[Saragossa]
[TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION]
[CHAPTER I]
[CHAPTER II]
[CHAPTER III]
[CHAPTER IV]
[CHAPTER V]
[CHAPTER VI]
[CHAPTER VII]
[CHAPTER VIII]
[CHAPTER IX]
[CHAPTER X]
[CHAPTER XI]
[CHAPTER XII]
[CHAPTER XIII]
[CHAPTER XIV]
[CHAPTER XV]
[CHAPTER XVI]
[CHAPTER XVII]
[CHAPTER XVIII]
[CHAPTER XIX]
[CHAPTER XX]
[CHAPTER XXI]
[CHAPTER XXII]
[CHAPTER XXIII]
[CHAPTER XXIV]
[CHAPTER XXV]
[CHAPTER XXVI]
[CHAPTER XXVII]
[CHAPTER XXVIII]
[CHAPTER XXIX]
[CHAPTER XXX]
[CHAPTER XXXI]
[New Fiction.]

Saragossa

When the other events of the Spanish war shall be lost in the obscurity of time, or only traced by disconnected fragments, the story of Zaragoza, like some ancient triumphal pillar standing amidst ruins, will tell a tale of past glory, and already men point to the heroic city and call her Spain.

Napier's "Peninsular War"

SARAGOSSA

A Story of Spanish Valor

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL

OF

B. PÉREZ GALDÓS

BY

MINNA CAROLINE SMITH

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1899

Copyright, 1899,

By Little, Brown, and Company

All rights reserved

University Press
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

"Saragossa" is the sixth volume in the brilliant series of historical novels by B. Pérez Galdós, which begins with "Trafalgar" and closes with "The Battle of the Arapiles," embracing "The Court of Carlos IV," "Gerona," and "Napoleon in Chamartin."

B. Pérez Galdós, possibly known best in the United States as the author of "Doña Perfecta," may be called the Walter Scott of Spain. He is, however, truer to history than Scott, and the characters he creates move in an atmosphere of reality rather than romance. "Saragossa" is one of the most powerful, impressive, and popular of the twenty novels wherein he tells the gallant story of his native land. This tale of the second siege of the ancient Aragon city by the generals of Napoleon is a work of art, one that stirs the blood with admiration of the indomitable valor of the Spaniards; yet is it not also a document of special pleading for the world's peace? "Saragossa" ranks with Tolstoi's "War and Peace," and Zola's "La Débâcle," among great dramatic war novels. Herein also are at least three of the best drawn characters in international literature,—the masterly miser Candiola, his beautiful daughter Mariquilla, and that valiant and lovable citizen, Don José de Montoria. Manuela Sancho appears as a minor character, the "Maid of Saragossa" whose bravery is honored in a street named for her in her native city. She is a type of the daughters of Saragossa, for more than one of them, in the exaltation of the terrific struggle against the French, extended their patriotic services beyond those gentle ones usual to women in besieged cities, rallying soldiers and serving guns.

The events leading up to the siege of Saragossa are a part of the history of Spain in her struggle for continued national existence against the encroachments of Napoleon. Although it was national warfare, each province and strong provincial city made its own individual stand. Therefore words like those quoted on a preceding page from Napier's "Peninsular War" have an especial significance. The English general's words are doubly striking when read in connection with these of Galdós, "Men of little sense—without any on occasion—the Spanish to-day, as ever, make a thousand blunders, stumbling and rising in the struggle of their inborn vices with the eminent qualities which they still preserve. Providence holds in store for this people great advancings and abasements, great terrors and surprises, apparent deaths and mighty resurrections."

The threatened loss of her nationality was the terror which hung above Spain in the dark days of 1808. Her court was rent with factions; her royal house was divided against itself. Three parties had made dissension in the palace and among the people. One was the party of the King Carlos IV; one was that of his son, Prince Ferdinand; the third, of a most insidious power, was that of Don Manuel Godoy, whose ambitions and pretensions were supported by the queen. A corrupt court and an intriguing priesthood had promoted the troubles of Spain, causing king, prince, and favorite, each and separately, to make application to Napoleon for protection, and for the support of their various plans. The imbecility of the Spanish Bourbons at such an hour in European history was inevitable in its influence upon the Emperor of the French. His ambition grew with this new opportunity. Under the mask of operating with Spain against Portugal, Napoleon filled the Peninsula with French troops under generals like Junot and Moncey and Lannes. The Spanish king and prince were already in France, and practically in durance there, before the people realized the danger which was close upon their very existence as a nation. Popular insurrections at Toledo and Madrid followed immediately upon the appointment of Murat to a place in the government. The abdication at Bayonne of Carlos IV in favor of Napoleon, and the appointment of Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain, with the consent of ninety-one Spanish nobles, roused the Peninsula into a spontaneous and determined revolt. War against the French invaders was already raging in every province when King Joseph was crowned at Madrid on July 24. Thus in the virtue of her people began the long struggle of Spain for independence as a nation,—a struggle which was destined not to end until England came to her aid, and the Duke of Wellington delivered her from the power of France.

Saragossa, although situated in an admirably strong strategic position between the French border and the Spanish capital, was not occupied by the French in force at first, because the character of the Saragossans made it unwise to attempt to place a small body of foreign troops among them, and Saragossa—Zaragoza in Spanish—had no citadel. Napoleon himself could not foresee what a tremendous defence would be made, nor that fifty thousand dead would yet speak from this city of Aragon to arouse the courage of Spain. The first siege lasted from mid-June to mid-August, and was raised not only because the defence was fierce, desperate, and unflinchingly prolonged, and because the besieging army under Verdier was greatly weakened, but also because disasters to the French arms elsewhere made its abandonment imperative. After the invaders had been victorious at Tudela, Aragon was open to them. Forty thousand French troops—General Napier says thirty-five thousand—besieged the capital of the province whither a large part of the army of Castaños and many other fugitives had fled after their defeat.

The second and successful siege, with whose events this novel is occupied, continued for two long and fatal months, from the twentieth of December of that same dark year until the twenty-first of the following February. During this time of horror and of bravery, there were also laughter and song, dancing and love-making in Saragossa, and such an idyl of tenderness and passion as this story of Augustine and Mariquilla which is now offered to readers of English.

M. C. S.

SARAGOSSA

A STORY OF SPANISH VALOR

CHAPTER I

It was, I believe, the evening of the eighteenth when we saw Saragossa in the distance. As we entered by the Puerta de Sancho we heard the clock in the Torre Nueva strike ten. We were in an extremely pitiful condition as to food and clothing. The long journey we had made from Lerma through Salas de los Infantes, Cervera, Agreda, Tarazona, and Borja, climbing mountains, fording rivers, making short cuts until we arrived at the high road of Gallur and Alagon, had left us quite used up, worn out, and ill with fatigue. In spite of all, the joy of being free sweetened our pain.

We were four who had succeeded in escaping between Lerma and Cogollos by freeing our innocent hands from the rope that bound together so many patriots. On the day of the escape, we could count among the four of us a total capital of eleven reales; but after three days of marching, when we entered the metropolis of Aragon and balanced our mutual cash, our common wealth was found to be a sum total of thirty-one cuartos. We bought some bread at a little place next the Orphanage, and divided it among us.

Don Roque, who was one of the members of our expedition, had good connections in Saragossa, but this was not an hour to present ourselves to any one. We postponed until the next day this matter of looking up friends; and as we could not go to an inn, we wandered about the city, looking for a shelter where we could pass the night. The market scarcely seemed to offer exactly the comfort and quiet which our tired bodies needed. We visited the leaning tower, and although one of my companions suggested that we should take refuge in the plaza, I thought that we should be quite the same as if altogether in the open country. The place served us, none the less, for temporary refuge and rest, and also as a refectory, where we despatched happily our supper of dry bread, glancing now and then at the great upright mass of the tower, whose inclination made it seem like a giant leaning to see who was running about his feet. By the light of the moon that brick sentinel projected against the sky its huddled and shapeless form, unable to hold itself erect. The clouds were drifting across its top, and the spectator looking from below trembled with dread, imagining that the clouds were quiet and that the tower was moving down upon him. This grotesque structure, under whose feet the overburdened soil has settled, seems to be forever falling, yet never falls.

We passed through the avenue of the Coso again from this house of giants as far as the Seminary. We went through two streets, the Calle Quemada and the Calle del Rincon, both in ruins, as far as the little plaza of San Miguel. From here, passing from alley to alley, and blindly crossing narrow and irregular streets, we found ourselves beside the ruins of the monastery of Santa Engracia, which was blown up by the French at the raising of the first siege. The four of us exclaimed at once in a way to show that we all thought the same thing. Here we had found a shelter, and in some cosy corner under this roof we would pass the night!

The front wall was still standing with its arch of marble, decorated with innumerable figures of saints which seemed undisturbed and tranquil as if they knew nothing of the catastrophe. In the interior we saw broken arches and enormous columns struggling erect from the debris, presenting themselves, darkling and deformed, against the clear light flooding the enclosure, looking like fantastic creatures generated by a delirious imagination. We could see decorations, cornices, spaces, labyrinths, caverns, and a thousand other fanciful architectural designs produced by the ruins in their falling. There were even small rooms opened in the spaces of the walls with an art like that of Nature in forming grottos. The fragments of the altar-piece that had rotted because of the humidity showed through the remains of the vaulting where still hung the chains which had suspended the lamps. Early grasses grew between the cracks of the wood and stone. Among all this destruction there were certain things wholly intact, as some of the pipes of the organ and the grating of the confessional. The roof was one with the floor, and the tower mingled its fragments with those of the tombs below. When we looked upon such a conglomeration of tombs, such a myriad of fragments that had fallen without losing entirely their original form, and such masses of bricks and plaster crumbled like things made of sugar, we could almost believe that the ruins of the building had not yet settled into their final position. The shapeless structure appeared to be palpitating yet from the shock of the explosion.

Don Roque told us that beneath this church there was another one where they worshipped the relics of the holy martyrs of Saragossa; but the entrance to this subterranean sanctuary was closed up. Profound silence reigned, but, penetrating further, we heard human voices proceeding from those mysterious deeps. The first impression produced upon us by hearing these voices was as if the spirits of the famous chroniclers who wrote of the Christian martyrs, and of the patriots sleeping in dust below, were crying out upon us for disturbing their slumbers.

On the instant, in the glare of a flame which illuminated part of the scene, we distinguished a group of persons sheltering themselves, huddling together in a space between two of the fallen columns. They were Saragossa beggars, who had made a palatial shelter for themselves in that place, seeking protection from the rain with beams of wood and with their rags. We also made ourselves as comfortable as might be in another place, and covering ourselves with a blanket and a half, prepared to go to sleep.

Don Roque said to me, "I know Don José de Montoria, one of the richest citizens of Saragossa. We were both born in Mequinenza. We went to school together, and we played our games together on the hills of Corregidor. It is thirty years since I have seen him, but I believe that he will receive us well. Like every good Aragonese, he is all heart. We will find him, fellows; we will see Don José de Montoria. I am of his blood on the maternal side. We will present ourselves to him. We will say—"

But Don Roque was asleep, and I also slept.

CHAPTER II

The place where we lay down did not by any blandishments invite us to sleep luxuriously until morning, and certainly a mattress of broken stones is conducive to early rising. We wakened with the dawn; and as we had to spend no time in making a toilet before a dressing-table, we were soon ready to go out and pay our visits.

The idea came to all four of us at once that it would be a good thing to have some breakfast, but at the same time we agreed unanimously that it was impossible, as we had not the wherewithal to carry out such a high purpose.

"Don't be discouraged, boys," said Don Roque; "because very soon I will take you all to the house of my friend, who will take good care of us."

While he was saying this, we saw emerging from our inn two men and a woman, of those who had been our companions there. They looked as if they were accustomed to sleep in the place. One of them was a cripple, a poor unfortunate who ended at his knees, and put himself in motion by the aid of crutches, swinging himself forward on them as if by oars. He was an old man, with a jovial face well burned by the sun. As he saluted us very pleasantly in passing, wishing us a good-morning, Don Roque asked him in what part of the city was the house of Don José de Montoria. The cripple replied:—

"Don José de Montoria? I know him as if he were the apple of my eye. It is twenty years since he used to live in the Calle de la Albarderia. Afterwards he moved to another street, the Calle de la Parra, then,—but you are strangers, I see."

"Yes, my good friend, we are strangers; and we have come to enlist with the troops of this brave city."

"Then you were not here on the fourth of August?"

"No, my friend," I answered him; "we were not present at that great feat of arms."

"You did not see the battle of Eras?" asked the beggar, sitting down in front of us.

"We did not have that felicity either."

"Well, Don José Montoria was there. He was one of those who pulled the cannon into place for firing. Well, well, I see that you haven't seen a thing. From what part of the world do you come?"

"From Madrid," said Don Roque. "So you are not able to tell me where my dear friend Don José lives?"

"Well, I should think I can, man, well, I should think I can!" answered the cripple, taking from his pocket a crust of dry bread for his breakfast. "From the Calle de la Parra he moved to the Calle de Enmedio. You know that all those houses were blown up. There was Stephen Lopez, a soldier of the Tenth Company of the First Regiment of Aragon Volunteers, and he alone, with forty men, himself forced the French to retire."

"That must have been a fine thing to see!" said Don Roque.

"Oh, if you did not see the fourth of August you have seen nothing," continued the beggar. "I myself also saw the fourth of June, because I was crawling along the Calle de la Paja, and I saw the woman who fired off the big cannon."

"We have already heard of the heroism of that noble woman," said Don Roque; "but if you could make up your mind to tell us—"

"Oh, of course. Don José de Montoria is a great friend of the merchant Don Andrés Guspide, who on the fourth of August was firing from near the narrow street of the Torre del Pino. Hand-grenades and bullets were raining all about him, and my Don Andrés stood like a rock. More than a hundred dead lay about him, and he alone killed fifty of the French."

"Great man, this one! And he is a friend of my friend?"

"Yes, señor," replied the cripple; "and they are two of the best gentlemen in all Saragossa, and they give me a little something every Saturday. For you must know that I am Pepe Pallejas, and they call me Sursum Corda, as twenty-four years ago I was sacristan of the Church of Jesus, and I used to sing——But this is not coming to the point, and I was going on to say I am Sursum Corda, and perhaps you have heard about me in Madrid?"

"Yes," said Don Roque, yielding to his generous impulses; "it seems to me that I have heard the Señor Sursum Corda mentioned there, haven't we, boys?"

"Well, it's likely, and you must know that before the siege I used to beg at the door of this monastery of Santa Engracia, which was blown up by the bandits on the thirteenth of August. I beg now at the Puerta de Jerusalem, at the Jerusalem Gate—where you will be able to find me whenever you like. Well, as I was saying, on the fourth of August I was here, and I saw Francisco Quilez come out of the church, first sergeant of the First Company of fusileers, who, you must already know, with thirty-five men, cast out the bandits from the Convent of the Incarnation. I see that you look surprised—yes! Well, in the orchard of the convent at the back is where the Lieutenant Don Miguel Gila died. There are at the least two hundred bodies in that orchard; and there Don Felipe San Clement, a merchant of Saragossa, broke both his legs. Indeed, if Don Miguel Salamero had not been present—don't you know anything about that?"

"No, sir, my friend," said Don Roque; "we don't know anything about it, and although we have the greatest pleasure in your telling us of so many wonders, what most concerns us now is to find out where we are going to find my old friend Don José. We four are suffering from a disease called hunger, which cannot be cured by listening to the recounting of sublimities."

"Well, now, in a minute I will take you where you want to go," replied Sursum Corda, offering us a part of his crust; "but first I will tell you something, and that is that if Don Mariano Cereso had not defended the Castle Aljaferia as he did defend it, nothing would have been done in the Portillo quarter. And this man, by the grace of God, this man was Don Mariano Cereso! During the attack of the fourth of August, he used to walk in the streets with his sword in its antique sheath. It would terrify you to see him! This Santa Engracia quarter seemed like a furnace, señors. The bombs and the hand-grenades rained down; but the patriots did not mind them any more than so many drops of water. A good part of the convent fell down; the houses trembled, and all this that we see seemed no more than a barrier of playing cards, by the way it caught fire and crumbled away. Fire in the windows, fire at the top, fire at the base! The French fell like flies, fell like flies, gentlemen. And as for the Saragossans, life and death were all the same to them. Don Antonio Quadros went through there, and when he looked at the French batteries, he was in a state to swallow them whole. The bandits had sixty cannon vomiting fire against the walls. You did not see it? Well, I saw it, and the pieces of brick of the wall and the earth of the parapets scattered like crumbs of a loaf. But the dead served as a barricade,—the dead on top, the dead below, a perfect mountain of the dead. Don Antonio's eyes shot flame. The boys fired without stopping. Their souls were all made of bullets! Didn't you see it? Well, I did, and the French batteries were all cleaned out of gunners. When he saw one of the enemy's cannon was without men, the commander shouted, 'An epaulet to the man who spikes that cannon!' Pepillo Ruiz started and walked up to it as if he was promenading in a garden among butterflies and may flowers, only here the butterflies were bullets, and the flowers were bombs. Pepillo Ruiz spiked the cannon, and came back laughing. And now another part of the convent was falling down. Whoever was smashed by it, remained smashed! Don Antonio Quadros said that that did not bother him any, and seeing that the enemy's batteries had opened a large hole in the wall, went to stuff it full of bags of wool. Then a bullet struck him in the head. They brought him here; he said that was nothing either, and died."

"Oh," said Don Roque, impatiently, "we are sufficiently astonished, Señor Sursum Corda, and the most pure patriotism inflames us to hear you relate such great deeds; but if you could only make up your mind to tell us where—"

"Good Lord!" exclaimed the beggar, "who said I wouldn't tell you? If there is any one thing I know better than another, and have seen most of anything in my life, it is the house of Don José de Montoria. It is near the San Pablo. Oh, you did not see the hospital? Well, I saw it. There the bombs fell like hail; the sick, seeing that the roofs were falling down, threw themselves from the windows into the street. Others crawled or rolled down the stairs. The partitions burned, and you could hear wailings. The lunatics bellowed in their cages like mad beasts. Many of them escaped and went through the cloisters, laughing and dancing with a thousand fantastic gestures that were frightful to see. They came out into the street as on carnival day; and one climbed the cross in the Coso, where he began a harangue, saying that he was the River Ebro, and he would run over the city and put out the fire. The women ran to care for the sick, who were all carried off to Del Pilar and to La Seo. You could not get through the streets. Signals were given from the Torre Nueva whenever a bomb was coming, but the uproar of the people prevented their hearing the bells. The French advanced by this street of Santa Engracia. They took possession of the hospital and of the Convent of San Francisco. The fighting began in the quarter of the Coso, and in the streets thereabouts. Don Santiago Sas, Don Mariano Cereso, Don Lorenzo Calvo, Don Marcos Simono, Renovales, Martin Albantos, Vicente Codé, Don Vicente Marraco, and others fearlessly attacked the French. And behind a barricade made by herself, awaited them, furious, gun in hand, the Countess de Bureta."

"What a woman, a countess, making barricades and firing guns!" cried Don Roque, enthusiastically.

"You did not know it?" he returned. "Well, where do you live? The Señora Maria Consolacion Azlor y Villavicencio, who lives near the Ecce Homo, also walked through the streets, saying words of good cheer to those who were discouraged. Afterwards she made them close the entrance to the street, and herself took the lead of a party of peasants, crying, 'Here we will all die before we will let them pass!'"

"Oh, what sublime heroism!" exclaimed Don Roque, yawning with hunger. "How much I should enjoy hearing those tales of heroism told on a full stomach! So you say that the house of Don José is to be found—"

"It is just around there," said the cripple. "You know already that the French had entangled themselves and stuck fast near the Arch of Cineja. Holy Virgin del Pilar, but that was where they killed off the French! The rest of the day was nothing beside it. In the Calle de la Parra and the Square of Estrevedes, in the Calles de los Urreas, Santa Fe, and Del Azoque, the peasants cut the French to pieces. The cannonading and the roar of that day still ring in my ears. The French burned down the houses that they could not defend, and the Saragossans did the same. There was firing on every side. Men, women, and children,—it was enough to have two hands to fight against the enemy. And you did not see it? You really have seen nothing at all! Well, as I was saying, Palafox came out of Saragossa towards—"

"That's enough, my friend," said Don Roque, losing patience. "We are charmed with your conversation; but if you can take us this instant to the house of my friend, or direct us so that we can find it, we will go along."

"In a minute, gentlemen. Don't hurry," replied Sursum Corda, starting off in advance with all the agility of which his crutches were capable. "Let us go there. Let us go, with all my heart. Do you see this house? Well, here lives Antonio Laste, first sergeant of the Fourth Company of Regulars, and you must know he saved from the treasury sixteen thousand, four hundred pesos, and took from the French the candles that they stole from the church."

"Go on ahead, go on, friend," I said, seeing that this indefatigable talker intended stopping to give all the details of the heroism of Antonio Laste.

"We shall arrive soon," replied Sursum; "on the morning of the first of July I was going past here, when I encountered Hilario Lafuente, first corporal of fusileers of the Parish of Sas, and he said to me, 'To-day they are going to attack the Portillo;' then I went to see what there was to see and—"

"We know all about this, already," said Don Roque. "Let us go on fast. We can talk afterwards."

"This house which you see here burned down and in ruins," continued the cripple, going around a corner, "is the one that burned on the fourth, when Don Francisco Ipas, sub-lieutenant of the Second Company of fusileers of the parish of San Pablo, stood here with a cannon, and these—"

"We know the rest, my good man," said Don Roque. "Forward, march! and the faster the better."

"But much better was what Codé did, the farmer of the parish of La Magdalena, with the cannon of the Calle de la Parra," persisted the beggar, stopping once more. "When he was going to fire the gun, the French surrounded him, everybody ran away; but Codé got under the cannon, and the French passed by without seeing him. Afterwards, helped by an old woman who brought him some rope, he pulled that big piece of artillery as far as the entrance of the street. Come, I will show you!"

"No, no, we don't want to see a thing. Go along ahead."

We kept at him, and closed our ears to his tales with so much obstinacy, that at last, although very slowly, he took us through the Coso and the Market to the Calle de la Hilarza, the street wherein stood the house of the person whom we were seeking.

CHAPTER III

But, alas! Don José de Montoria was not in his house, and we found it necessary to go a little way out of the city to look for him. Two of my companions, tired of so much going and coming, left us with the idea of trying on their own account for some military or civil situation. Don Roque and myself therefore started with less embarrassment on our trip to the country house, the "torre," of our friend. (They call country houses torres at Saragossa.) This was situated to the westward of the town; the place bordered on the Muela road, and was at a short distance from the Bernardona road. Such a long tramp was not at all the right thing for our tired bodies, but necessity obliged us to take this inopportune exercise. We were very well treated when we at last met the longed-for Saragossan and became the objects of his cordial hospitality.

Montoria was occupied, when we arrived, in cutting down olive-trees on his place, a proceeding demanded by the military exigencies of the plan of defence established by the officers in the field, because of the possibility of a second siege. And it was not our friend alone who destroyed with his own hands this heritage of his hacienda. All the proprietors of the surrounding places occupied themselves with the same task, and they directed the work of devastation with as much coolness as if they were watering or replanting, or busy with the grape harvest.

Montoria said to us, "In the first siege I cut down my trees on my property on the other side of the Huerva; but this second siege that is being prepared for us is going to be much more terrible, to judge by the great number of troops that the French are sending."

We told him the story of the surrender of Madrid, and as this seemed to depress him very much, we praised the deeds done at Saragossa between the fifteenth of June and the fourteenth of August with all sorts of grandiloquent phrases. Shrugging his shoulders, Don José said, "All that was possible to be done was done."

At this point Don Roque began to make personal eulogies of me, both military and civil, and he overdrew the picture so much that he made me blush, particularly as some of his announcements were stupendous lies. He said, first, that I belonged to one of the highest families of lower Andalusia, and that I was present as one of the marine guards at the glorious battle of Trafalgar. He said that the junta had made me a great offer of a concession in Peru, and that during the siege of Madrid I had performed prodigies of valor at the Puerta de los Pozos, my courage being so great that the French found it convenient after the capitulation to rid themselves of such a fearful foe, sending me with other Spanish patriots to France. He added that my ingenuity had made possible the escape of us four companions who had taken refuge in Saragossa, and ended his panegyric by assuring Don José that for my personal qualities also I deserved distinguished consideration.

Meantime Montoria surveyed me from head to foot, and if he observed the bad cut of my clothes and their many rents, he must also have seen that they were of the kind used by a man of quality, revealing his fine, courtly, and aristocratic origin by the multiplicity of their imperfections. After he had looked me over, he said to me, "Porra! I shall not be able to enlist you in the third rank of the company of fusileers of Don Santiago Sas, of which I am captain, but you can enter the corps where my son is; and if you don't wish to, you must leave Saragossa, because here we have no use for lazy men. And as for you, Don Roque, my friend, since you are not able to carry a gun, porra! we will make you one of the attendants in the army hospital."

When Don Roque had heard all this, he managed to express, by means of rhetorical circumlocution and graceful ellipses, the great necessity of a piece of meat for each one of us, and a couple of loaves of bread apiece. Then we saw the great Montoria scowl, looking at us so severely that he made us tremble, fearing that we were to be sent away for daring to ask for something to eat. We murmured timid excuses, and then our protector, very red in the face, spoke as follows,—

"Is it possible that you are hungry? Porra! Go to the devil with a hundred thousand porras! Why haven't you said so before? Do I look like a man capable of letting my friends go hungry? porra! You must know that I always have a dozen hams hanging from the beams of my storeroom, and I have twenty casks of Rioja, yes, sir. And you are hungry, and you did not tell me so to my face without any round-about fuss? That is an offence to a man like me. There, boys, go in and order them to cook four pounds of beef and six dozen eggs, and to kill six pullets, and bring from the wine-cellar seven jugs of wine. I want my breakfast, too. Let the neighbors come, the workmen, and my sons too, if they are anywhere about. And you, gentlemen, be prepared to punish it all with my compliments, porra! You will eat what there is without thanking me. We do not use compliments here. You, Señor Don Roque, and you, Señor Don Araceli, are in your own house to-day, porra! to-morrow and always, porra! Don José de Montoria is a true friend to his friends. All that he has, all that he owns, belongs to his friends."

The brusque hospitality of the worthy man astonished us. As he did not receive our compliments with good grace, we decided to leave aside the artificial formalities of the court, and, assuredly, the most primitive fashions reigned during the breakfast.

"Why don't you eat more?" Don José asked me. "It seems to me that you are one of these compliment-makers who expect to live on compliments. I don't like that sort of thing, my young gentleman. I find it very trying, and I am going to beat you with a stick to make you eat. There, despatch this glass of wine! Did you find any better at court? Not by a long way. Come now, drink, porra! or we shall come to blows." All this made me eat and drink more than was good for me; but it was necessary to respond to the generous cordiality of Montoria, and too it was not worth while to lose his good will for one indigestion more or less.

After the breakfast, the work of cutting down trees was continued, and the rich farmer directed it as if it were a festival performance.

"We will see," he said, "if this time they will dare to attack the Castle. Have you not seen the works that we have built? They will find it a very complicated task to take them. I have just given two hundred bales of wool, a mere nothing, and I would give my last crust."

When we returned to the town, Montoria took us to look over the defensive works that were built in the western part of the city. There was in the Portillo gate a large semi-circular battery that joined the walls of the Convent de los Fecetas with those of the Augustine friars' convent. From this building to the Convent of the Trinitarios extended a straight wall, with battlements along all its length and with a good pathway in the centre. This was protected by a deep moat that reached to the famous field of Las Eras, scene of the heroic deeds of the fifteenth of June. Further north, towards the Puerta Sancho, which protected the breastworks of the Ebro, the fortifications continued, terminated by a tower. All these works, constructed in haste, though intelligently, were not distinguished by their solidity. Any one of the enemy's generals, ignorant of the events of the first siege, and of the immense moral force of the Saragossans, would have laughed at those piles of earth as fortifications offering material for an easy siege. But God ordains that somebody must escape once in a while the physical laws that rule war. Saragossa, compared with Amberes, Dantzig, Metz, Sebastopol, Cartagena, Gibraltar, and other famous strongholds, was like a fortress made of cardboard.

And yet—!

CHAPTER IV

Before we left his house, Montoria became vexed at Don Roque and me because we would not take the money that he offered us for our first expenses in the city; then were repeated the blows on the table, and the rains of "porras" and other words that I will not repeat. But at last we arrived at an arrangement honorable for both parties.

And now I begin to think I am saying too much about this singular man before I describe his personality. Don José was a man of about sixty years of age, strong, high-colored, of over-flowing health, well placed in the world, contented with himself, fulfilling his destiny with a quiet conscience. His was an excess of patriotic virtues and of exemplary customs, if there can be an excess of such things. He was lacking in education, that is to say, in the finer and more distinguished training which in that time some of the sons of such families as his were beginning to receive. Don José was not acquainted with the superficialities of etiquette, and by character and custom was opposed to the amenities and the white lies which are a part of the foundations of courtesy. As he always wore his heart upon his sleeve, he wished everybody to do the same, and his savage goodness tolerated none of the frequent evasions of polite conversation. In angry moments he was impetuous, and let himself be carried to violent extremes, of which he always repented later. He never dissimulated, and had the great Christian virtues in a crude form and without polish, like a massive piece of the most beautiful marble where the chisel has traced no lines. It was necessary to know him to understand him, making allowances for his eccentricities, although to be sure he should scarcely be called eccentric, when he was so much like the majority of the men of his province.

His aim was never to hide what he felt; and if this occasionally caused him some trouble in the course of life in regard to questions of little moment, it was a quality which always proved an inestimable treasure in any grave matter, because, with his soul wholly on view, it was impossible to suspect any malice or any double dealing whatever. He readily pardoned offenders, obliged those who sought favors, and gave a large part of his numerous goods to those in need. He dressed neatly, ate abundantly, fasted with much scrupulousness during Lent, and loved the Virgin del Pilar with a fanatical sort of family affection.

His language was not, as we have shown, a model of elegance, and he himself confessed, as the greatest of his defects, the habit of saying porra every minute, and again, porra! without the slightest necessity. But more than once I heard him say, knowing his fault, he had not been able to correct it, for the porras came out of his mouth without his knowing it.

Don José had a wife and three children. She was Doña Leocadia Sarriera, by birth a Navarraise. The eldest son and the daughter were married, and had given grandchildren to the old man. The younger son was called Augustine, and was destined for the church, like his uncle of the same name, the Archdeacon of La Seo. I made the acquaintance of all these on the same day, and found them the best people in the world. I was treated with so much kindness that I was overwhelmed by their generosity. If they had known me since my birth, they could not have been more cordial. Their kindness, springing spontaneously from their generous hearts, touched my very soul; and as I have always had a faculty for letting people love me, I responded from the first with a very sincere affection.

"Señor Don Roque," I said that night to my friend as we were going to bed in the room which was given us, "I have never seen people like these. Is everybody in Aragon like this?"

"There are all kinds," he answered; "but men made of stuff like Don José and his family are plentiful in this land of Aragon."

Next day we occupied ourselves with my enlistment. The spirit of the men who were enlisting filled me with such enthusiasm that nothing seemed to me so noble as to follow glory, even afar off. Everybody knows that in those days Saragossa and the Saragossans had obtained a fabulous renown, that their heroism stimulated the imagination. Everything referring to the famous siege of the immortal city partook on the lips of narrators of the proportions and colors of the heroic age. With distance, the actions of the Saragossans acquired great dimensions. In England and Germany, where they were considered the Numantines of modern times, those half-naked peasants, with rope sandals on their feet and the bright Saragossan kerchief on their heads, became like figures of mythology.

"Surrender, and we will give you clothes," said the French in the first siege, admiring the constancy of a few poor countrymen dressed in rags.

"We do not know how to surrender," they made answer; "and our bodies shall be clothed with glory."

The fame of this and other phrases has gone round the world.

But let us go back to my enlistment. There was an obstacle in the way, Palafox's manifesto of the thirteenth of December, in which he ordered the expulsion of all strangers within a period of twenty-four hours. This measure was taken on account of the numbers of people who made trouble, and stirred up discord and disorder; but just at the time of my arrival another order was given out, calling for all the scattered soldiers of the Army of the Centre which had been dispersed at Tudela, and so I found a chance to enlist. Although I did not belong to that army, I had taken a place in the defence of Madrid and the battle of Bailen. These were reasons which, with the help of my protector Montoria, served me in entering the Saragossan forces. They gave me a place in the battalion of volunteers of the Peñas of San Pedro, which had been badly weakened in the first siege, and I received a uniform and a gun. I did not enter the lines, as my protector had said, in the company of the clergyman of Santiago Sas, because this valiant company was composed exclusively of residents of the parish of San Pablo. They did not want any young men in their battalion; for this reason Augustine Montoria himself, Don José's son, could not serve under the Sas banner, and enlisted like myself in the battalion of Las Peñas de San Pedro. Good luck bestowed upon me a good companion and an excellent friend.

From the day of my arrival I had heard talk of the approach of the French army; but it was not an incontrovertible fact until the twentieth. In the afternoon a division arrived at Zuera, on the left bank of the river, to threaten the suburb; another, commanded by Suchet, encamped on the right above San Lamberto. Marshal Moncey, who was the general in command, placed himself, with three divisions, near the canal, and on both sides of the Huerva. Forty thousand men besieged us.

It is known that the French, impatient to defeat us, began operations early on the twenty-first, attacking simultaneously and with great vigor Monte Torrero, and the Arrabal, the suburb on the left of the Ebro, points without whose possession it was impossible to dream of conquering the valiant city. But if we were obliged to abandon Torrero on account of the danger of its defence, Saragossa displayed in the suburb such audacious courage that that day is known as one of the most brilliant of all her brilliant history.

From four o'clock, from day-dawn, the battalion of Las Peñas de San Pedro guarded the front of the fortifications, from Santa Engracia to the Convent of Trinitarios, a line which seemed the least exposed in all the circuit of the city. Behind Santa Engracia was established the battery of Los Martires; from there ran the battlements of the wall as far as the Huerva bridge, defended by a barricade; it deflected afterwards towards the west, making an obtuse angle, and joining another redoubt built in the Torre del Pino; it continued in a straight line as far as the Convent of Trinitarios, and enclosed the Puerta del Carmen.

Whoever has seen Saragossa can well understand my imperfect description, for the ruins of Santa Engracia still remain, and in the Puerta del Carmen may still be seen, not far from the Glorieta, its ruined architrave and worm-eaten stones.

We were, as I have said, occupying the position described, and part of the soldiers had a bivouac in a neighboring orchard, next to the Carmen college.

Augustine Montoria and I were inseparable. His serene character, the affection he showed me from the moment we met, and the inexplicable concord in our thoughts, made his company very agreeable. He was a young man of beautiful figure, with large brilliant eyes and open brow, and an expression marked by a melancholy gravity. His heart, like that of his father, was filled by generosity which overflowed at the least impulse; but he was not likely to wound the feelings of a friend, because education had taken from him a great deal of the national brusqueness. Augustine entered manhood's estate with the security of a kind heart, firm and uncorrupted judgment, with a vigorous and healthy soul; the wide world only was the limit of his boundless goodness. These qualities were enriched by a brilliant imagination of sure and direct action, not like that of our modern geniuses, who most of the time do not know what they are about. Augustine's imagination was lofty and serene, worthy of his education in the great classics. Although with a lively inclination to poetry,—for Augustine was a poet,—he had learned theology, showing ability in this as in everything. The fathers at the Seminary, who were fond of the youth, looked upon him as a prodigy in the sciences, human and divine, and they congratulated themselves on seeing him with one foot at least over the threshold of the Church.

The Montoria family had many a pleasant anticipation of the day when Augustine would say his first mass, as a holy event that was fast approaching. Yet,—I am obliged to say it,—Augustine had no vocation for the Church. Neither his family nor the good fathers of the Seminary understood this, nor would they have understood it, even if the Holy Spirit had come down in person to tell them. This precocious theologian, this humanist who had Horace at the ends of his fingers, this dialectician who in the weekly discussions astonished the fathers with intellectual gymnastics of scholastic science, had no more vocation for the Church than Mozart for war, Raphael for mathematics, or Napoleon for dancing!

CHAPTER V

"Gabriel," he said to me one morning, "dost thou not feel like smashing something?"

"Augustine, dost thou not feel like smashing something?" I responded. It will be seen that we were "thee-ing" and "thou-ing" each other after three days' acquaintance.

"Not very much," he said, "suppose the first ball strikes us dead!"

"We shall die for our country, for Saragossa; and although posterity will not remember us, it is always an honor to fall on the field of battle for a cause like this."

"You are right," he answered sadly; "but it is a pity to die. We are young. Who knows for what we are destined in life?"

"Life is a trifle, and its importance is not worth thinking of."

"That is for the aged to say, but not us who are just beginning to live. Frankly, I do not wish to die in this terrible circle which the French have drawn about us. In the other siege, however, all the students of the Seminary took arms, and I confess that I was more valiant then than now. A peculiar zeal filled my blood, and I threw myself into places of greatest danger without fear of death. To-day does not find me the same. I am timid and afraid, and when a gun goes off, it makes me tremble."

"That is natural. Fear does not exist when one does not realize the danger. As far as that is concerned, they say the most valiant soldiers are the raw recruits."

"There is nothing in that. Indeed, Gabriel, I confess that the mere question of dying does not strike me as the greatest evil. But if I die, I am going to entrust you with a commission which I hope you will fulfil carefully like a good friend. Listen well to what I tell you. You see that tower that leans this way, as if to see what is passing here, or hear what we are saying?"

"The Torre Nueva? I see it. What charge are you going to give me for that lady?"

Day was breaking, and between the irregular-tiled roofs of the city, between the spires and minarets, the balconies and the cupolas of the churches, the Torre Nueva, old and unfinished, stood out distinctly.

"Listen well!" said Augustine. "If I am killed with the first shot on this day which is now dawning, when the battle is ended, and they break ranks, you must go there."

"To the Torre Nueva? Behold me! I arrive. I enter!"

"No, man, not enter. Listen, I will tell you. You arrive at the Plaza de San Felipe where the tower is. Look yonder! Do you see there near the great pile there is another tower, a little belfry? It seems like an acolyte before his lord the canon, which is the great tower."

"Yes, now I see the altar-boy. And if I am not mistaken, it is the belfry of San Felipe. And the damned thing is ringing this minute!"

"For mass, it is ringing for mass," said Augustine, with great emotion. "Do you not hear the cracked bell?"

"Very plainly. Let us know what I have to say to this Mr. Altar-boy who is ringing the cracked bell."

"No, no, it is nothing about him. You arrive at the Plaza of San Felipe. If you look at the belfry, you will see it is on a corner, and from this corner runs a narrow street. You enter there, and at the left you will find at a little distance another street, narrow and retired, called Anton Trillo. You follow this until you reach the back of the church. There you will see a house. You stop there—"

"And then I come back again?"

"No; close to the house there is a garden, with a little gateway painted the color of chocolate. You stop there."

"There I stop, and there I am!"

"No, old man. You will see—"

"You're whiter than your shirt, my Augustine. What do all these towers and stoppages signify?"

"They mean," continued my friend, with increasing embarrassment, "that in a little while you will be there. I desire you to go by night. All right, you arrive there. You stop. You wait a little, then you pass to the opposite sidewalk. You stretch your neck, and you will see a window over the wall of a garden. You pick up a pebble and throw it against the panes of glass lightly, to do little damage."

"And in a second she will come!"

"No; have patience. How do you know whether she will come or not come?"

"Well, let us suppose that she comes."

"Before I tell you another thing, you must understand that it is there the goodman Candiola lives. Do you know who Candiola is? Well, he is a citizen of Saragossa, a man who, as they say, has in his house a cellar full of money. He is avaricious and a usurer, and when he lends he guts his customers. He knows more about debtors, laws, and foreclosures than the whole court and council of Castile. Whoever goes to law with him is lost."

"From all this, the house with a gate painted chocolate color should be a magnificent palace."

"Nothing of the sort. You will see a wretched-looking house that seems about to fall down. I tell you that that goodman Candiola is a miser. He does not waste a real that he can help. And if you should see him about here you would give him alms. I will tell you another thing; he is never seen in Saragossa, and they call him goodman Candiola in mockery and contempt. His name is Don Jeronimo de Candiola; he is a native of Mallorca, if I am not mistaken."

"And this Candiola has a daughter?"

"Wait, man, how impatient you are! How do you know whether or not he has a daughter?" he answered, hiding his agitation by these evasions. "Well, as I was just going to tell you, Candiola is detested in the city for his great avarice and wicked heart. Many poor men has he put in prison after ruining them. Worse still, during the other siege he did not give a farthing for the war, nor take up arms, nor receive the wounded into his house, nor could they wring a peseta from him; and, as he said one day it was all one to him whether he gave to John or to Peter, he was on the point of being arrested."

"Well, he is a pretty piece, this man of the house of the garden of the chocolate-colored gate! And what if when the pebble strikes the window, goodman Candiola comes out with a cudgel and gives me a good beating for flirting with his daughter?"

"Don't be an idiot! Hush! You must know that as soon as it gets dark, Candiola shuts himself in an underground room, and there he stays counting his money until after midnight. Bah! He is well occupied now. The neighbors say they hear a muffled sound as if bags of coins were being tumbled out."

"Very well. I arrive there. I throw the stone. She comes, and I tell her—"

"You tell her that I am dead. No, don't be cruel; give her this amulet. No, tell her—no, it will be better to tell her nothing."

"Then I will give her the amulet?"

"By no means. Do not take the amulet to her."

"Now, now I understand. As soon as she comes I am to say good-night and march myself away singing, 'The Virgin del Pilar says—'"

"No, it is enough that she learns of my death. You must do as I tell you."

"But if you don't tell me anything."

"How hasty you are! Wait. Perhaps they'll not kill me to-day."

"True. And what a bother about nothing!"

"There is one thing which I have left out, Gabriel, and I shall tell it to you frankly. I have had many, very many great desires to confide to you this secret which weighs upon my breast. To whom could I tell it but to you, my friend? If I did not tell you, my heart would break like a pomegranate. I have been greatly afraid of telling it at night in my dreams. Because of this fear I cannot sleep. If my father, my mother, my brother, suspected it, they would kill me."

"And the fathers at the Seminary?"

"Don't name the fathers. You shall see. I will tell you what has befallen me. Do you know Father Rincon? Well, Father Rincon loves me very much, and every evening he used to make me come out for a walk by the river or towards Torrero or the Juslibol road. We would talk of theology and literature. Rincon is so enthusiastic about the great poet Horace that he used to say, 'It is a pity that that man wasn't a Christian so that he could be canonized.' He always carries with him a little Elzevir, which he loves more than the apple of his eye. When we were tired walking, he would sit down and read, and between the two of us we would make whatever comments occurred to us. Well, now I will tell you that Father Rincon was a kinsman of Doña Maria Rincon, the deceased wife of Candiola, who has a little property in the Monzalbarba road, with a wretched little country house, more like a hut than a house, but embowered in leafy trees, and with delightful views of the Ebro. One afternoon, after we had been reading the Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa, my teacher desired to visit his relative. We went there; we entered the garden, and Candiola was not there; but his daughter came to meet us, and Rincon said to her, 'Mariquilla, get some peaches for this young man, and get me a glass of you know what.'"

"And is Mariquilla nice?"

"Don't ask that. What if she is nice? You shall see. Father Rincon stroked his beard, and turning towards me said, 'Augustine, confess that in your lifetime you have never seen a more perfect face than this one. Look at those eyes of fire, that angel's mouth, and that bit of heaven for a brow.' I was trembling, and Mariquilla laughed, her face all rosy red. Then Rincon continued, saying, 'To you, who are a future father of the church, an example, a young pattern, without other passion than that for books, this divinity may show herself. Jove! admire here the admirable work of the Supreme Creator. Observe the expression of that face, the sweetness of those glances, the grace of that smile, the freshness, the delicacy of that complexion, the fineness of that skin, and confess that if heaven is beautiful, flowers, mountains, light, all the creations of God are nothing beside woman, the most perfect and finished work of the immortal hand.' Thus spoke my teacher, and I, mute and astonished, did not cease to contemplate that master work which was certainly better than the Æneid. I cannot tell you what I felt. Imagine the Ebro, that great river, which descends from its springs to give itself to the sea, all at once changing its channel and trying to run upward, returning to the Asturias. The same thing took place in my spirit. I myself was astonished that all my ideas had been changed from their wonted course and turned backward, cutting I know not what new channels. I assure you I was astonished, and I am yet. Looking at her without satisfying the longing of my soul or of my eyes, I said to myself, 'I love her in a wonderful way! How is it that until now I have never fallen in love?' I had never seen Mariquilla until that moment."

"And the peaches?"

"Mariquilla was as much disturbed before me as I before her. Father Rincon went to talk with the gardener about the encroachments that the French had made upon the property (that was soon after the first of September, a month after the raising of the first siege), and Mariquilla and I remained alone. Alone! My first impulse was to cut and run; and she, as she has told me, also felt the same. Neither she nor I ran. We stayed there. All at once I felt an extraordinary movement of my intellect. Breaking the silence, I began to talk with her. We talked about all sorts of indifferent things at first, but to me came thoughts beyond my usual understanding, surpassing the ordinary, and all, all, all, I uttered. Mariquilla answered me little, but her eyes were only more eloquent than when I was talking to her. At last Father Rincon called, and we marched away. I took leave of her, and in a low voice said that we would soon meet again. We returned to Saragossa. Yes, the street, the trees, the Ebro, the cupola of the Pilar, the belfries of Saragossa, the passers-by, the houses, the walls of the garden, the pavements, the sound of the wind, the dogs of the street, all seemed different to me, all, heaven and earth had been changed. My good teacher began to read again in Horace, and I said that Horace wasn't worth anything. He wished me to dine with him, and threatened me with the loss of his friendship. I praised Virgil with enthusiasm, and repeated the celebrated lines—

"'Est mollis flamma medullas
interea et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus.'"

"This was about the first of September," said I, "and since then?"

"From that day a new life began for me. It commenced with a burning disquiet that robbed me of sleep, making distasteful to me all that was not Mariquilla. My own father's house was hateful to me; and wandering about the environs of Saragossa without any companion, I sought peace for my spirit in solitude. I hated the college, all books and theology, and when October came, and they wished me to bind myself to live shut up in the holy house, I feigned illness in order to remain in my own. Thanks to the war that has made us all soldiers, I have been able to live free, to go at all hours, day and night, and see and talk with her frequently. I go to her house, make the signal agreed upon; she descends, opens her grated window; we talk long hours. People pass by, but I am muffled in my cloak even up to the eyes. With this and the darkness of night, no one recognizes me. As far as that is concerned, the boys in the street ask one another, 'Who is this admirer of the Candiola?' The other night, fearing discovery, we stopped our talks at the grating. Mariquilla came down, opened the garden gate, and I entered. No one could discover us, because Don Jeronimo, believing her to be in bed, retired to his room to count his money, and the old servant, the only one in the house, took us under her wing. Alone in the garden we sat down upon some stone steps and watched the brightness of the moonlight through the boughs of a great black poplar. In that majestic silence our souls contemplated the divine, and we experienced a deep sentiment, beyond words to express. Our felicity is so great that at times it is a living torment. If there are moments in which one might desire to be a hundred beings, there are also moments in which one might desire not to exist. We pass long hours there. The night before last we were there until daybreak. My teacher believed me to be with the guards, so I was not obliged to hasten. When morning first began to dawn, we separated. Over the top of the wall of the garden appeared the roofs of the neighboring houses and the top of the Torre Nueva. Pointing it out to me, Mariquilla said, 'When that tower stands straight, then only shall I cease to love you.'"

Augustine said no more. A cannon-shot sounded from the side of Mount Torrero, and we both turned in that direction.

CHAPTER VI

The French had assaulted with great vigor the fortified positions of the Torrero. Ten thousand men defended them, commanded by Don Philip Saint March and by O'Neill, both generals of great merit. The volunteers of Bourbon, Castile, Campo Segorbino, of Alicante, and of Soria, the sharp-shooters of Fernando VII, the Murcia regiment, and other bodies that I do not remember, answered the fire. From the redoubt of Los Martires we saw the beginning of the action, and the French columns which extended the length of the canal and flanked the Torrero. The fire of the fusileers continued for some time, but the struggle could not be prolonged very long, for that point could not be held without the occupation and fortification of others close by, like Buena Vista, Casa Blanca, and the reservoir of the canal. But none the less our troops did not retire except slowly and in the best order, retreating by the Puente de America, and carrying with them all the pieces of artillery except one, which had been dismantled by the enemy's fire. Amidst it all we heard a great noise which resounded at a great distance, and as the fire had almost ceased, we supposed that there was another battle outside the town.

"There is the Brigadier Don José Manso," said Augustine to me, "with the Swiss regiment of Aragon, which Don Mariano Walker commands, the volunteers of Huesca, of whom Don Pedro Villacampa is leader, the volunteers of Catalonia, and other valiant corps. And here are we, hand in hand! Along this side it appears to be about finished. The French will content themselves to-day with the conquest of Torrero."

"Either I am greatly deceived," I replied, "or they are now going to attack San José."

We all looked at the spot indicated, an edifice of huge dimensions which arose at our left, separated from the Puerta Quemada by the valley of the Huerva.

"There is Renovales," said Augustine,—"the brave Don Mariano Renovales, who distinguished himself so highly in the other siege, who now commands the troops of Orihuela and of Valencia."

In our position we were all prepared for an energetic defence. In the redoubt del Pilar, in the battery of Los Martires, in the tower of Del Pino, the same as in the Trinitarios, the artillery stood guard with burning matches, and the infantry waited behind the parapets in positions that seemed to us quite secure, ready to fire if any columns should attempt to assault us. It was cold, and most of us were shivering. One might almost have believed that it was from fear; but no, it was cold, and anybody who had said the contrary would have lied.

The movement which I had foreseen was not slow in taking place, and the convent of San José was attacked by a strong column of French infantry. It was an attempt at an attack, or, rather, a surprise. To all appearances, the enemy had a poor memory, and in three months they had forgotten that surprises were impossible in Saragossa. None the less they arrived within gunshot, and doubtless the graceless whelps believed that merely at sight of them our warriors would fall dead with fear. The poor men had just arrived from Silesia, and did not know what manner of warfare there was in Spain. And, furthermore, as they had gained the Torrero with so little difficulty, they believed themselves in train to swallow the world. They were advancing thus, as I have said, and San José was not making any demonstration. When they were nearly within gunshot of the loopholes and embrasures of that edifice, all at once these began vomiting such a terrible fire that my brave Frenchmen took to their heels with the utmost precipitation. Having had enough doubtless, they remained stretched out at full length; and upon seeing the outcome of their valor, those of us who were watching the onset from the battery of Los Martires broke out into exclamations, applause, cries, and huzzas. In this ferocious manner the soldier celebrates in battle the death of his fellow-creatures. He who instinctively feels compassion at the slaying of a rabbit on a hunt jumps for joy on seeing hundreds of robust men fall,—young, happy men who have never done harm to anybody.

Such was the attack upon San José, a futile attempt quickly punished. By that time, the French should have understood that if Torrero was abandoned, it was by calculation and not on account of weakness. Alone, embarrassed, deserted, without external defences, without forces or forts, Saragossa renewed again her earthworks, her defences of bricks, her bastions of mud heaped up the evening before to be again defended against the first soldiers, the first artillery, and the first engineers of the world. Pomp and show of a nation, formidable machines, enormous quantities of power, scientific preparation of materials, force, and intelligence in their greatest splendor, the invaders bring to attack the fortified place which appears to be guarded by boys. It is indeed almost like this: all succumb, all is reduced to powder in front of those walls which might be kicked over. But behind this movable defensive material is the well-tempered steel of Aragon souls, which cannot be broken or bent, nor cast into moulds, nor crushed, nor robbed of breath, and which surrounds the whole region like a barrier, indestructible by human means.

The whole district about the Torre Nueva was resounding with clamors and alarms. When to this district comes such mournful sounds, the city is in danger and needs all her sons. What is it? What is passing? What will happen?

"Matters must be going badly back of the town," said Augustine.

Meanwhile they attacked us yonder to occupy the attention of the crowd on this side of the river. The same thing was done in the first siege.

"Al arrabal, al arrabal!" was our cry. "To the suburb!"

And while we were saying this, the French sent us some balls to show us that we must stay where we were. Fortunately Saragossa had enough people within her walls, and could readily assist and support all parts.

My battalion abandoned the wall near Santa Engracia, and began to march towards the Coso. We did not know where we were being conducted, but it is probable that they were taking us to the suburb. The streets were full of people. Old men and women came out, impelled by curiosity, wishing to see at close quarters and near at hand the points of danger, since it was impossible for them to be placed in the same peril. The streets of San Gil, San Pedro, and La Cuchilleria, which lead to the bridge, were almost impassable. A great multitude of women were passing through them, all walking in the direction of the Pilar and La Seo.

The booming of the cannon excited rather than saddened the fervent people, and all were jostling one another to get nearest the front. In the Plaza de la Seo, I saw the cavalry which, with all these people, obstructed the bridge and obliged my battalion to look for an easier way to the other side. While we were passing before the porch of this sanctuary, we heard the sound of the prayers wherewith all the women of the city were imploring their holy patroness. The few men who wished to come into the temple were expelled by them.

We went to the bank of the river near San Juan de los Panetas, and took up our place on a mound, awaiting orders. In front and on the other side of the river, the field of battle was divided. We saw at the end nearest us the grove of Macanaz, over there and close to the bridge the little monastery of Altabas, yonder that of San Lazarus, and further on the Monastery of Jesus. Behind this scene, reflected in the waters of the great river, could be seen a horrible fire. There was an interminable turmoil, a hoarse clamor of the voices of cannon and of human yells. Dense clouds of smoke, renewed unceasingly, mounted confusedly to the heavens. All the breastworks of this position, which were constructed with bricks from neighboring brickyards, formed with the earth of the kilns a reddish mass. One might have believed that the ground had been mixed together with blood.

The French held their front towards the Barcelona road and the Juslibol, where more kilns and gardens lie at the left of the second of those two ways. Thence the Twelfth had furiously attacked our intrenchments, making their way by the Barcelona road, and challenging with impetuous intrepidity the cross-fires of San Lazarus and that of the place called El Marcelo. Their courage lay in striking audacious blows upon the batteries, and their tenacity produced a veritable hecatomb. They fell in great numbers; the ranks were broken, and, being instantly filled by others, they repeated the attack. At times they almost reached the parapets, and a thousand individual contests increased the horror of the scene. They went in advance of their leaders, brandishing their cutlasses, like desperate men who had made it a question of honor to die before a heap of bricks, and in that frightful destruction which wrenched the life from hundreds of men every minute, they disappeared, flung down upon mother earth, soldiers and sergeants, ensigns, captains, and colonels. It was a veritable struggle between two peoples; and while the fires of the first siege were burning in our hearts, the French came on thirsting for vengeance with all the passion of offended manhood, worse even than the passion of the warrior.

It was this untimely bloodthirstiness that lost them the day. They should have begun by demolishing our works with their artillery, observing the serenity which a siege demands, and not have engaged in those hand to hand combats before positions defended by a people like the one that they had met on the fifteenth of July, and the fourth of August. They ought to have repressed their feeling of contempt or scorn of the forces of the enemy,—a feeling that has always been the bad star of the French. It was the same in the war with Spain, as in the recent conflict with Prussia. They ought to have put into execution a calmly considered plan which would have produced in the besieged less of disgust than exaltation.

It is certain that if they carried with them the thought of their immortal general who always conquered as much by his admirable logic as by his cannons, they would have employed in the siege of Saragossa a little of the knowledge of the human heart, without which the pursuit of war, brutal war—it seems a lie!—is no more than cruel carnage.

Napoleon, with his extraordinary penetration, would have comprehended the Saragossan character, and would have abstained from attacking the unprotected columns, whose boast was of individual personal valor. This is a quality at all times difficult and dangerous to encounter, but above all in the presence of nations who fight for an ideal and not for an idol.

I will not go into further details of the dreadful battle of the twenty-first of December, the most glorious of the second siege of Aragon. As I did not see it at close quarters, and can only give the story of what was told me, I am moved not to be prolix, because there are so many and such interesting adventures which I must narrate. This makes a certain restraint necessary in the description of these sanguinary encounters. It is enough now to know that the French believed when night came that it was time to desist from their purpose, and they retired, leaving the plain covered with bodies of the dead. It was a good moment to follow them with cavalry; but after a short discussion the generals, I am told, decided not to put themselves in peril in a sally which could only be dangerous.

CHAPTER VII

Night came, and when a part of our troops fell back upon the city, all of the people hastened to the suburb to look at the field of battle from near at hand, and to gladden their imaginations by going over, one by one, the scenes of heroism. The animation, the movement, the clatter of noise in that part of the city were immense. At one side were groups of soldiers singing with feverish joy, on the other bands of merciful people carrying the wounded into their houses. Everywhere was hearty satisfaction, which showed itself in lively dialogues, question, joyous exclamations,—tears and laughter mingling with the rejoicings and enthusiasm.

It was, possibly, about nine o'clock before my battalion broke ranks; because, lacking quarters, we did not permit ourselves to leave the position, although there was no danger.

Augustine and I ran to Del Pilar, where a great crowd was rushing. We entered with difficulty. I was surprised to see how some persons jostled and pushed others in order to approach the chapel of the Virgin del Pilar. The prayers, the entreaties, and the demonstrations of rejoicing, taken all together, did not seem like the prayers of any class of the faithful. The prayers were like talks mingled with tears, groans, the most tender words, and other phrases of intimate and ingenuous affection, such as the Spanish people are wont to use with their saints that are most beloved. They fell upon their knees; they kissed the pavement; they grasped the iron gratings of the chapel; they addressed the holy image, calling it by names the most familiar and the most pathetic of the language. Those who could not—because of the crowd of people—come near her were talking to her from afar off, waving their arms wildly about. There were no sacristans to stop these wild ways and seemingly irreverent noises, because they were themselves children of this overflowing delirious devotion. The solemn silence of sacred places was not observed. All there were as if in their own house, as if the house of their cherished Virgin, their mother, their beloved, the queen of Saragossans, were also the house of her children, her servants and subjects.

Astonished at such fervor which the familiarity made more interesting, I fought my way to the grating, and saw the celebrated image. Who has not seen her, who does not know her, at least by the innumerable sculptures and portraits which have reproduced her endlessly from one end of the peninsula to the other?

She was at the left of the little altar which is in the depth of the chapel in a niche adorned with oriental luxury, a little statue, then as now. A great profusion of wax candles illuminated her, and precious stones covered her clothing and crown, darting dazzling reflections. Gold and diamonds gleamed in the circlet about her face, in the votive bracelets hung upon her breast, and in the rings on her hands. A living creature would have given way under so great a weight of treasure. Her garments, falling without folds, stretched straight from head to feet, and left visible only her hands. The child Jesus, sustained on her left side, revealed a bit of his brown little face between the brocade and the jewels. The face of the Virgin, burnished by time, is also brown. A gentle serenity possesses her, symbol of her eternal blessedness. She looks outward, her sweet gaze scanning constantly the devoted concourse. There shines in her eyes a ray of the clearest light, and this artificial gleam seems like the intensity and fixedness of the human gaze. It was difficult when I saw her for the first time to remain indifferent in the midst of that religious demonstration, and not to add a word to the concert of enthusiastic tongues talking with distinct voices to the Señora.

I was watching the statue, when Augustine pressed my arm, saying,—

"Look, there she is!"

"Who, the Virgin? I am looking at her now."

"No, man, Mariquilla! There, in front, close to the column."

I looked, but I saw only a great many people. We immediately quitted our place, looking about for a way to get through the multitude to the other side.

"She is not with Candiola," said Augustine, joyously. "She has come with the servant." And, saying this, he elbowed his way to one side and the other to make a road, punching backs and breasts, stepping on feet, matting down hats, and rumpling clothing. I followed behind him, causing equal destruction right and left. At last we came to the beautiful young girl, and it was really she, as I could see at once with my own eyes.

The enthusiastic passion of my good friend did not deceive me. Mariquilla was worth the trouble of being extravagantly, madly loved. Her pale brunette skin, her deeply black eyes, her perfect nose, her incomparable mouth, and her beautiful low forehead attracted attention to her at once. There was in her face as in her body a certain light and delicate voluptuousness. When she lowered her eyes, it seemed to me as if a sweet and lovely mist surrounded her. She smiled gravely; and when she approached us, her looks revealed timidity. Everything about her showed the reserved and circumspect passion of a woman of character, and she seemed to me little given to talking, lacking in coquetry, and poor in artifices. I afterwards had reason to confirm this, my early judgment. There shone in the face of Mariquilla a heavenly calm, and a certain security in herself. Different from most women, like few among them, that soul would not readily change, except for just and righteous reasons.

Other women of quick sensibility pour themselves out like wax before a small fire; but Mariquilla was made of the best metal, yielding only to a great fire, and when that came she was of necessity like molten metal that burns when it touches.

Besides her beauty, the elegance and even luxury of her dress attracted my attention. Having heard much of the avarice of Candiola, I supposed that he would have reduced his daughter to the utmost extremes of wretchedness in matters of dress. It was not so. As Montoria told me afterwards, the stingiest of the stingy not only permitted his daughter some expenses, but now and then made her some little present which he looked upon as the ne plus ultra of mundane splendor.

If Candiola was capable of letting some of his relations die of hunger, to his daughter he gave a phenomenal, a scandalous amount of pocket-money. Although he was a miser, he was a father; he loved his girl very much, finding in his generosity to her perhaps the only pleasure of his arid existence.

Somewhat more must be said in regard to this, but it will appear little by little in the course of the story. And now I must say that my friend had not yet spoken ten words to his adored Mariquilla, when a man approached us abruptly, and after having looked at the two for an instant with flashing eyes, spoke to the young girl, taking her by the arm, and saying, with a show of anger,—

"What is going on here? And you, good Guedita, what brought you to the Pilar at such an hour? Go to the house, go to the house immediately!"

And pushing before him mistress and maid, he carried them both off towards the door and the street, and the three disappeared from our sight.

It was Candiola. I remember him well, and the remembrance makes me tremble with horror. Further on you will know why. Since the brief scene in the church del Pilar, the image of that man has been engraven on my memory, and certainly his face was not one which would let itself be quickly forgotten. Old, bent, of miserable and sickly aspect, crooked and disagreeable, lean of face, with sunken cheeks, Candiola roused antipathy from the first moment. His nose, sharp and hooked like the beak of a bird, his chin, peaked also, the coarse hair of his grizzled eyebrows, the greenish eyes, the forehead furrowed as if by a ruler with deep parallel wrinkles, the cartilaginous ears, the yellowish skin, the metallic quality of the voice, the slovenly clothes, the insulting grimaces,—all his personality from head to foot, from his bag wig to the sole of his coarse shoe, produced at sight an unconquerable repulsion. It can readily be understood that he had not a single friend.

Candiola had no beard; his face, according to the fashion, was quite clean shaven, although the razor did not enter the field more than once a week. If Don Jeronimo had had a beard, it would have made him seem very much like a certain Venetian shop-keeper whom I afterwards came to know very well, travelling in the great world of books, and in whom I find certain traits of physiognomy that recalled the man who had so brusquely presented himself to us in the temple del Pilar.

"Did you see that miserable and ridiculous old man?" Augustine asked me when we were alone, looking towards the door where the three people had disappeared.

"He evidently doesn't like his daughter to have admirers."

"But I am sure that he did not see me talking with her. He has suspicions, nothing more. If he should pass from suspicion to certitude, Mariquilla and I would be lost. Did you see that look he threw us, the damned miser?—he is black from his soul to his Satanic hide."

"Bad sort of father-in-law to have."

"Bad enough," said Montoria, sadly. "He would be dear in exchange for a spoonful of verdigris! I am sure he will abuse her to-night; but fortunately he is not in the habit of
ill-treating her."

"And would not the Señor Candiola be pleased to see her married to the son of Don José de Montoria?" I asked.

"Are you mad? I see you talking to him of that! The wretched miser not only watches his daughter as if she were a bag of gold, and is not disposed to give her to anybody; but he has also an ancient and profound resentment against my father, because he freed some unhappy debtors from his fangs. I tell you, that if he discovers that his daughter loves me, he will keep her locked up in an iron chest in that cellar of his where he keeps his hard cash. I don't know what would happen if my father came to know of it. My flesh creeps just to think of it. The worst nightmare which disturbs my slumbers is that which shows me the moment when señor my father and señora my mother learn of my great love for Mariquilla. A son of Don José de Montoria enamoured of a daughter of Candiola, a young man who is formally destined to be a bishop,—a bishop, Gabriel! I am going to be a bishop, in the minds of my parents!"

Saying this, Augustine dashed his head against the sacred wall on which we were leaning.

"And do you think you will go on loving Mariquilla?"

"Don't ask me that!" he replied with energy. "Did you see her? If you saw her, how can you ask me if I will go on loving her? Her father and mine would rather see me dead than married to her. A bishop, Gabriel, they wish me to be a bishop! Think of being a bishop and loving Mariquilla for all of my life, here and hereafter, think of that and pity me!"

"But God opens unknown ways," I said.

"It is true, and sometimes my faith is boundless. Who knows what to-morrow will bring forth? God and the Virgin shall guide me henceforth."

"Are you devoted to this Virgin?"

"Yes. My mother places candles before the one we have in our house, that I may not fall in battle; and I say to her 'Sovereign Lady, may this offering also serve to remind you that I cannot cease from loving the daughter of Candiola.'"

We were in the nave upon which opened the chapel del Pilar. There is here an aperture in the wall, by which the devout, descending two or three steps, approach to kiss the pedestal which sustains the revered image. Augustine kissed the red marble. I kissed it also; then we left the church to go to our abode.

CHAPTER VIII

The following day, the twenty-second, Palafox said to the messenger who came under a flag of truce from Moncey to propose terms of surrender.

"I do not know how to surrender. After death, we will talk about that."

He followed this with a long and eloquent article which was published in the "Gazette;" but, according to general opinion, neither that document nor any of the proclamations which appeared with the signature of the commanding general were his own composition, but that of his friend, Basilio Boggiero, a man of great judgment, who was often seen in situations of danger, in the company of patriots and military leaders.

It is excusable to say that the army of the defence was very much inspired by the glorious action of the twenty-first. It was necessary to give expression to this ardor, to arrange a sortie, and so in effect it was done; but it happened that all wished to take part in this at the same time, and it was necessary to bury the dead. The sorties, arranged with prudence, were expedient; because the French, extending their lines around the city, were preparing for a regular siege, and had begun upon their outer works.

The district of Saragossa contained many people, which seemed to the common mind a great advantage, but which seemed to the intelligent a great danger, because of the immense destruction of human life which hunger would quickly bring,—hunger, that terrible general who is always the conqueror of overcrowded besieged cities. Because of this excess of people, the sorties were timely.

Renovales made one on the twenty-fourth with the troops of the fortress of San José, and cut down an olive grove which hid the works of the enemy.

Don John O'Neill made a sally from the suburb on the twenty-fifth with the volunteers of Aragon and Huesca, taking the chance of advantage from the enemy's lack of preparation, and killing many of the enemy's men.

On the thirty-first was made the most telling sally of all, striking in two distinct places and with considerable forces. During the early part of the day we had divided to perfection the works of the first French parallel, thrown up about three hundred and twenty yards from the walls. They were working actively, not resting by night, and we could see that they had signals of colored lanterns along the whole line. From time to time we discharged our guns, but we caused very little destruction. If troops were especially needed for a reconnoissance, they were despatched in less than no time.

The morning of the thirty-first arrived, and my battalion was charged to be ready to march upon orders from Renovales to attack the enemy in their centre, from the Torrero to the Muela road, while General Butron did the same by the Bernardona, that is to say, by the French left, sallying with sufficient forces of infantry and cavalry by the gates of Sancho and Portillo.

In order to distract the attention of the French, the general commanded that a battalion should be divided into skirmishing parties by the Tenerias, calling the attention of the enemy in that direction. In the mean time, with some of the soldiers of Olivenza and part of those of Valencia, we advanced by the Madrid road straight towards the French lines. The skirmishing parties were on both sides of the road when the enemy became aware of our presence, and now we were quicker than deer in doing up the first troop of French infantry which came to meet us. Behind a half-ruined country house some fortifications had been thrown up, and they began firing with good aim and much slaughter. For an instant we remained undecided, then some twenty men of us flanked the country house, while the rest followed the high road, pursuing the fugitives; but Renovales dashed forward and led us on, cutting down and bayoneting those who were defending the house. At the moment when we set foot within the first defence I noticed that my rank was thinned out. I saw some of my companions fall, breathing their last sighs. I looked to my right, fearing not to find my beloved friend among the living; but God had preserved him. Montoria and I were unharmed.

We could not spend much time in communicating to each other the satisfaction that we felt at finding ourselves still alive, because Renovales gave orders to follow on, in the direction of the line of intrenchments that the French were raising. We abandoned the high road and made a deflection, turning to the right with the intention of joining the volunteers of Huesca, who were attacking by the Muela road.

It may be understood by what I have related that the French did not expect that sortie, and that, taken completely unawares, they were holding there, besides the scanty force that kept the works, the engineers occupied in digging the trenches of the first parallel. We attacked them vigorously, turning upon them a murderous fire, improving the minutes well before the dreaded reinforcements should arrive. We took prisoners those whom we met without arms; we shot those who had them. We took the picks and spades,—all this with unequalled energy, animating one another with fiery words, exalted above all by the thought that they were watching us from the city.

In this attack we were fortunate, for while we were destroying those at work on the intrenchments, the troops who had made the sortie on the left were carrying on a successful struggle with the detachments which the enemy had in the Bernardona. While the volunteers of Huesca, the grenadiers of Palafox, and the Walloon guards defeated the French infantry, the squadron of Numancia and Olivenza cavalry cautiously emerged through the Puerta de Sancho, and making a wide détour occupied the Alagon road on one side, and the Muela on the other, exactly when the French drew back from the left to the centre, in need of greater auxiliary forces. Finding themselves in their element, our fiery cavalry sprang forward, destroying whatever was encountered in the way, and then the disgraced infantry, who were fleeing towards Torrero, fell, and were trampled underfoot.

In their dispersion, many fell beneath our bayonets, and if their desire to flee from the horses was great, great also was our anxiety to receive them in manner worthy of our swords. Some ran, throwing themselves into the trenches, not being able to jump over them; others surrendered at discretion, throwing down their arms; some defended themselves with heroism, permitting themselves to be slain before giving up; and at the last there failed not a few who, shutting themselves up in the brick kiln filled up with boughs and timber, set fire to it, preferring to die by roasting, rather than be taken prisoners.

All this which I have related in detail passed in a very short time, while the French commander, having seen enough in this hour, detached sufficient forces to hold back and punish our too audacious expedition. They beat the drum in Monte Torrero, and we saw a great force of cavalry coming against us; but we who were with Renovales had had our desire, the same as those with Butron, and were not obliged to wait for those horsemen who arrived at the end of the action; so we retired, giving them from a distance a "Good-day" of the most sharp and pointed phrases in our vocabulary. We still had time to make useless some pieces placed ready for employment on the following day. We took a multitude of tools and spades, and we destroyed in all haste whatever we could of their intrenchments without losing hold upon the dozens of prisoners, of which we had taken up a collection.

Juan Pirli, one of our companions in the battalion, was carrying home to Saragossa the steel helmet of an engineer for the admiration of the public, and also a frying-pan in which were still the remnants of a breakfast begun in camp before Saragossa and ended in the other world.

We had had nine killed and eight wounded in our battalion. When Augustine rejoined me near the Carmen gate, I noticed that one of his hands was stained with blood.

"Are you wounded?" I asked, examining the hand. "It is nothing more than a scratch."

"It is a scratch," he replied; "but it was not made by ball, lance, nor sabre, but by teeth, because when I gripped that Frenchman who lifted up his pick to brain me, the damned fellow set his teeth into my hand like a dog at bay."

When we entered the city, some by the Puerta del Carmen, some by the Portillo, all the pieces of the redoubts and forts of Mediodia poured a fire against the columns which were coming after us. The two sorties combined had done damage enough to the French. In addition to losing many men, a small part of their intrenchments had been made useless to them, and we had possessed ourselves of a considerable number of their tools. Besides this, the official engineers that Butron took with him on that daring venture had had time to examine the works of the besiegers, and measure them, and could give descriptions of them to the commanding general.

The rampart wall was invaded by the people. They had heard within the city the shooting of the skirmishes, and men and women, old people and children had run out to see what glorious action was bulletined on the plaza. We were received with exclamations of rejoicing, and from San José all the way to the Trinitarios, the long line of men and women, looking towards the battlefield, climbed upon the walls, and clapping their hands at our arrival, waving their handkerchiefs, presented a magnificent sight. After the cannon sounded, the redoubts together poured a fire upon the field that we had just abandoned, and their voices seemed a triumphal salvo, as it mingled with the huzzas and shouts of joy.

In the surrounding houses, the windows and balconies were filled with women, and the interest or curiosity of some of those in the streets was such that they went into the hurrying crowd in numbers, and up to the cannons, to congratulate the brave souls and soothe with kind words their nerves, high strung with the noise of artillery, which is unlike anything else in the world. It was necessary to command the multitude to depart from the fortress at the Portillo. The crowd in the Santa Engracia gave that place the aspect of a theatre, of a public festival. The fire of the cannon ceased at last, having no more need to protect our retreat, and the Castle Aljaferia alone sent an occasional shot against the works of the enemy.

In reward for our action on that day it was granted us on the next to wear a red ribbon on the breast by way of decoration; in justice to the hazards of that sortie, Father Boggiero told us, among other things uttered by the mouth of our general, "Yesterday you marked the last day of the year with an action worthy of yourselves. At the sound of the bugle your swords leaped from their scabbards and struck to the ground haughty heads humbled by your valor and patriotism. Numantia! Olivenza! I have now seen that your light horse will know how to preserve the honor of this army and the enthusiasm of these sacred walls! Wear these blood-stained swords that are the sign of your glory and the protection of your country."

CHAPTER IX

From that day, as memorable in the second siege as Eras in the first siege, began the great work in whose frenzy and exaltation both besiegers and besieged lived for the next month and a half. The sorties made during the first days of January were not of much importance. The French, having finished their first parallel, advanced in a zig-zag towards opening their second, and worked on it with so much activity that very soon we saw our two best positions in the Mediodia, San José and the redoubt del Pilar, threatened by siege batteries, every one with a dozen cannon. I must be excused for saying that we did not cease to make trouble for them, keeping up an incessant fire, and surprising them with sudden skirmishes, but this was all. Junot, who now took the place of Moncey, carried forward the work with great diligence.

Our battalion remained in the redoubt raised at the outer end of the Huerva bridge. The radius of our fire was considerable, crossing that of San José. The batteries of Los Martires, of the Botanical Garden, and of the Torre del Pino further within the city were less important than the two bodies holding the advanced positions, and served as auxiliaries.

Numbers of Saragossan volunteers were with us in the garrison, some of the soldiers of the guard, and various armed peasants who rather elected themselves to our corps than came into it by our choice. Eight cannons held the redoubt. Don Domingo Larripa was our leader. The artillery was commanded by Don Francisco Betbezé. As chief of engineers, we had the great Simono, high official of that distinguished service, and a man of such quality that he was able to quote himself as a model of all good military men, both in valor and in knowledge.

The redoubt was a work sufficiently strong for the purpose, and not lacking in any material requisite for defending itself. Over the entrance gate at the extremity of the bridge its constructors had placed a tablet with this inscription,—

The indestructible redoubt of our Lady of the Pillar. Saragossans! Die for the Virgin del Pilar or conquer!

We had our lodging within the redoubt, and though the place was not altogether bad, we went on poorly enough. The rations were provided by a committee recommended by the military administration; but this committee, to our sorrow, was not able to attend to us properly. By good fortune, and to the honor of that generous people, food was sent to us from the neighboring houses, the best of their provisions; and we were frequently visited by the charitable women, who since the battle of the thirty-first had taken it upon themselves to nurse and care for our poor wounded heroes.

I have not spoken of Pirli. Pirli was a boy from outside the city, a rustic about twenty years of age, and in such jolly condition that the most dangerous situations only moved him to a nervous and feverish joy. I never saw him sad. He met the French singing; and when the bullets whistled past his head, he capered about, making a thousand grotesque gestures, throwing up his hands and fairly dancing. When the fire was thick as hail, he called the bullets "hailstones." He called the cannon-balls "hot cakes;" he called the hand-grenades, "señoras;" and the powder he called "black flour," using other queer terms which I do not now remember. Pirli, although not at all a serious person, was a charming companion.

I do not know whether I have spoken of Tio Garces. He was a man of forty-five years, a native of Garrapinillos, very brave, bronzed, sawed-off looking, with limbs of steel; there was no one so active or so imperturbable under fire. He was somewhat talkative, and was a little inclined to be imprudent in his conversation, but with a certain wit in his garrulity. He had a small estate in the environs, and a very modest house; but he had levelled it with his own hands, and cut down his pear-trees, so that the enemy could not use them. I heard of a thousand of his valorous deeds in the first siege, and he wore a decoration on his right sleeve, the embroidered shield of distinction of the sixteenth of August. He dressed badly, and went almost half-naked, not because he lacked clothing, but because he had not time to put it on. He and others like him were without doubt those who inspired the celebrated phrase of which I have already made mention: "Their bodies were clothed only in glory." He slept without shelter, and ate less than an anchorite; indeed with two pieces of bread and a couple of bites of dried beef hard as hide, he had rations for the day.

He was a man somewhat given to meditation. When he saw the works of the second parallel, he said, looking at the French: "Thanks be to God, they are drawing near. Cuerno! Cuerno! these people are a trial to one's patience!"

"What a hurry you are in, uncle Garces," we said to him.

"I should say so. I want to plant my trees again before winter is over. And next month I want to build my little house again."

Truly Tio Garces should have worn a tablet on his brow like that on the bridge, reading, "An unconquerable man."

But who comes there, advancing slowly along the valley of the Huerva, leaning upon a thick stick and followed by a lively little dog which barked at all the passers-by, merely for mischief, without any intention of biting? It is the friar, Father Mateo del Busto, reader and qualifier of the order of Saint Francis de Paula, chaplain of the second company of Saragossa volunteers, an important man, who, in spite of his age, was seen during the first siege in all places of danger, succoring the wounded, helping the dying, carrying ammunition to the well, and cheering all by his gentle accents. Entering the redoubt, he showed us a large and heavy basket which he had toiled to bring here, and in which was food better than that of our ordinary table.

"These cakes," said he, placing it on the ground, and taking out one by one things which he named as he produced them, "have been given me in the house of that most excellent lady, the Countess de Bureta, and this in the house of Don Pedro Ric. Here you have a couple of slices of ham from my convent, which was for Father Loshollos, whose stomach is not strong, but he renounced this luxury and gave it to me to take to you. See, how does this bottle of wine look to you? How much would those foreign fellows yonder give for it?"

We all looked towards the plain. The little dog, leaping impudently upon the wall, began to bark at the French lines.

"I have also brought you a couple of pounds of dried fruit which has been kept in the dispensary at our house. We were going to preserve them in liquor, but you taste them first of any one, my brave boys. I have not forgotten thee at all, my beloved Pirli," he continued, turning to the boy of that name; "and as you are half naked, and without a cloak, I have brought you a magnificent covering. Do you see this bundle? Well, here is an old gown that I have kept to give to a poor man. Now, I present it to you as a covering for your body. It is unsuitable clothing for a soldier; but if the gown does not make the monk, neither does the uniform make the soldier. Put it on, and you will be very comfortable in it."

The friar gave our friend his parcel, and Pirli put on the garment, laughing and dancing about; and as he was still carrying on his head the engineer's helmet which he had taken in the enemy's camp on the thirty-first, he presented a figure stranger than can readily be imagined.

A little later, several women also arrived with baskets of provisions. The arrival of femininity swiftly transformed the aspect of the redoubt. I do not know from where they produced a guitar; it is certain that they produced one from somewhere. One of those present graciously began to play the measures of that incomparable, divine, immortal dance, the jota, and in a moment a great revelry of dancing was going on.

Pirli, whose grotesque figure began in a French engineer and ended in a Spanish friar, was the most carried away of any of the dancers, and could not keep tune with his partner, a most graceful girl in Spanish highland dress, who was called Manuela, whom I noticed the first moment that I saw her. She was about twenty-two years of age, and was slender, of a pure pale complexion. The excitement of the dance quickly flushed her cheeks, and by degrees her movements grew more lively, unmindful of fatigue. With her eyes half shut, her cheeks rosy, her arms moving to the music of the sweet strains, she shook her skirts with lively grace; taking her steps lightly, and presenting to us now her brow, and now her shoulders, Manuela held us enchanted.

The ardor of the dancing crowd, the lively music, and the enthusiasm of the rest of the dancers augmented her own, until at last, breathless with fatigue, she dropped her arms and fell to earth like a stone or a pomegranate.