who could with ease bend apart the heavy iron bars of the
prison, was led out with others to summary execution. "Every bullet has
its billet," runs the proverb. All the merit of proverbs consists in
the concise and picturesque expression. In the surprise of our minds is
found their persuasiveness. In other words, we are struck and convinced
by the shock.

What surprises us is the form, not the substance. Proverbs are
art--cheap art. As a general rule they are not true; unless indeed they
happen to be mere platitudes, as for instance the proverb, "Half a
loaf is better than no bread," or "A miss is as good as a mile." Some
proverbs are simply imbecile, others are immoral. That one evolved out
of the naive heart of the great Russian people, "Man discharges the
piece, but God carries the bullet," is piously atrocious, and at bitter
variance with the accepted conception of a compassionate God. It would
indeed be an inconsistent occupation for the Guardian of the poor, the
innocent, and the helpless, to carry the bullet, for instance, into the
heart of a father.

Gaspar Ruiz was childless, he had no wife, he had never been in love.
He had hardly ever spoken to a woman, beyond his mother and the ancient
negress of the household, whose wrinkled skin was the colour of cinders,
and whose lean body was bent double from age. If some bullets from those
muskets fired off at fifteen paces were specifically destined for
the heart of Gaspar Ruiz, they all missed their billet. One, however,
carried away a small piece of his ear, and another a fragment of flesh
from his shoulder.

A red and unclouded sun setting into a purple ocean looked with a fiery
stare upon the enormous wall of the Cordilleras, worthy witnesses of his
glorious extinction. But it is inconceivable that it should have seen
the ant-like men busy with their absurd and insignificant trials of
killing and dying for reasons that, apart from being generally childish,
were also imperfectly understood. It did light up, however, the backs
of the firing party and the faces of the condemned men. Some of them
had fallen on their knees, others remained standing, a few averted their
heads from the levelled barrels of muskets. Gaspar Ruiz, upright, the
burliest of them all, hung his big shock head. The low sun dazzled him a
little, and he counted himself a dead man already.

He fell at the first discharge. He fell because he thought he was a dead
man. He struck the ground heavily