st the wall, speechless and motionless. So intense
was his agony of mind he would have dashed out his brains against the
stones if he had had the strength. He could not breathe. His eyes swam,
and a long-drawn murmur, as soft as silence, filled his ears. He felt
his whole being bathed in a delicious semi-consciousness. For one
incomparable moment everything was harmony, serenity, light, fragrance,
sweetness. Then he ceased to know or feel anything.

When he returned to himself, the first notion that entered his head was
to regret his coma and, a philosopher even in the stupor of despair, he
reflected how he had had to plunge to the depths of an underground
dungeon, there to await execution, to enjoy the most exquisite of all
voluptuous sensations he had ever tasted. He tried hard to lose
consciousness again, but without success; on the contrary, little by
little he felt the poisonous air of the dungeon fill his lungs and bring
with it, along with the fever of life, a full consciousness of his
intolerable wretchedness.

Meantime his two companions regarded his silence as a cruel personal
insult. Brotteaux, who was of a sociable turn, endeavoured to satisfy
their curiosity; but when they discovered he was only what they called
"a political," one of the mild sort whose crime was only a matter of
words and opinions, they lost all respect and sympathy for him. The
offences charged against these two prisoners had more grit; the older of
the men was a murderer, the other had been manufacturing forged
assignats. Both made the best of their situation and even found some
alleviations in it. Brotteaux's thoughts suddenly turned to the world
above him,--how over his head all was noise and bustle, light and life,
while the pretty shopwomen in the Palais de Justice behind their
counters, loaded with perfumery and pretty knicknacks, smiled on their
customers, happy people free to go where they pleased,--and the picture
doubled his despair.

Night fell, unmarked in the darkness and silence of the dungeon, but yet
gloomy and oppressive. One leg extended on his bench and his back
propped against the wall, Brotteaux fell into a doze. And lo! he saw
himself seated at the foot of a leafy beech, in which the birds were
singing; the setting sun bathed the river in liquid fire and the clouds
were edged with purple. The night wore through. A burning fever consumed
him and he greedily drained his pitcher to the dregs, but the fetid
water only