Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/121

Rh second door, which admitted them, then to a third, which also turned on its hinges. These doors seemed to open and shut of themselves. No person was visible. As the corridor contracted, the roof grew lower, until at length it was impossible to stand upright. Moisture exuded from the wall. Drops of water fell from the vaulted roof. The slabs that paved the corridor were covered with slime. The pale, wan light became more and more pall-like. Air was deficient, and what was singularly ominous, the passage seemed to be a descent. Close observation was necessary to perceive that there was such a descent. In darkness even a gentle declivity is portentous. Nothing is more fearful than the vague evils to which we are led by imperceptible degrees. It is awful to descend into unknown depths.

How long they proceeded thus, Gwynplaine could not tell. Moments passed under such crushing agony seem immeasurably prolonged. Suddenly they halted. The darkness was intense. The corridor had widened somewhat. Gwynplaine heard close to him a sound similar to that made by a Chinese gong. It was the wapentake striking his wand against a sheet of iron. The sheet of iron was a door,—not a door on hinges, but a door which could be raised and lowered; something like a portcullis.

There was a sound of creaking in a groove, and Gwynplaine was suddenly face to face with a bit of square light. The sheet of metal had just been raised into a slit in the vault, like the door of a mouse-trap. An opening had appeared. The light was not daylight, but glimmer; but on the dilated eyeballs of Gwynplaine the pale ray struck like a flash of lightning. It was some time before he could distinguish anything. To see with dazzled eyes is as difficult as it is to see in darkness. At length, by degrees, the pupil of his eye adapted