Fire spurted from the Moorish walls, built by the Beni Hud, who reigned in Zaragoza, when still Sohail poured its protecting rays upon the land. The bluish wreaths of smoke curled on the Ebro, running along the water and enveloping the Coso as if in a mist. A dropping rifle-fire crackled out from the ramparts, and above the castle the red flag of the Intransigent-Republic shivered and fluttered in the breeze. The Torre-Nueva sprang from the middle of the town, just as a palm tree rises from the desert sands. It was built at the time when Moorish artisans, infidel dogs who yet preserved the secrets of the East amongst the Christians (may dogs defile their graves), had spent their science and their love upon it. Octagonal, and looking as if blown into the air by the magician’s art, it leaned a little to one side, and, as the admiring inhabitants averred, drawing their right hands open over their left arms, laughed at its rival of Bologna and at every other tower on earth. No finer specimen of the art known as Mudejar existed in all Spain. Galleries cut it here and there; and ajimeces, the little horseshoe windows divided by a marble pillar, loved of the Moors, which tradition says they took from the rude openings in their tents of camel’s hair, gave light to the inside. Stages of inclined planes led to the top, so gradual in their ascent that once a Queen of Spain had ridden up them to admire the view over the Sierras upon her palfrey, or her donkey, for all is one when treating of a queen, who of a certainty ennobles the animal she deigns to ride upon. Bold ajaracas, the patterns proper to the style of architecture, stood up in high relief upon its sides, and near the balustrade upon the top a band of bluish tiles relieved the brownness of the brickwork and sparkled in the sun. Sieges and time and storms, rain, wind, and snow had spared it; even the neglect of centuries had left it unimpaired—erect and elegant as a young Arab maiden carrying water from the well. Architects said that it inclined a little more each year, and talked about subsidences; but they were foreigners, unused to the things of Spain, and no one marked them; and the tower continued to be loved and prized and to fall into disrepair. On this occasion riflemen lined the galleries, pouring a hot fire upon the attacking forces of the Government. Encamped upon the heights above Torero, the Governmental army held the banks of the canal that gives an air of Holland to that part of the adust and calcined landscape of Aragon.