mournfully and saying: ‘See! it is for the sake of Spain that they are murdering Spain!’
“That Zucarraga! His reputation increased with every reverse of the national army. Folks said to one another: ‘It is Thomas Zumalacarregui come to life again!’ Zumalacarregui, you know, the paladin of the other Carlist war, in the old times. Even his name reminded people of the other one, and this made Zuccarraga a hero of romance, a general whose name was sung in the songs of the people, like the Cid.
“The general who was in command at Hernani–yes, the little town where, as the Gazette told us the other day, your great writer Hugo passed his childhood and the name of which he has made illustrious–the general, who kept sending his poor soldiers forward against the passes that Zucarraga was defending, was wild with rage. He had promised himself that he would force a passage, crush the flat-capped people and pierce their lines and relieve Bilbao. Ah! yes, indeed! Every attack was followed by a defeat, every assault resulted in something that was very near a rout. The dispirited troops returned with hanging head and heavy foot, leaving their dead lying by the roadside.
“As General Garrido one evening, up there on the Place de l’Ayuntamiento, was watching his shattered battalions as they slowly and sullenly re-entered their cantonments, while in the distance, over in the direction of the mountains, Zucarraga’s artillery was growling away as usual and we were looking at the smoke rising, rising from the depths of the valley along the bloodstained mountain-side, the general, I say–his gray hairs surmounted by his ros, his ros that in days
