He shook his head and declared that he had talked too much--ten times too much.

"Nonsense!" said Valentin; "a man sentenced to death can never talk too much.

Have you never read an account of an execution in a newspaper?
Don't they always set a lot of people at the prisoner--lawyers, reporters, priests--to make him talk?
But it's not Mr.Newman's fault; he sits there as mum as a death's-head." The doctor observed that it was time his patient's wound should be dressed again; MM.

de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux, who had already witnessed this delicate operation, taking Newman's place as assistants.

Newman withdrew and learned from his fellow-watchers that they had received a telegram from Urbain de Bellegarde to the effect that their message had been delivered in the Rue de l'Universite too late to allow him to take the morning train, but that he would start with his mother in the evening.