Saragossa quotes

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 Rincón, both in ruins, as far as the little plaza of San Miguel.

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.

“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.

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.

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;

“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 Tío Garcés 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 passersby, merely for mischief, without any intention of biting?

Nothing of this sort matters. Everybody out into the street, and thus save honor though the city perish, and the churches and convents and hospitals and the estates which are but earthly things!

The Saragossans, despising material good as they despised life, lived by their spirits in the infinite spaces of the ideal.

In the first moments the Captain-General and many other distinguished personages visited us—such as Don Mariano Cereso the priest of Sas, General O’Neill, San Genís, and Don Pedro Ric.

On the bridge we were swallowed up by insupportable terror and disorder.

There is nothing more frenzied than a coward. His abject meannesses are as great as the sublimities of his valor.

Our leaders kept crying out to us, “Back, you rabble! The redoubt del Pilar has not surrendered!” striking our swords with their sabres.

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.

Mariquilla smiled almost gayly as she told of her fears and joys with divine simplicity. The peculiar charm of her voice is indescribable.

Her words, like the vibration of crystal notes, left a harmonious echo in the soul.

As she ceased speaking, the first splendors of dawn illuminated her face.

The Aragonese nature stood forth, and it is one which does not know how to be conquered. The living took the places of the dead with a sublime aplomb.

Death was an accident, a trivial detail, a thing of which no notice should be taken.

While this was going on, other columns equally powerful were trying to take the Casa de González, which I have before mentioned.

There came a time when a sort of impassibility, a dreadful apathy, began to take possession of the besieged.

We became used to the sight of a heap of dead bodies, as if they were so many sacks of wool.

We were accustomed to see, without pity, great numbers of the wounded creeping and tottering to the houses, each one caring for himself as best he could.

I have never considered myself heroic; but it is certain that in those moments I did not fear death, nor did the sight of catastrophes terrify me.

It is true that heroism, as a thing of the moment, and the direct child of inspiration, does not belong exclusively to the brave. That is the reason it is often found in women and cowards.

I will not go into the details of those struggles in the Calle de Pabostre. They were much like those which I have described before.

No one tried to take any of the wounded to the churches, because all or nearly all were crowded. The cellars and lower rooms which at first had been considered good places of refuge, were now infected with a death-dealing atmosphere.

There came a time when the best place for the wounded was in the middle of the street.

I directed my steps towards the centre of the Coso, because they said that there they were giving out something to eat, but I received nothing.

“Truly, gentlemen, I am not now able to deny that I am tired.

Yesterday, I felt young; today, I am very old.

”

“Truly, gentlemen, I am not now able to deny that I am tired. Yesterday, I felt young; today, I am very old.”

Montoria had indeed aged visibly, and one night had taken ten years of his life.

He sat down upon a stone, and, putting his elbows on his knees, hid his face in his hands. He remained in this attitude for a long time, and none of those present interfered with his grief.

So it is. I don’t know what I am doing—yes, I do request you to forgive me, and let us be friends. Señor Don Jerónimo, let us be friends, let us be reconciled, and not make a permanent grudge out of an old resentment.

Hatred poisons the soul, and the remembrance of not having done right oppresses us with an insupportable weight.

”

Will Saragossa surrender? Death to him who says it!

Saragossa will not surrender. She will be reduced to powder. Of her historic houses, let not one brick remain upon another! Let her hundred temples fall, the ground beneath her open, pouring out flames; let her foundations be hurled into the air;

Will Saragossa surrender? Death to him who says it!

Saragossa will not surrender. She will be reduced to powder.

Of her historic houses, let not one brick remain upon another! Let her hundred temples fall, the ground beneath her open, pouring out flames; let her foundations be hurled into the air;

It was like having the birthplace of thunderbolts for a dwelling-place, like being in a disordered world, where everything was heaving up and unhinging. There was no place to live, because the ground was no longer ground.

Under every shrub or plant a crater was opening.

And yet those men went on defending themselves against the crushing horrors of a never-stilled volcano and a ceaseless tempest. Lacking fortresses, they had used the convents; lacking convents, the palaces; when the palaces failed, the humble houses. There were still some partition walls.

The voices of the dying people were husky in their throats. From hour to hour a funereal silence was conquering the city. Only the cannon spoke. The advance guards of the two nations no longer took the trouble to exchange insults.

Instead of madness, everybody was full of sadness; and the dying city fought on in silence, so that no atom of strength need be lost in idle words.

The necessity of surrender was now the general idea; but none showed it, guarding it in the depths of conscience as he would conceal a crime which he was about to commit. Surrender! It seemed an impossibility, a word too difficult.

The necessity of surrender was now the general idea; but none showed it, guarding it in the depths of conscience as he would conceal a crime which he was about to commit.

Surrender! It seemed an impossibility, a word too difficult. To perish would be easier!

One day passed after the explosion of San Francisco; it was a horrible day which seemed to have no existence in time, but only in the fanciful realm of the imagination.

“

Gabriel, do you not see it? Don’t you see the tower? Don’t you see that it is straight, Gabriel? The tower has been made straight!

”

Horrible nightmare, leave me! I do not wish to sleep.

But the bad dream which I long to fling from my remembrance returns to distress me. I wish I could blot from my memory the melancholy scene. But one night passes, and then another, and the scene is not blotted out.