But La Belle Laittiere was right when she said in the tavern of the Reine Margot that I was no longer fit to live. I was pleased to play the potentate, and I ended by having a mania for cutting up in pieces all those whom I suspected. My lieutenants ran more danger in serving me than in deserting me. They betrayed me, and that was logical. The beginning of my bad luck was the affair of the Luxembourg. It should have opened my eyes, but my pride hindered me from seeing clearly. This is a good time for these reflections, now that I am in the charnel house. “I am living in the charnel house with the dead, and for the first time in my life I am afraid. But I am not afraid of the dead; I am afraid of the living, for there is one near me alive! _I know that he moves_. It is strange that at this moment, when I am upon the limit of life and death, my senses perceive things that they ignored in good health, and while my ears do not hear any more, on account of the boiling water with which they were filled, I know there is some one alive near me. Shall I be then not the only one to live in this domain of putrefaction? I recall that the Vache-a-Paniers told me that the Count de Charalais had caused some women who had resisted him to be buried alive in the little ditches near the earthen mound of Montfançon, but I, Cartouche, have no desire to think of such a crime. I know very well that he bathes himself in the blood of young virgins whom he had killed, to cure himself of a terrible disease which ate into his flesh, but to bury women alive in ditches, that I do not believe. And yet there is on my left side a woman who moves in one of the ditches. I do not hear her, I feel her. The moon had lengthened its ray of light as far as myself. Its ray is divided into three by the bars of the grating. This makes three blue bands, by which I see, first of all, the hole of the eye, and the three holes of the nose, and then a wonderful mouth, which sticks its tongue out at me. Then there are three bodies without heads. In the left side of the third body I distinguish very plainly the putrefied wound in which was buried one of the rings from which the headless one was hanged. He could not be hanged by the neck, as he had no head. As I do not feel the woman at my side in the ditch move any more, I collect my wits a little and I employ myself in remembering the bodies which fill the charnel house. I begin to see those which are entirely in the shadows. There are some! There are some more sounds. They bring all the executed criminals here from the city. There are some fresh ones, there are some decayed ones, there are some well preserved ones, and all dry; but the others are not presentable—they are falling into ruin. I will soon be a ruin like them. However, all is not said, all is not finished, since I exist. Hope is not dead. One finds hope even in the depths of a charnel house. Oh, if I could move! The dead men are moving! I will end by moving also. I