scissors.

The Public Prosecutor spoke to the prisoner.

"Would you like a glass of rum? Would you like a cigarette? Is there
anything you wish to have done?"

Maitre Barberoux, who had not arrived in time for the awakening of the
prisoner, now approached his client; he, too, was ghastly white.

"Is there anything else that I can do for you? Have you any last wish?"

The condemned man made another effort to rise from the chair, and a
hoarse groan escaped from his throat.

"I--I----"

The prison doctor had joined the group, and now drew the Public
Prosecutor's deputy aside.

"It is appalling!" he said. "The man has not articulated a single word
since he was awakened. He is as though sunk in a stupefied sleep. There
is a technical word for his condition: he is in a state of inhibition.
He is alive, and yet he is a corpse. Anyhow he is utterly unconscious,
incapable of any clear thought, or of saying a word that has any sense.
I have never seen such complete stupefaction."

Deibler waved aside the men who were pressing round him.

"Sign the gaol book, please, M. Havard," he said, and while that
gentleman affixed a shaky signature to the warrant authorising the
delivery of Gurn to the public executioner, Deibler took the scissors
and cut a segment out of the prisoner's shirt and cut off a wisp of hair
that grew low down on his neck. Meanwhile an assistant bound the wrists
of the man who was about to die. Then the executioner looked at his
watch and made a half-bow to the Public Prosecutor.

"Come! Come! It is the time fixed by law!"

Two assistants took the wretch by the shoulders and raised him up. There
was a horrible, deep, unintelligible rattle in his throat.

"I--I----"

But no one heard him, and he was dragged away. It was practically a
corpse that the servants of the guillotine bore down to the boulevard
Arago.

* * * * *

Outside, the first rosy tints of early dawn were waking the birds, and
playing on the great triangular knife, drawing gleams from it. The time
was ten minutes past five. And now the supreme moment was at hand.

The crowd, momentarily growing denser, was crushed behind the cordon of
troops that had difficulty in keeping it at a distance from the
guillotine. The soldiers, unheeding the oaths and curses and entreaties
with which they were assailed, carried out their orders and permitted no
one to take up his stand anywhere in the near neighbourhood