ion. Ha! ha! ha! ha!--and the silver. Ha!

All at once, in the midst of the laugh, he became motionless and silent
as if turned into stone. He too, had a prisoner. A prisoner who must,
must know the real truth. He would have to be made to speak. And
Sotillo, who all that time had not quite forgotten Hirsch, felt an
inexplicable reluctance at the notion of proceeding to extremities.

He felt a reluctance--part of that unfathomable dread that crept on all
sides upon him. He remembered reluctantly, too, the dilated eyes of the
hide merchant, his contortions, his loud sobs and protestations. It
was not compassion or even mere nervous sensibility. The fact was that
though Sotillo did never for a moment believe his story--he could not
believe it; nobody could believe such nonsense--yet those accents of
despairing truth impressed him disagreeably. They made him feel sick.
And he suspected also that the man might have gone mad with fear. A
lunatic is a hopeless subject. Bah! A pretence. Nothing but a pretence.
He would know how to deal with that.

He was working himself up to the right pitch of ferocity. His fine eyes
squinted slightly; he clapped his hands; a bare-footed orderly appeared
noiselessly, a corporal, with his bayonet hanging on his thigh and a
stick in his hand.

The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miserable Hirsch, pushed
in by several soldiers, found him frowning awfully in a broad armchair,
hat on head, knees wide apart, arms akimbo, masterful, imposing,
irresistible, haughty, sublime, terrible.

Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been bundled violently
into one of the smaller rooms. For many hours he remained apparently
forgotten, stretched lifelessly on the floor. From that solitude, full
of despair and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows,
passive, sunk in hebetude. He listened to threats and admonitions, and
afterwards made his usual answers to questions, with his chin sunk on
his breast, his hands tied behind his back, swaying a little in front of
Sotillo, and never looking up. When he was forced to hold up his head,
by means of a bayonet-point prodding him under the chin, his eyes had a
vacant, trance-like stare, and drops of perspiration as big as peas were
seen hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches of his white face.
Then they stopped suddenly.

Sotillo looked at him in silence. "Will you depart from your obstinacy,
you rogue?" he asked. Already a r