L'homme qui rit. English

  CHAPTER VII.

  SHUDDERING.

  When Gwynplaine heard the wicket shut, creaking in all its bolts, hetrembled. It seemed to him that the door which had just closed was thecommunication between light and darkness--opening on one side on theliving, human crowd, and on the other on a dead world; and now thateverything illumined by the sun was behind him, that he had stepped overthe boundary of life and was standing without it, his heart contracted.What were they going to do with him? What did it all mean? Where was he?

  He saw nothing around him; he found himself in perfect darkness. Theshutting of the door had momentarily blinded him. The window in the doorhad been closed as well. No loophole, no lamp. Such were the precautionsof old times. It was forbidden to light the entrance to the jails, sothat the newcomers should take no observations.

  Gwynplaine extended his arms, and touched the wall on the right side andon the left. He was in a passage. Little by little a cavernous daylightexuding, no one knows whence, and which floats about dark places, and towhich the dilatation of the pupil adjusts itself slowly, enabled him todistinguish a feature here and there, and the corridor was vaguelysketched out before him.

  Gwynplaine, who had never had a glimpse of penal severities, save in theexaggerations of Ursus, felt as though seized by a sort of vaguegigantic hand. To be caught in the mysterious toils of the law isfrightful. He who is brave in all other dangers is disconcerted in thepresence of justice. Why? Is it that the justice of man works intwilight, and the judge gropes his way? Gwynplaine remembered what Ursushad told him of the necessity for silence. He wished to see Dea again;he felt some discretionary instinct, which urged him not to irritate.Sometimes to wish to be enlightened is to make matters worse; on theother hand, however, the weight of the adventure was so overwhelmingthat he gave way at length, and could not restrain a question.

  "Gentlemen," said he, "whither are you taking me?"

  They made no answer.

  It was the law of silent capture, and the Norman text is formal: _Asilentiariis ostio, praepositis introducti sunt_.

  This silence froze Gwynplaine. Up to that moment he had believed himselfto be firm: he was self-sufficing. To be self-sufficing is to bepowerful. He had lived isolated from the world, and imagined that beingalone he was unassailable; and now all at once he felt himself under thepressure of a hideous collective force. How was he to combat thathorrible anonyma, the law? He felt faint under the perplexity; a fear ofan unknown character had found a fissure in his armour; besides, he hadnot slept, he had not eaten, he had scarcely moistened his lips with acup of tea. The whole night had been passed in a kind of delirium, andthe fever was still on him. He was thirsty; perhaps hungry. The cravingof the stomach disorders everything. Since the previous evening allkinds of incidents had assailed him. The emotions which had tormentedhad sustained him. Without the storm a sail would be a rag. But his wasthe excessive feebleness of the rag, which the wind inflates till ittears it. He felt himself sinking. Was he about to fall withoutconsciousness on the pavement? To faint is the resource of a woman, andthe humiliation of a man. He hardened himself, but he trembled. He feltas one losing his footing.