"Ay, but for _me_--my name called--drawn Like a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn He has dipped into on the battle dawn. Bid out of life by a nod, a glance, Stumbling, mute mazed, at Nature's chance With a rapid finger circling round, Fixed to the first poor inch of ground To fight from, where his foot was found, Whose ear but a moment since was free To the wide camp's hum and gossipry-- Summoned, a solitary man, To end his life where his life began, From the safe glad rear to the awful van."
On the night of his arrest, when Don Carlos Alvarez was left alone in his dungeon, he stood motionless as one in a dream. At length he raised his head, and began to look around him. A lamp had been left with him; and its light illumined a cell ten feet square, with a vaulted roof. Through a narrow grating, too high for him to reach, one or two stars were shining; but these he saw not. He only saw the inner door sheathed with iron; the mat of rushes on which he was to sleep; the stool that was to be his seat; the two earthen pitchers of water that completed his scanty furniture. From the first moment these things looked strangely familiar to him.
He threw himself on the mat to think and pray. He comprehended his situation perfectly. It seemed as if he had been all his life expecting this hour; as if he had been born for it, and led up to it gradually through all his previous experience. As yet he did not think that his fate was terrible; he only thought that it was inevitable--something that was to come upon him, and that in due course had come at last. It was his impression that he should always remain there, and never more see anything beyond that grated window and that iron door.
There was a degree of unreality about this mood. For the past fortnight, or more, his mind had been strained to its utmost tension. Suspense, more wearing even than sorrow, had held him on the rack. Sleep had seldom visited his eyes; and when it came, it had been broken and fitful.
Now the worst had befallen him. Suspense was over; certainty had come. This brought at first a kind of rest to the overtaxed mind and frame. He was as one who hears a sentence of death, but who is taken off the rack. No dread of the future could quite overpower the present unreasoning sense of relief.