Near the convent of San Agustin, at the south-eastern end of Saragossa, there stood, in the year 1809, an old, large, gloomy house known as the Casa Ximenez. It was not in the best part of the city, but it had an air of high respectability, and in truth had been for many years the town residence of a prosperous burgher family, whose name stood for all that was solid and dignified in civic and commercial life.
On February 1st in the aforesaid year the spacious rooms of the mansion were empty—all but one. In the gilded sala on the first floor, a chamber large enough to contain fifty or sixty persons as well as its massive antique furniture, sat two ladies, one old, the other in the heyday of youth. Though it was early morning, the room would have been in pitch darkness but for two candles which, set in the cups of a silver candelabra on the table, threw a glimmering illumination upon the panelled walls. The sulphurous fumes of gunpowder hung heavily in the air. The deep, square windows were shuttered on the outside; there was no crack or aperture through which the light of day could enter save a hole in one of the shutters, and that at this moment was blocked by a long Spanish musket, behind which stood a middle-aged man in the sober costume of an upper servant.
Within the house all was silent, but from without, penetrating the thick walls and the iron-clamped shutters, came dull, heavy, thunderous sounds that shook the air, set the candle flames quivering, and caused the elder of the two ladies to start and shudder and moan as if in pain. At intervals the man at the window withdrew the musket, letting in for a few moments a streak of daylight that lay white across the yellow glimmer from the candles. With silent deliberation he charged his weapon, passed it through the aperture with a downward slant, and pulled the trigger, going through the same series of movements time after time with clock-work regularity.
The old lady watched him as if fascinated. She was small and thin; the hair beneath her elaborate cap was white. With the long bony fingers of one hand she clasped her mantilla closely about her shrunken frame; the other was held in the strong, warm hands of the younger lady, who sat on the floor by the elder's chair and spoke to her alternately in soothing and in urgent tones.
"You really must come, Auntie," she was saying. "It is not safe here. Hark! there is another gun! They will break in before long, and then—oh! come, come now; you can walk if you only try."
The old lady, still with her eyes fixed on the servant, shook her head and clutched her mantilla convulsively.
"Does he kill—every time?" she said in a thin quavering voice.
"How can we tell? And if he does kill, it only makes our position worse, for they will find out where the shots come from, and they will burst in, and you—we—oh! Auntie, it is our only chance. See, I will support you; if you lean on my arm you will walk quite well, and I will never leave you. Come!"
"I will not go," said her companion. "I will not, will not. The French may kill me, I have not long to live; but you, Juanita, you can escape. Francisco will shoot and kill until the very end; he and I will remain in the old house, in the old house—"
"They are coming nearer, Señorita," said Francisco, his respectful tone as quiet and unperturbed as though he were announcing a visitor.