He shuddered.
He fancied that he perceived, in the furthest depth of the dusky recess, something smiling.
Gilliatt had never heard the word “hallucination,” but he was familiar with the idea. Those mysterious encounters with the invisible, which, for the sake of avoiding the difficulty of explaining them, we call hallucinations, are in nature. Illusions or realities, visions are a fact. He who has the gift will see them. Gilliatt, as we have said, was a dreamer. He had, at times, the faculty of a seer. It was not in vain that he had spent his days in musing among solitary places.
He imagined himself the dupe of one of those mirages which he had more than once beheld when in his dreamy moods.
The opening was somewhat in the shape of a chalk-burner’s oven. It was a low niche with projections like basket-handles. Its abrupt groins contracted gradually as far as the extremity of the crypt, where the heaps of round stones and the rocky roof joined.
Gilliatt entered, and lowering his head, advanced towards the object in the distance.
There was indeed something smiling.
It was a death’s head; but it was not only the head. There was the entire skeleton. A complete human skeleton was lying in the cavern.
In such a position a bold man will continue his researches.
Gilliatt cast his eyes around. He was surrounded by a multitude of crabs. The multitude did not stir. They were but empty shells.