I am neither visionary nor superstitious, but it is probable these ideas caused in my brain a feverish excitement; for, whilst I thus wandered, all at once these five fatal names appeared as though written in flames on the dark wall; noises, louder and louder, burst on my ears; a dull red light filled my eyes, and it seemed to me that my cell became full of men,--strangers to me. Each bore his severed head in his left hand, and carried it by the mouth, for the hair had been removed; each raised his right hand at me, _except the parricide_.[5] I shut my eyes in horror, and then I saw all even more distinctly than before! Dream, vision, or reality, I should have gone mad if a sudden impression had not recalled me in time. I was near fainting, when I felt something cold crawling over my naked foot. It was the bloated spider, whom I had disturbed. This recalled my wandering senses. Those dreadful spectres, then, were only the fumes of an empty and convulsed brain. The sepulchre is a prison from whence none escape. The door of the tomb opens not inwards! * * * * * THIRTEENTH PAPER. I have lately witnessed a hideous sight. As soon as it was day, the prison was full of noise, I heard heavy doors open and shut; the grating of locks and bolts; the clanking of bunches of keys; the stairs creaking from top to bottom with quick steps; and voices calling and answering from the opposite extremes of the long corridors. My neighbours in the dungeons, the felons at hard labour, were more gay than usual. All in the prison seemed laughing, singing, running, or dancing; I--alone silent in this uproar, alone motionless in this tumult--listened in astonishment. A jailor passed; I ventured to call and ask him “if there were a Fête in the Prison.” “A Fête, if you choose to call it so,” answered he; “this is the day that they fetter the galley-slaves who are to set off to-morrow for Toulon. Would you like to see them? It would amuse you.” For a solitary recluse, indeed, a spectacle of any kind was an event of interest, however odious it might be; and I accepted the “amusement.” The jailor, after taking the usual precautions to secure me, conducted me into a little empty cell, without a vestige of furniture, and only a grated window,--but still a real window, against which one could lean, and through which one could actually perceive the sky! “Here,” said he, “you will see and hear all that happens. You will be ‘alone in your box,’ like the King!” He then went out, closing on me locks, bolts, and bars.