CHAPTER XIII
When we had finished carrying out the flour, I went and looked forAugustine; but I could find him nowhere, neither in his father'shouse, nor at the headquarters of supplies, nor in the Coso, nor inSanta Engracia. At nightfall I found him in the powder mill near SanJuan de los Panetes. I have forgotten to say that the Saragossans hadimprovised a work shop where were turned out daily nine or ten quintalsof powder. I saw Augustine helping the workmen put into sacks andbarrels the powder made during the day. He was working with feverishactivity.
"Do you see this enormous heap of powder?" he said to me when Iapproached him. "Do you see those sacks and those barrels all full ofthe same material? Well, Gabriel, it seems to me very little."
"I don't know what you are trying to say."
"I say that if this immense quantity of powder were as big as SaragossaI should like it still better. Yes, and in such a case I should liketo be the only inhabitant of this great city. What a pleasure! Listen,Gabriel! If it were so, I would myself set fire to it, and fly into theclouds, torn to pieces in the horrible explosion like pieces of rockwhich a volcano throws to a distance of a hundred leagues. I would behurled to the fifth heaven, and of my members, scattered everywhere,there would be no memory! Death, Gabriel, death is what I desire! But Idesire a death--I do not explain it to you. My desperation is so greatthat to die of a gunshot or a sabre-thrust would not satisfy me. I longto be rent asunder, and diffused through space in a thousand burningparticles. I pant to feel myself in the bosom of a flame-bearing cloud.My spirit yearns, if only for an infinitesimal instant, the delight ofseeing this wretched body reduced to powder. Gabriel, I am desperate.Do you see this powder? Imagine within my breast all the flames whichthis could make. Did you see her when she went out to get her father?Did you see her when she threw the money? I was in a corner where Icould see it all. Mariquilla does not know that that man who maltreatedher father is my own! Did you see how the boys threw mud at poorCandiola? I realize that Candiola is a wretch. But she, what fault hasshe? She and I, what fault have we? None, Gabriel. My heart is broken,and thirsts for a thousand deaths. I cannot live. I will run into theplace of greatest danger and fling myself into the fire of the French.After what I have seen to-day, I and the earth on which I dwell may notbe together."
I drew him away from the place, taking him to the walls; and we went towork on the fortifications which were being made in Las Tenerias, theweakest point in the city since the destruction of San Jos? and SantaEngracia. I have already said that from the mouth of the Huerva to SanJos? stretched a line of fifty mouths of fire. Against this formidableline of attack what avail was our fortified circuit?
The quarter of Las Tenerias extended from the eastern part of the city,between the Huerva and the old part of the town, perfectly outlined yetby the wide road which is called the Coso. It was at the beginning ofthis century a village of mean houses, almost all inhabited by laborersand artisans, and the religious houses there had none of the splendorof the monuments of Saragossa. The general plan of this district isapproximately the segment of a circle whose arc curves out to the opencountry, and whose chord unites it to the city, from the Puerta Quemadato the rise at the Sepulcro.
From that line to the circumference ran several streets, some of thembroken, like the Calles de la Diezma, Barrio Verde, de los Clavos,and de Pabostre. Some of these were marked not by rows of houses, butby walls, and lacking sometimes one thing and sometimes another. Thestreets spread out into formless little squares or yards or barrengardens. I describe badly because in the days I refer to the heaps ofruins left by the first siege had been used to mount batteries andraise barricades in points where the houses did not offer a naturaldefence.
Near the fortification of the Ebro were some remnants of an ancientwall, with various little towers of masonry which some persons supposedto be from the hands of the Romans, and others judged to be the work ofthe Moors. In my time--I do not know how it may be now--these pieces ofwall seemed to be mortised into the houses, or rather the houses weremortised into them, appearing like props and corners of that ancientwork, blackened but not crumbled by the passing of so many centuries.The new had been built in a confused way upon the ruins of the old,as the Spanish people had developed and grown upon the spoils of otherpeoples of mixed bloods, until they became as they are to-day.
The general aspect of the district of Las Tenerias brought to theimagination pleasant fancies of all that had taken place during Moorishrule, the abundance of brick, the long gable ends, the irregularfronts, the window lattices with shutters, the complete architecturalanarchy, making it impossible to know where one house ended and anotherbegan, or of distinguishing whether this had two floors or three, orif that roof served to support the walls of that one over there. Thestreets at best ended in yards with no ways out. The archways, whichgave entrance to a little square, reminded me that here was a vistaupon another Spanish people, very different from those now here.
This amalgamation of houses which I have described to you, this suburbbuilt up by many generations of laborers and peasants and tanners,according to the caprice of each, without order or harmony, hadprepared itself for the defence on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifthdays of January, at the time when the French began to display theirpomp of attack by placing forces on that side. All the familiesliving in the houses of this suburb proceeded to build works accordingto their own strategic instincts. There were military engineers inpetticoats who demonstrated a profound knowledge of war by walling upcertain spaces and opening others to the light, and for purposes offiring. The walls of the eastern side were spiked along their length.The turrets of the wall of C?sar Augustus, built to resist arrows andsling stones, now upheld cannon.
If any one of these pieces were turned upon one of the neighboringroofs, the roof or the entire house, whatever was there, would beimmediately blown to pieces. Many passages had been obstructed, andtwo of the religious edifices of the suburb, San Augustine and LasMonicas, were veritable fortresses. The wall had been rebuilt andstrengthened; the batteries had been joined together, and our engineershad calculated the positions and the reach of the enemy's guns verywell, in order to accommodate our defences to them.
Our line had two advanced points, the mill of Goicoechea and a housewhich, because it belonged to a certain Don Victoriano Gonzalez, hasgone into history by the name of the Casa de Gonzalez. This line,running from the Puerta Quemada, met first the battery of Palafox, thenthe Molino, the mill, in the city, then the garden of San Augustine;it continued to the mill of Goicoechea, situated a little out of thedistrict, then to the orchard of Las Monicas, and on to those of SanAugustine; further up, a great battery and the house of Gonzalez.This is all that I remember of Las Tenerias. There was over there aplace called the Sepulcro, because of its nearness to a church ofthat name. More than one portion of the suburb, indeed, deserved thename of sepulchre. I tell you no more in order not to tire you withthese descriptive minuti?, unnecessary to one who knows those gloriousplaces, and insufficient for one who has been unable to visit them.
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