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--!