Presently he seated himself upon a pile of stones, beating his brow
from time to time, and without loosening his hold of the chicken, he
laid his hand upon his heart, sighing deeply. I questioned him again
about his daughter, desiring to hear news of Augustine; and he said to
me,--
"I was in that house in the Calle de Añon, where we moved in yesterday.
Everybody told me that it was not safe there, and that we had much
better be in the middle of the town; but it does not suit me to go
where everybody else comes, and the place that I prefer is the one that
the rest abandon. This world is filled with thieves and rascals. It is
better that I get away from them. We managed with a lower room of that
house. My daughter is very much afraid of the cannon, and wished to go
elsewhere. When the mines began to burst under the neighboring houses,
she and Guedita rushed away, terrified. I stayed alone, thinking of
the danger my things are in; and pretty soon some soldiers came with
flaming torches ready to set fire to the house. Those wretched cowards
would not give me time to collect my things. Far from pitying my
condition, they ridiculed me. I hid the box with my receipts for fear
that those who think it is stuffed with money would carry it off; but
it was impossible to stay inside long. I was surrounded with the bright
flames, and choked with the smoke. In spite of everything, I insisted
upon trying to save my box; but it was an impossible thing. I had to
run. I could not take anything. Great God! I saved nothing but this
poor creature, forgotten by its owners in the hen-house. It cost me a
good deal of trouble to catch it. I burned one hand almost all over.
Oh, cursed be he who invented fire! Why should one lose one's fortune
to amuse these heroes! I had two houses in Saragossa besides the one I
lived in. One of them, the one in the Calle de la Sombra, is preserved
to me still, although it is without tenants. The other, which was
called Casa de los Duendes, back of the San Francisco is occupied by
the troops, and everything there has been torn to pieces for me. Ruin,
nothing but ruin! Is it a right thing to burn houses merely to retard
the conquest by the French?"
"War makes it necessary to do these things," I answered him. "And this
heroic city desires to carry her defence to the last extreme."
"And what induces Saragossa to wish to carry her defence to the last
extreme? What good does it do to the dead? You may talk to them of
glory, of heroism,--of all those notions. Before I ever come back to
live in an heroic city, I would go to a desert. I concede that there
should be a certain resistance, but not to such a barbarous extreme as
this. It is true the burned buildings are worth little, perhaps less
than the great mass of charcoal which will result. Don't let them come
to me with their foolish talk. Those fat sharpers are already planning
to make a good business out of the carbon."
This made me laugh. My readers must not think that I exaggerate, since
he said all this to me very nearly as I repeat it; and those who
have the misfortune to know him would most readily have faith in my
veracity. If Candiola had lived in Numantia, it would have been said
that the Numantines were merchants of charcoal mixed with heroes.
"I am lost! I am ruined forever!" he went on, crossing his hands
forlornly. "Those receipts were part of my fortune. How am I going to
claim the amounts without any documents to show, and when almost all
my debtors are dead, and lying rotting about the streets! I said, and
I repeat it, those who have made me all this trouble are disobedient
to God. It is a mortal sin; it is an unforgivable offence to let
themselves be killed when they owe money on such old accounts that
their creditor will not be able to collect easily. Paying up is very
hard work; so some of these people say, 'Let us wall ourselves in and
burn with the money.' But God is inexorable with this heroic rabble,
and to chastise them He will resurrect them, so that they will yet have
to meet the constable and the notary. My God, resurrect them! Holy
Virgin del Pilar, Santo Domingo del Val, resurrect them, I pray!"
"And your daughter?" I asked with interest. "Did she come out of the
fire unharmed?"
"Do not speak of her to me as my daughter!" he replied sternly. "God
has punished me for her faults. I know now who her infamous admirer is.
Who can it possibly be, but that damned son of Don José Montoria who
studied to be a priest! Mariquilla has confessed it to me. Yesterday
she was dressing a wound he has on his arm, and this was done before
me. Did you ever hear of anything so shameless?"
As he said this. Doña Guedita, who was looking anxiously for her
master, came up with a cup containing some sort of nourishment. He took
it hungrily; and then, by force of entreaty, we succeeded in getting
him away from there, taking him to the Organo alley, where his daughter
had taken refuge, in a porch, with other shelterless ones. After
growling at her a moment, Candiola went on into the house, followed by
his housekeeper.
"Where is Augustine?" I asked Mariquilla.
"He was here a moment ago; but some one came to tell him of the death
of his brother, and he has gone. I heard it said that the family is in
the Calle de las Rufas."
"His brother is dead! Don José's eldest son!"
"So they said, and he started in haste and in great distress."
Without waiting to hear more, I also ran to the Calle de las Rufas to
do everything I could to help in their trouble the generous family to
which I owed so much. Before arriving there, I met Don Roque, who, with
tears in his eyes, came up to speak to me.
"Gabriel," he said, "God has laid his hand heavily to-day upon our good
friend."
"Is it the eldest son who is dead, Manuel Montoria?"
"Yes, and that is not the only trouble of the family. Manuel was
married, as you know, and had a son four years of age. You see that
group of women? Well, the wife of Montoria's poor eldest son is there
with her boy in her arms. He is dying of the epidemic, and is already
in his agony. Is it not a horrible state of things? There is one of
the first families of Saragossa reduced to this sad condition, without
a roof to cover them, in want of the most necessary things. That
unfortunate young mother was in the street all night, exposed to the
weather with her sick child in her arms, expecting every instant that
he would breathe his last. After all it is better to be here than in
one of those pestilent cellars where no one can breathe. I am thankful
that I and other friends have been able to help her a little; but what
can one do when there is scarcely any bread to be had? The wine is all
finished, and a bit of beef is not to be found, though I gave her a
piece of ours."
Morning began to come. I went up to the group of women and saw a
sorrowful sight. With the anguished effort to save life, the mother
and the few women who kept her company were torturing the poor child
with remedies which everybody tries at such a time; but it needed only
to see the victim of the fever to realize the impossibility of saving
that little being whom death had already grasped with his relentless
hand.
The voice of Don José de Montoria obliged me to hasten forward more
quickly; and in an outer corner in the Calle de las Rufas a second
group completed the dreadful picture of that unhappy family. Stretched
upon the ground was the body of Manuel, a young man of thirty years,
no less amiable and generous in his life than his father and brother.
A ball had pierced his head, and from the small external wound, at the
spot whence the ball had emerged, a thread of blood still trickled,
dropping down the temple, the cheek, and the neck, and falling down
upon the skin beneath the shirt. Because of this, the body did not seem
like that of one dead.
When I arrived, nobody had been able to make his mother believe that he
was dead, and she held his head upon her knees, hoping to revive him
with tender words. Montoria, on his knees at the right side, held his
son's hand between his own hands and gazed at him, speechless, not
taking his eyes from him. As white as the dead, the father did not weep.
"Wife!" he exclaimed at last, "do not pray God for the impossible. We
have lost our son."
"No, my son is not dead!" exclaimed the mother, in despair. "It is a
lie. Why deceive me? How could it be possible for God to take our son
from us? What have we done to deserve such a punishment? Manuel, my
son, why dost thou not answer me? Why dost thou not move? Why dost thou
not speak? In a moment we will carry thee into the house--but where is
our house? My son grows cold on this bare ground. See how chill are his
hands and his face!"
"You must go away from here, wife," said Montoria, restraining the
flood of his tears; "we will take care of Manuel."
"O my Lord God!" moaned the mother, "what ails my son that he does
not speak, nor move, nor wake? He seems to be dead; but he is not, he
cannot be dead! Holy Virgin del Pilar, is it not true that my son is
not dead?"
"Leocadia," repeated Montoria, wiping away the first tears that had
fallen from his eyes, "go away from here a little, go away, for God's
sake! Be resigned, for God has dealt us a heavy blow, and our son no
longer lives. He has died for his country."
"Why has my son died!" exclaimed the mother, straining the body to her
in her arms, as if she would not let it go. "No, no, no! What is the
country to me? Let my son be given back to me. Manuel, my boy, do not
let them separate you from me; those who would tear you from my arms
must kill me first."
"O Lord God, Holy Virgin del Pilar," said Don José de Montoria, in
solemn tones, "never have I knowingly and deliberately offended ye.
For the sake of religion and the king I have given my goods and my
sons. Why, instead of my first-born, why have you not taken my life a
hundred times, miserable old man, good for nothing? Gentlemen, you who
are present, I am not ashamed to weep before you; my heart is utterly
broken, but Montoria is still the same. We will say to thee, Happy art
thou a thousand times, my son, who hast died at the post of honor.
Unhappy those of us who still live, having lost thee. But God wills it
thus; and we bow our foreheads before the ruler of all things. Wife,
God gave us peace, happiness, prosperity, and good sons; now it seems
that He desires to strip us of all. Let our hearts be filled with
humility, and let us not curse our fate. Blessed be the hand that leads
us, and let us tranquilly hope for the blessing of a death like this."
Doña Leocadia, who had no life left except for weeping, was kissing the
cold body of her son. Don José, trying to subdue the manifestations of
his own grief, rose and said in a firm voice,--
"Leocadia, you must rise now. It is necessary that our son should be
buried."
"Buried!" exclaimed the mother. "Buried!" And she could say no more,
for she fell forward, lifeless, clasping her son.
At the same moment we heard a heart-rending cry not far from there,
and a woman came running in anguish towards us. It was the wife of the
unfortunate Manuel, now widowed and childless. Several of us tried to
restrain her, so that she might not witness the terrible scene, after
what she had just been through; but the unhappy lady struggled with
us, begging us to let her see her husband. In the mean time Don José,
leaving us, went over to where the body of his grandson was lying,
took him in his arms, and carried him and put him down near Manuel. The
woman needed all of our care; and while Doña Leocadia continued without
consciousness or motion, holding the corpse embraced in her arms, her
daughter-in-law, fevered with grief, was running about after imaginary
enemies, threatening to tear them to pieces. We tried to hold her, but
she escaped from us. At times she laughed with frightful laughter, and
presently she knelt before us, praying us to return the two bodies that
we had taken away.
People passed,--soldiers, friars, peasants,--all seeing this with
indifference, because every one had passed through similar scenes.
Hearts were hardened, and souls seemed to have lost their most
beautiful faculties, preserving nothing but a rude heroism. At last
the poor woman yielded to fatigue, to the exhaustion of her own pain,
lying passive in my arms as if she were dead. We looked about for some
cordial or some kind of nourishment to revive her; but we had none,
and the people who saw our need had work enough to attend to their
own. In the mean time, Don José helped by his son Augustine, who also
controlled his bitter grief, loosened the body from the arms of Doña
Leocadia. The state of this unhappy lady was such that it seemed
almost as if we should have to mourn another death that day. Presently
Montoria repeated,
"It is necessary that my son be buried!"
He looked about; we all looked about, and saw numbers of unburied
bodies. In the Calle de las Rufas there were many; and the Calle de la
Imprenta (now the Calle de Flandro) close by had been made into a sort
of receiving house. It is not exaggeration, that which I saw and will
tell you: Innumerable bodies were piled up in the narrow way, forming a
broad wall from house to house. It was dreadful to see, and those who
saw it were condemned to have before their mind's eyes for all their
lives that funeral pyre made of the bodies of their fellow-beings. It
may seem that I am inventing, but this thing happened: a man entered
the Calle de la Imprenta and began to shout. At a window appeared
another man, who replied to him, saying, "Come up!"
Then the other, thinking to make a shorter cut than by the house door
and the staircase, climbed up over the heap of bodies, and reached the
second story, one of whose windows served him for a door.
In many other streets, the same thing happened. Who could think of
giving them sepulchre? For every pair of useful arms, and for every
spade, there were fifty dead. Three hundred to four hundred were
perishing daily with the epidemic. Every bloody battle had carried
off a thousand more; and already Saragossa began to seem a great city
depopulated of living creatures.
Montoria, on seeing how things were, said:
"My son and my grandson will not have the privilege of sleeping beneath
the ground. Their souls are in heaven. What matters the rest? We must
leave them thus in this gateway of the Calle de las Rufas. Augustine,
my son, it is best for you to go back to the lines. The officers are
able to spare fewer than ever. I believe that they are in need of men
at the Magdalena. I have now no son, man, but you. If you die, what
would be left me? But duty is first; and, before seeing thee a coward,
I prefer to see thee bleeding like thy poor brother with thy temple
pierced by the enemy's ball."
Then placing his hand upon the head of his son, who was kneeling
uncovered beside the body of Manuel, he continued, lifting his eyes to
heaven,--
"Lord, if thou hast willed to take my second son, also, take me to my
first. When the siege is over, I desire to live no longer; my poor
wife and I have had our share of happiness. We have received too many
blessings to speak against the hand which has wounded us. Hast thou not
done enough to prove us? Must my second son also perish? Come, señors,"
he said presently, "let us disperse. Perhaps we are needed elsewhere."
"Señor Don José," said Don Roque, weeping, "will you not retire also,
and let your friends fulfil this sad duty?"
"No; I am man for all that must be done, and God has given me a soul
that does not flinch and will not quail."
He lifted the body of Manuel, aided by one of the others, while
Augustine and I lifted his grandchild, to place both at the entrance of
the Calle de las Rufas, where many other families had lain their dead.
Montoria, as he put down the body, breathed a long sigh, and let his
arms fall as if the effort made had exhausted his energies, and said,--
"Truly, gentlemen, I am not now able to deny that I am tired.
Yesterday, I felt young; to-day, 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. Doña
Leocadia, her daughter, and her daughter in-law, assisted by two old
servants of the family, were in the Coso. Don Roque, who went and came
from one place to the other, said,--
"The señora remains very weak. They are praying earnestly now and
weeping. They are sadly downcast, the poor ladies. Boys, it is very
necessary that we look about town, and see if a little something in the
way of nourishment cannot be found."
Montoria rose then, wiped away the tears which coursed freely from his
burning eyes, saying,--
"There is no lack of food still in town, according to my belief. Don
Roque, my friend, will you not go and find something to eat, let it
cost what it may?"
"Yesterday I paid five duros for a hen in the market," said one of the
old servants of the house.
"But to-day there are none," said Don Roque. "I was there only a moment
ago."
"Friends, look about and find something. I need nothing for myself."
He was saying this when we heard the agreeable cackle of a fowl.
We all looked joyfully towards the entrance of the street, and we
saw Candiola, who carried in his left hand the chicken we know of,
caressing its black plumage with his right. Before they asked him for
it, he approached Montoria slowly, and said,--
"A doubloon for the chicken."
"What a starved thing it is!" exclaimed Don Roque. "The poor creature
is little more than bones."
I was not able to restrain my anger at seeing such shining evidence of
the repugnant meanness and hard-heartedness of Candiola. So I went up
to him, and snatched the chicken from his hands, saying violently,--
"This chicken is stolen! Come, you miserable miser, one would sell
one's own cheaper! This was sold for five duros yesterday in the
market. Five duros you may have, you coward, you thief, not a fraction
more!"
Candiola began to howl for his chicken, and was on the point of getting
a good thrashing, when Don José de Montoria intervened, saying,--
"Let him have what he wishes. Give Señor Candiola the doubloon that he
charges for this fowl." He gave him the extortionate amount, which
Candiola was not slow to accept; and then our friend went on thus,--
"Señor Candiola, let us speak together. Now, about that wherein I
offended you. Yes--a few days ago--about that affair of the blows.
There are times when one is not master of one's self, when the blood
mounts up to the head. It is true that you provoked me, and you charged
more for the flour than the Captain-General had ordered. It is true,
Don Jeronimo, my friend, that I shook you off, and you see--yet--one
could not help that and--I, I believe the--well, I suppose that my hand
flew away from me, and I did something."
"Señor Montoria," said Candiola, "a day will come when we shall again
have authorities in Saragossa. Then we shall meet again face to face."
"Are you going to make it a matter of justices and notaries? That's
bad. That which is past--it was an access of anger, one of those things
which cannot be helped. My mind now is filled with the thought that I
am in trouble, very great trouble. One does not wish to offend one's
neighbor."
"It is not much to offend him, after robbing him," said Don Jeronimo,
looking about at us all, and smiling contemptuously.
"It was not exactly robbing," said Don José, patiently; "because I
did that which the Captain-General commanded. The offence of word and
deed was undeniable; and now when I saw you coming with the chicken,
I determined at once to own up that I did wrong. My conscience urged
it upon me. Ah, Señor Candiola, I am very unhappy! When one is happy,
one does not know his faults. But it is true, Don Jeronimo, that as
I saw you coming toward me just now, I felt desirous to ask your
pardon for those blows. I hold out the hand that offended. 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 Jeronimo, 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."
"After an act of robbery, you think all can be arranged with
hypocritical words," said Candiola, turning his back and skulking away
from the group, muttering, "Señor Montoria should talk of refunding the
price of the flour. Begging forgiveness of me! I have lived to see all
there is to see."
He moved slowly away. Montoria, seeing that several of us were about to
pursue the insolent cur, said,--
"Let him go in peace. Let us have compassion on that unfortunate man."