...of condemnation

‘You understand, then,’ says Dritto, ‘the detachment will take up position between the pilon on Mount Pellegrino and the scond gorge. Cousin will take over command. You’ll get new orders from the batallion when you arrive up there.’
Now all the men’s eyes are on him, sleepy brooding eyes, crossed by locks of hair.
‘What about you?’ they ask
Dritto’s lowered eyelashes are covered with a slight discharge.
‘I’m ill,’ he says, ‘I can’t come.’
There, now they can say what they like. The men say nothing. ‘I’m a finished man,’ thinks Dritto. Now everything can take its course. It’s terrible, though, that the men say nothing, make no protest; that means they’ve already condemned him, are pleased at his shirking this last test. Perhaps they expected it. And yet they cannot understand what it is that makes him do this; neither does he, Dritto, himself. But now everything can take its course, there is nothing for him to do but let himself drift.

[The Path to the Spider’s Nests, Calvino, I.]