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!