Christopher took the scrap of paper, on which a number was written, and selecting a bunch of keys from a heap that lay in one of the desks, took the lamp in his disengaged hand. The governor made a sign to the page, and all three plunged at once into the black labyrinth of passages which led into the stony heart of the prison. Through long, vault-like halls, down narrow chasms, that seemed hewn from the original rock, far into the very bowels of the earth, these three persons penetrated. After a time, they heard low, sobbing murmurs, indiscribably mournful, which came to them out of the darkness, as if the very stones were saturated with tears. Once the clank of a chain broke sharply through these murmurs, and the grinding sound of a curse broke across the blackness of their progress. At last they stopped before an oaken door, studded heavily with great iron knobs, over which time and dampness had woven a coat of reddish rust. A great, clumsy lock of iron spread far out on the ponderous oak, into which Christopher thrust an equally clumsy key, which ground its way through the rasping rust, and was only turned by a vigorous wrench of both the keeper’s powerful hands. At last the door was forced open, and there, sitting upon the bare, wet stones was a human being. He had just been aroused from a dreary sleep, and, supporting himself by the palms of both hands pressed upon the floor, was peering at them through a fall of snow-white hair, which drooped over the most mournfully white face that human eye ever gazed upon. When he saw the light, and more than one human face looking in upon his misery, this man, who scarcely knew what the presence of a fellow-creature was, began to tremble with strange apprehension, and crept half across the floor, whispering, “Has she come—has she come?” His eyes were bright as diamonds, his white face was full of piteous entreaty; his voice sounded like the heartbroken prayer of a dying man. They did not speak to him, but drew back, and partly closed the door upon him. Then a wild shriek broke from the dungeon, a cry of anguish so terrible that the page covered his face with both hands, and went staggering through the dark passage like a drunken creature. “Oh! if I could but take it back—if I could tear this one sin from my soul!” The governor heard this cry of anguish, but did not comprehend the words. He had witnessed too many scenes like the one they had left to tremble at the sight. “Have no apprehensions,” he said. “They will not find him here in the morning, rest content; not even the king knows all the secrets of the Bastille. There exist lower dungeons yet.” CHAPTER XLII. THE PAGE TRANSFORMED.