e can do nothing for
her. Natacha Feodorovna is lost to us."

Then, with a gesture to those who surrounded Rouletabille:

"Do your duty, messieurs."

"Pardon, pardon. But if I do prove the innocence of Natacha? Just
wait, messieurs. There is only I who can prove that innocence! You lose
Natacha by killing me!"

"If you had been able to prove that innocence, monsieur, the thing would
already be done. You would not have waited."

"Pardon, pardon. It is only at this moment that I have become able to do
it."

"How is that?"

"It is because I was sick, you see--very seriously sick. That affair of
Michael Nikolaievitch and the poison that still continued after he was
dead simply robbed me of all my powers. Now that I am sure I have not
been the means of killing an innocent man--I am Rouletabille again!
It is not possible that I shall not find the way, that I shall not see
through this mystery."

The terrible voice of the Christ-like figure said monotonously:

"Do your duty, messieurs."

"Pardon, pardon. This is of great importance to you--and the proof is
that you have not yet hanged me. You were not so procrastinating with my
predecessor, were you? You have listened to me because you have hoped!
Very well, let me think, let me consider. Oh, the devil! I was there
myself at the fatal luncheon, and I know better than anyone else all
that happened there. Five minutes! I demand five minutes of you; it is
not much. Five little minutes!"

These last words of the condemned man seemed to singularly influence the
revolutionaries. They looked at one another in silence.

Then the president took out his watch and said:

"Five minutes. We grant them to you."

"Put your watch here. Here on this nail. It is five minutes to seven,
eh? You will give me until the hour?"

"Yes, until the hour. The watch itself will strike when the hour has
come."

"Ah, it strikes! Like the general's watch, then. Very well, here we
are."

Then there was the curious spectacle of Rouletabille standing on
the hangman's stool, the fatal rope hanging above his head, his legs
crossed, his elbow on his knees in that eternal attitude which Art
has always given to human thought, his fists under his jaws, his eyes
fixed--all around him, all those young men intent on his silence, not
moving a muscle, turned into statues themselves that they might not
disturb the statue which thought and thought.

XVIII. A SINGULAR EXPERIENCE

The five mi