"I say that if this immense quantity of powder were as big as Saragossa I should like it still better. Yes, and in such a case I should like to be the only inhabitant of this great city. What a pleasure! Listen, Gabriel! If it were so, I would myself set fire to it, and fly into the clouds, torn to pieces in the horrible explosion like pieces of rock which a volcano throws to a distance of a hundred leagues. I would be hurled to the fifth heaven, and of my members, scattered everywhere, there would be no memory! Death, Gabriel, death is what I desire! But I desire a death--I do not explain it to you. My desperation is so great that to die of a gunshot or a sabre-thrust would not satisfy me. I long to be rent asunder, and diffused through space in a thousand burning particles. I pant to feel myself in the bosom of a flame-bearing cloud. My spirit yearns, if only for an infinitesimal instant, the delight of seeing this wretched body reduced to powder. Gabriel, I am desperate. Do you see this powder? Imagine within my breast all the flames which this could make. Did you see her when she went out to get her father? Did you see her when she threw the money? I was in a corner where I could see it all. Mariquilla does not know that that man who maltreated her father is my own! Did you see how the boys threw mud at poor Candiola? I realize that Candiola is a wretch. But she, what fault has she? She and I, what fault have we? None, Gabriel. My heart is broken, and thirsts for a thousand deaths. I cannot live. I will run into the place of greatest danger and fling myself into the fire of the French. After what I have seen to-day, I and the earth on which I dwell may not be together." I drew him away from the place, taking him to the walls; and we went to work on the fortifications which were being made in Las Tenerias, the weakest point in the city since the destruction of San José and Santa Engracia. I have already said that from the mouth of the Huerva to San José stretched a line of fifty mouths of fire. Against this formidable line of attack what avail was our fortified circuit? The quarter of Las Tenerias extended from the eastern part of the city, between the Huerva and the old part of the town, perfectly outlined yet by the wide road which is called the Coso. It was at the beginning of this century a village of mean houses, almost all inhabited by laborers and artisans, and the religious houses there had none of the splendor of the monuments of Saragossa. The general plan of this district is approximately the segment of a circle whose arc curves out to the open country, and whose chord unites it to the city, from the Puerta Quemada to the rise at the Sepulcro.