armour, and mount a small pony, before the signal for the march
was given, and all set forth. Early in the year as it was, the sun
already possessed great force, and the dry rocky soil of Castile
reflected his beams, so that, long before noon, it seemed to
Eustace almost as if their march lay through an oven. Nor were
his perplexities by any means at an end; the thirst, occasioned
by the heat, was excessive, and at every venta, in the villages
through which they passed, the men called loudly for liquor; but
the hot, fiery Spanish wine was, as Eustace had already been
cautioned by Father Waleran, only fit to increase the evil, by
inflaming their blood. It was the Holy Week, which was to him
a sufficient reason for refraining entirely, contenting himself
with a drink of water, when it could be procured, which, however,
was but rarely. He would willingly have persuaded his men to do
the same, but remonstrance was almost without effect, and his dry
lips refused to utter a prohibition, which would have been esteemed
at once cruel and unreasonable. In his persuasions to Gaston he
was, however, more in earnest, representing to him that he was
increasing the fever of his wound; but the Squire was perfectly
impracticable. At first, he answered in his usual gay, careless
manner, that the scratch was nothing, and that, be what it might,
he had as soon die of a wound as of thirst; but as the day wore on,
it seemed as if the whole nature of the man were becoming changed.
Sometimes he was boisterously loud in his merriment, sometimes
sullen and silent; and when Eustace, unwearied, reiterated his
arguments, he replied to him, not only with complete want of the
deference he was usually so scrupulous in paying to his dignity,
but with rude and scurril taunts and jests on his youth, his
clerkly education, and his inexperience. Eustace's patience would
scarcely have held out, but that he perceived that d'Aubricour