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246 of the town. This completed the anarchy which reigned at this moment over the devoted city.

These sad scenes were beginning to disgust me, when a temporary truce was arranged between the combatants. A deep silence succeeded the booming of the artillery; the time had now come for both sides to count their dead and to remove the wounded. I went to my room, anxious to know how Don Blas was getting on, but he was not there, and the bed on which I had laid him was very little disarranged. On questioning the people of the house, I learned that, at the very moment the truce had been proclaimed, he had been seen to descend the stairs and go into the street. He had probably thought that it would be more reasonable and prudent of him to see after his much coveted rank of captain than remain quietly in my house. Seeing, then, that his wound must have been but slight, I went out also. In the streets they were lifting the wounded, and carrying them into the houses. As for the dead, their game had been played out, and the pedestrian trod their bodies under foot with the coolest indifference. They were already completely forgotten.

On the very next day, however, the combat recommenced, and blood again flowed in the streets. Beaten without being overcome, the executive annulled the obnoxious law of fifteen per cent. A full and entire amnesty was granted to the insurgents; and, issuing from the gates of the presidential palace, marched, with all the honors of war, a body of the factious citizens, among whom I recognized, with no small dismay, several convicted felons, notorious in the annals of crime. The ruins of fallen masonry which encumbered the streets, the blood that had been everywhere shed, and