. . . They went through other ghostly halls, thronged by a silent company which never moved nor spake. They came to the entrance of that astounding mausoleum of wickedness, The Chamber of Horrors.
There they saw, as in a faint light under the sea, the legion of the lost, the horrible men and women who had gone to swell the red quadrilles of hell.
In long rows, sitting or standing, with blood-stained knives and hangmen's ropes in front of them, in their shameful resurrection they inhabited this place of gloom and death.
Here, was a man in shirt-sleeves, busy at work in a homely kitchen lit by a single candle. Alone at midnight and with sweat upon his face he was breaking up the floor; making a deep hole in which to put something covered with a spotted shroud which lay in a bedroom above.
There, was the "most extraordinary relic in the world," the knife of the guillotine that decapitated Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and twenty thousand human beings besides.
The strange precision of portraiture, the somewhat ghastly art which had moulded these evil faces was startlingly evident in its effect upon the soul.
When a great novelist or poet creates an evil personality it shocks and terrifies us, but it is never wholly evil. We know of the monster's antecedents and environment. However stern we may be in our attitude towards the crime, sweet charity and deep understanding of the motives of human action often give us glimmerings which enable us to pity a lamentable human being who is a brother of ours whatever he may have done.
But here? No. All was sordid and horrible.
Gilbert and Rita saw rows upon rows of faces which differed in every way one from the other and were yet dreadfully alike.
For these great sinister dolls, so unreal and so real, had all a likeness. The smirk of cruelty and cunning seemed to lie upon the waxen masks. Colder than life, far colder than death, they gave forth emanations which struck the very heart with woe and desolation.