'Yes, yes, death!'
The chairs were pushed back and Sambuc approached Goliath, saying: 'You are sentenced, you are about to die.'
The two candles were burning with tall flames, like death-bed tapers, on either side of Goliath's distorted face. He was making such an effort to beg for mercy, to shriek forth the words which were stifling him, that the blue handkerchief over his mouth became saturated with foam; and it was a terrible sight indeed—that man reduced to silence, already as mute as a corpse, and about to die with all that torrent of explanations and prayers pent in his throat.
Cabasse cocked the revolver. 'Shall I smash his skull?' he asked.
'Oh! no, no!' shouted Sambuc, 'he would be only too glad.' And stepping up to Goliath he added: 'You are not a soldier; you don't deserve the honour of being despatched with a bullet. No, you shall die like the dirty hog of a spy that you are!' Then turning round he said politely: 'By your leave, Silvine, I should very much like to have a tub.'
Silvine had not once stirred during the trial-scene. With rigid features, she stood there waiting, her mind elsewhere, absorbed in the fixed idea that had been goading her on for two days past. And when she was asked for a tub she simply complied with the request, vanished for a moment into the adjacent store-house, and came back with the large tub in which she usually washed Charlot's linen.
'There, put it under the table, close to the edge,' said Sambuc.
She placed it as requested, and as she was rising up her eyes again met Goliath's. In the wretched man's glance a final prayer for mercy was mingled with an expression of revolt—the revolt of one who would not die. But at that moment nothing womanly was left in her, nothing but her unswerving desire for that death which she awaited like deliverance. She again drew back to the sideboard and remained there.
Opening the table-drawer, Sambuc had just taken from it a large kitchen-knife, the one that was used for cutting bacon. 'As you are a hog,' said he, 'I'm going to bleed you like a hog.'
He proceeded in a leisurely manner, discussing the slaughtering with Cabasse and Ducat in order that it might be accomplished in proper fashion. And a dispute even arose through Cabasse declaring that in his part of the country, Provence, pigs were bled hanging head-downwards, whereat Ducat expressed great indignation, holding this method to be both barbarous and inconvenient.