the Augustines, or Los Monichas. The assault upon the monastery then commenced, and though the carnage among the enemy was dreadful, they still continued to advance. The combatants then entered the church, from which the French were at first repulsed by the monks, who, mingling in the thickest of the affray, fought with all the fury and fervor of desperation. The assailants returned again to the charge, and now the chancel presented a scene such as has seldom or never been witnessed before.

At the great and side altars were crowds of women and children upon their knees, supplicating Heaven for mercy and protection ; but their frantic cries were drowned amidst the yells and execrations of the belligerents, and the roar of the musquetry. The French troops, amidst an indiscriminate slaughter of women and children, still pushed forward, till their further progress was arrested by the cry that the roof, battered by shells, was beginning to give way. Panic stricken by this new enemy ; mingling in one common mass with those against whom, but a moment before, they had been engaged in deadly conflict, they rushed for the doors. Some precipitated themselves from the windows, such was their extreme terror ; whilst the most heartrending screams re-echoed throughout the church, from the numbers that were crushed beneath the feet of the fugitives, or suffocated by the pressure at the doors.

Of the dense crowd that had previously filled the chapel, except the wounded, but two remained ; one a lady, who knelt before a picture of the Madonna, and the other was the Count St. Croix, who had headed the troops in the assault upon the Monastery. The Count, believing the cry of the falling roof to be a false alarm, forbore for a while to join his companions in arms, curious to inspect the features of one who had displayed so much of calm intrepidity, amidst the scene of horrors which had just been enacted.

The devotee still preserved the same attitude as if no other object occupied her mind, except the holy office in which she was engaged. At length, the unusual stillness of the church, interrupted only at intervals by the hollow groans of the wounded, seemed to fix his attention. At the noise of the Count's footsteps, as he advanced toward her, she turned her face in the direction, and one glance at the well-known features told him they were those of the Lady Isandra. She had snatched a few moments from the arduous, but humane duty of attending to the wounded, to pour out at the shrine of the Virgin Mother her tears and prayers for the liberation of her native land. Her eye fell darkly, and a pang shot through her frame, as she recognised the hated form of the intruder. She looked above, around- no avenue for escape presented itself. One minute more, and the Count had seized her hand, as if anticipating her purpose, shouting at the same time in a tone of exultation, “ blessed triumph of our arms ! this moment of our unexpected meeting repays for all the toil and turmoil of this bloody day ! Demon, or fate, be it which you will, I will curse thee no more for marring my projects." Then, his voice sunk to a low but startling and sepulchral tone. "You have scorned my advances, and escaped my vengeance once, proud maiden ; but now, though hell itself yawned beneath, you shall not balk my passion. Swear by that shrine before which you kneel- this favor do I grant thee for thy resemblance to one whom I loved and lost-or rather swear- you will respect the oath- to be my wedded bride, spite of precontract or bethrothing, by him who is the god of your idolatry, to be mine, and mine for ever, or this blazing fabric-" and his eye glanced upward as the flames burst from the crackling timbers of the roof-" shall be a holocaust to light your soul to the chambers of eternal sleep !" "Presumptuous man !" returned Isandra, all the native fire of the Castilian flashing from her eye as she spoke, " I swear not at all, willingly ; or, if I do, I swear by that Mighty One who spoke that shrine, and this whirling world into existence, peopling it with the miserable atoms of the human race, never shall you call me thine." Then her voice dropped to the softest notes of entreaty, as she added, " has all that is akin to woman in man's breast departed from you ? or is the stream of pity so frozen by this icy blast of war, that not one tender feeling floats along the life stream of your exist ence ? Why should you break the chain that binds two devoted hearts together ? Hast thou no mother, no sister ? Oh ! if such there be, even they would plead for me in this hour of trial." She seemed by her last words to awaken somewhat of softer emotion in the Frenchman's heart ; but the effect was momentary. More horrible and ghastly still was the grin that pervaded his features as he replied, his whole frame quivering with internal passion : "Mother ! sister ! once you were the loved accents of my lips. A mother's voice, in times gone by, was to me as the summer's breeze to the houseless wanderer, cooling the fever of my boyish fretfulness ; her eye, beaming with maternal light, was the cynosure of my destiny. And, sister- sweet sister ! even still my mocking fancy echoes in my ears thy dulcet tones, like music's dying close !" He dashed from his cheeks the scalding tear, that showed that nature will at times assert her sway in the most obdurate heart, and then he gnashed his teeth with wild ferocity, as he cried in hurried sentences, “ but