"The volunteers of Huesca have not borne themselves badly," he said. "They are known to be good fellows. Now we must busy ourselves defending these houses on the right. I do not suppose that one is left. There goes Villacampa alone. Then are not those Mendieta, and Paul, Benedicto, and Oliva? Let us go. I see that indeed none are left in that place." In this way the convent of Las Monicas passed into the hands of the French. CHAPTER XXI On reaching this point in my story, I beg the reader to pardon me if I do not give the dates exactly of that which I relate. In this period of horror, lasting from January 27 to the middle of the next month, the successive events are so confused, so mixed up, so run together in my mind, that I cannot distinguish days and nights, and, in some instances, I do not know whether certain skirmishes of those I recall took place in daylight. It seems to me that all happened during one long day, or in one endless night, and that time was not then marked by its ordinary divisions. Many sensations and impressions are linked together in my memory, forming one vast picture where there are no more dividing lines than those that the events themselves offer,--the greater fright of one moment, the unexplained panic or fury of another. For this reason I cannot tell exactly on what day that took place which I am going to relate now; but if I am not mistaken it was on a day after the fight at Las Monicas, and somewhere, I should say, between the thirtieth of January and the second of February. We were occupying a house in the Calle de Pabostre. The French were in the one next to it, and were trying to advance through the inside of the block to reach the Puerta Quemada. Nothing can compare with the incessant activity going on there. No kind of warfare, no bloodiest battle on the open field, no sieges of a plaza, nor struggles in a street barricade can compare with the succession of conflicts between the army of an alcove and the army of a drawing-room, between the troops that occupy one floor and those which guard the one above it.