The belfries no longer sounded the alarm, because there were no bell-ringers. One heard no more the proclamations by criers, because proclamations were no longer published. Mass was not said, because there were no more priests. Nobody sang the jota now. The voices of the dying people were husky in their throats. From hour to hour a funereal silence was conquering the city. Only the cannon spoke. The advance guards of the two nations no longer took the trouble to exchange insults. Instead of madness, everybody was full of sadness; and the dying city fought on in silence, so that no atom of strength need be lost in idle words.
The necessity of surrender was now the general idea; but none showed it, guarding it in the depths of conscience as he would conceal a crime which he was about to commit. Surrender! It seemed an impossibility, a word too difficult. To perish would be easier!
One day passed after the explosion of San Francisco; it was a horrible day which seemed to have no existence in time, but only in the fanciful realm of the imagination. I had been in the Calle de las Arcadas a little before the greater number of its houses fell. I ran afterwards to the Coso, to fulfil a commission with which I had been charged, and I remember that the heavy infected air choked me so that I could scarcely walk. On the way I saw the same child that I had seen several days before, alone and crying in the quarter of Las Tenerias. He was still alone and crying, and the poor child had his hands in his mouth as if he were eating his fingers. In spite of that, nobody noticed him. I also passed him by indifferently; but, afterwards a little voice reproached me, and I turned back, and took him with me, giving him some bits of bread. My commission accomplished, I ran to the Plazuela de San Felipe, where, since the affair of Las Arcadas, were the few men of my battalion who were still alive. It was now night; and although there had been firing in the Coso between one sidewalk and the other, my comrades were held in reserve for the following day, because they were dropping with fatigue. On arriving, I saw a man who wrapped in his military cloak was walking up and down, taking notice of nobody. It was Augustine Montoria.
"Augustine, is it thou?" I asked, going up to him. "How pale and changed thou art? Have they wounded thee?"
"Let me alone," he answered bitterly, "I am in no mood for comrades."
"Are you mad? What has happened to you?"
"Leave me," he answered, pushing me away, "I tell you that I want to be alone. I do not want to see anybody."
"Friend!" I cried, understanding that some terrible trouble was on the soul of my companion, "if misfortune is upon you, tell it to me, and let me share your sorrow."
"Do you not know it, then?"