It is my weakness that I
could not be, as a man, honourable to Jean Jacques Barbille. And so I pay
the price; so I have to go without time to make my will. Bless heaven
above, I have no wife--"
"If you had a wife you would not be dying now. You would not then meddle
with the home of Jean Jacques Barbille," sneered Jean Jacques. The note
was savage yet.
"Ah, for sure, for sure! It is so. And if I lived I would marry at once."
Desperate as his condition was, the master-carpenter could almost have
laughed at the idea of marriage preventing him from following the bent of
his nature. He was the born lover. If he had been as high as the Czar, or
as low as the ditcher, he would have been the same; but it would be
madness to admit that to Jean Jacques now.
"But, as you say, let me get on. My time has come--"
Jean Jacques jerked his head angrily. "Enough of this. You keep on saying
'Wait a little,' but your time has come. Now take it so, and don't
repeat."
"A man must get used to the idea of dying, or he will die hard," replied
the master-carpenter, for he saw that Jean Jacques' hands were not so
tightly clenched on the lever now; and time was everything. He had
already been near five minutes, and every minute was a step to a chance
of escape--somehow.
"I said you were to blame," he continued. "Listen, Jean Jacques Barbille.
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