sed as well. No loophole, no lamp. Such were the precautions
of old times. It was forbidden to light the entrance to the jails, so
that the newcomers should take no observations.

Gwynplaine extended his arms, and touched the wall on the right side and
on the left. He was in a passage. Little by little a cavernous daylight
exuding, no one knows whence, and which floats about dark places, and to
which the dilatation of the pupil adjusts itself slowly, enabled him to
distinguish a feature here and there, and the corridor was vaguely
sketched out before him.

Gwynplaine, who had never had a glimpse of penal severities, save in the
exaggerations of Ursus, felt as though seized by a sort of vague
gigantic hand. To be caught in the mysterious toils of the law is
frightful. He who is brave in all other dangers is disconcerted in the
presence of justice. Why? Is it that the justice of man works in
twilight, and the judge gropes his way? Gwynplaine remembered what Ursus
had told him of the necessity for silence. He wished to see Dea again;
he felt some discretionary instinct, which urged him not to irritate.
Sometimes to wish to be enlightened is to make matters worse; on the
other hand, however, the weight of the adventure was so overwhelming
that he gave way at length, and could not restrain a question.

"Gentlemen," said he, "whither are you taking me?"

They made no answer.

It was the law of silent capture, and the Norman text is formal: _A
silentiariis ostio, praepositis introducti sunt_.

This silence froze Gwynplaine. Up to that moment he had believed himself
to be firm: he was self-sufficing. To be self-sufficing is to be
powerful. He had lived isolated from the world, and imagined that being
alone he was unassailable; and now all at once he felt himself under the
pressure of a hideous collective force. How was he to combat that
horrible anonyma, the law? He felt faint under the perplexity; a fear of
an unknown character had found a fissure in his armour; besides, he had
not slept, he had not eaten, he had scarcely moistened his lips with a
cup of tea. The whole night had been passed in a kind of delirium, and
the fever was still on him. He was thirsty; perhaps hungry. The craving
of the stomach disorders everything. Since the previous evening all
kinds of incidents had assailed him. The emotions which had tormented
had sustained him. Without the storm a sail would be a rag. But his was
the excessive feebleness of