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68 DAYS IN THE SUN
people, and sympathized with the criminal; then it was
hard for me to do my job. There were often times
when I should have liked to be in the sinner’s place.
Then my knees would fail me, like a pregnant woman;
but the thought that my prisoner might not be willing
to change with me made me attack him like a beast
of prey. No, the hangman is not a human being. And
yet, I have often stood on the scaffold with thousands
of lustful eyes fixed upon me and my only feeling was
that if a reprieve should arrive, there would be only
two people who would really be happy—the con-
demned man and his executioner—in spite of all the
noisy protests of the crowd. And while I was con-
signing a man to death as a warning and as a penalty,
other men were making use of the excitement to pick
each other’s pockets; once they did not even scorn the
hangman’s coat and stole all my pay, unclean though
I was.”
“Do you ever feel any desire to reverse the job, as
it were?” I ask.
He makes no reply, but his sidelong glance at the
gendarmes shows me that he has grasped my question
immediately. No Spaniard can have failed to under-
stand me.
“It would be very difficult for me to find any ex-
pression for the things I have felt,” he says cautiously,
after a short pause. “But Espronceda has spoken for
us—for me and my kind. Do you know his poem
‘The Hangman’? JI can recite it for you.”
It is not a boast when a Spaniard offers to recite for
you. Every Spaniard is eloquent and has oratorical
resources; when he can neither read nor write, he will
yet be capable of a melodious and rhythmical delivery
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