Don Roque, who was one of the members of our expedition, had good
connections in Saragossa, but this was not an hour to present ourselves
to any one. We postponed until the next day this matter of looking
up friends; and as we could not go to an inn, we wandered about the
city, looking for a shelter where we could pass the night. The market
scarcely seemed to offer exactly the comfort and quiet which our
tired bodies needed. We visited the leaning tower, and although one
of my companions suggested that we should take refuge in the plaza, I
thought that we should be quite the same as if altogether in the open
country. The place served us, none the less, for temporary refuge and
rest, and also as a refectory, where we despatched happily our supper
of dry bread, glancing now and then at the great upright mass of the
tower, whose inclination made it seem like a giant leaning to see
who was running about his feet. By the light of the moon that brick
sentinel projected against the sky its huddled and shapeless form,
unable to hold itself erect. The clouds were drifting across its top,
and the spectator looking from below trembled with dread, imagining
that the clouds were quiet and that the tower was moving down upon him.
This grotesque structure, under whose feet the overburdened soil has
settled, seems to be forever falling, yet never falls.
We passed through the avenue of the Coso again from this house of
giants as far as the Seminary. We went through two streets, the Calle
Quemada and the Calle del Rincon, both in ruins, as far as the little
plaza of San Miguel. From here, passing from alley to alley, and
blindly crossing narrow and irregular streets, we found ourselves
beside the ruins of the monastery of Santa Engracia, which was blown
up by the French at the raising of the first siege. The four of us
exclaimed at once in a way to show that we all thought the same thing.
Here we had found a shelter, and in some cosy corner under this roof we
would pass the night!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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