In the ruined wing, through windows garnished with bars of iron, the dismantled chambers of the main building of brick are visible; the English guards were in ambush in these rooms; the spiral of the staircase, cracked from the ground floor to the very roof, appears like the inside of a broken shell.
The staircase has two stories; the English, besieged on the staircase, and massed on its upper steps, had cut off the lower steps.
These consisted of large slabs of blue stone, which form a heap among the nettles.
Half a score of steps still cling to the wall; on the first is cut the figure of a trident.
These inaccessible steps are solid in their niches. All the rest resembles a jaw which has been denuded of its teeth. There are two old trees there:
one is dead; the other is wounded at its base, and is clothed with verdure in April.
Since 1815 it has taken to growing through the staircase.
A massacre took place in the chapel.
The interior, which has recovered its calm, is singular.
The mass has not been said there since the carnage.
Nevertheless, the altar has been left there-- an altar of unpolished wood, placed against a background of roughhewn stone.
Four whitewashed walls, a door opposite the altar, two small arched windows; over the door a large wooden crucifix, below the crucifix a square air-hole stopped up with a bundle of hay; on the ground, in one corner, an old window-frame with the glass all broken to pieces--such is the chapel.
Near the altar there is nailed up a wooden statue of Saint Anne, of the fifteenth century; the head of the infant Jesus has been carried off by a large ball. The French, who were masters of the chapel for a moment, and were then dislodged, set fire to it.
The flames filled this building; it was a perfect furnace; the door was burned, the floor was burned, the wooden Christ was not burned.
The fire preyed upon his feet, of which only the blackened stumps are now to be seen; then it stopped,-- a miracle, according to the assertion of the people of the neighborhood. The infant Jesus, decapitated, was less fortunate than the Christ.
The walls are covered with inscriptions.
Near the feet of Christ this name is to be read:
Henquinez.
Then these others: Conde de Rio Maior Marques y Marquesa de Almagro (Habana). There are French names with exclamation points,--a sign of wrath. The wall was freshly whitewashed in 1849.
The nations insulted each other there.