Читать книгу Saragossa (Historical Novel) - Benito Pérez Galdós - Страница 6

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Before we left his house, Montoria became vexed at Don Roque and me because we would not take the money that he offered us for our first expenses in the city; then were repeated the blows on the table, and the rains of "porras" and other words that I will not repeat. But at last we arrived at an arrangement honorable for both parties.

And now I begin to think I am saying too much about this singular man before I describe his personality. Don José was a man of about sixty years of age, strong, high-colored, of over-flowing health, well placed in the world, contented with himself, fulfilling his destiny with a quiet conscience. His was an excess of patriotic virtues and of exemplary customs, if there can be an excess of such things. He was lacking in education, that is to say, in the finer and more distinguished training which in that time some of the sons of such families as his were beginning to receive. Don José was not acquainted with the superficialities of etiquette, and by character and custom was opposed to the amenities and the white lies which are a part of the foundations of courtesy. As he always wore his heart upon his sleeve, he wished everybody to do the same, and his savage goodness tolerated none of the frequent evasions of polite conversation. In angry moments he was impetuous, and let himself be carried to violent extremes, of which he always repented later. He never dissimulated, and had the great Christian virtues in a crude form and without polish, like a massive piece of the most beautiful marble where the chisel has traced no lines. It was necessary to know him to understand him, making allowances for his eccentricities, although to be sure he should scarcely be called eccentric, when he was so much like the majority of the men of his province.

His aim was never to hide what he felt; and if this occasionally caused him some trouble in the course of life in regard to questions of little moment, it was a quality which always proved an inestimable treasure in any grave matter, because, with his soul wholly on view, it was impossible to suspect any malice or any double dealing whatever. He readily pardoned offenders, obliged those who sought favors, and gave a large part of his numerous goods to those in need. He dressed neatly, ate abundantly, fasted with much scrupulousness during Lent, and loved the Virgin del Pilar with a fanatical sort of family affection.

His language was not, as we have shown, a model of elegance, and he himself confessed, as the greatest of his defects, the habit of saying porra every minute, and again, porra! without the slightest necessity. But more than once I heard him say, knowing his fault, he had not been able to correct it, for the porras came out of his mouth without his knowing it.

Don José had a wife and three children. She was Doña Leocadia Sarriera, by birth a Navarraise. The eldest son and the daughter were married, and had given grandchildren to the old man. The younger son was called Augustine, and was destined for the church, like his uncle of the same name, the Archdeacon of La Seo. I made the acquaintance of all these on the same day, and found them the best people in the world. I was treated with so much kindness that I was overwhelmed by their generosity. If they had known me since my birth, they could not have been more cordial. Their kindness, springing spontaneously from their generous hearts, touched my very soul; and as I have always had a faculty for letting people love me, I responded from the first with a very sincere affection.

"Señor Don Roque," I said that night to my friend as we were going to bed in the room which was given us, "I have never seen people like these. Is everybody in Aragon like this?"

"There are all kinds," he answered; "but men made of stuff like Don José and his family are plentiful in this land of Aragon."

Next day we occupied ourselves with my enlistment. The spirit of the men who were enlisting filled me with such enthusiasm that nothing seemed to me so noble as to follow glory, even afar off. Everybody knows that in those days Saragossa and the Saragossans had obtained a fabulous renown, that their heroism stimulated the imagination. Everything referring to the famous siege of the immortal city partook on the lips of narrators of the proportions and colors of the heroic age. With distance, the actions of the Saragossans acquired great dimensions. In England and Germany, where they were considered the Numantines of modern times, those half-naked peasants, with rope sandals on their feet and the bright Saragossan kerchief on their heads, became like figures of mythology.

"Surrender, and we will give you clothes," said the French in the first siege, admiring the constancy of a few poor countrymen dressed in rags.

"We do not know how to surrender," they made answer; "and our bodies shall be clothed with glory."

The fame of this and other phrases has gone round the world.

But let us go back to my enlistment. There was an obstacle in the way, Palafox's manifesto of the thirteenth of December, in which he ordered the expulsion of all strangers within a period of twenty-four hours. This measure was taken on account of the numbers of people who made trouble, and stirred up discord and disorder; but just at the time of my arrival another order was given out, calling for all the scattered soldiers of the Army of the Centre which had been dispersed at Tudela, and so I found a chance to enlist. Although I did not belong to that army, I had taken a place in the defence of Madrid and the battle of Bailen. These were reasons which, with the help of my protector Montoria, served me in entering the Saragossan forces. They gave me a place in the battalion of volunteers of the Peñas of San Pedro, which had been badly weakened in the first siege, and I received a uniform and a gun. I did not enter the lines, as my protector had said, in the company of the clergyman of Santiago Sas, because this valiant company was composed exclusively of residents of the parish of San Pablo. They did not want any young men in their battalion; for this reason Augustine Montoria himself, Don José's son, could not serve under the Sas banner, and enlisted like myself in the battalion of Las Peñas de San Pedro. Good luck bestowed upon me a good companion and an excellent friend.

From the day of my arrival I had heard talk of the approach of the French army; but it was not an incontrovertible fact until the twentieth. In the afternoon a division arrived at Zuera, on the left bank of the river, to threaten the suburb; another, commanded by Suchet, encamped on the right above San Lamberto. Marshal Moncey, who was the general in command, placed himself, with three divisions, near the canal, and on both sides of the Huerva. Forty thousand men besieged us.

It is known that the French, impatient to defeat us, began operations early on the twenty-first, attacking simultaneously and with great vigor Monte Torrero, and the Arrabal, the suburb on the left of the Ebro, points without whose possession it was impossible to dream of conquering the valiant city. But if we were obliged to abandon Torrero on account of the danger of its defence, Saragossa displayed in the suburb such audacious courage that that day is known as one of the most brilliant of all her brilliant history.

From four o'clock, from day-dawn, the battalion of Las Peñas de San Pedro guarded the front of the fortifications, from Santa Engracia to the Convent of Trinitarios, a line which seemed the least exposed in all the circuit of the city. Behind Santa Engracia was established the battery of Los Martires; from there ran the battlements of the wall as far as the Huerva bridge, defended by a barricade; it deflected afterwards towards the west, making an obtuse angle, and joining another redoubt built in the Torre del Pino; it continued in a straight line as far as the Convent of Trinitarios, and enclosed the Puerta del Carmen.

Whoever has seen Saragossa can well understand my imperfect description, for the ruins of Santa Engracia still remain, and in the Puerta del Carmen may still be seen, not far from the Glorieta, its ruined architrave and worm-eaten stones.

We were, as I have said, occupying the position described, and part of the soldiers had a bivouac in a neighboring orchard, next to the Carmen college.

Augustine Montoria and I were inseparable. His serene character, the affection he showed me from the moment we met, and the inexplicable concord in our thoughts, made his company very agreeable. He was a young man of beautiful figure, with large brilliant eyes and open brow, and an expression marked by a melancholy gravity. His heart, like that of his father, was filled by generosity which overflowed at the least impulse; but he was not likely to wound the feelings of a friend, because education had taken from him a great deal of the national brusqueness. Augustine entered manhood's estate with the security of a kind heart, firm and uncorrupted judgment, with a vigorous and healthy soul; the wide world only was the limit of his boundless goodness. These qualities were enriched by a brilliant imagination of sure and direct action, not like that of our modern geniuses, who most of the time do not know what they are about. Augustine's imagination was lofty and serene, worthy of his education in the great classics. Although with a lively inclination to poetry—for Augustine was a poet—he had learned theology, showing ability in this as in everything. The fathers at the Seminary, who were fond of the youth, looked upon him as a prodigy in the sciences, human and divine, and they congratulated themselves on seeing him with one foot at least over the threshold of the Church.

The Montoria family had many a pleasant anticipation of the day when Augustine would say his first mass, as a holy event that was fast approaching. Yet—I am obliged to say it—Augustine had no vocation for the Church. Neither his family nor the good fathers of the Seminary understood this, nor would they have understood it, even if the Holy Spirit had come down in person to tell them. This precocious theologian, this humanist who had Horace at the ends of his fingers, this dialectician who in the weekly discussions astonished the fathers with intellectual gymnastics of scholastic science, had no more vocation for the Church than Mozart for war, Raphael for mathematics, or Napoleon for dancing!