stomach left, my lungs are gone,
and this body that you see is like a dislocated machine that can
hardly move, creaking in every joint, as though all the bits intended
to fall apart. The Virgin who saved me at your recommendation might
really have interceded a little more in my favour, softening my
jailors. Those wretches think to save the world by giving free rein
to those wild beast instincts that slumber in us all, relics of a
far-away past. Since then, at liberty, life has been more painful than
death. On my return to Spain, pressed by poverty and persecution, my
life has been a hell. I dare stop in no place where men congregate;
they hunt me like dogs, forcing me to live out of the towns, driving
me to the mountains, into the deserts, where no human beings live. It
appears I am still a man to be feared, more to be feared than those
desperadoes who throw bombs, because I can speak, because I carry in
me an irresistible strength which forces me to preach the Truth if
I find myself in the presence of miserable and trodden-down
wretches--but all this is coming to an end. You may be easy, brother,
I am a dead man; my mission is drawing to a close, but others will
come after me, and again others. The furrow is open and the seed is in
its bowels--'GERMINAL!'[1] as a friend of my exile shouted as he saw
the last rays of the setting sun from the scaffold of the gibbet. I am
dying, and I think I have the right to rest for a few months. I wish
to enjoy for the first time in my life the sweets of silence, of
absolute quiet, of incognito; to be no one, for no one to know me; to
inspire neither sympathy nor fear. I should wish to be as a statue
on the doorway, as a pillar in the Cathedral, immovable, over whose
surface centuries have glided without leaving the slightest trace or
emotion. To wait for death as a body that eats or breathes, but cannot
think or suffer, nor feel enthusiasm; this to me would be happiness,
brother. I do not know where to go; men are waiting for me out beyond
these doors to drive me on again. Will you let me stay with you?"

[Footnote 1: "It will sprout."]

For all answer the "Wooden Staff" laid his hand affectionately on
Gabriel's arm.

"Let us come upstairs, madman--you shall not die, I will nurse you;
what you want is care and quiet. We will cure that hot head, which
seems like that of Don Quixote. Do you remember when you were a child
reading us his history in the long evenings? Go along, dreamer