Desnoyers felt as though he were surrounded by a tribe of brutalized
and famished Indians like those he had often seen in his adventurous
voyages. He had brought with him from Paris a quantity of gold pieces,
and he pulled out a coin which glittered in the sun. Bread was needed,
everything eatable was needed; he would pay without haggling.
The flash of gold aroused looks of enthusiasm and greediness, but this
impression was short-lived, all eyes contemplating the yellow discs
with indifference. Don Marcelo was himself convinced that the miraculous
charm had lost its power. They all chanted a chorus of sorrow and
horrors with slow and plaintive voice, as though they stood weeping
before a bier: "Monsieur, they have killed my husband." . . . "Monsieur,
my sons! Two of them are missing." . . . "Monsieur, they have taken all
the men prisoners: they say it is to work the land in Germany." . . .
"Monsieur, bread! . . . My little ones are dying of hunger!"
One woman was lamenting something worse than death. "My girl! . . . My
poor girl!" Her look of hatred and wild desperation revealed the secret
tragedy; her outcries and tears recalled that other mother who was
sobbing in the same way up at the castle. In the depths of some cave,
was lying the victim, half-dead with fatigue, shaken with a wild
delirium in which she still saw the succession of brutal faces, inflamed
with simian passion.
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