"Were they drunk thus to burn a Negro?"
"I do not know," Robert Jordan said. "Because I saw it only looking out from under the blinds of a window in the house which stood on the corner where the arc light was.
The street was full of people and when they lifted the Negro up for the second time--"
"If you had only seven years and were in a house, you could not tell if they were drunk or not," Pilar said.
"As I said, when they lifted the Negro up for the second time, my mother pulled me away from the window, so I saw no more," Robert Jordan said.
"But since I have had experiences which demonstrate that drunkenness is the same in my country.
It is ugly and brutal."
"You were too young at seven," Maria said.
"You were too young for such things.
I have never seen a Negro except in a circus.
Unless the Moors are Negroes."
"Some are Negroes and some are not," Pilar said.
"I can talk to you of the Moors."
"Not as I can," Maria said.
"Nay, not as I can."
"Don't speak of such things," Pilar said.
"It is unhealthy.
Where were we?"
"Speaking of the drunkenness of the lines," Robert Jordan said.
"Go on."
"It is not fair to say drunkenness," Pilar said. "For, yet, they were a long way from drunkenness.
But already there was a change in them, and when Don Guillermo came out, standing straight, near-sighted, gray-headed, of medium height, with a shirt with a collar button but no collar, standing there and crossing himself once and looking ahead, but seeing little without his glasses, but walking forward well and calmly, he was an appearance to excite pity.
But some one shouted from the line,
'Here, Don Guillermo.
Up here, Don Guillermo.
In this direction.
Here we all have your products.'
"They had had such success joking at Don Faustino that they could not see, now, that Don Guillermo was a different thing, and if Don Guillermo was to be killed, he should be killed quickly and with dignity.
"'Don Guillermo,' another shouted.
'Should we send to the house for thy spectacles?'
"Don Guillermo's house was no house, since he had not much money and was only a fascist to be a snob and to console himself that he must work for little, running a wooden-implement shop.
He was a fascist, too, from the religiousness of his wife which he accepted as his own due to his love for her.
He lived in an apartment in the building three houses down the square and when Don Guillermo stood there, looking near-sightedly at the lines, the double lines he knew he must enter, a woman started to scream from the balcony of the apartment where he lived.
She could see him from the balcony and she was his wife.
"'Guillermo,' she cried.
'Guillermo.
Wait and I will be with thee.'
"Don Guillermo turned his head toward where the shouting came from.
He could not see her.
He tried to say something but he could not.
Then he waved his hand in the direction the woman had called from and started to walk between the lines.
"'Guillermo!' she cried.
'Guillermo!
Oh, Guillermo!'
She was holding her hands on the rail of the balcony and shaking back and forth.
'Guillermo!'
"Don Guillermo waved his hand again toward the noise and walked into the lines with his head up and you would not have known what he was feeling except for the color of his face.
"Then some drunkard yelled,
'Guillermo!' from the lines, imitating the high cracked voice of his wife and Don Guillermo rushed toward the man, blindly, with tears now running down his cheeks and the man hit him hard across the face with his flail and Don Guillermo sat down from the force of the blow and sat there crying, but not from fear, while the drunkards beat him and one drunkard jumped on top of him, astride his shoulders, and beat him with a bottle.
After this many of the men left the lines and their places were taken by the drunkards who had been jeering and saying things in bad taste through the windows of the _Ayuntamiento_.