"'When I used to go up the street of the Dead to carouse at the Chopinettes, I often looked through that grating. I looked through it curiously because I saw that one day I should lie in the charnel-house. But never did it occur to me that when a body lay there, _it could look out from the other side of the grating_! And now my body looks out through it! They have thrown me into the charnel-house because they believed me dead! I am buried alive with the bodies of hanged men! My wretched fate surpasses anything that the imagination of men could invent! "'The saddest reflections assail me. I ask myself by what trick of Fate I am reduced to such an extremity. I am forced to confess that Fate played no part in the matter. It was my pride, nothing but my accursed pride. I could have quietly remained King of all the robbers, _if there had been any living with me_. Pretty-Milkmaid was right when she said at the Queen Margot _that there was no longer any living with me_. I would no longer listen to a word from anyone; and when I called together my Grand Council, I took no notice whatever of the resolutions it passed. I took a delight in playing the despot; and I ended with that mania for cutting up everyone I suspected into little bits. My lieutenants ran greater risks in serving me than in disobeying me. They betrayed me; and it was quite logical. _Oh, it's quite time for these reflections, now that I'm in the charnel-house!_ "'I'm alive in this charnel-house, alive among the dead; and for the first time in my life _I am frightened_.' "Theophrastus was silent for a minute; and we looked at one another with harried eyes. Then in the same mournful, plaintive tones he took up his tale again. "'It's odd--very odd. Now that I'm on the very boundary of life and death my senses perceive things which they could not perceive when I was in health. My ears hear no more--that boiling water destroyed my hearing--_yet they do hear_. There is a footfall, a slinking footfall on the steps leading down to the grating... Suddenly the moon ceases to light the charnel-house... Then I see between me and the moon on the steps of the charnel-house, a man! a living man!... Maybe I am saved! I wanted to cry aloud with joy; and perhaps I should have cried aloud, if the horror of what I _feel_, of what I _know_, had not sealed my lips. I _feel_, I _know_ that this man has come to rob me of my hand... I read it, clearly, _in his brain_. A lady of the Court has sent him for the charm--the charm to keep her husband's love--the hand of a murderer--the hand of Cartouche!