The latter had opened the door of the corridor and summoned the three domestics to our assistance. They entered with their rifles. But it was axes that were needed. The door was solid and barricaded with heavy bolts. Pere Jacques went out and fetched a beam which served us as a battering ram. Each of us exerted all his strength and, finally, we saw the door beginning to give way. Our anxiety was at its height. In vain, we told ourselves that we were about to enter a room in which there were only walls and barred windows. We expected anything--or, rather, we expected nothing, for in the mind of each and every one of us was the recollection of the disappearances, the flights, the actual “dissolution of matter” which Larsan had brought about in times past and which at this moment haunted us and drove us nearly mad. When the door had commenced to yield, Rouletabille directed the servants to take up their guns, with the order, however, that the weapons were to be used only in case it should be impossible to capture Larsan living. Then the young reporter set his shoulder to the door with one last powerful effort and as the boards, wrenched from their hinges, fell to the ground, he was the first to enter the room. We followed him. And behind him, upon the threshold, we all halted, stupefied by the sight which met our eyes. Larsan was there--plainly to be seen by everyone. And this time there was no difficulty in recognizing him. He had removed his false beard; he had put aside his “Darzac mask”; he had resumed once more the pale, clean-shaven face of that Frederic Larsan whom we had known at the Château of Glandier. And his presence seemed to fill the entire room. He was lying back comfortably in an easy chair in the center of the room and was looking at us with his great, calm eyes. His arm was stretched along the arm of the chair. His head was resting on the cushion at the back. One would have said that he was giving us an audience and was waiting for us to make known our business. It seemed to me that I could even discern an ironical smile on his lips. Rouletabille advanced toward him. “Larsan,” he said in a voice which was not quite steady, “Larsan, do you give yourself up?” But Larsan did not reply. Then Rouletabille touched the man’s face and his hand and we saw that Larsan was dead. Rouletabille pointed to a ring on the middle finger. The collet was open and showed a hollow cup which was empty. It must have contained a deadly poison. Arthur Rance put his head against the man’s chest and assured us that all was over. And Rouletabille entreated us to leave him alone in the Square Tower and to try and forget the terrible events which had passed there. “I will charge myself with everything,” he asserted gravely. “Here is the ‘body too many.’ No one will inquire into the disposition which may be made of it.” And he gave an order to Walter which Arthur Rance translated into English.