not wish to cease.  Rouletabille would have believed himself stronger, more courageous, more stoical at least.  But blind instinct swept all of this away, that instinct of conservation which had no concern with the minor bravadoes of the reporter, no concern with the fine heroic manner, of the determined pose to die finely, because the instinct of conservation, which is, as its rigid name indicates, essentially materialistic, demands only, thinks of nothing but, to live.  And it was that instinct which made Rouletabille’s last pipe die out unpuffed.

The young man was furious with himself, and he grew pale with the fear that he might not succeed in mastering this emotion, he took fierce hold of himself and his members, which had stiffened at the contact of seizure by rough hands, relaxed, and he allowed himself to be led.  Truly, he was disgusted with his faintness and weakness.  He had seen men die who knew they were going to die.  His task as reporter had led him more than once to the foot of the guillotine.  And the wretches he had seen there had died bravely.  Extraordinarily enough, the most criminal had ordinarily met death most bravely.  Of course, they had had leisure to prepare themselves, thinking a long time in advance of that supreme moment.  But they affronted death, came to it almost negligently, found strength even to say banal or taunting things to those around them.  He recalled above all a boy of eighteen years old who had cowardly murdered an old woman and two children in a back-country farm, and had walked to his death without a tremor, talking reassuringly to the priest and the police official, who walked almost sick with horror on either side of him.  Could he, then, not be as brave as that child?

They made him mount some steps and he felt that he had entered the stuffy atmosphere of a closed room.  Then someone removed the bandage.  He was in a room of sinister aspect and in the midst of a rather large company.

Within these naked, neglected walls there were about thirty young men, some of them apparently quite as young as Rouletabille, with candid blue eyes and pale complexions.  The others, older men, were of the physical type of Christs, not the animated Christs of Occidental painters, but those that are seen on the panels of the Byzantine school or fastened on the ikons, sculptures of silver or gold.  Their long hair, deeply parted in the middle, fell upon their shoulders in curl-tipped golden masses.  Some leant against the wall, erect, and motionless.  Others were seated on the floor, their legs crossed.  Most of them were in winter coats, bought in the bazaars.  But there were also men from the country, with their skins of beasts, their sayons, their touloupes.  One of them had his legs laced about with cords and was shod with twined willow twigs.  The contrast afforded by various ones of these grave and attentive figures showed that representatives from the entire revolutionary party were present.  At the back of the room, behind a table, three young men were seated, and the oldest of them was not more than twenty-five and had the benign beauty of Jesus on feast-days, canopied by consecrated palms.