"The whiteness spread over it as smoothly as the edge of the rising tide spreads over the sand, but more slowly. In five minutes all his hair had turned white except one lock on his brow. "We were silent; and I wiped the perspiration from my face. M. de la Nox was panting; Marceline was sobbing. Somehow that slow whitening of the hair was more painful, more impressively dreadful than those piercing, ear-splitting yells. "M. de la Nox seemed almost at his wits' end. Twice I saw him open his lips to question Theophrastus; twice he shut them without a word. Then suddenly he stooped down and listened to the beating of Theophrastus' heart. He stood upright again with an air of relief and said: "'What are you doing now, Cartouche?' "'Shamming dead. After the red-hot irons and the boiling water they poured into my ears I shammed dead. They have left me... I am slipping the paper I wrote in my cell this morning, with a splinter of wood, and my blood, into the crack in the wall above my head. It tells where I've hid my treasures.' "He was silent again; and again I saw the face of M. de la Nox grow intent as once more he concentrated all his being on his astral work. How I wished I had attained a height of psychic development which would have enabled me to follow the wonderful, the miraculous movements of his Astral Scalpel. "It must have been nearly three-quarters of an hour later that he heaved a deep sigh and said, 'Our work is nearly at an end. Where are you now, Cartouche?' "'I don't know quite what has happened,' said Theophrastus. 'I hid the document; and I have not seen anyone since. When I open my eyes--it is rather an effort--I do not recognise the place to which they have brought me... I'm certainly not in the Torture-chamber, nor in my cell in Montgomery Tower... There's a faint blue light falling through the bars of a grating in front of me... The moon is coming to visit me... The moonlight has descended two or three of the steps which lead up from the grating... I try to move... I can't... I'm a log. My will no longer commands my muscles or limbs... It's as if all relations between my will and my body had ceased... My brain is only master of my sight and understanding. It is no longer master of my actions... My poor limbs! I feel them _scattered_ round about me... I must have reached the point of suffering at which one suffers no more... But where am I?... The moonlight descends two more steps... And again two more steps... Ah! what is that it lights up?... An eye--a big eye... The moonlight moves... A skull... The moonlight moves... A bony hand!... I understand! I understand! They have thrown me into a common grave!... The moonlight moves... There are two legs of a dead man lying across my body!... I recognise those steps now!... And that grating!... I am in the charnel-house of Montfaucon!... _I am frightened!_