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336 said to myself.' Now Benavides has a part in this affair, but he is not here, in order to refer this outrage to the Federal enthusiasm, as Rosas called the assassination of Mana. which he denounced as 'an atrocious license in a moment of profound and immense popular irritation.' The prison is in a straight line, a square and a half from Benavides' house. Sound runs so many leagues a minute, and to go two hundred and twenty-five yards required only a second of time. In vain would the Governor have wished to wash his hands of that anonymous outrage, for here was I in a high and respectable place to send the crime to its source and origin. The servants of Benavides' house, one of his scribes, and his aide-de-camp, ran on seeing the sword glisten as it revolved in the air over my head, and one after another, as they ran into the house, shrieked, 'Sir! sir! they are killing Don Domingo!' I had then caught my cunning gaucho in his own net. Either he confessed himself an accomplice, or he would send the order to leave me in peace. Benavides had not courage at that time to take that responsibility; my blood would have been distilling over his heart drop by drop all the rest of his life!

"When the furies who cried 'come down,' were convinced that I would not die under the hoofs of the horses, it being my pleasure to do that in a decent and clean place, ten or twelve rushed up the steps, and catching me in their arms, carried me down, at the moment when a dozen hussars whom Espinosa had sent for to despatch me, had arrived at the spot. But Espenosa wished to see my face and to terrify me. The comic actor whom I hissed in the theatre, made captain of the Confederacy, held his sword at my breast with his eyes fixed on Espinosa, ready at a signal to thrust it into me. The commandant whirled his lance and pricked me on my side,