Zaragoza. English

by Benito Pérez Galdós

  CHAPTER XXX

  Horrible nightmare, leave me! I do not wish to sleep. But the bad dreamwhich I long to fling from my remembrance returns to distress me. Iwish I could blot from my memory the melancholy scene. But one nightpasses, and then another, and the scene is not blotted out. I, who onso many occasions have faced great dangers without winking an eyelash,I tremble now, and the cold sweat comes on my forehead. The swordbathed in French blood falls from my hand, and I shut my eyes in ordernot to see what passes before me. In vain I hurl thee away, dreadfulvision! I expel thee, and thou dost return. Thou art fast rooted in mymemory. No, I am not capable of taking the life of a fellow-being incold blood, though inexorable duty commands it. Why did I not tremblein the trenches as I tremble now? I feel a mortal chill. By the lightof lanterns I see sinister faces, one above all livid and sullen, thatshows a terror greater than all other terrors. How the barrels of theguns gleam! All is ready, and but one word is lacking, my word. I tryto pronounce the word, and I bite my tongue. No, that word will nevercome from my lips!

  Away from me, black nightmare! I shut my eyes. I draw my eyelidscloser, better to exclude thee, and the closer they are shut theplainer I see thee, horrible picture! They all wait with anxiety; butnothing is comparable to the state of my soul, rebelling against thelaw which obliges it to decide the end of another's existence. Timepasses, then eyes which I wish I had never seen disappear under thebandage. I cannot look at the scene; would that they had put a bandageover my eyes also! The soldiers look at me, and I frown to hide mycowardice. We mortals are stupid and vain even in supreme moments. Theby-standers jested at my state, and that gave me a certain energy. Iunglued my tongue from my palate, and cried,--

  "Fire!"

  The accursed nightmare will not go, and torments me to-night as itdid last night, bringing again before me that which I do not wish tosee. It is better not to sleep. I prefer wakefulness to this. I shakeoff the lethargy, and dread my vigil as before I abhorred the dream.Always the same humming of the cannon. Those insolent brass mouths donot cease to talk.

  Ten days pass, and Saragossa has not yet surrendered, because somemadmen are still persistent in guarding for Spain that heap of dustand ashes. The houses go on falling; and France, after establishingone foot, wastes armies and quintals of powder in gaining ground onwhich to set the other. Spain will not give up as long as she hasone paving-stone to serve as a lever for the immense machine of herbravery. I am almost lifeless. I cannot move. Those men I see passingbefore me do not seem to be men. They are languid and emaciated, andtheir faces would be yellow, if dust and powder had not blackened them.Eyes gleam under blackened eyebrows,--eyes that do not yet know how tolook without taking aim. Men are covered with unclean rags, and clothsare bound about their heads. They are so filthy that they seem likethe dead raised from that heap in the Calle de la Imprenta, to showthemselves among the living. From time to time among the smoky columnsthese dying ones come, and the friars murmur religious consolation tothem. 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 cityis 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 memorydoes not seem real, the true things being confused in my memory withthose dreamed.

  I was stretched out in a gateway of the Calle de la Albarderia, shakingwith cold, my left hand wrapped in a bloody, dirty cloth. The feverburned me, and I longed for strength to hasten to the front. They werenot all corpses beside me. I reached out my hand and touched the arm ofa friend who was still living.

  "What is going on, Se?or Sursum Corda?"

  "It seems that the French are on this side of the Coso," he answeredme, in a feeble voice. "They have blown up half of the city. May be weshall have to surrender. The Captain-General has fallen ill with theepidemic, and is in the Calle de Predicadores. They think he is goingto die. The French will enter. I rejoice that I shall die before I seethat. How do you find yourself, Se?or 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 bewith me, I shall go straight to heaven. Se?or de Araceli, have you diedyet?"

  I got up and took a few steps. Leaning against the walls, I advanceda little and came to the Orphanage. Some military officers of highrank were accompanying a short, slender ecclesiastic to the door, whodismissed them, saying, "We have done our duty, and human strength cancompass nothing more." It was Father Basilio. A friendly arm held meup, and I recognized Don Roque.

  "Gabriel, my friend," he said to me, in deep affliction, "the citysurrenders 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 todraw itself up to flee also, and in the distance its leaden casque fellfrom it. The flames of the city no longer gleamed. Columns of blacksmoke moved from east to west. Powder and ashes, raised by the whirlingwinds, moved in the same direction. The sky was no longer the sky, buta leaden canopy, strangely agitated.

  "Everything is fleeing; everything is going from this place ofdesolation," I said to Don Roque. "The French will find nothing."

  "Nothing. To-day they enter by the Puerta del Angel. They say thatthe capitulation has been honorable. Look, here come the spectres whodefend the plaza!"

  Indeed along the Coso filed the last combatants, one for every thousandof those who had faced the bullets and the epidemic. There were fatherswithout sons, brothers without brothers, husbands without wives. He whocannot find his own among the living is not at all sure of finding themamong the dead, because there are fifty-two thousand corpses, almostall piled in the streets, the doorways, the cellars, the ditches. TheFrench, on entering, halted affrighted at such a spectacle, and werealmost on the point of retreating. Tears streamed from their eyes, andthey asked whether these were men or shadows, these poor creatures whofled at sight of them.

  A volunteer on entering his house stumbled over the bodies of his wifeand children. A wife ran to the wall, to the trench, to the barricadeto look for her husband; but no one knew where he was. The thousandsof the dead did not speak; and could not tell whether her Fulano wasamong them. Many large families were exterminated, not one member wasleft. This saves many tears when death strikes with one blow the fatherand the orphan, the husband and the widow, the victim and the eyes thatwould have been forced to weep.

  France had at last set foot within that city built on the banks of theclassic river which gives its name to our peninsula.

  They had conquered it without subduing it. On seeing the desolationof Saragossa, the Imperial army considered itself the grave-diggersof the heroic inhabitants, instead of their conquerors. Fifty-threethousand lives were contributed by this Aragonese city to those of themillions of creatures wherewith humanity paid for the military gloriesof the French Empire. This sacrifice will not prove fruitless, forit was a sacrifice for an idea. The French Empire,--a vain thing, athing of circumstance, founded on fickle fortune, in audacity and themilitary genius that is always a second-rate quality when separatedfrom service of the ideal,--this empire existed merely by its ownself-worship. The French Empire--I say, that tempest which disturbedthe first years of the century, and whose lightnings and thunderboltsheld Europe in terror--passed, as tempests pass. The normal state inhistoric 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 fewyears afterwards, but that also passed, overthrown by its own weightof pride. Perhaps this old tree will sprout the third time; but itwill not give grateful shade to the world during centuries, and willscarcely serve for mankind to warm itself by its last bits of wood.

  That which has not passed, nor shall pass, is the idea of nationalitywhich 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 hallowedthe Christian idea in the arena. The result is that Spain, depreciatedunjustly in the Congress of Vienna, disprized with reason for her civilwars, her bad governors, her disorders, her bankruptcy more or lessdeclared, her immoral treaties, her extravagances, her bull-fights, andher proclamations, has never since 1808 seen the continuation of hernationality placed in any doubt. Even to-day, when it seems that wehave reached the last degree of abasement, offering more chance thanPoland for dismemberment, no one dares attempt the conquest of thishouse of madmen. Men of little sense,--without any on occasion,--theSpanish will to-day, as ever, die a thousand deaths, stumbling andrising in the struggle of their inborn vices with the great qualitieswhich they still preserve, with those which they acquire slowly, andthose which Central Europe sends them. Providence holds in storefor this people great advancings and abasements, great terrors andsurprises, apparent deaths and mighty resurrections. Her destiny isto be able to live in agitation like a salamander in fire; but hernational permanency is and ever will be assured.