“What _does_ it mean?... the audacity of it!... the unspeakable effrontery!... Are we on the eve of a Reign of Terror?... After six months’ truce, are we to behold once more this figure of ill-omen rise threatening, terrifying, on the horizon?... And to think of it, my name too, on all men’s lips!... Confusion twice confounded! once again the man succeeds in thrusting on another the responsibility for his crimes!... a Minister kidnapped!... the Chamber in consternation!... The whole country attacked in the person of its highest representatives!... Ah! Fantômas is indeed a genius, the genius of audacity, the king of frightfulness, the monster that assails everything, that fears nothing, for whom nothing is sacred!” For the tenth time, Fandor re-read the article in _La Capitale_. On regaining the Rue Saint-Fargeau, worn out by the stress and strain of his visit to Elisabeth, he had heard the newsboys crying at the top of their voices the latest edition of _La Capitale_. People were fighting for the paper, passers-by reading the news with looks of horror and feverish excitement. No sooner had Fandor cast his eyes on the copy he had secured than he started violently. In enormous letters he read the headlines: “_Fantômas at work again.—A Minister carried off by brigands.—Fantômas demands a million francs to disappear. The Chamber votes defiance._” Now, back in his garret two hours ago, Fandor was reading, still incapable, in the mad whirl of his thoughts, of regaining anything like calmness, the amazing details of the extraordinary sitting of the Chamber, the Chamber wherein Fantômas had thrown defiance, a veritable ultimatum to France, the sitting that had been held that same afternoon at the moment he was on his way to Mlle. Dollon’s. That Fantômas should strike a sudden blow, he reflected, a blow so extraordinary as the one he has just delivered, is astounding, but it is not perhaps so crushing as I thought at first. In any case, what a fine argument it supplies in Juve’s defence. If Fantômas manifests his activity abroad, in public, why, Juve can no longer be confounded with him, seeing Juve is a prisoner in the Santé! Then, with ever increasing agitation, the journalist began to read the passage in the paper giving the shorthand report of the debate in the Chamber, which stated how his name, his, Jérôme Fandor’s name, had been uttered aloud as probably masking that of one of Fantômas’ chief accomplices. “By the Lord!” soliloquized the young man, “it’s plain enough; everybody believes that Juve is Fantômas! Now Juve is in gaol, debarred from action; the inevitable conclusion, therefore, is that one of his lieutenants, one of his accomplices, must be credited with the atrocity of to-day. As I am known to be Juve’s bosom friend, it is naturally on me the police fix their suspicions, it is against me the public launches its accusations. Yes, the game is up, my fate is sealed; no stone will be left unturned to hunt me down and arrest me.”