We kept at him, and closed our ears to his tales with so much obstinacy, that at last, although very slowly, he took us through the Coso and the Market to the Calle de la Hilarza, the street wherein stood the house of the person whom we were seeking. CHAPTER III But, alas! Don José de Montoria was not in his house, and we found it necessary to go a little way out of the city to look for him. Two of my companions, tired of so much going and coming, left us with the idea of trying on their own account for some military or civil situation. Don Roque and myself therefore started with less embarrassment on our trip to the country house, the "torre," of our friend. (They call country houses torres at Saragossa.) This was situated to the westward of the town; the place bordered on the Muela road, and was at a short distance from the Bernardona road. Such a long tramp was not at all the right thing for our tired bodies, but necessity obliged us to take this inopportune exercise. We were very well treated when we at last met the longed-for Saragossan and became the objects of his cordial hospitality. Montoria was occupied, when we arrived, in cutting down olive-trees on his place, a proceeding demanded by the military exigencies of the plan of defence established by the officers in the field, because of the possibility of a second siege. And it was not our friend alone who destroyed with his own hands this heritage of his hacienda. All the proprietors of the surrounding places occupied themselves with the same task, and they directed the work of devastation with as much coolness as if they were watering or replanting, or busy with the grape harvest. Montoria said to us, "In the first siege I cut down my trees on my property on the other side of the Huerva; but this second siege that is being prepared for us is going to be much more terrible, to judge by the great number of troops that the French are sending." We told him the story of the surrender of Madrid, and as this seemed to depress him very much, we praised the deeds done at Saragossa between the fifteenth of June and the fourteenth of August with all sorts of grandiloquent phrases. Shrugging his shoulders, Don José said, "All that was possible to be done was done."