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 of the guillotine, except the few rare individuals who had a special pass. A sudden murmur ran through the crowd. The mounted police, stationed opposite the guillotine, had just drawn their sabres. Fandor gripped Juve's hand nervously. The detective was very pale. "Let us get over there," he said, and led Fandor just behind the guillotine, to the side where the severed head would fall into the basket. "We shall see the poor devil get out of the carriage, and being fastened on to the bascule, and pulled into the lunette." He went on talking as if to divert his own mind from the thing before him. "That's the best place for seeing things: I stood there when Peugnez was guillotined, a long time ago now, and I was there again in 1909 when Duchémin, the parricide, was executed." But he came to an abrupt stop. From the great door of the Santé prison a carriage came rapidly out. All heads were uncovered, all eyes were fixed, and a deep silence fell upon the crowded boulevard.