Truly I did not regret the distraction this whimsical Society afforded me. Left to myself, the fever of my mind would have corroded my very reason, I think. To have been condemned to face those hours of tension indescribable, with no company but that of my own thoughts, would have proved such an ordeal as, I felt, would have gone far to render me nerveless at the critical moment. So, responding to the dig of circumstance in my ribs, I abandoned myself to frolic, and almost, in the end, lapsed into the other extreme of hysteria.
But, about five o’clock, closing in from the far end of the corridor, a swift ominous silence succeeded the jangle; and I was immediately aware of heavy footsteps treading the cemented floor of the passage, and, following upon these, the harsh snap of locks and the rumbling of a deep voice—
“Follow me, De la Chatière.”
The words were the signal for a shrilling chorus of sounds—whoops, cat-calls, verberant renderings of a whole farmyard of demoniac animals.
“Miau, miau, Émile! Thou art caught in thine own springe!”
“They will ask thee one of thy nine lives, Émile!”
“Ah—bah! if he pleads as he reasons, upside-down, they will only cut off his feet.”
“Plead thy poor sick virtue, Émile!”
“No, no! that were one coup de tête that shall procure him another.”
“What need to lie when the truth will serve! Plead thy lost virtue, Émile, and the jury will love thee.”