第36章 A CATASTROPHE(1)

The ruin of his house had hardly been repaired,when there arrived out of Europe tidings which smote as with a still more fatal hurricane on the four corners of his inner world,and awoke all the old thunders that lay asleep on his horizon there.Tidings,at last of a decisive nature,from Gibraltar and the Spanish democrat adventure.This is what the Newspapers had to report--the catastrophe at once,the details by degrees--from Spain concerning that affair,in the beginning of the new year 1832.

Torrijos,as we have seen,had hitherto accomplished as good as nothing,except disappointment to his impatient followers,and sorrow and regret to himself.Poor Torrijos,on arriving at Gibraltar with his wild band,and coming into contact with the rough fact,had found painfully how much his imagination had deceived him.The fact lay round him haggard and iron-bound;flatly refusing to be handled according to his scheme of it.No Spanish soldiery nor citizenry showed the least disposition to join him;on the contrary the official Spaniards of that coast seemed to have the watchfulest eye on all his movements,nay it was conjectured they had spies in Gibraltar who gathered his very intentions and betrayed them.This small project of attack,and then that other,proved futile,or was abandoned before the attempt.Torrijos had to lie painfully within the lines of Gibraltar,--his poor followers reduced to extremity of impatience and distress;the British Governor too,though not unfriendly to him,obliged to frown.As for the young Cantabs,they,as was said,had wandered a little over the South border of romantic Spain;had perhaps seen Seville,Cadiz,with picturesque views,since not with belligerent ones;and their money being done,had now returned home.

So had it lasted for eighteen months.

The French Three Days breaking out had armed the Guerrillero Mina,armed all manner of democratic guerrieros and guerrilleros;and considerable clouds of Invasion,from Spanish exiles,hung minatory over the North and North-East of Spain,supported by the new-born French Democracy,so far as privately possible.These Torrijos had to look upon with inexpressible feelings,and take no hand in supporting from the South;these also he had to see brushed away,successively abolished by official generalship;and to sit within his lines,in the painfulest manner,unable to do anything.The fated,gallant-minded,but too headlong man.At length the British Governor himself was obliged,in official decency and as is thought on repeated remonstrance from his Spanish official neighbors,to signify how indecorous,improper and impossible it was to harbor within one's lines such explosive preparations,once they were discovered,against allies in full peace with us,--the necessity,in fact,there was for the matter ending.It is said,he offered Torrijos and his people passports,and British protection,to any country of the world except Spain:Torrijos did not accept the passports;spoke of going peaceably to this place or to that;promised at least,what he saw and felt to be clearly necessary,that he would soon leave Gibraltar.And he did soon leave it;he and his,Boyd alone of the Englishmen being now with him.