“Oh, of course. Don José de Montoria is a great friend of the merchant Don Andrés Guspide, who on the fourth of August was firing from near the narrow street of the Torre del Pino. Hand-grenades and bullets were raining all about him, and my Don Andrés stood like a rock. More than a hundred dead lay about him, and he alone killed fifty of the French.”
“Great man, this one! And he is a friend of my friend?”
“Yes, señor,” replied the cripple; “and they are two of the best gentlemen in all Saragossa, and they give me a little something every Saturday. For you must know that I am Pepe Pallejas, and they call me Sursum Corda, as twenty-four years ago I was sacristan of the Church of Jesus, and I used to sing—But this is not coming to the point, and I was going on to say I am Sursum Corda, and perhaps you have heard about me in Madrid?”
“Yes,” said Don Roque, yielding to his generous impulses; “it seems to me that I have heard the Señor Sursum Corda mentioned there, haven’t we, boys?”
“Well, it’s likely, and you must know that before the siege I used to beg at the door of this monastery of Santa Engracia, which was blown up by the bandits on the thirteenth of August. I beg now at the Puerta de Jerusalem, at the Jerusalem Gate—where you will be able to find me whenever you like. Well, as I was saying, on the fourth of August I was here, and I saw Francisco Quílez come out of the church, first sergeant of the First Company of fusileers, who, you must already know, with thirty-five men, cast out the bandits from the Convent of the Incarnation. I see that you look surprised—yes! Well, in the orchard of the convent at the back is where the Lieutenant Don Miguel Gila died. There are at the least two hundred bodies in that orchard; and there Don Felipe San Clement, a merchant of Saragossa, broke both his legs. Indeed, if Don Miguel Salamero had not been present—don’t you know anything about that?”