[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE PRISON.
Don Miguel had been transferred to the prison of Santa Fe. Europeans, accustomed to philanthropic manners, and regarding human life as of some value, cannot imagine what atrocities the word "prison" contains in Mexico. In countries beyond sea the penitentiary system is not even in its infancy; for it is completely ignored, and has not even been suggested yet. With the exception of the United States, prisons are in America what they were at the period of the Spanish dominion; that is to say, filthy dens, where the wretched prisoners suffer a thousand tortures.
Among ourselves, so long as a man is not proved guilty, he is assumed to be innocent; but over there, so soon as a man is arrested, he is considered guilty, and consequently every consideration and all pity vanish, to make room for brutal and barbarous treatment. Thrown on a little straw in fetid holes, often inhabited by serpents and other unclean animals, the prisoners have more than once been found dead at the expiration of twenty-four hours, and half devoured. We have witnessed scores of times atrocious tortures inflicted by coarse and cruel soldiers on poor fellows whose crimes, in our country, would have merited a slight chastisement at the most. Still, in the great centres of populations, the prisons are better managed than in the towns and villages; and in this land, where money is the most powerful lever, a rich man easily succeeds in obtaining all he wishes, and rendering his position at any rate tolerable.
Don Miguel and General Ibañez had managed to be confined together by the expenditure of many entreaties and a heavy sum of gold. They inhabited two wretched rooms, the entire furniture of which consisted in a halting table, a few leather covered butacas, and two benches which served them as beds. These two men, so powerful by nature, had endured without complaint all the humiliation and insults inflicted on them during their trial, resolved to die as they had lived, with head erect and firm heart, without giving the judges who had condemned them the satisfaction of seeing them turn weak at the last moment.
It was toward evening of the same day on which we saw Valentine in the clearing. Darkness fell rapidly, and the only window, a species of narrow slit that served to light the prison, allowed but a weak and dubious light to penetrate. Don Miguel was walking with long strides up and down his prison, while the general, carelessly reclining on one of the benches, quietly smoking his cigarette, watching with childish pleasure the light clouds of bluish smoke which rose in a spiral to the ceiling, and which he constantly blew asunder.
"Well," Don Miguel said all at once, "it seems it is not for today either."
"Yes," the general said, "unless (though I do not believe it) they wish to do us the honor of a torchlight execution."
"Can you at all account for this delay?"