Chapter 5

V

GASPAR RUIZ, 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. The jar of the fall surprised
him. "I am not dead apparently," he thought to himself, when he heard
the execution platoon reloading its arms at the word of command. It
was then that the hope of escape