Foiled thus in every attempt to exchange thoughts with a fellow-being, and reduced to commune only with his own, the unhappy prisoner ceased, at last, to make any effort; and, yielding gradually to a despair that was not the less consuming for being entirely without complaint, he began, in the end, to be indifferent even to the coming and presence of his jailer, neither rising to meet him, nor even lifting his eyes from the floor, on which they were fixed with a lethargic dejection.
He became also indifferent to his food; and once, when Najara entered, he perceived that the water-jar, the dish of _tortillas_, or maize-cakes, the savoury wild-fowl, and the fragrant _chocolatl_, (for in regard to food, he was liberally supplied,) stood upon the little table, where they had been placed the day before, untasted and even untouched. He cast his eyes upon the youth, and, for the first time, began to feel a sentiment of pity for his condition. Indeed, the noble figure of the young man was beginning to waste away; his cheeks were hollow, his neglected beard was springing uncouthly over his lips, and his sunken eyes drooped upon the earth, as if never more to gleam with the light of hope and pleasure. The hunchback hesitated for a moment, and then growled out a few words,--the first he had uttered for a week. But these, though commiseration prompted them, he succeeded in making expressive only of scorn or anger.
"Hark you, señor Juan Lerma," he said, "do you mean to starve?"
At the sound of his voice, so unusual and so unexpected, the young man raised his eyes, but with a vague, wo-begone look, and answered nothing.
"I say, señor," continued Najara, somewhat more blandly, "is it your will to die by starvation rather than in any other way?"
"Ah, Najara! is it thou?" said Juan, rising feebly, or indolently, to his feet. "Heaven give you a good-morrow."
"Pshaw!" returned the jailer, gruffly; "pray me no such prayers: keep them for yourself. I ask you, if it be your purpose to starve yourself to death, out of a mere unsoldierly fear of hanging?"
"Thou hast not said so much to me, I know not when," replied the youth, not with any intention of shuffling off the question, but speaking of what was uppermost in his mind. His voice was very mild, and Najara, by no means without his weaker points, felt it as a reproach.
