Un penjat

"It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery. the unspeakable wrongness of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working -bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming- all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the gry walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned -reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone -one mind less, one world less."
G.O., 1931