The Marquis of Bolibar

by Leo Perutz

  "The Marquis of Bolibar," I mused. "A haughty gentleman, no doubt, and unduly jealous of his rank."

  "Not at all! An affable and kindly soul, for all his noble birth - a truly devout Christian and far from haughty. No matter who salutes him in the street, be it a water-carrier or the Reverend Father himself, he returns their greetings with equal friendliness. "

  "But he's somewhat weak in the head, surely?" I hazarded a lie to draw him out. "Urchins run after him in the street, I'm told. They taunt and tease him by calling his name aloud."

  "What!" the landlord exclaimed with a look of surprise and consternation. "Who could have fed you such untruth, Señor caballero? There isn't a wiser man in all the province, believe me. Peasants from every village in the neighbourhood make pilgrimage to him when they don't know where to turn on account of their cattle, or their wives, or the high taxes."

  The landlord's words seemed quite out of tune with the scene I had just witnessed in the garden, and again I had a vision of the old man as he walked, mute and expressionless, through that noisy, chattering throng of servants, making no attempt to shoo them away. I was just debating whether to tell the landlord precisely what I had seen from his garden when my ears were assailed by a blare of trumpets and a clatter of hoofs. Hearing the colonel's voice, I hurried out into the street.

  My regiment had arrived. The grenadiers, begrimed and streaked with sweat after their hours-long march, had fallen out and were sitting by the roadside to left and right. The officers dismounted and called for their servants. I went up to the colonel and presented my report.

  The colonel listened to me with only half an ear. He was studying the terrain and wondering how best to improve the fortifications. In his mind's eye he was already constructing ramparts and bastions, mines and redoubts for the defence of the town.

  Captain Brockendorf and several other officers were standing beside the ox cart laden with their valises. I joined him and described the Marquis of Bolibar's curious morning promenade. He listened with an air of disbelief, shaking his head the while, but Lieutenant Günther, who was seated beside him on an upturned bucket, had an explanation ready.

  "Many of these Spanish grandees are the queerest fish imaginable. They never tire of hearing their fine-sounding names, which are so long that you could say three whole rosaries in the time it takes to recite them. It delights them to hear their servants reel off their titles in full, all day long. At Salamanca, when I was billeted on the Conde de Veyra ..."

  He launched into an account of his experiences in the household of that proud Spanish nobleman, but Lieutenant Donop cut him short.

  "Bolibar? Did you say Bolibar? Why, that was the name of our late lamented Marquesin!"

  "Yes indeed," cried Brockendorf, "you're right. What's more, he once told me that his family owned an estate in the neighbourhood of La Bisbal."

  A young Spanish nobleman had served in our regiment as a volunteer — one of the few of his nation to have been so fired with the ideals of liberty and justice that he espoused the cause of France and the Emperor. He was estranged from his family and had disclosed his true name and provenance to two or three of his comrades only, but the Spanish peasants called him "el Marquesin" - for he was short and slight of stature — and we, too, addressed him by that sobriquet. Having fallen in battle with the guerrillas the previous night, he now lay buried in the village graveyard at Bascaras.

  "That settles it," said Donop. "Your Marquis of Bolibar, Jochberg, is a kinsman of our Marquesin. It behoves us to inform the old man, as gently and considerately as possible, of our gallant comrade's death. Since you're already acquainted with the Marquis, Jochberg, will you take it upon yourself to do so?"

  I saluted and made my way to the nobleman's house with one of my men, meanwhile rehearsing the words with which I proposed to fulfil my difficult and thankless task.

  A wall lay between the house and the road, but it had crumbled away at so many points that one could easily get across. As I neared the building I was met by a babble of loud, plaintive, quarrelsome voices. I knocked on the door, and the din ceased at once.

  "Who's there?" called a voice.

  "I come in peace," I replied.

  "Who comes in peace?"

  "A German officer."

  "Ave Maria purissima!" wailed someone. "It isn't he!" The door was opened and I walked in.

  I found myself in a vestibule where lackeys, coachmen, gardeners and other servants were running hither and thither in great dismay and confusion. The shaggy little fellow who had addressed the Marquis as "my friend" was also present. He minced up to me in his dancing master's fashion, puce in the face with agitation, and introduced himself as His Grace the Marquis's steward and majordomo.

  "I wish to speak with the Marquis in person," I told him.

  The majordomo clasped his head with both hands, breathing heavily.

  "The Señor Marques?" he groaned. "O merciful God, merciful God!" He stared at me awhile. Then he said, "Alas, Lieutenant or Captain or whatever you may be, His Grace isn't here."

  "How so, not here?" I said sternly. "I myself saw him in his garden earlier this morning."

  "Earlier this morning, perhaps, but now he's gone." The majordomo turned and called to a man who was hurrying through the vestibule.

  "Pasqual! Have you looked in the stables? Is none of the horses missing?"

  "None, Señor Fabricio. They're all accounted for."

  "The saddle horses too? Capitan the grey and San Miguel the roan? What of Hermosa the mare - is she also in her stall?"

  "They're all there," the groom repeated. "Not one is missing."

  "Then may God, the Virgin and all the Saints assist us. Our master has vanished - he must have met with an accident."

  "When did you see him last?" I asked.

  "Not half an hour ago, in his bedchamber. He was standing before the mirror, looking at himself. He had instructed me to burst into the room, time and again, and inquire after his health. 'Did Your Grace pass a restful night?' I had to ask, or, as if I were one of his friends from Madrid, 'Heaven bless you, Bolibar, what are you doing here?' I had to repeat that several times while he stood before the mirror and studied his reflection."

  "And this morning in the garden?"

  "The Señor Marques behaved strangely all morning. He made us hide in the bushes and call his name aloud. God alone knows what he had in mind, but our master never does anything without an excellent reason."

  At that point the gardener entered with his lad. The major- domo promptly abandoned me and flew at him.

  "What are you waiting for? Drain the pool at once, do you hear?" Then, turning to me, he sighed and said, "God grant we may give him an honourable Christian burial if we find him at the bottom of the pool ..."

  I left the house and told my comrades what I had heard. We were still discussing the matter when a wounded officer was carried past on a litter.

  "Bolibar?" he exclaimed suddenly. "Who spoke that name?"

  Although he wore the uniform of another regiment, I knew him. The wounded officer was Lieutenant von Röhn of the Hanoverian Chasseurs, with whom I had shared quarters for two weeks the previous summer. He had been shot through the chest.

  "I did," I said. "What of the Marquis of Bolibar? Do you know him?"

  He gazed at me in horror, his eyes glittering with fever.

  "Seize him quickly," he cried in a hoarse voice, "or he'll destroy you all."

  THE TANNER'S TUB

  Lieutenant von Röhn succumbed to the effects of his wound two days later in the Convent of Santa Engracia, which we fitted out as a hospital immediately after our arrival in La Bisbal. During this time he was repeatedly questioned by our colonel and Captain Eglofstein about the details of his encounter with Colonel Saracho and the Marquis of Bolibar. Although he was not always fully conscious, his statements gave us a sufficient knowledge of what had been agreed that night — the night after our skirmish with the guerrillas — between the Marquis of Boliba
r, the "Tanner's Tub" and Captain William O'Callaghan of the British Army. His account of what happened at St Rochus' chapel in the woods of Bascaras enlightened us on the nature and abilities of the Marquis of Bolibar, and on what to expect from that dangerous foe of France and the Emperor.

  Lieutenant von Rohn's regimental commander had dispatched him to Marshal Soult's headquarters at Forgosa with some important papers, to wit, the feuilles d'appel or muster rolls of the Hanoverian Chasseurs, because the assistant paymaster had refused to disburse any monies without them. The area between Marshal Soult's Fourth Corps and General d'Hilliers' brigade, to which the Hanoverian Chasseurs belonged, was temporarily controlled by the insurgents who also held La Bisbal and its environs, so Lieutenant von Röhn was compelled to avoid the more convenient highroad and use the winding forest tracks that led through the mountains to Forgosa.

  At this stage in his account Lieutenant von Röhn inveighed bitterly against the army's book-keepers. He wished he could dig all the quartermasters and planners and pen-pushers out of their comfortable chairs at headquarters and transplant them to the rugged Spanish highlands; that would soon teach them to treat honest soldiers in a fitting manner. His regiment was always short of something, be it boots or cartridges, and they had once been obliged to use garden tubs instead of gabions. Here he went off at a tangent and began to speak of pay, fiercely complaining that a lieutenant earned twenty-two thalers a month at home but only eighteen on campaign. "Junot is insane!" he cried, half delirious with fever. "How can an utter lunatic continue to command an army corps! He's a brave man, mark you. In battle he has been known to borrow a private soldier's musket and blaze away ..."

  Eglofstein broke in with a question, whereupon the lieutenant grew calmer and returned to the subject in hand.

  On the evening of the second day he traversed the wood near Bascaras escorted by his soldier servant. While picking their way through the dense undergrowth - their horses were more of a hindrance than a help in such difficult terrain — they heard musket-fire and the din of the battle in progress between us and the guerrillas on the highroad not far away. Röhn at once changed direction and set off uphill, seeking safety in the recesses of the wood. A few minutes later he was hit in the chest by a stray bullet. He fell to the ground and briefly lost consciousness.

  On regaining his senses he found that the servant had lashed him to his saddle with two thongs. They had almost reached the summit of the hill, but the din of battle was far louder than before. Individual voices and words of command could now be distinguished, together with oaths and the cries of wounded men.

  In a clearing on the brow of the hill stood a ruined chapel once dedicated to St Rochus but now employed as a barn. Here the servant reined in, for the wounded lieutenant had lost so much blood that he feared he would die on him. They would be bound to fall into the Spaniards' hands unless something were done quickly, he said, so he lifted the lieutenant off his horse and carried him into the chapel. Röhn, who was in severe pain and weakened by loss of blood, made no demur. The servant carried him up a ladder to the loft, where he wrapped him in his cloak and covered him with bales of straw. Then he gave him his canteen, put two loaded pistols where Röhn could reach them, and covered those, too, with straw. That done, he went off with the horses, but not before he had urged Röhn to lie still, promising to remain close at hand and not to desert him under any circumstances.

  Meantime, night had fallen and the firing and shouting had died away. For a while all remained quiet. The lieutenant was just about to put his head out of a skylight and call his servant back, thinking the danger past, when he heard voices and saw lanterns and torches approaching the chapel.

  Perceiving at once that the men were guerrillas, he hurriedly concealed himself once more beneath the bales of straw. The holes and chinks in the floor on which he lay enabled him to observe the Spaniards as they carried their wounded into the chapel. One of them climbed the ladder and threw down some bales of straw to his companions while the lieutenant held his breath for fear he should be discovered and butchered on the spot.

  But the Spaniard failed to notice him and descended the ladder with his lantern to bandage the wounded. He went from one to another with his instruments, but never before had the lieutenant seen a surgeon ply his trade in such a sullen and surly manner.

  "Why are you sitting there like Job the Jew on his dunghill?" he railed at one of the wounded, and poured scorn on another who groaned that he felt he would soon be entering the realms of eternal bliss.

  "You fool!" he jeered. "Eternal bliss costs more than you think. Do you really imagine that all you need to get you to heaven is a hole in the belly?"

  "What do you have for me in that medicine chest of yours?" cried another man. "Monkey's fat? Bear's grease? Raven's dung?"

  "All I have for you is a Paternoster," the surgeon snapped.

  "You've too many holes to mend." And, as he busied himself with the next man, he growled, "Yes, Death is a heathen — he never takes a holiday. Wars make hummocky churchyards, that's what I always say."

  "How soon will you come to me?" called a wounded man lying in a corner.

  "Wait your turn, damn you!" the surgeon cried angrily. "I know you of old — you want a plaster on every little gnat-bite. A pity the bullet didn't fly up the Devil's backside, then I'd not be having to trouble with you now."

  The guerrillas had meanwhile kindled a fire outside the chapel. Sentries had been posted on the edge of the woods and an orderly officer was going the rounds. The insurgents, who numbered upwards of a hundred and fifty, lay sprawled around the fire, many of them asleep and some smoking tobacco rolled in paper. They were armed and clothed with what they had taken from the French: infantrymen's gaiters, long cuirassiers' swords, heavy German riding boots. Near the chapel stood a cork oak with an effigy of the Virgin and Child affixed to its trunk, and before this two Spaniards knelt in prayer. A British officer, a captain in the Northumberland Fusiliers, stood leaning on his sword and gazing into the fire. His scarlet cloak and the white panache in his cap made him look, beside the ragged guerrillas, like a gold ducat among copper stivers. (From Rohn's description, this officer could only have been Captain William O'Callaghan, whom General Blake, as we already knew, had sent to instil order and discipline into the guerrilla bands of the district.)

  The surgeon, having completed his work in the chapel, came out and limped over to the fire. An exceedingly stout little man, he wore a brown jacket, short trousers, and torn blue hose, but his collar was adorned with colonel's insignia. As soon as the firelight fell upon his face, Lieutenant von Röhn perceived that it was Saracho himself that had bandaged the wounded in the chapel and, spiteful as a monkey, dispensed such poor consolation. On his head he wore a velvet cap embroidered with gold thread. This the lieutenant recognized at once as Marshal Lefebvre's nightcap, which was renowned throughout the army because, when it fell into the insurgents' hands together with some other baggage belonging to Lefebvre, the furious marshal's aides-de-camp and all the other officers in the baggage train had been placed under arrest.

  The Tanner's Tub held his hands to the fire to warm them. For a while all was quiet save for the groans of the wounded, a man cursing in his sleep, and the murmured prayers of the two Spaniards on their knees before the Madonna.

  At this stage Lieutenant von Rohn's fatigue was so extreme that he would have fallen asleep, despite his thirst and the proximity of his enemies, had he not been suddenly roused by a shout from one of the sentries. He peered through the skylight and caught sight of the Marquis of Bolibar, who was just emerging from the dark wood into the glow of the fire.

  Röhn described him as a tall, elderly man whose hair was as white as the moustache beneath his aquiline nose. There was something fierce and awe-inspiring about his features, although, try as he would, Röhn could not define it.

  "There he is!" cried the Tanner's Tub, and withdrew his hands from the fire. "The Marquis of Bolibar," he said, turning to the Br
itish officer. "Señor Marques, a thousand pardons for having disturbed your night's rest" — here he made a clumsy obeisance - "but I shall doubtless have quit this district by tomorrow, and I have to acquaint you with certain information of great importance. It relates to your family."

  The Marquis abruptly turned his head and looked Saracho in the eye. All the blood had left his face, but the firelight suffused his cheeks with a reddish glow. The British captain addressed him in a courteous tone.

  "Are you, My Lord Marquis, a kinsman of the LieutenantGeneral de Bolibar who commanded the Spanish Second Corps two years ago?"

  "The lieutenant-general is my brother," replied the Marquis, without taking his eyes off Saracho.

  "An officer of your name saw service in the British Army, too. He captured the French artillery depot at Acre."

  "That was my cousin," said the Marquis. He continued to stare at the Tanner's Tub, almost as if he were awaiting a surprise attack from that quarter and had to meet it with a steadfast gaze.

  "The family of the Señor Marques has provided many an army with outstanding officers," said Saracho. "One of his nephews served until lately in the French Army."

  The Marquis shut his eyes.

  "Is he dead?" he asked quietly.

  "He had a fine career," the Tanner's Tub replied with a laugh. "He became a French lieutenant despite his seventeen years. I myself have a son and would gladly have made a soldier of him, but he's a hunchback and fit only for a monastery."

  "Is he dead?" asked the Marquis. He stood there unmoving, but his shadow leapt wildly about in the fire's fitful light. It was as if the old man's shadow, not the old man himself, were awaiting Saracho's tidings in fear and uncertainty.

  "Men of many nations fight with the French Army," Saracho said, shrugging his shoulders. "Germans and Dutchmen, Neapolitans and Poles. Why should a Spaniard not serve with the French for once?"

  "Is he dead?" cried the Marquis.