an entrance or an exit through the square
hole, this grating would have prevented it. It did not allow the passage
of the body, but it did allow the passage of the eyes; that is to
say, of the mind. This seems to have occurred to them, for it had been
re-enforced by a sheet of tin inserted in the wall a little in the rear,
and pierced with a thousand holes more microscopic than the holes of
a strainer. At the bottom of this plate, an aperture had been pierced
exactly similar to the orifice of a letter box. A bit of tape attached
to a bell-wire hung at the right of the grated opening.

If the tape was pulled, a bell rang, and one heard a voice very near at
hand, which made one start.

"Who is there?" the voice demanded.

It was a woman's voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was mournful.

Here, again, there was a magical word which it was necessary to know. If
one did not know it, the voice ceased, the wall became silent once more,
as though the terrified obscurity of the sepulchre had been on the other
side of it.

If one knew the password, the voice resumed, "Enter on the right."

One then perceived on the right, facing the window, a glass door
surmounted by a frame glazed and painted gray. On raising the latch and
crossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impression
as when one enters at the theatre into a grated baignoire, before the
grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in
a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a
much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from
the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean
upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only
the grating of it was not of gilded wood, as at the opera; it was a
monstrous lattice of iron bars, hideously interlaced and riveted to the
wall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched fists.

The first minutes passed; when one's eyes began to grow used to this
cellar-like half-twilight, one tried to pass the grating, but got no
further than six inches beyond it. There he encountered a barrier of
black shutters, re-enforced and fortified with transverse beams of wood
painted a gingerbread yellow. These shutters were divided into long,
narrow slats, and they masked the entire length of the grating. They
were always closed. At the expiration of a few moments one heard a voice
proceeding from behind these shutters,