I raised my head. A burly form, topped by a great hairy face, blocked the doorway. I made it out by the little light that filtered through a high-up grating above me.
“Mille démons!” shouted the turnkey suddenly, “what is this?”
He came pounding into the cell, paused, and lifted his hands like a benedictory priest. “Mille démons!” he whispered again, with his jaw dropped.
I had jumped to my feet.
“Pardieu! Mr Jailer!” said I; “the guillotine, it appears, has anticipated upon itself that law of which it is the final expression. The rest of us you will of necessity acquit.”
I looked down, half-dazed; but I recalled the odd sound that had awakened me in the night. Here, then, was the explanation of it—in this swollen and collapsed form, whose head, it seemed, was plunged beneath the floor, as if it had dived for Tartarus and had stuck at the shoulders.
“He has guillotined himself with a vengeance!” I exclaimed.
“But how?” said the turnkey, stupidly.
“But thus, it is obvious: by propping the slab-end on the pitcher; by lying down with his neck over the brink of the trough; by upsetting the vessel with a sweep of his arm as he lay. Mon Dieu! see how he sprouts from the chink like a horrible dead polypus! This is no mouse-trap, but a gin to catch human vermin!”
“It was not to be foreseen,” muttered the man, a little scared. “Who would have fancied a madman to be in earnest!”