Take it all in all, it's better to be dead in Barcelona than alive in this accursed land of heretics!" "Come, come," replied the other, "life is life! 'A live dog is better than a dead king,' says a proverb in my country." "And it is right, too," replied the Spaniard.

"But ever since we came here our master's face looks as if imperial life didn't taste exactly like mulled wine, either." The Netherlander lowered his halberd and answered his companion's words first with a heavy sigh, and then with the remark: "Bad weather upstairs as well as down--the very worst! I've been in the service thirteen years, but I never saw him like this, not even after the defeat in Algiers.

That means we must keep a good lookout.

Present halberds! Some one is coming down." Both quickly assumed a more erect attitude, but the Spaniard whispered to his comrade: "It isn't he.

His step hasn't sounded like that since the gout--" "Quijada!" whispered the Netherlander, and both he and the man from Barcelona presented halberds with true military bearing; but the staves of their descending weapons soon struck the flags of the pavement again, for a woman's voice had detained the man whom the soldiers intended to salute, and in his place two slender lads rushed down the steps.
The yellow velvet garments, with ash-gray facings, and cap of the same material in the same colours, were very becoming to these youths--the Emperor's pages--and, though the first two were sons of German and Italian counts, and the third who followed them was a Holland baron, the sentinels took little more notice of them than of Queen Mary's pointers following swiftly at their heels.
"Of those up there," observed the halberdier from Haarlem under his breath, "a man would most willingly stiffen his back for Quijada." "Except their Majesties, of course," added the Catalonian with dignity.
"Of course," the other repeated.