Gaspar Ruiz | Page 7

the prison, was led out with others to summary execution. "Every bullet
has its billet," runs the proverb. All the merit of proverbs consists in the
concise and picturesque expression. In the surprise of our minds is
found their persuasiveness. In other words, we are struck and
convinced by the shock.
What surprises us is the form, not the substance. Proverbs are art--
cheap art. As a general rule they are not true; unless indeed they happen
to be mere platitudes, as for instance the proverb, "Half a loaf is better
than no bread," or "A miss is as good as a mile." Some proverbs are
simply imbecile, others are immoral. That one evolved out of the naive
heart of the great Russian people, "Man discharges the piece, but God
carries the bullet," is piously atrocious, and at bitter variance with the
accepted conception of a compassionate God. It would indeed be an
inconsistent occupation for the Guardian of the poor, the innocent and
the helpless, to carry the bullet, for instance, into the heart of a father.
Gaspar Ruiz was childless, he had no wife, he had never been in love.
He had hardly ever spoken to a woman, beyond his mother and the
ancient negress of the household, whose wrinkled skin was the colour

of cinders, and whose lean body was bent double from age. If some
bullets from those muskets fired off at fifteen paces were specifically
destined for the heart of Gaspar Ruiz, they all missed their billet. One,
however, carried away a small piece of his ear, and another a fragment
of flesh from his shoulder.
A red and unclouded sun setting into a purple ocean looked with a fiery
stare upon the enormous wall of the Cordilleras, worthy witnesses of
his glorious extinction. But it is inconceivable that it should have seen
the ant-like men busy with their absurd and insignificant trials of
killing and dying for reasons that, apart from being generally childish,
were also imperfectly understood. It did light up, however, the backs of
the firing party and the faces of the condemned men. Some of them had
fallen on their knees, others remained standing, a few averted their
heads from the levelled barrels of muskets. Gaspar Ruiz, upright, the
burliest of them all, hung his big shock head. The low sun dazzled him
a little, and he counted himself a dead man already.
He fell at the first discharge. He fell because he thought he was a dead
man. He struck the ground heavily. The jar of the fall surprised him. "I
am not dead apparently," he thought to himself, when he heard the
execution platoon reloading its arms at the word of command. It was
then that the hope of escape dawned upon him for the first time. He
remained lying stretched out with rigid limbs under the weight of two
bodies collapsed crosswise upon his back.
By the time the soldiers had fired a third volley into the slightly stirring
heaps of the slain, the sun had gone out of sight, and almost
immediately with the darkening of the ocean dusk fell upon the coasts
of the young Republic. Above the gloom of the lowlands the snowy
peaks of the Cordillera remained luminous and crimson for a long time.
The soldiers before marching back to the fort sat down to smoke.
The sergeant with a naked sword in his hand strolled away by himself
along the heap of the dead. He was a humane man, and watched for any
stir or twitch of limb in the merciful idea of plunging the point of his
blade into any body giving the slightest sign of life. But none of the
bodies afforded him an opportunity for the display of this charitable
intention. Not a muscle twitched amongst them, not even the powerful
muscles of Gaspar Ruiz, who, deluged with the blood of his neighbours
and shamming death, strove to appear more lifeless than the others.

He was lying face down. The sergeant recognised him by his stature,
and being himself a very small man, looked with envy and contempt at
the prostration of so much strength. He had always disliked that
particular soldier. Moved by an obscure animosity, he inflicted a long
gash across the neck of Gaspar Ruiz, with some vague notion of
making sure of that strong man's death, as if a powerful physique were
more able to resist the bullets. For the sergeant had no doubt that
Gaspar Ruiz had been shot through in many places. Then he passed on,
and shortly afterwards marched off with, his men, leaving the bodies to
the care of crows and vultures.
Gaspar Ruiz had restrained a cry, though it had seemed to him that his
head was cut off at a blow; and