The president had just time sufficient to pronounce the condemnation as the clock struck.
Maurice heard the two with a sense of confusion and utter bewilderment.
When the vibration had ceased, his strength was utterly exhausted. The gendarmes led away Geneviève and Lorin, who had offered her his arm.
Both saluted Maurice, but in different ways. Lorin smiled; but Geneviève, pale and fainting, wafted him a last kiss upon her fingers, bathed in tears.
She had till the last moment clung to the hope of life, and now wept, not the loss of her life, but of her love, which must perish with her.
Maurice, half mad, had not replied to his friends' farewell. He rose, pale and bewildered, from the bench on which he had fallen. His friends had disappeared.
He felt only one sentiment alive within him. It was the hatred which was gnawing at his heart.
He threw a last look around him and recognized Dixmer, who was leaving with the rest of the spectators, and at that moment stooped to pass under the arched door of the passage.
With the rapidity of a steel spring when it unbends, Maurice sprang from bench to bench, and reached the door.