Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

GIBRALTAR INNS.

27

very comfortable quarters at a building called the Club, which was, I believe, its original use, though now nothing but an hotel. In addition to this, there is an inn in the same square, called "Griffiths," of which I cannot speak from experience, but the report of others of the passengers who had put up there was favourable.

[blocks in formation]

at ten o'clock :- -a fresh and more variegated congregation of passengers replaced those we had left at Cadiz and Gibraltar; and what a confusion of tongues and nations! The Hermes seemed a floating Babel. English, American, Spanish, French, Moors, Turks, and Greeks, all talking together, and each giving directions, various and loud, about his own luggage.

[blocks in formation]

Among our new companions were a noble Spanish lady, the Marchesa de Villa Seca, and her son and daughter, who being of the Carlist party, have been obliged, as we heard, to leave this country to save their lives. The lady's story interested us; she had been tried by the Junta of Cordova on some political charge, the sentence against her was, "guilty of suspicion of not being attached to the government of Isabella Segunda" this sentence was sent to the supreme court at Seville, which annulled it as nonsense. A few days after this a notary called on her, and exhibited some kind of decree, announcing that she was banished to Malaga, and enjoining her to quit Cordova in an hour: she repeatedly asked by whose orders she was thus banished, but could get no information; the civil governor of Cordova denying that he had given any order of the kind. Within the hour the escorts arrived and

proceeded with her to Malaga, where they left her. She had not been in Malaga more than eight or ten days, when she received information that the Junta of Cordova had again commenced proceedings against her; that her rents were sequestered, and that thirty Urbanos, or national guards were on their way to Malaga to bring her back to Cordova to stand another trial.

Under these circumstances-which certainly were not calculated to inspire much confidence in the justice of the tribunal of Cordova, she prudently went with her family on board H.M.S. Jaseur, which happened to be at Malaga, and claimed the protection of the English flag, requesting a passage to Gibraltar. We were assured that incredible as it may appear the officer in command of the party of Urbanos sent from Cordova, had orders to lodge the lady, her son and daughter, if he could

[blocks in formation]

have caught them, every night in the common prison of the place where they might stop, with a further private instruction to take a favourable opportunity of shooting the whole of the family, servants and all, under the pretence of an attempt at rescue or evasion.

When the Urbanos found that their victim had escaped, they made no secret of their orders; and those who saw the officer to whom they had been given, told me that, judging from his appearance, the Junta had picked out a fit instrument for this sanguinary task, and one not likely to be moved to compassion by either youth or beauty, of which the young lady had a fair share, being indeed a very pretty girl of eighteen. The elder lady, however, was, it seemed, not corrected by this lesson, of her political zeal, and was supposed to have drawn the thread of her intrigues after her to Gibraltar, which induced the governor to desire her to leave the fortress,

« AnteriorContinua »