I now felt myself able to walk a little, although with difficulty. I saw that my clothing was all soaked with blood. Feeling a lively smarting in my right arm, I supposed that I was severely wounded; but the hurt turned out to be an insignificant contusion, and the stains on my clothing came from creeping along through the pools of blood and mud.
I could now think clearly again. I could see plainly, and could hear distinctly the shouts and the hurried footsteps, the cannon-shots near and afar in dreadful dialogue. Their crashings here and yonder seemed like questions and replies.
The burning went on. There was a dense cloud over the city formed of dust and smoke, which, with the splendor of the flames, revealed horrible unearthly scenes like those of dreams.
The mangled houses, with their windows and openings glaring with the light like hellish eyes, the projecting angles of the smoking ruins, and the burning beams formed a spectacle less sinister than that of those leaping and unwearied figures that did not cease to move about here and there, almost in the centre of the flames. They were the peasants of Saragossa, who were still fighting with the French, and disputing with them every hand’s breadth of this hell.
I found myself in the Calle de Puerta Quemada. That which I have described was seen by looking in two directions from the Seminary, and from the entrance of the Calle de Pabostre. I went on a few steps, but fell again, overcome by fatigue. A priest, seeing me covered with blood, came up to me and began to talk to me of the future life, and of the eternal rewards destined for those who die for their country. He told me that I was not wounded; but that hunger, weariness, and thirst had prostrated me, and that I seemed to have the early symptoms of the epidemic. Then the good friar, in whom I recognized at once Father Mateo del Busto, seated himself beside me, sighing deeply.
“I can keep up no longer. I believe that I am going to die.”