"What do you mean?" Diego replied.
"That in the name of the friendship which unites us, in the name of the love which I have for Doña Maria, I have come to ask you to restore to liberty the brother of her whom I love."
And Leon ceased speaking.
The man who, walking along a road bordered by flowers and turf, suddenly saw the ground open under his feet, and a bottomless precipice present itself, would not feel a greater commotion of surprise than that which assailed the descendant of Tahi-Mari: his lips were clenched, his cheeks turned livid, and he fell crushed on the ponchos which remained on the ground.
"Have I rightly understood? Leon, it is at the moment when after waiting twenty years for the solemn hour of victory I at length hear it strike, that you ask me to surrender my enemy to you! What I should have broken all the obstacles which opposed the success of the holy cause which I am defending; I should have sacrificed without pity for myself all that attached me to life, after tearing from my heart all the illusions of my youth, in order only to leave my hatred, and all that in order to renounce the hope of attaining the object which I was pursuing! Oh, no, that is not possible; and it is not you, Leon, my friend, my brother, who would ask such a sacrifice of me. No!"
"Brother, forgive me!" Leon exclaimed; "but I love this woman."
"Yes, you love her; and if I give you the life of the brother, you will ask me tomorrow for that of the father; and each day, implored by you, I must, I suppose, abandoning one by one the victims I have marked, efface from my memory every recollection of the past, and allow the assassins of Tahi-Mari to live amid the joys which power and wealth produce. No, no! I pity you, brother, for you must have left all your reason at the bottom of that love to which you refer when you dare to make me such a proposal."
"Enough, Diego; enough! I implored you in the name of our friendship, and I was wrong, since you believe that you are committing an act of justice in killing those for whom I implore your mercy. Pardon me; and now farewell, brother, I will leave you."
"Where are you going, madman?" Diego asked, as he held him back.
"I do not know, but I wish to fly far from here."