ate had uttered its decree. He no
longer thought of rebelling against the decision.

He looked at Clarisse. She was peacefully sleeping; and this total
oblivion, this absence of all consciousness, seemed to him so enviable
that, suddenly yielding to a fit of cowardice, he seized the bottle,
still half-filled with the sleeping-draught, and drank it down.

Then he stretched himself on a couch and rang for his man:

"Go to bed, Achille, and don't wake me on any pretence whatever."

"Then there's nothing to be done for Gilbert and Vaucheray, governor?"
said Achille.

"Nothing."

"Are they going through it?"

"They are going through it."

Twenty minutes later Lupin fell into a heavy sleep. It was ten o'clock
in the evening.

The night was full of incident and noise around the prison. At one
o'clock in the morning the Rue de la Sante, the Boulevard Arago and all
the streets abutting on the gaol were guarded by police, who allowed no
one to pass without a regular cross-examination.

For that matter, it was raining in torrents; and it seemed as though
the lovers of this sort of show would not be very numerous. The
public-houses were all closed by special order. At four o'clock three
companies of infantry came and took up their positions along the
pavements, while a battalion occupied the Boulevard Arago in case of
a surprise. Municipal guards cantered up and down between the lines; a
whole staff of police-magistrates, officers and functionaries, brought
together for the occasion, moved about among the troops.

The guillotine was set up in silence, in the middle of the square formed
by the boulevard and the street; and the sinister sound of hammering was
heard.

But, at five o'clock, the crowd gathered, notwithstanding the rain, and
people began to sing. They shouted for the footlights, called for the
curtain to rise, were exasperated to see that, at the distance at which
the barriers had been fixed, they could hardly distinguish the uprights
of the guillotine.

Several carriages drove up, bringing official persons dressed in black.
There were cheers and hoots, whereupon a troop of mounted municipal
guards scattered the groups and cleared the space to a distance of three
hundred yards from the square. Two fresh companies of soldiers lined up.

And suddenly there was a great silence. A vague white light fell from
the dark sky. The rain ceased abruptly.

Inside the prison, at the end of the passage containing th