“Because not one of them would believe what I said.”
“But, surely, you could prove it. Somebody must have told you?”
“Nobody has told me.”
“You have seen some private letter, then; or you have managed to get sight of the execution-order; or—”
“Spare your conjectures, Marigny. I have not read, as I have not been told, what is the hour at which we are to die to-morrow.”.
“Then how on earth can you possibly know it?”
“I do not know when the execution will begin, or when it will end—I only know that it will be going on at nine o’clock to-morrow morning. Out of the twenty-one who are to suffer death, one will be guillotined exactly at that hour. Whether he will be the first whose head falls, or the last, I cannot tell.”
“And pray who may this man be, who is to die exactly at nine o’clock? Of course, prophetically knowing so much, you know that?”
“I do know it. I am the man whose death by the guillotine will take place exactly at the hour I have mentioned.”
“You said just now, Duprat, that you never joked. Do you expect me to believe that what you have just spoken is spoken in earnest?”