CHAPTER XXX

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Horrible nightmare, leave me! I do not wish to sleep. But the bad dream which I long to fling from my remembrance returns to distress me. I wish I could blot from my memory the melancholy scene. But one night passes, and then another, and the scene is not blotted out. I, who on so many occasions have faced great dangers without winking an eyelash, I tremble now, and the cold sweat comes on my forehead. The sword bathed in French blood falls from my hand, and I shut my eyes in order not to see what passes before me. In vain I hurl thee away, dreadful vision! I expel thee, and thou dost return. Thou art fast rooted in my memory. No, I am not capable of taking the life of a fellow-being in cold blood, though inexorable duty commands it. Why did I not tremble in the trenches as I tremble now? I feel a mortal chill. By the light of lanterns I see sinister faces, one above all livid and sullen, that shows a terror greater than all other terrors. How the barrels of the guns gleam! All is ready, and but one word is lacking, my word. I try to pronounce the word, and I bite my tongue. No, that word will never come from my lips!

Away from me, black nightmare! I shut my eyes. I draw my eyelids closer, better to exclude thee, and the closer they are shut the plainer I see thee, horrible picture! They all wait with anxiety; but nothing is comparable to the state of my soul, rebelling against the law which obliges it to decide the end of another's existence. Time passes, then eyes which I wish I had never seen disappear under the bandage. I cannot look at the scene; would that they had put a bandage over my eyes also! The soldiers look at me, and I frown to hide my cowardice. We mortals are stupid and vain even in supreme moments. The by-standers jested at my state, and that gave me a certain energy. I unglued my tongue from my palate, and cried,—

"Fire!"

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

Ten days pass, and Saragossa has not yet surrendered, because some madmen are still persistent in guarding for Spain that heap of dust and ashes. The houses go on falling; and France, after establishing one foot, wastes armies and quintals of powder in gaining ground on which to set the other. Spain will not give up as long as she has one paving-stone to serve as a lever for the immense machine of her bravery. I am almost lifeless. I cannot move. Those men I see passing before me do not seem to be men. They are languid and emaciated, and their faces would be yellow, if dust and powder had not blackened them. Eyes gleam under blackened eyebrows,—eyes that do not yet know how to look without taking aim. Men are covered with unclean rags, and cloths are bound about their heads. They are so filthy that they seem like the dead raised from that heap in the Calle de la Imprenta, to show themselves among the living. From time to time among the smoky columns these dying ones come, and the friars murmur religious consolation to them. 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 city is 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 memory does not seem real, the true things being confused in my memory with those dreamed.

I was stretched out in a gateway of the Calle de la Albarderia, shaking with cold, my left hand wrapped in a bloody, dirty cloth. The fever burned me, and I longed for strength to hasten to the front. They were not all corpses beside me. I reached out my hand and touched the arm of a friend who was still living.

"What is going on, SeÑor Sursum Corda?"

"It seems that the French are on this side of the Coso," he answered me, in a feeble voice. "They have blown up half of the city. May be we shall have to surrender. The Captain-General has fallen ill with the epidemic, and is in the Calle de Predicadores. They think he is going to die. The French will enter. I rejoice that I shall die before I see that. How do you find yourself, SeÑor 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 be with me, I shall go straight to heaven. SeÑor de Araceli, have you died yet?"

I got up and took a few steps. Leaning against the walls, I advanced a little and came to the Orphanage. Some military officers of high rank were accompanying a short, slender ecclesiastic to the door, who dismissed them, saying, "We have done our duty, and human strength can compass nothing more." It was Father Basilio. A friendly arm held me up, and I recognized Don Roque.

"Gabriel, my friend," he said to me, in deep affliction, "the city surrenders 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 to draw itself up to flee also, and in the distance its leaden casque fell from it. The flames of the city no longer gleamed. Columns of black smoke moved from east to west. Powder and ashes, raised by the whirling winds, moved in the same direction. The sky was no longer the sky, but a leaden canopy, strangely agitated.

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

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

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

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

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

They had conquered it without subduing it. On seeing the desolation of Saragossa, the Imperial army considered itself the grave-diggers of the heroic inhabitants, instead of their conquerors. Fifty-three thousand lives were contributed by this Aragonese city to those of the millions of creatures wherewith humanity paid for the military glories of the French Empire. This sacrifice will not prove fruitless, for it was a sacrifice for an idea. The French Empire,—a vain thing, a thing of circumstance, founded on fickle fortune, in audacity and the military genius that is always a second-rate quality when separated from service of the ideal,—this empire existed merely by its own self-worship. The French Empire—I say, that tempest which disturbed the first years of the century, and whose lightnings and thunderbolts held Europe in terror—passed, as tempests pass. The normal state in historic 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 few years afterwards, but that also passed, overthrown by its own weight of pride. Perhaps this old tree will sprout the third time; but it will not give grateful shade to the world during centuries, and will scarcely serve for mankind to warm itself by its last bits of wood.

That which has not passed, nor shall pass, is the idea of nationality which 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 hallowed the Christian idea in the arena. The result is that Spain, depreciated unjustly in the Congress of Vienna, disprized with reason for her civil wars, her bad governors, her disorders, her bankruptcy more or less declared, her immoral treaties, her extravagances, her bull-fights, and her proclamations, has never since 1808 seen the continuation of her nationality placed in any doubt. Even to-day, when it seems that we have reached the last degree of abasement, offering more chance than Poland for dismemberment, no one dares attempt the conquest of this house of madmen. Men of little sense,—without any on occasion,—the Spanish will to-day, as ever, die a thousand deaths, stumbling and rising in the struggle of their inborn vices with the great qualities which they still preserve, with those which they acquire slowly, and those which Central Europe sends them. Providence holds in store for this people great advancings and abasements, great terrors and surprises, apparent deaths and mighty resurrections. Her destiny is to be able to live in agitation like a salamander in fire; but her national permanency is and ever will be assured.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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