But how long will it take the French to pull down what it will have taken ten or eleven months to construct?
And if they are unable to draw sustenance from a desolate, wasted country, what time will they have at their disposal?
It will be with them a matter of life or death.

Having come so far they must reach Lisbon or perish; and if the fortifications can delay them by a single month, then, granted that all Lord Wellington's other dispositions have been duly carried out, perish they must.

It remains, Monsieur le Major, for you to determine whether, with all their energy, with all their genius and all their valour, the French can--in an ill-nourished condition--destroy in a few weeks the considered labour of nearly a year." The major was aghast.

He had changed colour, and through his eyes, wide and staring, his stupefaction glared forth at them.
Minas uttered a dry cough under cover of his hand, and screwed up his eyeglass to regard the major more attentively.

"You do not appear to have considered all that," he said.
"But, my dear Marquis," was the half-indignant answer, "why was I not told all this to begin with?
You represented yourself as but indifferently informed, Monsieur de Samoval.