understand well enough!... Bobinette! You know well
enough what I have to reproach you with!... What I have to force you
to expiate!"...

A hoarse cry escaped the girl's parched lips:

"You are mad, mad, Vagualame!... Pity!... Pity!"

In a voice so hard, so biting, that the words seemed arrows piercing
her quivering flesh, the bandit addressed his victim:

"Bobinette, you deceive yourself strangely! I am not of those to whom
one cries for pity!... I know not the word, nor such weakness. I have
never had it, and never shall have it for any living soul."

The bandit paused. Then, in a tone of rising anger, he continued:

"And you think me mad? But what sort of woman are you, Bobinette, to
try and deceive me? What madness is yours to think, to imagine you can
dupe me?... To confess that with such words and speeches as your
feminine mind can think of you are going to ensnare me, make me alter
my decision, turn me from my vengeance--that you should decide how I
shall act--I?... I?... Vagualame?"

The bandit pronounced "I?" with such an accent of authority, with such
terrific pride, that Bobinette, with a sound as though the death
rattle were in her throat, cried:

"Vagualame! Who are you? Tell me!... Tell me!"...

"You ask me who I am?... You wish to know?... It be according to your
wish!... Who am I?... Look!"...

Slowly, with a movement firm and dignified, Vagualame unfolded the
long cloak which enveloped him. He tore off his hat and flung it at
his feet. With arms crossed he apostrophied Bobinette:

"Dare to utter my name! Dare to name me!"

Before Bobinette's distracted eyes a terrifying outline showed
itself.... The beggar of a moment ago, his cloak removed, his hat
thrown to the ground, appeared no more a bent old man: he stood there,
upright, young, vigorous, superbly muscular. He was sheathed from head
to foot in a tight-fitting garment, black as Erebus!

Bobinette could not see his face, a black hood covered it: two
gleaming eyes alone were visible, eyes that to the distraught girl
seemed lit by fires from hell!

This vision, the vision of this man without a face, resembling no
other man, this apparition with nameless mask, its body like some
statue cut from solid darkness, was yet so definite in its mystery
that Bobinette, uttering the indescribable cry of some inhuman thing,
articulated:

"Fantomas!... You are Fantomas!"

The bandit spoke:

"I am Fantomas!... I am he for whom the entire world