"Don Roderigo," said the Viceroy, stepping back into the room behind him, "look here one moment, tell me if you know this man?"
Don Roderigo stepped onto the balcony and looked over into the street, but the man had left his post and was walking slowly away with his back towards them.
"Is not that Evaña?" said the Viceroy.
"Evaña? impossible!" replied Don Roderigo. "There is nothing for which Evaña has greater contempt than for the shouts of a mob." And so saying he went back and looked no more.
But Liniers lingered on the balcony, still fascinated by the slowly receding figure of the tall man who had looked at him so intently. He watched him till he reached a corner, turned it, and vanished from sight. But it seemed to the Viceroy that, as he vanished, he turned once more to look at him, and raised his hand in angry menace toward the evening sky.
Still borne on the evening air from neighbouring streets came the shouts of the citizens slowly dispersing to their homes:
"Viva Don Santiago Liniers! No queremos otro Virey. Viva!"
Listening to these shouts, the Viceroy then turned his gaze to the evening sky toward which that figure had raised its threatening hand. To the west, where the sun had sunk below the horizon, the sky was covered by broad bands of scarlet and yellow, two of scarlet with one of yellow between them, and over these there hung a dark, black cloud, sinking lower and lower, till the crimson glories of the sunset faded away into the darkness. Over that dark cloud the sky was of the purest blue, and straight before him in the midst of it there shone one brilliant star.
Clutching the rail of the balcony with both hands, the Viceroy gazed upon this star, and as he gazed again through the evening air there came the sound of voices shouting from far off, in accents clear and distinct, his own name. He thought of what he was about to do; again he thought of the people who had placed their destinies in his hands, and a sort of dreamy hallucination fell upon; he forgot that he was in Buenos Aires, he forgot that he was Viceroy, again in memory he stood in the streets of Paris as he had stood in his youth, and the shouts changed from acclamations to yells of deadly menace:
"Ca ira! Les aristocrats a la lanterne."