"None, senor. I return the parchment squares left over. El--El Chaparrito has no more thoughts for the Republic. He thinks," and Murguia ground his knuckles into the desk top, "he thinks of no one, of no one--except Maximilian! And he has never thought of aught else. The Republic? Bah, the Republic was only his tool, Senor Presidente. Only his tool, but the tool needed sharpening. They say that's the way with the guillotine, eh, Senor Presidente?" "But hombre--No, our unseen friend of the Republic, our Chaparrito, would not ask for Maximilian's pardon?" "_Pardon!_"--It was fairly a cry of rage--"Yet you, Senor Presidente, _you_ postpone the execution! _You_ mean to pardon him!" "Indeed?" "Yes, I--I think so. But you shall not, Senor Presidente. I come to, to----" "Now that's curious. Possibly I, too, am to be sharpened into a kind of guillotine, eh, senor?" "All the others were," Murguia returned stubbornly. "That is, all except one." "Ha, then El Chaparrito found one man who was incorruptible?" "Yes. But still Your Excellency is mistaken. El Chaparrito did not use money to win his agents. That, senor, is the unsafest way of all." "You would tell me, senor, that El Chaparrito had a safe way?" "Yes, and it was absolute. He awakened memory, the memory, Senor Presidente, of wrongs. For example, there was Your Excellency's savior in breech-clout. He once lived in a forest village down in the Huasteca. One night Dupin came and burned the huts, and the Indito's family perished with other women and children there. That village alone gave the Chaparrito many another messenger or spy, but memories left by the Empire were plentiful enough everywhere, and cheap. The Chaparrito simply drafted them, that was all. But once his system failed. Yet--well the man in that case was an American, and _they_ are liable to be exceptions to any rule, to any passion. But in the end he was safe enough too, though something else, that I can't understand, made him so." "And what did he do, this American?" "He took me to Escobedo." "And you?" "I took Lopez. That same night Queretaro fell." "_You?_ Now--now to what particular wrong in _your_ case, senor, does the Republic stand thus indebted?" Juarez put the question lightly, even patronizingly. But his steadfast gaze had not once left his gaunt and battered visitor. By design, too, he had not asked a second time who the Chaparrito was, because he saw, or felt, that the old man knew, though former emissaries from that mysterious source had not known. And Juarez meant to possess the secret. But with his casual irony he never looked for any such kindling of memory as then flashed deep in the cavernous sockets opposite him. The eyes of the aged man glowed and darkened, glowed and darkened, and seemed the very breathing of some famished beast. It was a thing to startle even Benito Juarez, who during many, many years had learned the meaning of civil war. The President leaped to his feet, pointing a finger.