"Yes, a hundred times yes; I do not comprehend you with your magnanimity. My good sir, if the Committee for the Public Safety caught us, you would see if they acted toward us with so much ceremony."
"You persist, then, in your decision, gentlemen?"
"Without doubt, and you are not, we hope, going to oppose it."
"I have only one voice, gentlemen; it has been in favor of his liberation: you possess six, and they all vote for his death. Let it, then, be death."
Maurice felt the blood freeze in his veins.
"Of course he will howl," said a voice; "have you removed Madame Dixmer?"
"Madame Dixmer!" murmured Maurice; "I begin now to comprehend. I am in the house of the master-tanner who spoke to me in the old Rue Saint Jacques, and who went away laughing because I was unable to tell him the name of my friend. But how can it be to his interest to assassinate me?"
Looking round, Maurice perceived an iron stake with a handle of ash-tree wood.
"In any case," said he, "before they assassinate me, I will kill more than one of them."