Note 49 — Chapter VII

Ravachol’s masterful sneer at the church on his way to the guillotine was not, it seems, pure perverseness. Ravachol had taken a real liking to the prison priest, whom he admitted to be a good fellow, but he had such a horror of being claimed by the church after his death as an eleventh-hour penitent that he had requested the priest not to assist at his execution. To this request the priest had answered,—could anything well be more maladroit?—“I cannot avoid it. I shall be there by the same right as the headsman.”