“Where shall we ever find something to eat?” Augustine asked me. “Who is going to see about that?”
“This thing must end soon in one way or the other,” I answered; “either the city will surrender, or we shall all perish.”
At last, near the Coso, we met some of the commissary who were dealing out rations. We took ours eagerly, taking also all that we could carry for our comrades. They received it with a great racket, and a sort of joviality inappropriate to the circumstances. But the Spanish soldier is and always has been like that. While they were eating some crusts of bread as hard as cobblestones, the unanimous opinion spread through the battalion that Saragossa never would surrender, and never should surrender.
It was midnight when the firing dwindled down. The French had not conquered a hand’s breadth of earth more than the houses they had occupied at sunset, although they were not to be driven out of the quarters they had taken. This was left for the days that followed. When the influential men of the city, the Montorias, the Ceresos, the Sases, the Salameros, and the San Clementes were returning to Las Mónicas, the scene that night of great prodigies of valor, they showed such tremendous courage and uttered such contempt of the enemy that it roused the spirits of all who saw and heard them.
“Little has been accomplished tonight,” said Montoria. “Our men have been a bit remiss. It is true that it was not possible to drive them all out, nor ought we to have come out into the open, though the French attacked us with little energy. I have seen a few defeats, nothing of consequence. The nuns have beaten up plenty of oil with wine, and now it is only a question of binding up a few wounds. If there were time, it would be well to bury the dead in this heap, but there will be more presently. The epidemic is getting hold of more men. They need rubbing. Plenty of rubbing is what I believe in. For the present, they can