"Don Melchior de la Cruz," he said, "do you know where you are, and in whose presence?"
"I know it," he replied through his clenched teeth.
"Do you recognize the authority of the men by whom you are surrounded?"
"Yes, because they have the might on their side; any attempt at resistance or protest would be an act of folly on my part."
"No, it is not for that reason that you come under the authority of these men, and you are perfectly aware of the fact; but because you voluntarily connected yourself with them by a compact. In making this compact, you accepted their jurisdiction, and gave them the right to be your judges, if you broke the oaths which you took of your own full accord—"
Don Melchior shrugged his disdainfully.
"Why should I attempt a useless defense?" he said; "for am I not condemned beforehand. Hence execute without further delay, the sentence which you have already tacitly pronounced."
The masked man darted at him a flashing glance through the openings in his mask.
"Don Melchior," he continued in a hard and deeply marked voice, "it is neither as parricide, nor as fratricide, nor as robber, that you appear before this supreme tribunal, I repeat to you, but as a traitor to your country, I call on you to defend yourself."
"And I refuse to do so," he replied in a loud firm voice.