At the same moment we heard a heart-rending cry not far from there,
and a woman came running in anguish towards us. It was the wife of the
unfortunate Manuel, now widowed and childless. Several of us tried to
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 mean time 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 mean time, 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
broad wall from house to house. It was dreadful to see, and those who
saw it were condemned to have before their mind's eyes for all their
lives that funeral pyre made of the bodies of their fellow-beings. It
may seem that I am inventing, but this thing happened: a man entered
the Calle de la Imprenta and began to shout. At a window appeared
another man, who replied to him, saying, "Come up!"
Then the other, thinking to make a shorter cut than by the house door
and the staircase, climbed up over the heap of bodies, and reached the
second story, one of whose windows served him for a door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account