The barrel of a revolver was pointed at me and a man's voice said:
"Silence, do you understand? The least sound, the least attempt at escape; and you're done for. Otherwise you have nothing to fear; and the best thing you can do is to go to sleep."
The door was closed behind me. Two bolts were shot.
I had fallen into the trap which the man Velmot—I did not hesitate to fix upon him at once—had laid for me through the instrumentality of Bérangère.
This unaccountable adventure, like all those in which Bérangère was involved, did not alarm me unduly at the moment. I was no doubt too weary to seek reasons for the conduct of the girl and of the man under whose instructions she was acting. Why had she betrayed me? How had I incurred the man Velmot's ill-will? And what had induced him to imprison me, if I had nothing to fear from him as he maintained? These were all idle questions. After groping through the room and finding that it contained a bed, or rather a mattress and blankets, I took off my boots and outer clothing, wrapped myself in the blankets and in a few minutes was fast asleep.
I slept well into the following day. Meanwhile some one must have entered the room, for I saw on a table a hunk of new bread and a bottle of water. The cell which I occupied was a small one. Enough light to enable me to see came through the slats of a wooden shutter, which was firmly barricaded outside, as I discovered after opening the narrow window. One of the slats was half broken. Through the gap I perceived that my prison overlooked from a height of three or four feet a strip of ground at the edge of which little waves lapped among the reeds. Finding that, after crossing one river, I was facing another, I concluded that Velmot had brought me to an island in the Seine. Was this not the island which I had beheld, in a fleeting vision, on the chapel in the cemetery? And was it not here that Velmot and Massignac had established their head-quarters last winter?
Part of the day passed in silence. But, about five o'clock, I heard a sound of voices and outbursts of argument. This happened under my room and consequently in a cellar the grating of which opened beneath my window. On listening attentively, I seemed on several occasions to recognize Massignac's voice.
The discussion lasted fully an hour. Then some one made his appearance outside my window and called out:
"Hi, you chaps, come on and get ready! . . . . He's a stubborn beast and won't speak unless we make him."