“I do not believe so.”
“Or perhaps where they are making cartridges?”
“I believe that still less. She would be in her house, and there is where I wish to go, Gabriel. You may go and see to the carrying of the wounded, or to the powder, or whatever you please, but I am going there!”
As he said this, Pirli presented himself to us in his friar’s habit, already torn and hanging in a thousand fragments, and on his head the French engineer’s helmet, badly battered, but plated and plumed, and making our hero look less like a soldier than a carnival figure.
“Are you coming to help carry the wounded?” he asked. “They have just killed two more for us that we are carrying to San Pablo. They need men there to open the ditch where they are burying our dead of yesterday, but I have worked enough. I am going to the house of Manuela Sancho to see if I can get a snatch of sleep. But, first, we are going to dance a little. Don’t you want to come along?”
“No, we are going to San Pablo,” I replied, “to bury the dead. There is enough to do.”
“They say that so many dead make the air bad, and that is why there are so many ill of the fever. That is finishing them faster than their wounds, over by the other barricade. I would rather have some ‘hot cakes’ than the epidemic. A ‘señora’ wouldn’t scare me, but a chill and a fever would. So then you are going to bury the dead?”
“Yes,” said Augustine, “let us bury the dead.”
“In San Pablo there are no less than forty wounded,” answered Pirli; “and, at the rate we’re going there, we’ll soon be more dead than living. Don’t you want a little diversion? If you are not going to work on the ditch, why not come along to the cartridge factory? All the girls will be there, and from time to time they will give us some singing, or cheer our souls with a little dancing.”
“We have no fault to find with all that. Will Manuela Sancho be there too?”
“No, the girls there are the young ladies of Saragossa, the señoritas who have been called into service by the committee of safety. There are a great many of them in the hospitals too. They invite themselves for that service. And it would be a queer one who would use her eyes so little as not to make a match for herself, if not for this year, then for next!”
We heard the rushing sound of many footsteps behind us, and, turning, we saw a great number of people, among whose voices we recognized that of Don José de Montoria. He was very angry at seeing us there, and exclaimed—
“What are you doing here, idiots? Three strong hearty men standing here with their hands folded, when there is such a lack of men for the work to be done! Go along with you! Clear out of here! March, you little tin soldiers! Do you see those two posts there on the Trenque knoll with beams crossed on top from which six ropes are hanging? Do you see that gallows set up in that place for traitors? Well, it’s for loafers, too. Get along to work, or I’ll show your carcasses how to move with my fists.”
We followed him until we came quite near the gallows, where the six ropes were swaying commandingly in the wind, ready to strangle traitors or cowards. Montoria seized his son by the arm, and pointed to the horrible apparatus with an energetic gesture, saying—
“Here you can see what we have been getting ready this evening. Look! There’s where those who do not do their duty will be entertained. On with you! I who am old never get tired, but you young healthy men act as if you were made of putty. The invincible men of the first siege have almost all worked themselves to death; and we old men, sirs, are obliged to set an example to these dandies who if they miss dining for a week begin to complain and beg for broth. I would give you broth of powder, and soup of cannon balls, you cowards! Go, and see that you help to bury the dead and carry ammunition to the walls.”
“And assist at the hell which this damned epidemic is spreading,” said one of those who had accompanied Montoria.
“I don’t know what to think of this thing which the doctors call the epidemic,” answered Don José. “I call it fear, sirs, pure fear. They take a chill; then they have spasms and a fever; then they turn green, and they die. What is all that but the effect of fear? Our strong men all seem to be gone, yes, señors. Ah, what men those were in the first siege! Now when the soldiers have been firing and been fired at for a trifle of ten hours, they begin to fall down with fatigue, and say they can do no more. There’s one man who had lost only a leg and a half who began screaming and calling upon all the holy martyrs, begging that they put him to bed. Nothing but cowardice, pure cowardice! Today several soldiers left Palafox’s battery who had a good sound arm apiece left to fight with. And they began to beg for broth! They had better drink their own blood, which is the best broth in the world. I say the race of men of courage is finished and done with, porra! a thousand porras!”
“Tomorrow the French will attack Las Tenerias,” said the other. “If, as a result, there are many wounded, I don’t see where we are going to put them.”
“Wounded!” exclaimed Montoria. “We don’t wish to see any wounded here. The dead do not hinder us. We can
