on, almost without breath, she had no longer the
power to suffer; Phoebus, the sun, midday, the open air, the streets of
Paris, the dances with applause, the sweet babblings of love with the
officer; then the priest, the old crone, the poignard, the blood,
the torture, the gibbet; all this did, indeed, pass before her mind,
sometimes as a charming and golden vision, sometimes as a hideous
nightmare; but it was no longer anything but a vague and horrible
struggle, lost in the gloom, or distant music played up above ground,
and which was no longer audible at the depth where the unhappy girl had
fallen.

Since she had been there, she had neither waked nor slept. In that
misfortune, in that cell, she could no longer distinguish her waking
hours from slumber, dreams from reality, any more than day from night.
All this was mixed, broken, floating, disseminated confusedly in her
thought. She no longer felt, she no longer knew, she no longer thought;
at the most, she only dreamed. Never had a living creature been thrust
more deeply into nothingness.

Thus benumbed, frozen, petrified, she had barely noticed on two or three
occasions, the sound of a trap door opening somewhere above her, without
even permitting the passage of a little light, and through which a hand
had tossed her a bit of black bread. Nevertheless, this periodical
visit of the jailer was the sole communication which was left her with
mankind.

A single thing still mechanically occupied her ear; above her head, the
dampness was filtering through the mouldy stones of the vault, and
a drop of water dropped from them at regular intervals. She listened
stupidly to the noise made by this drop of water as it fell into the
pool beside her.

This drop of water falling from time to time into that pool, was the
only movement which still went on around her, the only clock which
marked the time, the only noise which reached her of all the noise made
on the surface of the earth.

To tell the whole, however, she also felt, from time to time, in that
cesspool of mire and darkness, something cold passing over her foot or
her arm, and she shuddered.

How long had she been there? She did not know. She had a recollection
of a sentence of death pronounced somewhere, against some one, then
of having been herself carried away, and of waking up in darkness and
silence, chilled to the heart. She had dragged herself along on her
hands. Then iron rings that cut her ankles, and cha