e and shouting:

"It's you who have asked to die, Florence! Nothing can prevent it now.
I can't even see your head, if you make a sign. It's too late! You
asked for it and you've got it! Ah, you're crying! You dare to cry!
What madness!"

He was standing almost above the grotto, on the right. His anger made him
draw himself to his full height. He looked horrible, hideous, atrocious.
His eyes filled with blood as he inserted the bar of the pickaxe between
the two blocks of granite, at the spot where the brick was wedged in.
Then, standing on one side, in a place of safety, he struck the brick,
struck it again. At the third stroke the brick flew out.

What happened was so sudden, the pyramid of stones and rubbish came
crashing with such violence into the hollow of the grotto and in front of
the grotto, that the cripple himself, in spite of his precautions, was
dragged down by the avalanche and thrown upon the grass. It was not a
serious fall, however, and he picked himself up at once, stammering:

"Florence! Florence!"

Though he had so carefully prepared the catastrophe, and brought it about
with such determination, its results seemed suddenly to stagger him. He
hunted for the girl with terrified eyes. He stooped down and crawled
round the chaos shrouded in clouds of dust. He looked through the
interstices. He saw nothing.

Florence was buried under the ruins, dead, invisible, as be had
anticipated.

"Dead!" he said, with staring eyes and a look of stupor on his face.
"Dead! Florence is dead!"

Once again he lapsed into a state of absolute prostration, which
gradually slackened his legs, brought him to the ground and paralyzed
him. His two efforts, following so close upon each other and ending in
disasters of which he had been the immediate witness, seemed to have
robbed him of all his remaining energy.

With no hatred in him, since Arsene Lupin no longer lived, with no love,
since Florence was no more, he looked like a man who has lost his last
motive for existence.

Twice his lips uttered the name of Florence. Was he regretting his
friend? Having reached the last of that appalling series of crimes, was
he imagining the several stages, each marked with a corpse? Was something
like a conscience making itself felt deep down in that brute? Or was it
not rather the sort of physical torpor that numbs the sated beast of
prey, glutted with flesh, drunk with blood, a torpor that is almost
voluptuousness?

Neverth