Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

had sustained him. Without the storm a sail would be a rag. But his was
the excessive feebleness of the rag, which the wind inflates till it
tears it. He felt himself sinking. Was he about to fall without
consciousness on the pavement? To faint is the resource of a woman, and
the humiliation of a man. He hardened himself, but he trembled. He felt
as one losing his footing.
CHAPTER VIII.
LAMENTATION.
They began to move forward.
They advanced through the passage.
There was no preliminary registry, no place of record. The prisons in
those times were not overburdened with documents. They were content to
close round you without knowing why. To be a prison, and to hold
prisoners, sufficed.
The procession was obliged to lengthen itself out, taking the form of
the corridor. They walked almost in single file; first the wapentake,
then Gwynplaine, then the justice of the quorum, then the constables,
advancing in a group, and blocking up the passage behind Gwynplaine as
with a bung. The passage narrowed. Now Gwynplaine touched the walls with
both his elbows. In the roof, which was made of flints, dashed with
cement, was a succession of granite arches jutting out, and still more
contracting the passage. He had to stoop to pass under them. No speed
was possible in that corridor. Any one trying to escape through it would
have been compelled to move slowly. The passage twisted. All entrails
are tortuous; those of a prison as well as those of a man. Here and
there, sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left, spaces in the
wall, square and closed by large iron gratings, gave glimpses of flights
of stairs, some descending and some ascending.
They reached a closed door; it opened. They passed through, and it
closed again. Then they came to a second door, which admitted them; then
to a third, which also turned on its hinges. These doors seemed to open
and shut of themselves. No one was to be seen. While the corridor
contracted, the roof grew lower, until at length it was impossible to
stand upright. Moisture exuded from the wall. Drops of water fell from
the vault. The slabs that paved the corridor were clammy as an
intestine. The diffused pallor that served as light became more and
more a pall. Air was deficient, and, what was singularly ominous, the
passage was a descent.
Close observation was necessary to perceive that there was such a
descent. In darkness a gentle declivity is portentous. Nothing is more
fearful than the vague evils to which we are led by imperceptible
degrees.
It is awful to descend into unknown depths.