Chapter 16

XVI

BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL

Only, Rouletabille refused to be put into the basket. He would not
let them disarm him until they promised to call a carriage. The
Vehicle rolled into the court, and while Pere Alexis was kept back
in his shop at the point of a revolver, Rouletabille quietly got
in, smoking his pipe. The man who appeared to be the chief of the
band (the gentleman of the Neva) got in too and sat down beside him.
The carriage windows were shuttered, preventing all communication
with the outside, and only a tiny lantern lighted the interior.
They started. The carriage was driven by two men in brown coats
trimmed with false astrakhan. The dvornicks saluted, believing it
a police affair. The concierge made the sign of the cross.

The journey lasted several hours without other incidents than those
brought about by the tremendous jolts, which threw the two
passengers inside one on top of the other. This might have made
an opening for conversation; and the "gentleman of the Neva" tried
it; but in vain. Rouletabille would not respond. At one moment,
indeed, the gentleman, who was growing bored, became so pressing
that the reporter finally said in the curt tone he always used when
he was irritated:

"I pray you, monsieur, let me smoke my pipe in peace."

Upon which the gentleman prudently occupied himself in lowering one
of the windows, for it grew stifling.

Finally, after much jolting, there was a stop while the horses were
changed and the gentleman asked Rouletabille to let himself be
blindfolded. "The moment has come; they are going to hang me
without any form of trial," thought the reporter, and when, blinded
with the bandage, he felt himself lifted under the arms, there was
revolt of his whole being, that being which, now that it was on the
point of dying, did not wish to cease. Rouletabille would have
believed himself stronger, more courageous, more stoical at least.
But blind instinct swept all of this away, that instinct of
conservation which had no concern with the minor bravadoes of the
reporter, no concern with the fine heroic manner, of the determined
pose to die finely, because the instinct of conservation, which is,
as its rigid name indicates, essentially materialistic, demands
only, thinks of nothing but, to live. And it was that instinct
which made Rouletabille's last pipe die out unpuffed.

The young man was furious with himself, and he grew pale with the
fear that he might not succeed in mastering this emotion, he took
fierce hold of himself and his members, which had stiffened at
the contact of seizure by rough hands, relaxed, and he allowed
himself to be led. Truly, he was disgusted with his faintness and
weakness. He had