Don José had a wife and three children. She was Doña Leocadia Sarriera, by birth a Navarraise. The eldest son and the daughter were married, and had given grandchildren to the old man. The younger son was called Augustine, and was destined for the church, like his uncle of the same name, the Archdeacon of La Seo. I made the acquaintance of all these on the same day, and found them the best people in the world. I was treated with so much kindness that I was overwhelmed by their generosity. If they had known me since my birth, they could not have been more cordial. Their kindness, springing spontaneously from their generous hearts, touched my very soul; and as I have always had a faculty for letting people love me, I responded from the first with a very sincere affection. "Señor Don Roque," I said that night to my friend as we were going to bed in the room which was given us, "I have never seen people like these. Is everybody in Aragon like this?" "There are all kinds," he answered; "but men made of stuff like Don José and his family are plentiful in this land of Aragon." Next day we occupied ourselves with my enlistment. The spirit of the men who were enlisting filled me with such enthusiasm that nothing seemed to me so noble as to follow glory, even afar off. Everybody knows that in those days Saragossa and the Saragossans had obtained a fabulous renown, that their heroism stimulated the imagination. Everything referring to the famous siege of the immortal city partook on the lips of narrators of the proportions and colors of the heroic age. With distance, the actions of the Saragossans acquired great dimensions. In England and Germany, where they were considered the Numantines of modern times, those half-naked peasants, with rope sandals on their feet and the bright Saragossan kerchief on their heads, became like figures of mythology. "Surrender, and we will give you clothes," said the French in the first siege, admiring the constancy of a few poor countrymen dressed in rags. "_We do not know how to surrender_," they made answer; "_and our bodies shall be clothed with glory_." The fame of this and other phrases has gone round the world.