ke cells of pygmies
in dwelling-places of Titans. Passages, niches, alcoves, and secret
recesses. All sorts of holes and corners, in which was stored away the
meanness of the great.

These winding and narrow passages recalled games, blindfolded eyes,
hands feeling in the dark, suppressed laughter, blind man's buff, hide
and seek, while, at the same time, they suggested memories of the
Atrides, of the Plantagenets, of the Medicis, the brutal knights of
Eltz, of Rizzio, of Monaldeschi; of naked swords, pursuing the fugitive
flying from room to room.

The ancients, too, had mysterious retreats of the same kind, in which
luxury was adapted to enormities. The pattern has been preserved
underground in some sepulchres in Egypt, notably in the tomb of King
Psammetichus, discovered by Passalacqua. The ancient poets have recorded
the horrors of these suspicious buildings. _Error circumflexus, locus
implicitus gyris_.

Gwynplaine was in the "little rooms" of Corleone Lodge. He was burning
to be off, to get outside, to see Dea again. The maze of passages and
alcoves, with secret and bewildering doors, checked and retarded his
progress. He strove to run; he was obliged to wander. He thought that he
had but one door to thrust open, while he had a skein of doors to
unravel. To one room succeeded another. Then a crossway, with rooms on
every side.

Not a living creature was to be seen. He listened. Not a sound.

At times he thought that he must be returning towards his
starting-point; then, that he saw some one approaching. It was no one.
It was only the reflection of himself in a mirror, dressed as a
nobleman. _That_ he? Impossible! Then he recognized himself, but not at
once.

He explored every passage that he came to.

He examined the quaint arrangements of the rambling building, and their
yet quainter fittings. Here, a cabinet, painted and carved in a
sentimental but vicious style; there, an equivocal-looking chapel,
studded with enamels and mother-of-pearl, with miniatures on ivory
wrought out in relief, like those on old-fashioned snuff-boxes; there,
one of those pretty Florentine retreats, adapted to the hypochondriasis
of women, and even then called _boudoirs_. Everywhere--on the ceilings,
on the walls, and on the very floors--were representations, in velvet or
in metal, of birds, of trees; of luxuriant vegetation, picked out in
reliefs of lacework; tables covered with jet carvings, representing
warriors, queens, and