“In the confusion of the moment—­two men struggling together—­I could hear them gasping—­I wanted to call for help—­then a fall!  And then I felt myself seized by the arm:  ’Run, neighbor, run!  This is no business of yours!’ It didn’t sound like the voice of a human being.  And that was how—­that was how I happened to be there, a helpless witness.  I think that Don Nicasio meant to kill his wife, too; but the wretched woman escaped.  She ran and shut herself up in her room.  That is—­I read so afterwards, in the papers.  The husband would have been wiser to have killed her first.  Evil weeds had better be torn up by the roots.  What are you having that man write, your honor?”

“Nothing at all, as you call it.  Just your deposition.  The clerk will read it to you now, and you will sign it.”

“Can any harm come to me from it?  I am innocent!  I have only said what you wanted to make me say.  You have tangled me up in a fine net, like a little fresh-water fish!”

“Wait a moment.  And this is the most important thing of all.  How did it happen that the mortal wounds on the dead man’s body were made with a razor?”

“Oh, the treachery of Don Nicasio!  My God!  My God!  Yes, your honor.  Two days before—­no one can think of everything, no one can foresee everything—­he came to the shop and said to me, ’Neighbor, lend me a razor; I have a corn that is troubling me.’  He was so matter-of-fact about it that I did not hesitate for an instant.  I even warned him, ’Be careful! you can’t joke with corns!  A little blood, and you may start a cancer!’ ‘Don’t borrow trouble, neighbor,’ he answered.”

“But the razor could not be found.  You must have brought it away.”

“I?  Who would remember a little thing like that?  I was more dead than alive, your honor.  Where are you trying to lead me, with your questions?  I tell you, I am innocent!”

“Do not deny so obstinately.  A frank confession will help you far more than to protest your innocence.  The facts speak clearly enough.  It is well known how passion maddens the heart and the brain.  A man in that state is no longer himself.”

“That is the truth, your honor!  That wretched woman bewitched me!  She is sending me to the galleys!  The more she said ‘No, no, no!’ the more I felt myself going mad, from head to foot, as if she were pouring fire over me, with her ‘No, no, no!’ But now—­I do not want another man to suffer in my place.  Yes, I was the one, I was the one who killed him!  I was bewitched, your honor!  I am willing to go to the galleys.  But I am coming back here, if I have the good luck to live through my term.  Oh, the justice of this world!  To think that she goes scot free, the real and only cause of all the harm!  But I will see that she gets justice, that I solemnly swear—­with these two hands of mine, your honor!  In prison I shall think of nothing else.  And if I come back and find her alive—­grown old and ugly, it makes no difference—­she will have to pay for it, she will have to make good!  Ah, ‘no, no, no!’ But I will say, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ And I will drain her last drop of blood, if I have to end my days in the galleys.  And the sooner, the better!”