"No, sir, my friend," said Don Roque; "we don't know anything about it, and although we have the greatest pleasure in your telling us of so many wonders, what most concerns us now is to find out where we are going to find my old friend Don José. We four are suffering from a disease called hunger, which cannot be cured by listening to the recounting of sublimities." "Well, now, in a minute I will take you where you want to go," replied Sursum Corda, offering us a part of his crust; "but first I will tell you something, and that is that if Don Mariano Cereso had not defended the Castle Aljaferia as he did defend it, nothing would have been done in the Portillo quarter. And this man, by the grace of God, this man was Don Mariano Cereso! During the attack of the fourth of August, he used to walk in the streets with his sword in its antique sheath. It would terrify you to see him! This Santa Engracia quarter seemed like a furnace, señors. The bombs and the hand-grenades rained down; but the patriots did not mind them any more than so many drops of water. A good part of the convent fell down; the houses trembled, and all this that we see seemed no more than a barrier of playing cards, by the way it caught fire and crumbled away. Fire in the windows, fire at the top, fire at the base! The French fell like flies, fell like flies, gentlemen. And as for the Saragossans, life and death were all the same to them. Don Antonio Quadros went through there, and when he looked at the French batteries, he was in a state to swallow them whole. The bandits had sixty cannon vomiting fire against the walls. You did not see it? Well, I saw it, and the pieces of brick of the wall and the earth of the parapets scattered like crumbs of a loaf. But the dead served as a barricade,--the dead on top, the dead below, a perfect mountain of the dead. Don Antonio's eyes shot flame. The boys fired without stopping. Their souls were all made of bullets! Didn't you see it? Well, I did, and the French batteries were all cleaned out of gunners. When he saw one of the enemy's cannon was without men, the commander shouted, 'An epaulet to the man who spikes that cannon!' Pepillo Ruiz started and walked up to it as if he was promenading in a garden among butterflies and may flowers, only here the butterflies were bullets, and the flowers were bombs. Pepillo Ruiz spiked the cannon, and came back laughing. And now another part of the convent was falling down. Whoever was smashed by it, remained smashed! Don Antonio Quadros said that that did not bother him any, and seeing that the enemy's batteries had opened a large hole in the wall, went to stuff it full of bags of wool. Then a bullet struck him in the head. They brought him here; he said that was nothing either, and died."