You are going to die," he added, his hands gripping the lever tighter.
The master-carpenter had had the true inspiration in his hour of danger.
He had touched his appeal with logic, he had offered an argument.
Jean Jacques was a logician, a philosopher! That point made about the difference between a murder and an execution was a good one.

Beside it was an acknowledgment, by inference, from his victim, that he was getting what he deserved.
"Pray quick and have it over, pig of an adulterer!" added Jean Jacques.
The master-carpenter raised a protesting hand.

"There you are mistaken; but it is no matter.

At the end of to-day I would have been an adulterer, if you hadn't found out.

I don't complain of the word.