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260 where a humiliating reception awaited him. Some officers from Mendoza, carried away by their desire for revenge, made him enter the town mounted upon a wretched animal, exposed to the insults of the people. "Wretch!" they shouted, "thou hast brought destruction upon thy country!" "I have also brought it much glory," replied the prisoner, with dignity, for the insults of his enemies had restored all his courage. He was then carried to prison, where he might reflect upon his past deeds in silence and solitude, and the retrospection became so intolerable that he excited the contempt of his jailers by his terror and childish exhibitions of alarm. He implored every one who came near him to tell him if anything was said about his death, and the ordinary noises about the prison filled him with fears, until at last he could no longer sleep at night, and never ceased his suspicious watch upon his jailers. Some priests undertook to reconcile him with the church, and whether through fear, or real repentance, he eagerly acceded to their propositions. One day while listening to Don José Santos Ortiz, he happened to look at a sentinel before his door, who knowing the terror he was constantly in, maliciously passed his hand across his own throat with a significant motion, and Aldao throwing the breviary from him, cried, "They will kill me to-day! they will kill me!"

His companion tried in vain to tranquillize him, by representing that he would have to be tried and legally condemned before he could be executed; he only became the more agitated, saying, "Ah, you have not done what I have done!" The soldier who had been famous for his bold, reckless audacity, did not dare to