The keeper was a vigorous old man, who climbed up the interminable steps much more rapidly than I could follow.
“You will have a magnificent view, sir,” said he.
I told him that we Italians also had a leaning tower like that of Saragossa. He turned so that he could look at me and said sternly, “Ours is the only one in the world.”—“Oh, nonsense! I say that we have one too, and I have seen it with my eyes, at Pisa, but then, if you don’t want to believe me, you may read it here. See, the guide-book tells about it.”
He gave me a look and muttered, “Perhaps so.”
Perhaps so! the stubborn old numbskull! I could have thrown the book at his head.
Finally we reached the top. It is a wonderful sight. One sees Saragossa at a glance—the great Coso, the avenue of Santa Engracia, the suburbs; and then below, where it seems one can almost touch them, the richly-colored domes of Our Lady of the Pillar; just beyond, the bold tower of the Seo; yonder the famous Ebro sweeping around the city with a majestic curve, and the wide valley, enamored, in the words of Cervantes, with the beauty of her waters and the dignity of their flow; and the Huerba and the bridges and the hills, which could tell of so many bloody repulses and desperate assaults.
The keeper read in my face the thoughts which were passing through my mind, and, as though he was continuing a conversation which I had commenced, he began to point out the places at which the French forced their entrance, and where the citizens made the most stubborn resistance. “It was not the bombs of the French,” said he, “which made us surrender. We ourselves burned the houses and blew them up with mines. It was the plague. During the last days there were in the hospitals more than fifteen thousand of the forty thousand men who defended the city. There was not time to bring in the wounded or to bury the dead. The ruins of the houses were covered with putrefying corpses, which poisoned the air. One-third of the buildings of the city were destroyed, yet no one said surrender, and if any one had done so, he would have been strung up on one of the gallows which had been erected in every square.
“We would have died behind the barricades, in the fire, beneath the rubbish of our walls, rather than have bowed the head. But when Palafox found himself at the point of death, when it was known that the French were victorious in other places, and that there was no longer any hope, then we were obliged to lay down our arms. But the defenders of Saragossa surrendered themselves with all the honors of war, and when that crowd of soldiers, peasants, monks, and boys—haggard, ragged, blood-stained, and battle-scarred—filed out before the French army, the victors trembled with awe and had not the heart to rejoice over their victory. The lowest of our peasants could carry his head as high as the first of their marshals. Saragossa”—and, speaking these words, the old man was magnificent—“Saragossa has spit in the face of Napoleon!”
I thought at that moment of Thiers’ history, and the remembrance of his account of the fall of Saragossa raised within me a feeling of disdain. Not one generous word for the sublime sacrifice of that devoted people! To him their valor was but the raging of fanatics or a senseless mania for war on the part of the peasants weary of their monotonous life in the fields, and of monks surfeited with the solitude of the cell; their unyielding heroism was only obstinacy; their love of country, foolish pride. They did not die pour cet ideal de grandeur which animated the courage of the imperial troops. As if liberty, justice, and the honor of a people were not nobler than the ambition of an emperor seeking to triumph by treachery and wishing to rule with violence!
The sun was setting, the towers and minarets of Saragossa were gilded by the last rays, the sky was liquid. Again I looked around to impress clearly upon my memory the picture of the city and the country, and before I descended I said to the keeper, who regarded me with an air of benevolent curiosity: “Tell the strangers who in after-time may come to visit this tower that one day a young Italian a few hours before he started for Castile, in bidding a last farewell to the capital of Arragon from this balcony, bared his head with a sentiment of the deepest reverence, thus, and, as he was not able to kiss, one by one, the brows of all the descendants of the heroes of 1809, he gave a kiss to the keeper;” and so I kissed him and he me, and I went away content, and he too; and you may laugh who will.