One evening a score of revolutionaries, after having driven away
the terrorized servants, mounted to his apartments. He was dining
with his family. They knocked and he opened the door. He saw who
they were, and tried to speak. They gave him no time. Before his
wife and children, mad with terror and on their knees before the
revolutionaries, they read him his death-sentence. A fine end that
to a dinner!"

As he listened Rouletabille paled and he kept his eyes on the door
as if he expected to see it open of itself, giving access to
ferocious Nihilists of whom one, with a paper in his hand, would
read the sentence of death to Feodor Feodorovitch. Rouletabille's
stomach was not yet seasoned to such stories. He almost regretted,
momentarily, having taken the terrible responsibility of dismissing
the police. After what Koupriane had confided to him of things that
had happened in this house, he had not hesitated to risk everything
on that audacious decision, but all the same, all the same - these
stories of Nihilists who appear at the end of a meal, death-sentence
in hand, they haunted him, they upset him. Certainly it had been
a piece of foolhardiness to dismiss the police!

"Well," he asked, conquering his misgivings and resuming, as always,
his confidence in himself, "then, what did they do then, after
reading the sentence?"

"The Chief of the Surete knew he had no time to spare. He did not
ask for it. The revolutionaries ordered him to bid his family
farewell. He raised his wife, his children, clasped them, bade
them be of good courage, then said he was ready. They took him
into the street. They stood him against a wall. His wife and