tacilla, finding in
him the epitome of the Spain he himself hated. What, principally,
was evident about the officer with the heavy short neck, the
surprising red hair, and small restless blue eyes, was cruelty of
an extraordinary refined persistence. He had, unexpectedly in his
sheer brutal bulk, a tormenting spirit, a mental abnormality,
rather than the to-be-looked-for mere insensate weight of his fist.
He was, Charles discovered, the victim of disordered nerves, his
gaze, his thick hands or shoulders, were never still, and his lips
had a trick of movement as if in the pronunciation of soundless
periods.

He spoke, even to La Clavel, abruptly, mockingly; his tenderest
words, addressed to her with a sweeping disregard of whoever could
overhear, were hasty, introspective rather than generous. More
frequently he was silent, redly brooding. It was evident to the most
casual understanding that Santacilla was, by birth, association and
ideas, an aristocrat of the absolute type fast disappearing. It was
his power that, in a world largely affected by the ideal of
Christianity, he was ruthless; in an era of comparative humanity he
was inhuman. There was, about him, the smell of the slow fires of
the Inquisition, of languid murder, curious instruments of pain.
Charles recalled a story of the Spanish occupation of Cuba--how the
soldiers in armor cut and stabbed their way through a village of
naked, unprepared and peaceable bodies.

That, until he had known Santacilla, had been incomprehensible--a page
of old history; but now Charles understood: he could see the heavy
figure with a darkly suffused face hacking with a sword. He was
insane, Charles Abbott told himself; in other circumstances he'd be
soon convicted of a sensational murder, quickly hanged or put in an
asylum. But in Havana, as an officer of the Crown quartered on a
people he held in less esteem than the cattle whose slaughter he
applauded in the bull ring, nothing, practically, limited his mad
humors. Yes, here, in the West, he was Spain, the old insufferable
despotism, and Charles thought of Santacilla's necessary end as coldly
as though the soldier were no more than a figment of the doomed old
injustice.

La Clavel was seated with Charles Abbott in the upper room of the
Tuileries, when Santacilla slid into an unoccupied chair beside them.
They were eating mantecados, frozen sweetened cream, and Santacilla
dropped a number of battered Cuban coins, small in deno