ntive bleating; it was the little
goat mourning.

The sitting of the court was suspended. A counsellor having remarked
that the gentlemen were fatigued, and that it would be a long time
to wait until the torture was at an end, the president replied that a
magistrate must know how to sacrifice himself to his duty.

"What an annoying and vexatious hussy," said an aged judge, "to get
herself put to the question when one has not supped!"

CHAPTER II. CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.

After ascending and descending several steps in the corridors, which
were so dark that they were lighted by lamps at mid-day, La Esmeralda,
still surrounded by her lugubrious escort, was thrust by the police into
a gloomy chamber. This chamber, circular in form, occupied the ground
floor of one of those great towers, which, even in our own century,
still pierce through the layer of modern edifices with which modern
Paris has covered ancient Paris. There were no windows to this cellar;
no other opening than the entrance, which was low, and closed by an
enormous iron door. Nevertheless, light was not lacking; a furnace had
been constructed in the thickness of the wall; a large fire was lighted
there, which filled the vault with its crimson reflections and deprived
a miserable candle, which stood in one corner, of all radiance. The iron
grating which served to close the oven, being raised at that moment,
allowed only a view at the mouth of the flaming vent-hole in the dark
wall, the lower extremity of its bars, like a row of black and pointed
teeth, set flat apart; which made the furnace resemble one of those
mouths of dragons which spout forth flames in ancient legends. By the
light which escaped from it, the prisoner beheld, all about the room,
frightful instruments whose use she did not understand. In the centre
lay a leather mattress, placed almost flat upon the ground, over which
hung a strap provided with a buckle, attached to a brass ring in the
mouth of a flat-nosed monster carved in the keystone of the vault.
Tongs, pincers, large ploughshares, filled the interior of the furnace,
and glowed in a confused heap on the coals. The sanguine light of the
furnace illuminated in the chamber only a confused mass of horrible
things.

This Tartarus was called simply, The Question Chamber.

On the bed, in a negligent attitude, sat Pierrat Torterue, the official
torturer. His underlings, two gnomes with squa