...of surrender

The ceremony lasted only the time necessary to sign the documents. Around the rustic table placed in the centre of a patched circus tent where the delegates sat were the last officers who were faithful to Colonel Aureliano Buendia. Before taking the signatures, the personal delegate of the president of the republic tried to read the act of surrender aloud, but Colonel Aureliano Buendia was against it. "Let's not waste time on formalities," he said and prepared to sign the papers without reading them. One of his officers then broke the soporific silence of the tent.
"Colonel," he said, "please do us the favour of not being the first to sign."
Colonel Aureliano Buendia acceded. When the documents went all round the table, in the midst of a silence that was so pure that one could have deciphered the signatures from the scratching of the pen on the paper, the first line was still blank. Colonel Aureliano Buendia prepared to fill it.
"Colonel," another of his officers said, "there's still time for everything to come out right."
Without changing his expression, Colonel Aureliano Buendia signed the first copy. He had not finished signing the last one when a rebel colonel appeared in the doorway leading a mule carrying two chests. In spite of his extreme youth he had a dry look and a patient expression. He was the treasurer of the revolution in the Macondo region. He had made a difficult journey of six days, pulling along the mule, who was dying of hunger, in order to arrive at the armistice on time. With an exasperating parsimony he took down the chests, opened them, and placed on the table, one by one, seventy-two gold bricks. Everyone had forgotten about the existence of that fortune. In the disorder of the past year, when the central command fell apart and the revolution degenerated into a bloody rivalry of leaders, it was impossible to determine any responsibility. The gold of the revolution, melted into blocks that were covered with baked clay, was beyond all control. Colonel Aureliano Buendia had the seventy-two gold bricks included in the inventory of surrender and closed the ceremony without any speeches. The filthy adolescent stood opposite him, looking into his eyes with his own calm, syrup-coloured eyes.
"Something else?" Colonel Aureliano Buendia asked him.
"The young colonel tightened his mouth.
"The receipt," he said.
Colonel Aureliano Buendia wrote it out in his own hand. Then he had a glass of lemonade and a piece of biscuit that the novices were passing around and retired to a field tent which had been prepared for him in case he wished to rest. There he took off his shirt, sat on the edge of the cot, and at three-fifteen in the afternoon took his pistol and shot himself in the iodine circle that his personal physician had painted on his chest. At that moment in Macondo Ursula took the cover off the pot of milk on the stove, wondering why it was taking so long to boil, and found it full of worms.

[One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez, G. G.]