“There’s not one of our lot who would give me the lie!... to behave like that is bloody treachery! You have betrayed the Numbers. There it is in a nutshell! What have you to reply to that?”

For the third time, Jules repeated in a hoarse whisper, for he felt life was gradually leaving him: an awful fear gripped him, he saw he was completely done for.

“I swear I did not do that!... I didn’t rob the princess.... I don’t even know who did!”

Jules was, perhaps, speaking the truth, but he took the worst way to defend himself... If he had had pluck and wit enough to take the Beard’s accusation with a high hand; if he had met threats with violent denial and assertion, it is quite possible he might have made an impression in his favour; but he cried for pity and for mercy from men who were pitiless.

He was horribly afraid!... His fear was shown by the convulsive trembling which agitated his wretched body, by his ghastly pallor, by the cold drops of sweat rolling down his forehead.... He was no longer a man: it was a lamentable bit of human wreckage the hooligans had before them!...

And the more lamentable this wreck showed itself to be, the less worthy of their interest it seemed.

When Jules gasped out once again:

“I swear to you it was not I! No!.. I did not do it!” The hooligans, moved by a common impulse, rose, indignant, furious.

“That’s a good one, that is!” yelled Nibet, who, beside himself with rage, suddenly forgot his avowed respect for judicial forms.

“Since he is determined to tell lies, and hasn’t the guts to say what he’s done, there’s only one thing for us to do, and that’s to stop his filthy mouth up! Ernestine, put the plug back!”

And as the girl once more rolled the scarf round and round the head of the miserable Jules, Nibet turned to his comrades.

“Now then? One hasn’t any need to waste more time over it!... We know all the story – not so? It’s settled, I tell you!... A fellow who has done what he has done, what does he deserve? You answer first, Mother Toulouche, since you are the oldest.”

Mother Toulouche stretched out a trembling, withered witch’s hand, as though calling on the Devil to witness a black oath.

“I,” said the old woman, with a wicked gleam in her eyes, “I don’t hesitate! Comrades who flinch, blabberguts who betray – get rid of them, say I! I condemn him to death!”

The old woman’s sentence was greeted with loud applause.

Nibet resumed.

“It is said!... It is unanimous!... Make a quick finish, my lads!... Since each has been injured, let each take his revenge! I say: Death by the hammer!”

In that smoke-thickened air rose a ravening chorus of hate and of vengeance.