“Tell thy masters, slave, that I know that my doom is already decided, though I have done nothing that one betrayed, oppressed, and ill-used as I have been might not have done and yet go blameless. They have taken my gold and given me their faith. They have broken it without ruth or shame to me and mine, and now, that they may the better steal my country and make my people slaves, they are going to kill me. Since my armies have failed me and all my friends and servants have deserted me, there is nothing left for me but to die in accordance with the decree of the Unnameable. To His judgment I bow, but not to theirs. The will is His and theirs is but the hand, for the sins that I die for they have never seen. There can be no tribunal in this land high enough to judge one who is himself the law, and even were their justice pure it would be polluted in passing through so foul a channel as those lying lips of thine. Tell thy masters what I have said. Tell them also that, since they have assured themselves beforehand of my guilt, there is nothing left for them but to tell me the manner of my death. Now I have spoken, and not even their torments shall bring more useless words from me.” So saying he turned his head away and looked out of an open window near him over the green valley and the terraced mountains beyond, with their rugged, broken heights piercing the blue and cloudless sky, and from that moment to the end of his trial he never spoke again or seemed to take any interest in the proceedings on which his life depended. It was in vain that Pizarro ordered Filipillo to put question after question to him, threatening and promising by turns. The fallen Inca had wrapped himself in unbending dignity and unbreakable silence, and neither word nor sign of interest in what was going on could be drawn from him. At length Valverde, who had long lost all patience, said angrily-- “Señores, how much longer shall we suffer this heathen to trifle with us? We have made others speak, why not he as well?” “Ay,” added Almagro, with an evil twinkle in his one eye, “the reverend father is right. I warrant that a very brief trial of the match or the thumbscrew, or maybe a few minutes on the rack, would speedily open his Majesty’s lips and loosen his royal tongue.” “No, Caballeros, while I have a voice in the matter, no,” said the Captain-General, shaking his head and looking as some thought almost sorrowfully at the prisoner. “It seems to me that the Inca hath already suffered enough at our hands, unless of course the finding of this honourable court be that he is guilty of the crime imputed to him, in which case let the just penalty fall upon him, but let us not forget, Señores, that, whatever his fault may be, he is a crowned monarch, and that it would ill-please the tender mercy and high chivalry of his Most Catholic Majesty to learn that soldiers of his had put the indignity of torture upon a brother sovereign.”