In this way the convent of Las Monicas passed into the hands of the French.
XXI
On reaching this point in my story, I beg the reader to pardon me if I do not give the dates exactly of that which I relate. In this period of horror, lasting from January 27 to the middle of the next month, the successive events are so confused, so mixed up, so run together in my mind, that I cannot distinguish days and nights, and, in some instances, I do not know whether certain skirmishes of those I recall took place in daylight. It seems to me that all happened during one long day, or in one endless night, and that time was not then marked by its ordinary divisions. Many sensations and impressions are linked together in my memory, forming one vast picture where there are no more dividing lines than those that the events themselves offer—the greater fright of one moment, the unexplained panic or fury of another.
For this reason I cannot tell exactly on what day that took place which I am going to relate now; but if I am not mistaken it was on a day after the fight at Las Monicas, and somewhere, I should say, between the thirtieth of January and the second of February. We were occupying a house in the Calle de Pabostre. The French were in the one next to it, and were trying to advance through the inside of the block to reach the Puerta Quemada. Nothing can compare with the incessant activity going on there. No kind of warfare, no bloodiest battle on the open field, no sieges of a plaza, nor struggles in a street barricade can compare with the succession of conflicts between the army of an alcove and the army of a drawing-room, between the troops that occupy one floor and those which guard the one above it.
Hearing the muffled blows of the picks at various points, not knowing from what direction the attack might come, caused us some alarm. We went up into attics; we descended into cellars, and glued our ears to partition walls; we tried to learn the intentions of the enemy according to the direction of the blows. At last we noticed that the partition wall was being violently shaken near the very place where we were standing, and we waited fire in the doorway, after heaping up the furniture as a barricade. The French opened a hole, and presently began leaping over beams and broken fragments, showing an intention of driving us from the place. There were twenty of us, fewer of them, and they evidently did not expect to be received in such fashion, and retreated, returning soon with such reinforcement that we were in great danger, and obliged to retire, leaving five comrades behind the furniture, two of them dead. In the narrow passage we ran against a stairway up which we hurried without knowing where we were going, and presently found ourselves in a garret—an admirable position for defence. The stairway was narrow, however, and the Frenchmen who tried to come up it died inevitably. So we remained for some time, prolonging the resistance, and encouraging one another with huzzas and shouts, when the partition at our backs began to resound with loud blows, and we saw immediately that the French, by opening an entrance through there, would catch us between two fires without means of escape. We were now thirteen, as two had fallen in the garret, severely wounded. Tío Garces, who was in command, shouted furiously: “By heaven, the dogs shall not catch us! There’s a skylight in the roof. Let us go up through it to the tiles of the roof. Go on firing at whoever comes up to try and cut through it! The rest of you enlarge the hole. Away with fear, and viva the Virgin del Pilar!”
It was done as he commanded. This was to be a well-ordered retreat, according to the rules of war; and while part of our army was preventing the onward march of the enemy, the rest were occupied in facilitating the retreat. This able plan was put into execution with feverish activity, and very soon the hole of escape was large enough for three men to pass through at once, without the French gaining a single step during the time that we were employed in this way. We quickly got out on the roof. We were now nine. Three had been left in the garret, and another was wounded in trying to get out, falling still alive, into the hands of the enemy. On finding ourselves outside, we leaped for joy. We cast a glance over the roofs of the quarter, and saw at a distance the batteries of the French. We advanced on all fours for a good distance, exploring the lay of the land, leaving two sentinels in the gap to pop off a gun at anyone who should seek to slip up by them. We had not gone twenty paces when we heard a great noise of voices and laughter which seemed to us to be French. And so it was; from a broad balcony those rascals were looking at us and laughing. They were not slow in firing upon us, but protected behind the chimneys, the angles and corners which the roof afforded, we answered them shot for shot, and replied to their oaths and exclamations by a thousand other invectives with which the lively imagination of Tío Garces inspired us. At last we retreated, jumping to the roof of the next house. We believed it to be in the hands of our own men, and we entered by
