He met his doom calmly and laid his head beneath the axe with a martyr's
brow. Kaiserina acknowledged this.

Felix Clemenceau understood everything now. The trustees to whom he owed
his subsistence-money, M. Rollinet the imperial counsel, and M.
Constantin Ritz, a famous sculptor's son, and the life-companion of
Clemenceau, were characters in the momentous drama which Kaiserina
recited, whom he knew by correspondence.

The finger of fate, which had urged the artist to commit a homicide for
morality's sake, had pointed out to his son the way which had to be
followed over corpses of the young student's slaying.

Brooding over the alteration in his future, he exchanged hardly a word
with his cousin, during the prolonged journey, which they continued
together, as though mutual reluctance to part bound them indissolubly.
Logic said there should be a powerful repugnance between those whom the
shadow of the guillotine's red arm clouded. But, spite of all, Felix
felt that Kaiserina was, like himself, well within the circle of infamy.
Her mother was the sister of the shameful Iza, and her husband's careful
guard of her proved that he doubted her walking virtuously if her
unscrupulous mother stood by her side. This old Megara--who sold her
offspring to worse than death--was living--seemed eternal as evil
itself. It were a pious act to save Kaiserina from her as his father had
tried to do with Iza. He was pleased that she seemed inclined to cling
to him as though wearied of the erratic life she seemed to have led
after a flight from her mother's, and which she did not describe
minutely. He was also grateful that, in her allusions to his father, she
did not speak with the bitterness of a blood-avenger.