I returned precipitately to sit on my straw bed; my head sunk on my
knees. After a time, my childish fear was dissipated, and a wild
curiosity forced me to continue the examination of my walls.
Beside the name of Papavoine, I tore away an enormous cobweb, thick with
dust, and filling the angle of the wall. Under this web there were four
or five names perfectly legible, among others of which nothing remained
but a smear on the wall,--DAUTAN, 1815. POULAIN, 1818. JEAN MARTIN,
1821. CASTAING, 1823.
As I read these names, frightful recollections crowded on me. _Dautan_
was the man who cut his brother in quarters, and who went at night to
Paris and threw the head into a fountain, and the body into a sewer.
_Poulain_ assassinated his wife. _Jean Martin_ shot his father with a
pistol as the old man opened a window. And _Castaing_ was the physician
who poisoned his friend; and while attending the illness he had caused,
instead of an antidote, gave him more poison. Then, next to these names,
was Papavoine, the horrible madman who stabbed children to death in his
phrenzy.
“These,” I exclaimed, as a shudder passed over me, “these, then, have
been my predecessors in this cell. Here, on the same pavement where I
am, they conceived their last thoughts,--these fearful homicides! Within
these walls, in this narrow square, their last steps turned and
re-turned, like those of a caged wild-beast. They succeeded each other
at short intervals; it seems that this dungeon does not remain empty.
They have left the place warm,--and it is to me they have left it. In my
turn I shall join them in the felons’ cemetery of Clamart, where the
grass grows so well!”
* * * * *
I am neither visionary nor superstitious, but it is probable these ideas
caused in my brain a feverish excitement; for, whilst I thus wandered,
all at once these five fatal names appeared as though written in flames
on the dark wall; noises, louder and louder, burst on my ears; a dull
red light filled my eyes, and it seemed to me that my cell became full
of men,--strangers to me. Each bore his severed head in his left hand,
and carried it by the mouth, for the hair had been removed; each raised
his right hand at me, _except the parricide_.[5]
I shut my eyes in horror, and then I saw all even more distinctly than
before!
Dream, vision, or reality, I should have gone mad if a sudden impression
had not recalled me in time. I was near fainting, when I felt something
cold crawling over my naked foot. It was the bloated spider, whom I had
disturbed. This recalled my wandering senses. Those dreadful spectres,
then, were only the fumes of an empty and convulsed brain. The sepulchre
is a prison from whence none escape. The door of the tomb opens not
inwards!
* * * * *