Mariquilla Candiola made no movement whatever towards taking the money, and Montoria put it down upon a box, saying—
“There it is!”
Then the girl with a brusque and energetic movement which seemed, as it certainly was, the inspiration of her offended dignity, took the money, gold, silver, and copper, and threw it as if it were so many stones into the face of Montoria. The money was scattered all over the floor, and rolled out of the door without much promise of anyone’s finding it all in the future. Immediately afterwards the señorita went without a word into the street. She beheld her father jammed into the crowd; and presently, aided by some young men, unable to see with indifference a woman in distress, she freed him from the infamous captivity in which the boys held him.
The father and daughter entered by the garden gate, as we were beginning to remove the flour.
XIII
When we had finished carrying out the flour, I went and looked for Augustine; but I could find him nowhere, neither in his father’s house, nor at the headquarters of supplies, nor in the Coso, nor in Santa Engracia. At nightfall I found him in the powder mill near San Juan de los Panetes. I have forgotten to say that the Saragossans had improvised a work shop where were turned out daily nine or ten quintals of powder. I saw Augustine helping the workmen put into sacks and barrels the powder made during the day. He was working with feverish activity.
“Do you see this enormous heap of powder?” he said to me when I approached him. “Do you see those sacks and those barrels all full of the 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 Saragossa I should like it still better. Yes, and in such a case I should like to 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 the clouds, torn to pieces in the horrible explosion like pieces of rock which a volcano throws to a distance of a hundred leagues. I would be hurled to the fifth heaven, and of my members, scattered everywhere, there would be no memory! Death, Gabriel, death is what I desire! But I desire a death—I do not explain it to you. My desperation is so great that to die of a gunshot or a sabre-thrust would not satisfy me. I long to be rent asunder, and diffused through space in a thousand burning particles. I pant to feel myself in the bosom of a flame-bearing cloud. My spirit yearns, if only for an infinitesimal instant, the delight of seeing this wretched body reduced to powder. Gabriel, I am desperate. Do you see this powder? Imagine within my breast all the flames which this 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 I could see it all. Mariquilla does not know that that man who maltreated her father is my own! Did you see how the boys threw mud at poor Candiola? I realize that Candiola is a wretch. But she, what fault has she? 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 the place of greatest danger and fling myself into the fire of the French. After what I have seen today, I and the earth on which I dwell may not be together.”
I drew him away from the place, taking him to the walls; and we went to work on the fortifications which were being made in Las Tenerias, the weakest point in the city since the destruction of San José and Santa Engracia. I have already said that from the mouth of the Huerva to San José stretched a line of fifty mouths of fire. Against this formidable line 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 yet by the wide road which is called the Coso. It was at the beginning of this century a village of mean houses, almost all inhabited by laborers and artisans, and the religious houses there had none of the splendor of the monuments of Saragossa. The general plan of this district is approximately the segment of a circle whose arc curves out to the open country, and whose chord unites it to the city, from the Puerta Quemada to the rise at the Sepulcro.
From that line to the circumference ran several streets, some of them broken, like the Calles de la Diezma, Barrio Verde, de los Clavos, and de Pabostre. Some of these were marked not by rows of houses, but by walls, and lacking sometimes one thing and sometimes another. The streets spread out into formless little squares or yards or barren gardens. I describe badly because in the days I refer to the heaps of ruins left by the first siege had been used to mount batteries and raise barricades in points where the houses did not offer a natural defence.
Near the fortification of the Ebro were some remnants of an ancient wall, with various little towers of masonry which some persons supposed to be from the hands of the Romans, and others judged to be the work of the Moors. In my time—I do
