The authorities understood that it would be difficult to prolong the resistance much longer, and with offers of money and honors tried to rouse the patriots anew. In a proclamation of the second of February, asking for means, Palafox said, "I am giving my two watches and twenty silver dishes, which are all I have left." In that of the fourth of February, he offered to give especial honors, to make caballeros of the twelve men who should most distinguish themselves; a military order of nobility was created for them, called the Infanzones. In the proclamation of the ninth, he mourned the indifference and readiness to yield, exhibited by some citizens at the misfortunes of their country; and after intimating that this loss of heart was brought about by French gold, he threatened dire punishment for those who showed themselves cowards. The battles of the third, fourth, and fifth were not so bloody as the last which I have described. The French and Spanish were perishing with fatigue. The street entrances which we were holding in the Plazuela de la Magdalena were defended with cannon, and repulsed the enemy's two advances from the Calle de Palomar and the Calle de Pabostre. The remains of the Seminary were also bristling with artillery; and the French, sure of not being able to drive us from there by ordinary means, were working at their mines without ceasing. My battalion was now one with that of the Estremadura, and indeed what was left of both was scarcely three companies. Augustine Montoria was captain, and I was promoted lieutenant on the second. We did not return to service in Las Tenerias. They sent us to guard San Francisco,--a vast edifice which offered good positions for our guns against the French, who were established in the Convent of Jerusalem. Very short rations were now dealt out to us; and those of us who were counted among the officers ate in the same mess with the soldiers. Augustine kept his bread to give to Mariquilla. After the fourth day, the French began mining towards the hospital and San Francisco, in order to take it; for they knew well that it would be impossible in any other way. In order to hinder them we countermined, intending to blow them up before they could blow us up. This toilsome labor in the bowels of the earth can be compared to nothing else in the world. We seemed to ourselves to have left off being men, and to be converted into another kind of creatures, into cold inhabitants of caverns, without feeling, far from the sun and the pure air and the lovely light of day. We built long galleries, working ceaselessly like the worm that builds his house in the darkness of earth, shaping it like his own body. Between the blows of our picks, we heard, like a muffled echo, the picks of the French. After having been beaten and destroyed on the surface, we expected momentarily to be exterminated in the dreadful night of those sepulchres.