The different behaviour of the sufferers was such as deeply to affect the spectators. Ortiz was greatly moved at the thought of leaving his son fatherless and destitute; ♦CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE EXECUTION.♦ but overcoming that emotion with a Spaniard’s feeling, he commended the boy to God as the orphan’s Father, and called upon the Lord to receive his soul as a victim for his religion and his country. The priest held a crucifix in one hand as he went to execution, and beat his breast incessantly with the other; and while tears of ardent devotion streamed down his cheeks, implored with a loud voice forgiveness for his own sins and for those of the people. Muro, who was a much younger man than either, was of a weak constitution, still further weakened by the fatigues he had undergone in the performance of his duties; so that what with ill treatment, and what he had suffered during twelve days’ imprisonment, there seemed to be an entire prostration of his strength; faintings and cold sweats succeeded each other, and it was thought he would expire before he could reach the place where he was to be put to death. He had asked earnestly for a crucifix; the priest who attended him not knowing for what service he had been summoned had improvidently left his house without one; he gave him therefore in its stead a rosary, with a medal attached to it, on which was the image of Our Lady of the Pillar. Muro had studied in the university of Zaragoza, where it is said he had never omitted, for a single day, to visit and adore the tutelary idol of that city; and this trifling circumstance, which at any other time would have appeared to him light as air, acted upon him now in a manner that might seem miraculous or incredible to those who cannot comprehend the force of imagination and the strength of a believing mind; for no sooner had he seen what image the medal bore, than, as if by an influx of divine support, he put off all weakness and proceeded to the place of death with a firm step and a cheerful countenance, and ejaculations of jubilant devotion. When they came to the foot of the hill on the top of which they were to suffer, “Up, brothers!” he exclaimed, “up! let us ascend this our Mount Calvary, where it is vouchsafed to us that we should imitate our Redeemer! I pray and trust that this hour our offences shall be blotted out by virtue of the blood which on his holy Calvary he shed for our sins.” In this spirit he knelt down upon the fatal spot, raised his eyes to heaven, and presented his breast to the soldiers. The Spaniards compared the circumstances of this man’s death with what the French themselves had related of Marshal Lasnes, how after he had received his mortal wound, a visit from Buonaparte comforted and for a while revived him: “Let patron,” said they, “be compared with patron, client with client, and cause with cause!” ♦TREATMENT OF THEIR BODIES.♦