"But suppose he speaks to the jailer?" said Gabriel. "Oh, he is a deaf mute, born in the Châtelet, who has never been outside the walls." Gabriel shuddered. This man, so completely isolated from the world of the living, and who yet lived and thought, inspired in his breast a feeling of compassion mingled with an undefinable dread. What resolution or compunction, what fear of hell or trust in heaven, could prevent so wretched a being from dashing out his brain against the walls of his dungeon? Could it be the thirst for revenge, or some hope of deliverance that enabled him to retain his hold on life! Gabriel felt a sort of anxious eagerness to see this man; his heart beat faster than it had ever done before except when he was on his way to see Diane. He had visited a hundred other prisoners with no other emotion than a sort of general compassion for their lot; but the thought of this poor wretch appealed to him and moved him more than all the others, and his heart was filled with sorrow when he thought of his tomb-like existence. "Let us go to Number 21," he said to the governor with a choking voice. They went down several damp, black stairways, passed under several arches which resembled the horrible spirals of Dante's Inferno; at last the governor said, stopping before an iron door,-- "This is the place. I am not his jailer; he is in the cell, no doubt. But I have duplicate keys; let us go in." He opened the door, and they went in, with no light but a lantern, held by a turnkey. Then Gabriel saw before him a mute and frightful picture, such as one hardly sees except in the nightmare of delirium. For walls, nothing but solid rock, black, moss-grown, and noisome; for this gloomy hole was excavated below the bed of the Seine, and the water, in times of freshet, filled it half full. On these loathsome walls were crawling slimy things; and the icy air was broken by no sound except that made by the regular, dull falling of a drop of water from the hideous arch. A little less alive than the drop of water, a little more alive than the almost motionless slugs, two beings that had been human were dragging out their existence there, one guarding the other, both dumb and awe-inspiring. The jailer, a sort of idiot, a dull-eyed giant, with a face of deathlike pallor, was standing in the shadow, gazing stupidly at the prisoner, who was lying in the corner on a pallet of straw, shackled hand and foot to a chain riveted to the wall. He was an old man, with a long white beard and white hair. When they entered he seemed to be sleeping, and did not stir; he might have been taken for a corpse or a statue. But suddenly he sat up and opened his eyes, and his gaze met Gabriel's.