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. I, who on
so many occasions have faced great dangers without winking an eyelash,
I tremble now, and the cold sweat comes on my forehead. The sword
bathed in French blood falls from my hand, and I shut my eyes in order
not to see what passes before me. In vain I hurl thee away, dreadful
vision! I expel thee, and thou dost return. Thou art fast rooted in my
memory. No, I am not capable of taking the life of a fellow-being in
cold blood, though inexorable duty commands it. Why did I not tremble
in the trenches as I tremble now? I feel a mortal chill. By the light
of lanterns I see sinister faces, one above all livid and sullen, that
shows a terror greater than all other terrors. How the barrels of the
guns gleam! All is ready, and but one word is lacking, my word. I try
to pronounce the word, and I bite my tongue. No, that word will never
come from my lips!
Away from me, black nightmare! I shut my eyes. I draw my eyelids
closer, better to exclude thee, and the closer they are shut the
plainer I see thee, horrible picture! They all wait with anxiety; but
nothing is comparable to the state of my soul, rebelling against the
law which obliges it to decide the end of another's existence. Time
passes, then eyes which I wish I had never seen disappear under the
bandage. I cannot look at the scene; would that they had put a bandage
over my eyes also! The soldiers look at me, and I frown to hide my
cowardice. We mortals are stupid and vain even in supreme moments. The
by-standers jested at my state, and that gave me a certain energy. I
unglued my tongue from my palate, and cried,--
"Fire!"
The accursed nightmare will not go, and torments me to-night as it
did last night, bringing again before me that which I do not wish to
see. It is better not to sleep. I prefer wakefulness to this. I shake
off the lethargy, and dread my vigil as before I abhorred the dream.
Always the same humming of the cannon. Those insolent brass mouths do
not cease to talk.
Ten days pass, and Saragossa has not yet surrendered, because some
madmen are still persistent in guarding for Spain that heap of dust
and ashes. The houses go on falling; and France, after establishing
one foot, wastes armies and quintals of powder in gaining ground on
which to set the other. Spain will not give up as long as she has
one paving-stone to serve as a lever for the immense machine of her
bravery. I am almost lifeless. I cannot move. Those men I see passing
before me do not seem to be men. They are languid and emaciated, and
their faces would be yellow, if dust and powder had not blackened them.
Eyes gleam under blackened eyebrows,--eyes that do not yet know how to
look without taking aim. Men are covered with unclean rags, and cloths
are bound about their heads. They are so filthy that they seem like
the dead raised from that heap in the Calle de la Imprenta, to show
themselves among the living. From time to time among the smoky columns
these dying ones come, and the friars murmur religious consolation to
them. Neither the dying understand, nor the friar knows what he says.
Religion itself goes half mad. Generals, soldiers, peasants, priests,
and women are all overwhelmed. There are no classes or sexes. The city
is defended in anarchy.
I do not know what happened me. Do not ask me to go on with the story,
for there is nothing more to tell. That which I see before my memory
does not seem real, the true things being confused in my memory with
those dreamed.
I was stretched out in a gateway of the Calle de la Albarderia, shaking
with cold, my left hand wrapped in a bloody, dirty cloth. The fever
burned me, and I longed for strength to hasten to the front. They were
not all corpses beside me. I reached out my hand and touched the arm of
a friend who was still living.
"What is going on, Señor Sursum Corda?"
"It seems that the French are on this side of the Coso," he answered
me, in a feeble voice. "They have blown up half of the city. May be we
shall have to surrender. The Captain-General has fallen ill with the
epidemic, and is in the Calle de Predicadores. They think he is going
to die. The French will enter. I rejoice that I shall die before I see
that. How do you find yourself, Señor de Araceli?"
"Very bad off. I will see if I can get up."
"I am alive yet, it seems. I did not think I should be. The Lord be
with me, I shall go straight to heaven. Señor de Araceli, have you died
yet?"
I got up and took a few steps. Leaning against the walls, I advanced
a little and came to the Orphanage. Some military officers of high
rank were accompanying a short, slender ecclesiastic to the door, who
dismissed them, saying, "We have done our duty, and human strength can
compass nothing more." It was Father Basilio. A friendly arm held me
up, and I recognized Don Roque.
"Gabriel, my friend," he said to me, in deep affliction, "the city
surrenders this very day."
"What city?"
"This."
As he said so, it seemed to me as if nothing remained in its place.
Men and houses all ran together confusedly. The Torre Nueva seemed to
draw itself up to flee also, and in the distance its leaden casque fell
from it. The flames of the city no longer gleamed. Columns of black
smoke moved from east to west. Powder and ashes, raised by the whirling
winds, moved in the same direction. The sky was no longer the sky, but
a leaden canopy, strangely agitated.
"Everything is fleeing; everything is going from this place of
desolation," I said to Don Roque. "The French will find nothing."
"Nothing. To-day they enter by the Puerta del Angel. They say that
the capitulation has been honorable. Look, here come the spectres who
defend the plaza!"
Indeed along the Coso filed the last combatants, one for every thousand
of those who had faced the bullets and the epidemic. There were fathers
without sons, brothers without brothers, husbands without wives. He who
cannot find his own among the living is not at all sure of finding them
among the dead, because there are fifty-two thousand corpses, almost
all piled in the streets, the doorways, the cellars, the ditches. The
French, on entering, halted affrighted at such a spectacle, and were
almost on the point of retreating. Tears streamed from their eyes, and
they asked whether these were men or shadows, these poor creatures who
fled at sight of them.
A volunteer on entering his house stumbled over the bodies of his wife
and children. A wife ran to the wall, to the trench, to the barricade
to look for her husband; but no one knew where he was. The thousands
of the dead did not speak; and could not tell whether her Fulano was
among them. Many large families were exterminated, not one member was
left. This saves many tears when death strikes with one blow the father
and the orphan, the husband and the widow, the victim and the eyes that
would have been forced to weep.
France had at last set foot within that city built on the banks of the
classic river which gives its name to our peninsula.
They had conquered it without subduing it. On seeing the desolation
of Saragossa, the Imperial army considered itself the grave-diggers
of the heroic inhabitants, instead of their conquerors. Fifty-three
thousand lives were contributed by this Aragonese city to those of the
millions of creatures wherewith humanity paid for the military glories
of the French Empire. This sacrifice will not prove fruitless, for
it was a sacrifice for an idea. The French Empire,--a vain thing, a
thing of circumstance, founded on fickle fortune, in audacity and the
military genius that is always a second-rate quality when separated
from service of the ideal,--this empire existed merely by its own
self-worship. The French Empire--I say, that tempest which disturbed
the first years of the century, and whose lightnings and thunderbolts
held Europe in terror--passed, as tempests pass. The normal state in
historic life, as in nature, is that of calm. We all saw it pass,
and we viewed its death-agony in 1815. We saw its resurrection a few
years afterwards, but that also passed, overthrown by its own weight
of pride. Perhaps this old tree will sprout the third time; but it
will not give grateful shade to the world during centuries, and will
scarcely serve for mankind to warm itself by its last bits of wood.
That which has not passed, nor shall pass, is the idea of nationality
which Spain defended against the right of conquest and usurpation.
When other peoples succumbed, she maintained her right, defended it,
and, sacrificing her own life-blood, hallowed it as martyrs hallowed
the Christian idea in the arena. The result is that Spain, depreciated
unjustly in the Congress of Vienna, disprized with reason for her civil
wars, her bad governors, her disorders, her bankruptcy more or less
declared, her immoral treaties, her extravagances, her bull-fights, and
her proclamations, has never since 1808 seen the continuation of her
nationality placed in any doubt. Even to-day, when it seems that we
have reached the last degree of abasement, offering more chance than
Poland for dismemberment, no one dares attempt the conquest of this
house of madmen. Men of little sense,--without any on occasion,--the
Spanish will to-day, as ever, die a thousand deaths, stumbling and
rising in the struggle of their inborn vices with the great qualities
which they still preserve, with those which they acquire slowly, and
those which Central Europe sends them. Providence holds in store
for this people great advancings and abasements, great terrors and
surprises, apparent deaths and mighty resurrections. Her destiny is
to be able to live in agitation like a salamander in fire; but her
national permanency is and ever will be assured.