restrain her, so that she might not witness the terrible scene, after what she had just been through; but the unhappy lady struggled with us, begging us to let her see her husband. In the meantime Don José, leaving us, went over to where the body of his grandson was lying, took him in his arms, and carried him and put him down near Manuel. The woman needed all of our care; and while Doña Leocadia continued without consciousness or motion, holding the corpse embraced in her arms, her daughter-in-law, fevered with grief, was running about after imaginary enemies, threatening to tear them to pieces. We tried to hold her, but she escaped from us. At times she laughed with frightful laughter, and presently she knelt before us, praying us to return the two bodies that we had taken away.
People passed—soldiers, friars, peasants—all seeing this with indifference, because every one had passed through similar scenes. Hearts were hardened, and souls seemed to have lost their most beautiful faculties, preserving nothing but a rude heroism. At last the poor woman yielded to fatigue, to the exhaustion of her own pain, lying passive in my arms as if she were dead. We looked about for some cordial or some kind of nourishment to revive her; but we had none, and the people who saw our need had work enough to attend to their own. In the meantime, Don José helped by his son Augustine, who also controlled his bitter grief, loosened the body from the arms of Doña Leocadia. The state of this unhappy lady was such that it seemed almost as if we should have to mourn another death that day. Presently Montoria repeated,
“It is necessary that my son be buried!”
He looked about; we all looked about, and saw numbers of unburied bodies. In the Calle de las Rufas there were many; and the Calle de la Imprenta (now the Calle de Flandro) close by had been made into a sort of receiving house. It is not exaggeration, that which I saw and will tell you: Innumerable bodies were piled up in the narrow way, forming a