able. The angles of their neighbours' elbows do not dispose them to be good-natured. I hope the benches will not give way. We shall be the victims to an incensed population. Ah! if our friend TomJim-Jack were here! but he never comes now. Look at those heads rising one above another. Those who are forced to stand don't look very well pleased, though the great Galen pronounced it to be strengthening. We will shorten the entertainment, as only 'Chaos Vanquished' was announced in the playbill, we will not play 'Ursus Rursus.' There will be something gained in that. What an uproar ! O blind turbulence of the masses. They will do us some damage. However, they can't go on like this. We should not be able to play. No one can catch a word of the piece. I am going to address them. Gwynplaine, draw the curtain a little aside.-Gentlemen.” Here Ursus addressed himself with a shrill and feeble voice,—

“Down with that old fool!"

Then he answered in his own voice,

"It seems that the mob insult me. Cicero is right; plebs fex urbis. Never mind, we will admonish the mob, though I shall have much trouble in making myself heard. I will speak, notwithstanding. Man, do your duty. Gwynplaine, look at that bitter scold grinding her teeth down there."

Ursus made a pause, which he filled by gnashing his teeth, Homo, provoked, added a second, and Govicum a third.

Ursus went on:

"My lords and gentlemen, I see that my address has unluckily displeased you. I take leave of your hisses for a moment. I shall put on my head, and the performance is going to begin."

The rings of the curtain were heard being drawn over the rod. The tambourines of the gipsies stopped. Ursus took down his instrument, executed his prelude, and said, in a low tone: "Alas! Gwynplaine, how mysterious this is," then he flung himself down with the wolf.

When he had taken down his instrument, he had also taken from the nail a rough wig which he had, and which he had thrown on the stage in a corner within his reach. The representation of "Chaos Vanquished" took place as usual, minus only the effect of the blue light, and the brilliancy of the fairies. The wolf played his best. At the proper moment Dea made her appearance, and, with that voice so tremulous and heavenly, invoked Gwynplaine. She extended her arms, feeling for that head.

Ursus rushed at the wig, ruffled it, put it on, advanced softly, and holding his breath, his head bristled thus under the hand of Dea.

Then calling all his art to his aid, and copying Gwynplaine's voice, he sang with ineffable love the response of the monster to the call of the spirit. The imitation was so perfect that again the gipsies sought Gwynplaine with their eyes, frightened at hearing without seeing him.

Govicum, filled with astonishment, stamped, applauded, clapped his hands, producing an Olympian tumult, and himself laughed as if he had been a chorus of gods. This boy, it must be confessed, developed a rare talent for acting an audience.

Fibi and Vinos, being automatons, of which Ursus pulled the strings, made their habitual rattle of their instruments, composed of copper and ass's skin, which marked the end of the representation and the departure of the people.

Ursus arose, covered with sweat. He said, in a low voice, to Homo, "You see it was necessary to gain time. I think we have succeeded. I have not acquitted myself badly. I, who have as much reason as any one to go distracted. Gwynplaine may return here to-morrow. It is useless to kill Dea directly. I can explain matters to you."

He took off his wig and wiped his forehead.

"I am a ventriloquist of genius," murmured he. "What talent I displayed! I have equalled Brabant, the engastrimist of Francis I., of France. Dea is convinced that Gwynplaine is here."

"Ursus," said Dea, "where is Gwynplaine ?"

Ursus started, and turned. Dea was still standing at the back of the stage, alone under the lamp which hung from the ceiling. She was pale, with the pallor of a ghost.

She added, with an ineffable expression of despair,

"I know. He has left us. He is gone. I always knew he had wings."

And raising her sightless eyes on high, she added: "When shall I follow?"

CHAPTER III.

MENIBUS SURDIS CAMPANA MUTA.

URSUS smoothed the felt of the hat, touched the cloth of the cloak, the serge of the coat, the leather of the esclavine, and not being able longer to doubt whose garments they were, with a gesture at once brief and imperative, and without saying a word, he pointed to the door of the inn.

Master Nicless opened it.

Ursus rushed out of the tavern.

Master Nicless following him with his eyes, saw Ursus run as fast as his old legs would allow, in the direction taken that morning by the wapentake who carried off Gwynplaine.

A quarter of an hour afterwards, Ursus, out of breath, reached the little street in which stood the private gate of the Southwark Jail, which he had already watched so many hours. This alley was lonely enough at all hours, but if dreary during the day, it was portentous in the night. No one ventured through it after a certain hour. It seemed as though people feared that the walls should close in, and that if the prison or the cemetery took a fancy to embrace, they should be crushed in their clasp. These were the effects of darkness. The pollard willows of the ruelle Vauvert, in Paris, were thus ill-famed. It was said that during the night these stumps of trees changed into great hands, and caught hold of the passers-by.

By instinct the Southwark folks shunned, as we have said, this alley between a prison and a churchyard. Formerly it had been barricaded during the night by an iron chain. Very uselessly; because the strongest chain which guarded the street was the terror it inspired.

Ursus entered it resolutely.

What intention possessed him? None.

He came into this alley to seek intelligence.

Was he about to knock at the door of the jail? Certainly not. Such an expedient, at once fearful and vain, had no place in his brain. To attempt to introduce himself to demand an explanation ! What folly! Prisons open not to those who wish to enter, any more than to those who desire to get out.

Their hinges turn not except by law. Ursus knew this. Why, then, did he come there? To see. To see what? Nothing. Who can tell?

Even to be opposite the door through which Gwynplaine had disappeared-that was something.

Sometimes the blackest and most rugged of walls whispers, and some light escapes through a cranny. A vague glimmering is perceived occasionally through solid and sombre piles of building. Even to examine the envelope of a fact is to some purpose. The instinct of all is never to leave between the fact which interests us and ourselves more than the thinnest possible cover. It was for this reason that Ursus returned to the alley in which was the lower entrance to the prison.

At the moment he entered it he heard one stroke of the clock, then a second.

"Hold," thought he; "can it be midnight already?” Mechanically he set himself to count.

"Three, four, five."

He mused.

"At what long intervals this clock strikes !-how slowly! Six, seven !"

Then he remarked,

"What a melancholy sound! Eight, nine! Ah! nothing can be more natural; it's dull work for the clock living in a prison. Ten! Besides, there is the cemetery. This clock sounds the hour to the living, and eternity to the dead. Eleven! Alas! to strike the hour to him who is not free, is also to chronicle an eternity! Twelve ! "It is not the striking of a clock: it is the bell Muta. No wonder I said, How long it is in striking midnight. This clock does not strike it tolls. What fearful thing is about to take place?"

Formerly all prisons, as all monasteries, had a bell called Muta, reserved for melancholy occasions. La Muta (the mute) was a bell which struck very low, as if doing its best not to be heard.

Ursus had reached the corner so convenient for his watch whence he had been able during a great part of the day to keep his eye on the prison.

The strokes followed each other at lugubrious intervals. A knell makes an ugly punctuation in space. It breaks the preoccupation of the mind into funereal paragraphs. A knell, like a man's death-rattle, notifies an agony. If in the houses about the neighbourhood where a knell is tolled there are reveries straying in doubt, its sound cuts them into rigid fragments. A vague reverie is a sort of refuge. Some indefinable diffuseness in anguish allows now and then a ray of hope to pierce through it. A knell is precise and desolating. It concentrates this diffusion of thought, and into the trouble, where anxiety seeks to remain in suspense, it hurls the mind down headlong. A knell speaks to each one in the sense of his own grief or his own trouble. Tragic bell! your voice sounds warning to all alike.

All at once, in that very spot which appeared like a dark hole, a redness showed. The redness grew larger, and became a light.

There was no uncertainty about it. It soon took a form and angles. The door of the jail had just turned on its hinges. This glow painted the arch and the jambs of the door. It was a yawning rather than an opening. A prison does not open; it yawns-per

haps from ennui. his hand.

Through the gate passed a man with a torch in

The death-bell rang on. Ursus felt his attention fascinated by two objects. He watched, his ear the knell, his eye the torch. Behind the first man the gate, which had been ajar, enlarged the opening suddenly, and allowed egress to two other men; then to a fourth. This fourth was the wapentake, clearly visible by the light of the torch. In his grasp was his iron staff.

Following the wapentake, filed and opened out below the gateway in order, two by two, with the rigidity of a series of walking posts, some silent men.

This nocturnal procession stepped through the lower door coupled in file, like a procession of penitents, without any solution of continuity, with a funereal care to make no noise, gravely-almost gently; a serpent issuing from its hole uses similar precautions.

The torch threw out their profiles and their attitudes in relief. Fierce looks, sullen attitudes.

Ursus recognised the faces of the police who had that morning carried off Gwynplaine.

There was no doubt about it. They were the same. They were re-appearing.

Evidently Gwynplaine would also re-appear. They had carried him to that place. They would bring him back.

It was all quite clear.

Ursus's eyes were strained to the utmost. Would they set Gwynplaine at liberty?

The files of police flowed through the low arch very slowly, and, as it were, drop by drop. The toll of the bell was uninterrupted, and seemed to mark their steps. On leaving the prison, the procession turned their backs on Ursus, and went to the right, into the bend of the street opposite to that in which he was posted.

A second torch shone under the gateway, announcing the end of the procession.

Ursus would now see what they brought with them. The prisoner. The man.

Ursus would soon, he thought, see Gwynplaine.

That which they carried appeared.

It was a bier.

Four men carried a bier, covered with black cloth.

Behind them came a man, with a shovel on his shoulder.

A third lighted torch, held by a man reading in a book, probably the chaplain, closed the procession..