Saragossa

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, Ágreda, Tarazona, and Borja, climbing mountains, fording rivers, making shortcuts until we arrived at the high road of Gallur and Alagón, 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 Aragón 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 anyone. 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.

“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. Today 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.

“Back, cowards!” cried our officers, striking us in the faces, “and die in the breach!”

The redoubt was vacated. None but the dead and the wounded were there. Suddenly we saw advance amid the dense smoke and the blackness of powder, leaping over the lifeless bodies and the heaps of earth and the ruins, and the guns we had thrown down, and the shattered works, a figure, dauntless, pale, splendid, of tragic calmness. It was a woman who had made her way forward and, penetrating the abandoned place, was marching like a queen towards the horrible breach. Pirli, who was lying on the ground, wounded in the leg, exclaimed in affright,

“Manuela Sancho, where are you going?”

All this passed in much less time than I take to tell it. After Manuela Sancho, first one, then another, then many hurried, then all, urged on by the leaders whose sabre-cuts had prodded us to the point of duty. This portentous transformation came about by the impulse of every man’s heart obeying sentiments which all feel without anyone’s knowing whence the mysterious force emanates. I do not know why we were cowards, nor why we were brave a few moments later. What I do know is that, moved by an extraordinary power, immense and superhuman, we hurled ourselves into the breach behind the heroic woman, at the point where the French were attempting the assault with ladders. Without in the least knowing how to explain it, we felt our strength increased a hundredfold, and crushed them back, hurling into the ditch those men of cotton who a little while ago had seemed to us men of steel.

”

When he said this, Don José de Montoria, who was already choking with wrath, lost his stirrups, as the saying is, and powerless to contain his indignation, went straight up to Candiola, apparently to slap his face; but the other had with one strategic glance foreseen the movement, and prepared to repel it. Quickly taking the offensive, he threw himself with a catlike spring upon my protector, grasping his neck with both hands and fastening upon him with his strong and bony fingers, at the same time making ready with his teeth, as if he were about to take between them the entire person of his enemy.

There was a brief struggle in which Montoria strove to free himself from those feline claws which had so suddenly made him their captive; but it could be seen in an instant that the nervous strength of the miser could not hold against the muscular strength of the Aragonese patriot. He shook him off violently. Candiola fell to the ground like a dead man.

We heard the cry of a woman from an upper window, and then the snap of a window-shutter closing. In this dramatic moment I wheeled about anxiously towards Augustine, but he had disappeared.

Don José de Montoria, mad with rage, kicked angrily at the prostrate body, stammering thickly in his wrath.

My comrades ran to the front, and I was preparing to follow them, when I happened to see a man whose looks attracted my attention. It was Candiola. He was coming out of a house near by with his clothing scorched, and grasping between his hands a fowl, which cackled at being held captive. I stopped him in the middle of the street, questioning him about his daughter and Augustine. He answered me in a very disturbed way⁠—

“My daughter⁠—I do not know⁠—there she is⁠—somewhere. All, all! I have lost all. The receipts, the receipts were burned. Fortunately I got out of the house, and as I fled I came upon this chicken which, like me, was flying from the dreadful flames. Yesterday, a hen was worth five duros. But my receipts! Holy Virgin del Pilar, and thou, dear little Santo Domingo of my soul, why have ye let my receipts be burned? They, at least, might have been saved. Do you wish to help me? The tin box which held them is still there pinned down under a great beam. Where can you find half a dozen men for me? Good God, this junta, these authorities, this Captain-General, what are they thinking of?” And he went on, calling out to the passersby, “Eh, peasant, friend, dear man, let us see if we cannot lift the beam which has fallen into the corner. Oh, friends, put down that dying man you are carrying to the hospital, and come and help me. Oh, pitiless Saragossans, how God is chastising you!”