Gusman slewed his head about--cockt as it had been to the outcry--to view of us. “They are lively to-day,” he said, with an unearthly distortion of his features. “The echoes?” “_C’est cela, citoyen._ So men entitle them. No doubt it is human to think to put terror out of countenance by miscalling it.” “How, then?” He beckoned us to follow; plunged into the very funnel mouth that had vomited the eerie babble; led us swiftly by a winding passage, and stopped. “Behold!” said he, flashing his torch to and fro over the surface of a roughly piled and cemented wall that seemed to close the entrance to a vast recess. “Behold!” said he, sweeping the flame to the ground at the wall-foot. We saw a skull or two; a few scattered bones. An indescribable brassy odour assailed our nostrils. The stones shone with an oily exudation. “What company lies here, citizen?” “A brave one, by my faith--a whole cemetery _en bloc_. _Comment diable!_ shall they have fitted themselves each with his own by the day of Judgment! They pretend to sleep, piecemeal as they were bundled in; but utter so little as a whisper down there, and they will begin to stir and to talk. Then if thou shout’st, as I did--my God, what a clamour in reply! But one would have thought they had protested enough already.” “In what manner?” “Ask the killers of September, thou. They are held honest men, I believe.” “It is enough,” said I. “Lead on, Citizen Gusman, and find us a glint of light, in the name of God!” I glanced, with a shudder, at Carinne. Thank heaven! she had not, it appeared, understood. So here, in one dreadful lime-cemented heap, were massed the victims of those unspeakable days! I remembered the Abbaye and the blood-mark on the lip of Mademoiselle de Lâge; and I held the girl to my side, as we walked, with a pressure that was convulsive. Again the torch danced before us, and again we followed; and yet again the deadman called us to a stop, and whirled his half-devoured brand. “Observe well,” said he; “for it is in this quarter ye must sojourn, and here seek refuge when warning comes.” This time a very hill of skulls and ribs and shanks--a lifeless crater--a Monte Testaccio of broken vessels that had once contained the wine of life. The heap filled a wide recess and rose twenty feet to the roof. “The contribution of ‘Les Innocens,’” said Gusman, as if he were some spectral minister of affairs announcing in the Convention of the dead a Sectional subscription. He pointed to a little closet of stone, like a friar’s cell, that pierced the wall to one side of the heap. “Behold your hermitage!” said he. Carinne, clinging to me, cried, “No, no!” in a weeping voice. “_Eh bien!_” said the creature, indifferently; “you can take or leave, as you will.” “We will take, citizen.” “Look, then!” (he gripped my arm and haled me to the mound) “and note what I do.”