“Gabriel,” he said, “God has laid his hand heavily today upon our good friend.”
“Is it the eldest son who is dead, Manuel Montoria?”
“Yes, and that is not the only trouble of the family. Manuel was married, as you know, and had a son four years of age. You see that group of women? Well, the wife of Montoria’s poor eldest son is there with her boy in her arms. He is dying of the epidemic, and is already in his agony. Is it not a horrible state of things? There is one of the first families of Saragossa reduced to this sad condition, without a roof to cover them, in want of the most necessary things. That unfortunate young mother was in the street all night, exposed to the weather with her sick child in her arms, expecting every instant that he would breathe his last. After all it is better to be here than in one of those pestilent cellars where no one can breathe. I am thankful that I and other friends have been able to help her a little; but what can one do when there is scarcely any bread to be had? The wine is all finished, and a bit of beef is not to be found, though I gave her a piece of ours.”
Morning began to come. I went up to the group of women and saw a sorrowful sight. With the anguished effort to save life, the mother and the few women who kept her company were torturing the poor child with remedies which everybody tries at such a time; but it needed only to see the victim of the fever to realize the impossibility of saving that little being whom death had already grasped with his relentless hand.
The voice of Don José de Montoria obliged me to hasten forward more quickly; and in an outer corner in the Calle de las Rufas a second group completed the dreadful picture of that unhappy family. Stretched upon the ground was the body of Manuel, a young man of thirty years, no less amiable and generous in his life than his father and brother. A ball had pierced his head, and from the small external wound, at the spot whence