"I don't remember having been so miserable in my life before or since.
The torment of my sensibility was so great that I wished the sergeant to
fall dead at my feet, and the stupid soldiers who stared at me to
turn into corpses; and even those wretches for whom my entreaties had
procured a reprieve I wished dead also, because I could not face them
without shame. A mephitic heat like a whiff of air from hell came out of
that dark place in which they were confined. Those at the window who had
heard what was going on jeered at me in very desperation: one of these
fellows, gone mad no doubt, kept on urging me volubly to order the
soldiers to fire through the window. His insane loquacity made my heart
turn faint. And my feet were like lead. There was no higher officer to
whom I could appeal. I had not even the firmness of spirit to simply go
away.

"Benumbed by my remorse, I stood with my back to the window. You must
not suppose that all this lasted a long time. How long could it have
been? A minute? If you measured by mental suffering it was like a
hundred years; a longer time than all my life has been since. No,
certainly, it was not so much as a minute. The hoarse screaming of those
miserable wretches died out in their dry throats, and then suddenly a
voice spoke, a deep voice muttering calmly. It called upon me to turn
round.

"That voice, senores, proceeded from the head of Gaspar Ruiz. Of his
body I could see nothing. Some of his fellow-captives had clambered upon
his back. He was holding them up. His eyes blinked without looking at
me. That and the moving of his lips was all he seemed able to manage in
his overloaded state. And when I turned round, this head, that seemed
more than human size resting on its chin under a multitude of other