"I pity you, but, unfortunately, can do no more than that."
"General," they cried, falling at his knees, "in the name of what you hold dearest, have pity on us, we implore you."
"I am really in despair at what has occurred, and should like to come to your aid; unhappily I do not see my way, and then, again, you do nothing to help me."
"Alas!" they repeated, sobbing and clasping their hands desperately.
"I am well aware that you have not the money, and there is the insurmountable difficulty, believe me. However, let us see," he added, apparently reflecting.
The poor devils, who felt themselves so near death, looked at him with eyes sparkling with hope. There was a rather lengthened silence, during which you might have heard the heart throbs of these men, who knew that life and death depended on the man who held them panting under his eye.
"Listen," he continued, "this is all I can do for you, and believe me, that, in acting thus, I assume an enormous responsibility; there are thirty of you, I think?"
"Yes, Excellency," they exclaimed unanimously.
"Well, only ten of you shall be shot. You shall select them yourselves, and those you designate will be immediately led into the patio and executed. But now ask me for nothing further, as I shall be constrained to refuse you; and that you may have time to make your selection carefully, I grant you ten minutes."
This was a proof of incontestable cleverness on the part of the General. By breaking, through this decision, the agreement that had hitherto prevailed among the merchants, by opposing them to one another, he was certain of obtaining the result which, without, he would probably not have secured. For we prefer to suppose, for the honour of the General, whose career up to this day had been so free from excesses, and acts of this nature, that the threat of death was only a mode employed to cause these men, whom he knew to be opposed to the government he represented, into undoing their purse strings, and that he would not have been so cruel as to carry matters to extremities, and shoot in cold blood thirty of the most respectable townsmen.