These fifteen persons looked at one another gravely, their eyes
scarcely betraying the sentiments that filled their souls. The
sentinels, also motionless, watched them, but respected the sorrow of
those cruel enemies.

An expression of inquiry came upon the faces of all when Victor
appeared. He gave the order to unbind the prisoners, and went himself
to unfasten the cords that held Clara in her chair. She smiled sadly.
The officer could not help touching softly the arms of the young girl
as he looked with sad admiration at her beautiful hair and her supple
figure. She was a true Spaniard, having the Spanish complexion, the
Spanish eyes with their curved lashes, and their large pupils blacker
than a raven's wing.

"Have you succeeded?" she said, with one of those funereal smiles in
which something of girlhood lingers.

Victor could not keep himself from groaning. He looked in turn at the
three brothers, and then at Clara. One brother, the eldest, was thirty
years of age. Though small and somewhat ill-made, with an air that was
haughty and disdainful, he was not lacking in a certain nobility of
manner, and he seemed to have something of that delicacy of feeling
which made the Spanish chivalry of other days so famous. He was named
Juanito. The second son, Felipe, was about twenty years of age; he
resembled Clara. The youngest was eight. A painter would have seen in
the features of Manuelo a little of that Roman constancy that David
has given to children in his republican pages. The head of the old
marquis, covered with flowing white hair, seemed to have escaped from
a picture of Murillo. As he looked at them, the young officer shook
his head, despairing that any one of those four beings would accept