"As you may guess, there are few saints among the rough crowd here, that are scraped up from all the prisons in Spain. Though I have to live among them, I don't consider them my equals. For that reason I try to keep away from them, and have nothing to do with their rough mirth or noisy quarrels. Well, it happened that the end of last week a smart-Aleck of a fellow came in, an Andalusian. He had been given twelve years for killing one man and badly injuring another. As soon as this fellow saw me, he took me for a boob he could make sport of, and lost no chance of poking fun at me. I kept quiet, and—so as not to get into any mix-up with him—turned my back on him.
"Yesterday, at dinner, he tried to pick a quarrel. Some of the other prisoners laughed and set him on to me.
"'Look here, Amadeo,' said he. 'What are you in for?'
"I answered, looking him square in the eyes:
"'For having killed a man.'
"'And what did you kill him for?' he insisted.
"I said nothing, and then he added something very coarse and ugly that I won't repeat. It's enough for you to know your name was mixed up in it. That's why your name was the last word his mouth ever uttered. I drew my knife—you know that in spite of all the care they take, and all their searches, we all go armed—and cried:
"'Look out for yourself, now, because I'm going to kill you!'
"Then we fought, and it was a good fight, too, because he was a brave man. But his courage was of no use to him. He died on the spot.
"Forgive me, dearest Rafaela of my soul, and make our boy forgive me, too. This makes my situation much worse, because now I shall have another trial and I don't know what sentence I'll get. I realize it was very bad of me to kill this man, but if I hadn't done it he would have killed me, which would have been much worse for all of us."