A little while after the mass was ended, I heard a large number of people coming from the direction of the market,--an angry and noisy crowd. In the mob, and striving to quell its violence, were several friars; but it was a mob of men deaf to the voice of reason. They were yelling themselves hoarse, and as they came, they dragged along a victim who was powerless to free himself from their grasp. The maddened people took him to the place near the entrance of the Trenque where the gallows was; and in a few moments the convulsed body of a man was hanging from one of its ropes, and was jerked about in the air until it was lifeless. On the wood of the gallows an inscription soon appeared, which read,-- _An assassin of human kind, who kept back twenty thousand beds._ The wretch was one Fernando Estello, watchman of a storehouse of furniture. When the sick and wounded were breathing their last in the gutters and on the cold tiles of the churches, there was found a great collection of beds whose hiding the watchman Estello could not account for. The wrath of the populace was not to be restrained. I have heard that he was innocent. Many lamented his death; but when the firing in the trenches began again, no one remembered him more. Palafox published that day a proclamation in which he tried to raise the spirits of the soldiers, promising the rank of captain to the man who should bring him a hundred recruits, threatening with the penalty of death and confiscation of property the man who should fail to hasten to the defence, or should leave the lines. All this showed great distress on the part of the commanding officers. That day was memorable for the attack on Santa Monica, which the volunteers of Huesca were defending. During the greater part of the night the French had been bombarding the building. The batteries of the orchard were no longer serviceable, and it was necessary to take away the cannon, an operation performed by our valiant men, exposed without protection to the hostile fire. This opened a breach at last; and, penetrating into the orchard, they tried to gain possession of that also, forgetting that they had twice been repulsed on previous days. But Lannes, exasperated by the extraordinary and unprecedented tenacity of the Saragossans, had given orders to reduce the convent to powder,--a thing which was easier to accomplish with the cannon and howitzer than to take it by storm. At all events, after six hours of artillery fire, a large part of the eastern wall fell, and then the French showed their exultation, and, without loss of time, rushed forward to seize the position, aided by the cross-fire from the Molino in the city. Seeing them coming, Villacampa, commander of the Huesca men, and Palafox, who had hurried to the point of danger, tried to close up the breach with sacks of wool and some empty musket-boxes.