“Manuela, are you not going?” said Augustine. “Doesn’t it frighten you to look at all that?”
The girl, with her attention fixed on the spectacle, terrified, trembling, with white lips and palpitating bosom, neither moved nor spoke.
“Manuelilla,” said Pirli, running up to her, “take my gun and shoot it off.”
Contrary to what we expected, Manuelilla did not show any sign of terror.
“Take it, please,” cried Pirli, making her take the gun. “Put your thumb here. Aim over yonder. Fire! Viva the second artillery woman! Viva Manuela Sancho and the Virgin del Pilar!”
The girl took the gun, and, to judge by her actions, and the stupor of her looks, it seemed as if she did not know what she was doing. But, raising the gun with a trembling hand, she aimed at the field, pulled the trigger, and fired.
A thousand fiery shouts of applause greeted the discharge, and the girl left the gun. She was radiant with satisfaction, and her delight deepened the roses in her cheeks.
“Do you see? You have already lost your fear?” said the priest. “There is nothing more in these things than taking hold of them. All the Saragossan women ought to do the same, and then Augustina Casta Alvarez would not be the one glorious exception to her sex.”
“Bring another gun,” exclaimed the girl; “I wish to fire again.”
“They have already marched off, if you please! Aren’t you a good one!” said Pirli, preparing to make an onslaught on the provision basket. “Tomorrow, if you like, you shall be invited for a few ‘hot cakes.’ Well, let us make ourselves comfortable and eat.”
The friar, calling his little dog, said to him: “That is enough, my son; don’t bark so, nor take it so much to heart that you make yourself hoarse. Keep your boldness until tomorrow. Today, we have no wish to employ it, for if I am not mistaken they are hurrying away to get behind their works.”
In fact the skirmish at San José had concluded, and for the moment the French were not in sight. A short time afterwards the sound of the guitar was renewed, and the women returning, the sweet undulations of the jota began again with Manuela Sancho and the great Pirli in the first line.
X
When I woke at daybreak the next morning I saw Montoria, who was passing by the wall.
“I believe that the bombardment is going to begin,” he said to me; “there is a great activity in the enemy’s lines.”
“They will try to demolish this redoubt,” I said, getting up lazily. “How gloomy the sky is, Augustine! Day dawns very sadly.”
“I believe they will attack on all sides at once, until they have made their second parallel. Do you know that Napoleon in Paris, knowing the resistance shown by this city in the first siege, was furious with Lefebre Desnouettes because he assaulted the plaza by the Portillo and the Castle Aljaferia? He called for a plan of Saragossa, and they gave it to him, and he showed that the city should be attacked by Santa Engracia.”
“By this place? A black day is indeed dawning for us if the orders of Napoleon are carried out. Tell me, have we anything to eat here?”
“I did not show it to you before because I wished to surprise you,” he said to me, showing me a basket which served as the tomb of two cold roast fowls, some comfits and fine preserves.
“You brought these last night? Indeed! How could you go out of the redoubt?”
“I got leave from the general for an hour, and Mariquilla prepared this feast. If Candiola knows that two of the hens from his chicken-corral have been killed and roasted to regale two of the defenders of the city, the devil will be to pay. Let us eat then, Señor Araceli, while we await the bombardment. Here it comes. One bomb! Another, another!”
The right batteries opened fire upon San José and the Pilar, and what a fire! The whole army seemed behind the cannon. Away with breakfasts, away with the morning meal, away with tidbits!—the men of Aragon will have no food but glory!
The unconquerable fortress answered the insolent besieger with a tremendous cannonade, and soon the great soul of our fatherland moved within us. The balls, beating upon the brick walls and the earthworks, beat down the redoubt as if it were a toy pelted with stones by a boy. The grenades, falling among us, burst with a great noise, and the bombs, passing with awful majesty over our heads, went on to fall into the streets and upon the roofs of the houses.
Everybody out! Let there be no idle or cowardly people in the city. The men to the walls, the women to the bloody hospitals, the children and priests to carry ammunition! Let no notice be taken of these dreadful and burning things which bore through roofs, penetrate dwelling-houses, open gates, pierce floors, descend to the cellars, and, bursting, scatter the flames of hell upon the tranquil hearth, surprising with death the aged invalid on his couch and the child in his cradle. Nothing of this sort matters. Everybody out into the street, and thus save honor though the city perish, and the churches and convents and hospitals and the estates which are but earthly things! The Saragossans, despising material good as they despised life, lived by their spirits in the infinite spaces of the ideal.
In the first moments the Captain-General and many other distinguished personages visited us—such as Don Mariano Cereso the priest of Sas, General O’Neill, San Genis, and Don Pedro Ric. There was also there the brave and generous Don José Montoria, who embraced his son, saying to him: “Today is the day to conquer or to die. We will meet each other in heaven.”
Behind Montoria, Don Roque presented himself; he had become a
