Carmelita Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was strewing rosemary leaves on Pilar Ternera's bed when the shot rang out. Aureli-ano José had been destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his back and shattered his chest had been directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards. Captain Aquiles Ricardo, who was really the one destined to die that night, did indeed die, four hours before Aureli-ano José. As won as the shot was heard he was brought down by two simultaneous bullets whose origin was never established and a shout of many voices shook the night.
"Long live the Liberal party! Long live Colonel Aure-liano Buendía!"
At twelve o'clock, when Aureli-ano, José had bled to death and Carmelita Montiel found that the cards showing her future were blank, more than four hundred men had filed past the theater and discharged their revolvers into the abandoned body of Captain Aquiles Ricardo. A patrol had to use a wheelbarrow to carry the body, which was heavy with lead and fell apart like a water-soaked loaf of bread.
Annoyed by the outrages of the regular army, General José Raquel used his political influence, put on his uniform again, and assumed the civil and military leadership of Macondo. He did not expect, however, that his conciliatory attitude would be able to prevent the inevitable. The news in September was contradictory. While the government announced that it was maintaining control throughout the country, the Liberals were receiving secret news of armed uprisings in the interior. The regime would not admit a state of war until it was proclaimed in a decree that had followed a court-martial which had condemned Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía to death in absentia. The first unit that captured him was ordered to carry the sentence out. "This means he's come back," úrsula said joyfully to General . But he himself knew nothing about it.
Actually, Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía had been in the country for more than a month. He was preceded by conflicting rumors, supposed to be in the most distant places at the same time, and even General did not believe in his return until it was officially announced that he had seized two states on the coast. "Congratulations, dear friend," he told úrsula, showing her the telegram. "You'll soon have him here." úrsula was worried then for the first time. "And what will you do?" she asked. General had asked himself that same question many times.
"The same as he, my friend," he answered. "I'll do my duty."
At dawn on the first of October Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía attacked Macondo with a thousand well--armed men and the garrison received orders to resist to the end. At noon, while General was lunching with úrsula, a rebel cannon shot that echoed in the whole town blew the front of the municipal treasury to dust. "They're as well armed as we are," General sighed, "but besides that they're fighting because they want to." At two o'clock in the afternoon, while the earth trembled with the artillery fire from both sides, he took leave of úrsula with the certainty that he was fighting a losing battle.
"I pray to God that you won't have Aureli-ano in the house tonight," he said. "If it does happen that way, give him an embrace for me, because I don't expect ever to see him again."