Chapter 16 - Page 2

seen men die who knew they were going to die.
His task as reporter had led him more than once to the foot of the
guillotine. And the wretches he had seen there had died bravely.
Extraordinarily enough, the most criminal had ordinarily met death
most bravely. Of course, they had had leisure to prepare themselves,
thinking a long time in advance of that supreme moment. But they
affronted death, came to it almost negligently, found strength even
to say banal or taunting things to those around them. He recalled
above all a boy of eighteen years old who had cowardly murdered an
old woman and two children in a back-country farm, and had walked
to his death without a tremor, talking reassuringly to the priest
and the police official, who walked almost sick with horror on
either side of him. Could he, then, not be as brave as that child?

They made him mount some steps and he felt that he had entered the
stuffy atmosphere of a closed room. Then someone removed the
bandage. He was in a room of sinister aspect and in the midst of
a rather large company.

Within these naked, neglected walls there were about thirty young
men, some of them apparently quite as young as Rouletabille, with
candid blue eyes and pale complexions. The others, older men, were
of the physical type of Christs, not the animated Christs of
Occidental painters, but those that are seen on the panels of the
Byzantine school or fastened on the ikons, sculptures of silver or
gold. Their long hair, deeply parted in the middle, fell upon
their shoulders in curl-tipped golden masses. Some leant against
the wall, erect, and motionless. Others were seated on the floor,
their legs crossed. Most of them were in winter coats, bought in
the bazaars. But there were also men from the country, with their
skins of beasts, their sayons, their touloupes. One of them had his
legs laced about with cords and was shod with twined willow twigs.
The contrast afforded by various ones of these grave and attentive
figures showed that representatives from the entire revolutionary
party were present. At the back of the room, behind a table, three
young men were seated, and the oldest of them was not more than
twenty-five and had the benign beauty of Jesus on feast-days,
canopied by consecrated palms.

In the center of the room a small table stood, quite bare and
without any apparent purpose.

On the right was another table with paper, pens and ink-stands. It
was there that Rouletabille was conducted and asked to be seated.
Then he saw that another man was at his side, who was required to
keep standing. His face was pale and desperate, very drawn. His
eyes burned somberly, in spite of the panic that deformed his
features Rouletabille recognized one