In the deep stillness which prevailed, nothing was to be heard but the droning of the heavy wheel.
It was all over with Bajus.
The next in order was the haughty Hafran.
With him the bloody drama took quite another turn.
The vihodar's assistants had sufficed for the first robber. He himself had only given his directions in a low voice. But honor constrained him to cope personally with the second robber.
Hafran was a frantic devil. He howled curses at the vihodar and overwhelmed him with insults. He told him to his face that he was a clumsy bungler.
Then the old vihodar took his biretta from his head, doffed his coat, and set about accomplishing his masterpiece.
The spectators had reason to be satisfied with both performers. The old vihodar exhausted all his skill upon the robber, and the robber never ceased hurling defiance at the vihodar. They cursed and reviled each other like devils. The robber laughed at all the torments, and infuriated the vihodar by asking him derisively when he was going to begin. The vihodar was quite beside himself for rage, and excelled himself in the invention of fresh torments. Every time he produced a fresh instrument of torture, he asked the robber how the entertainment pleased him.
The Franciscan monk who was on the scaffold to afford the delinquents the last consolations of religion, tried to pacify them both, and begged them for Heaven's sake to leave off cursing; but neither paid the slightest attention to him. The robber had the last word. Even when he was so mangled and mutilated that he no longer resembled anything human, even then he howled words of scorn in the face of his tormentor. At last they plunged a hook into his side and hoisted him aloft, and even then he showered down insults upon all the women present at the bloody spectacle, till at last he gave up his unconquerable spirit, which had surely made some mistake in choosing a simple human body for its earthly dwelling-place.
The old vihodar was ashamed. He felt that this heroic resistance had very considerably impaired his prestige in the opinion of the people. This blot upon his escutcheon must be wiped off.