An icy chill ran the length of my spine. For death I had been long preparing; but I was beginning at last to see that dying was not what threatened me: it was a question of something else, of something worse, perhaps.
The Vicomte Antoine persisted in his objection:
“But those mortal remains, where are we....”
The marquis cut the sentence off with an oblique downward movement of his hand and arm:
“Here!” said he.
XXIV
In the silence which followed, I could hear the violent leap of my heart and feel the drops of chilling sweat as they gathered about my temples. I was afraid, with that indescribable sensation of fear which one has of the dark, or of the ghosts and phantoms that walk by night. The falsetto of the marquis did little to allay my weird uneasiness when his voice again came to my ears. He was speaking to me: