It was His Excellency, with his uniform burst open and
smelling of wine. Eyes and voice were both trembling.
"My dear sir," he stuttered, trying to recover this suave irony, "I
warned you not to interfere in our affairs and you have not obeyed me.
You may now take the consequences of your lack of discretion."
He gave an order, and the old man felt himself pushed downstairs to the
cellars underneath the castle. Those conducting him were soldiers under
the command of a petty officer whom he recognized as the Socialist. This
young professor was the only one sober, but he maintained himself erect
and unapproachable with the ferocity of discipline.
He put his prisoner into an arched vault without any breathing-place
except a tiny window on a level with the floor. Many broken bottles and
chests with some straw were all that was in the cave.
"You have insulted a head officer!" said the official roughly, "and
they will probably shoot you to-morrow. Your only salvation lies in the
continuance of the revels, in which case they may forget you."
As the door of this sub-cellar was broken, like all the others in the
building, a pile of boxes and furniture was heaped in the entrance way.
Don Marcelo passed the rest of the night tormented with the cold--the
only thing which worried him just then. He had abandoned all hope of
life; even the images of his family seemed blotted from his memory.
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