Page:Gaston Leroux--The man with the black feather.djvu/217

Rh me… I'm certainly not in the Torture-chamber, nor in my cell in Montgomery Tower… There's a faint blue light falling through the bars of a grating in front of me… The moon is coming to visit me… The moonlight has descended two or three of the steps which lead up from the grating… I try to move… I can't… I'm a log. My will no longer commands my muscles or limbs… It's as if all relations between my will and my body had ceased… My brain is only master of my sight and understanding. It is no longer master of my actions… My poor limbs! I feel them scattered round about me… I must have reached the point of suffering at which one suffers no more… But where am I?… The moonlight descends two more steps… And again two more steps… Ah! what is that it lights up?… An eye—a big eye… The moonlight moves… A skull… The moonlight moves… A bony hand!… I understand! I understand! They have thrown me into a common grave!… The moonlight moves… There are two legs of a dead man lying across my body!… I recognise those steps now!… And that grating!… I am in the charnel-house of Montfaucon!… I am frightened!

"'When I used to go up the street of the