One of the revolutionaries started over to a little cabin that had been transformed into a chapel, while the rest of them looked at the reporter with a good deal less sympathy than they had been showing. If his bravado had impressed them agreeably in the trial room, they were beginning to be rather disgusted by his cries, his protestations and all the maneuvers by which he so apparently was trying to hold off the hour of his death.
But all at once Rouletabille jumped up onto the fatal stool. They believed he had decided finally to make an end of the comedy and die with dignity; but he had mounted there only to give them a discourse.
“Messieurs, understand me now. If it is true that you are not suppressing me in order to avenge Michael Nikolaievitch, then why do you hang me? Why do you inflict this odious punishment on me? Because you accuse me of causing Natacha Feodorovna’s arrest? Truly I have been awkward. Of that, and that alone, I accuse myself.”
“It was you, with your revolver, who gave the signal to Koupriane’s agents! You have done the dirty work for the police.”
Rouletabille tried vainly to protest, to explain, to say that his revolver shot, on the contrary, had saved the revolutionaries. But no one cared to listen and no one believed him.
“Here is the priest, monsieur,” said the gentleman of the Neva.
“One second! These are my last words, and I swear to you that after this I will pass the rope about my neck myself! But listen to me! Listen to me closely! Natacha Feodorovna was the most precious recruit you had, was she not?”
“A veritable treasure,” declared the president, his voice more and more impatient.
“It was a terrible blow, then,” continued the reporter, “a terrible blow for you, this arrest?”
“Terrible,” some of them ejaculated.