"Chief detective-inspectors," Juve said, pointing them out: "my colleagues. Some of yours too: do you see them? Chief reporters of the big dailies. Are you aware that you are uncommonly lucky to have been selected, at your extremely youthful age, to represent your paper at this lugubrious function?" Jérôme Fandor made an odd grimace. "I don't mind admitting to you, Juve, that I am here because I am like you in wanting to see Gurn's head fall; you have satisfied me beyond all doubt that Gurn is Fantômas, and I want to be sure that Fantômas is really dead. But if it were not the execution of that one particular wretch,--the only thing that can make society safe,--I should certainly have declined the honour of reporting this event." "It upsets you?" "Yes." Juve bent his head. "So it does me! Just think: for more than five years I have been fighting Fantômas! For more than five years I have believed in his existence, in spite of all ridicule and sarcasm! For more than five years I have been working for this wretch's death, for death is the only thing that can put a stop to his crimes!" Juve paused a moment, but Fandor made no comment. "And I am rather sick and sorry, too: because, although I have reached this certainty that Gurn is Fantômas, and have succeeded in convincing intelligent people, who were ready to study my work in good faith, I have nevertheless not succeeded in establishing legal proof that Gurn is Fantômas. Deibler and the Public Prosecutor, and people generally, think that it is merely Gurn who is going to be decapitated now. I may have secured this man's condemnation, but none the less he has beaten me and deprived me of the satisfaction of having brought him, Fantômas, to the scaffold! I have only consigned Gurn to the scaffold, and that is a defeat!" The detective stopped. From the boulevard Arago, from the end to which the crowd had been driven back, cheers and applause and joyous shouts broke out; it was the mob welcoming the arrival of the guillotine. Drawn by an old white horse, a heavy black van arrived at a fast trot, escorted by four mounted police with drawn swords. The van stopped a few yards from Juve and Fandor; the police rode off, and a shabby brougham came into view, from which three men in black proceeded to get out. "Monsieur de Paris and his assistants," Juve informed Fandor: "Deibler and his men." Fandor shivered, and Juve went on with his explanations. "That van contains the timbers and the knife. Deibler and his men will get the guillotine up in half an hour, and in an hour at the outside, Fantômas will be no more!" While the detective was speaking, the executioner had stepped briskly to the officer in charge of the proceedings and exchanged a few words with him. He signified his approval of the arrangements made, saluted the superintendent of police of that division, and turned to his men.