...of the mortified

“She claims that she once killed one of our officers and wishes to know whether or not you are the general who has come to collect the remains of the soldiers killed in the last war,” the priest said.
“Yes, madame,” the general said in a toneless voice, summoning up all his strength to hold his head high before this old woman who filled him with such terror.
The old woman then added a few words that the priest was unable to translate because they were half lost in a noisy murmur from the crowd, and before anyone could make a move to stop her she had pulled the sack from her back, amid terrified shrieks from the women, and thrown it on the floor at the general’s feet. There was nothing left for the priest to translate; all translation had become superfluous, for everything now had been made clear, and nothing in fact could have been at once more meaningful or more horrible than the sack, covered with great gouts of still damp black mud, that had just thudded down on the floor. The women all drew back in violent alarm, covering their faces with their hands, or in the case of the older ones crossing themselves with horrified gasps.
“She had buried him under her doorstep!” someone cried.
“Oh, Nice! Nice!”
Suddenly the old woman turned her back on them all and left as she had come, drenched and mud-spattered, without it occurring to anyone to prevent her, for what was meant to happen had happened.
The general could not take his eyes from the floor. He felt dazed by the noise, the cries, the horror of the scene. All at once, without his being able to say how or why, a great silence enveloped him. Perhaps in reality there was no silence at all, but the general was nevertheless under the impression that there was. At his feet, as all the guests looked on, lay that sombre and silent shape, that old sack checquered with patches. Someone must attend to it! he thought. And then, in the silence, he slowly bent and grasped the sack by the neck with trembling hands, lifted it as it was, plastered with mud, and let it fall again. Then he put on his coat, took up the sack once more, hoisted it slowly up onto his shoulder, and left that place, bent beneath his burden, mortified, as though he were carrying all the shame and the weight of the earth on his back.

[The General of the Dead Army, Kadare, I.]