"But, Master!... What have I done?... Master!... Fantômas, what have I done?"
Slowly the bandit enveloped himself once more in his cloak.... Bobinette was on her knees, as one nailed to the earth!... Fantômas had hypnotised her into immobility, as the bird is hypnotised by the cat watching its prey. He played with her. He could seize and master her at his pleasure.
In a voice cold and hard as the nether millstone, he denounced his victim:
"Bobinette, you aimed at my betrayal!... You pointed out the Nihilist's haunt to Juve, to Fandor, to my most personal enemies, to those who would hound me to the guillotine!"
"I never did!... I did not do it!... I swear it!" shrieked the maddened girl.
Fantômas, convinced that Bobinette, and she alone, was the traitor here....
"You are to die; but not by my hand!... The hand of Fantômas does not deal death to those who once served him, to the traitorous wretches once in his employ!... But you shall die, Bobinette! I deliver you to death!"...
Fantômas laughed. He laughed because the body of this woman, huddled in the mud, crushed to the earth, was a pleasing thing, because Fantômas was happy when he made human creatures suffer, when he tortured, when he wrought sweet vengeance....
Far away sounded the church bells.... The carillon was ringing.... Church bells were chiming through the night. To Bobinette, the abject creature grovelling in the mire of the roadway, the bells sounded vaguely serene, far, far away....
She seemed to be floating in some indefinable element, floating like thistledown on an irresistible breeze.... Suddenly she had the sensation that she was sinking, falling, that she was rolling down, down, into the depths of a bottomless abyss....