 Section 71 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Section 72 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. As we have already said, according to the very severe laws of the police of those days, the summons to follow the Wappentake, addressed to an individual, implied to all other persons present the command not to stir. Some curious idlers, however, were stubborn, and followed from afar off the cordage which had taken Gwynn Plain into custody. Ursus was one of them. He had been nearly as petrified as any one has a right to be, but Ursus so often assailed by the surprise's incident to a wandering life, and by the malice of chance was, like a ship of war, prepared for action, and could call to the post of danger the whole crew, that is to say, the aid of all his intelligence. He flung off his stupor and began to think. He strove not to give way to emotion, but to stand face to face with circumstances. To look fortune in the face is the duty of every one not an idiot. To seek, not to understand, but to act. Presently he asked himself, what could he do? Gwynn Plain being taken, Ursus was placed between two terrors, a fear for Gwynn Plain, which instigated him to follow, and a fear for himself, which urged him to remain where he was. Ursus had the intrepidity of a fly, and the impassibility of a sensitive plant. His agitation was not to be described, however, he took his resolution heroically, and decided to brave the law, and follow the whop and take, so anxious was he concerning the fate of Gwynn Plain. His terror must have been great to prompt so much courage. To want valiant acts will not fear drive a hair. The chamois and disparage of supprecipes, to be terrified into imprudence, is one of the forms of fear. Gwynn Plain had been carried off rather than arrested. The operation of the police had been executed so rapidly that the fair field, generally little frequented at that hour in the morning, had scarcely taken cognizance of the circumstance. Scarcely anyone in the caravans had any idea that the whop and take had come to take Gwynn Plain, hence the smallness of the crowd. Gwynn Plain, thanks to his cloak and his hat, which nearly concealed his face, could not be recognized by the passers-by. Before he went out to follow Gwynn Plain, Ursus took a precaution. He spoke to Master Nicholas, to the Voidgovacum, and to Phoebe and Venus, and insisted on their keeping absolute silence before Dea, who was ignorant of everything, that they should not utter a syllable that could make her suspect what had occurred, that they should make her understand that the cares of the management of the green box necessitated the absence of Gwynn Plain and Ursus, that, besides, it would soon be the time of her daily siesta, and that before she awoke, he and Gwynn Plain would have returned. That all that had taken place had arisen from a mistake, that it would be very easy for Gwynn Plain and himself to clear themselves before the magistrate and police, that a touch of the finger would put the matter straight, after which they should both return. Above all, that no one should say a word on the subject to Dea. Having given these directions, he departed. Ursus was able to follow Gwynn Plain without being remarked, though he kept at the greatest possible distance he so managed as not to lose sight of him. Boldness and ambuscade is the bravery of the timid. After all, notwithstanding the solemnity of the attendant circumstances, Gwynn Plain might have been summoned before the magistrate for some unimportant infraction of the law. Ursus assured himself that the question would be decided at once. The solution of the mystery would be made under his very eyes by the direction taken by the courtage, which took Gwynn Plain from Terenzoh Field, when it reached the entrance of the lanes of the little strand. If it turned to the left, it would conduct Gwynn Plain to the Justice Hall in Southwick. In that case there would be little to fear, some trifling municipal offence, an admonition from the magistrate, two or three shillings to pay, and Gwynn Plain would be set at liberty. And the representation of chaos vanquished would take place in the evening as usual. In that case no one would know that anything unusual had happened. If the courtage had turned to the right, matters would be more serious. There were frightful places in that direction. When the Wappentake, leading the file of soldiers between whom Gwynn Plain walked, arrived at the small streets, Ursus watched them breathlessly. There are moments in which a man's whole being passes into his eyes. Which way were they going to turn? They turned to the right. Ursus, staggering with terror, leaned against a wall that he might not fall. There is no hypocrisy so great as the words which we say to ourselves, I wish to know the worst. At heart we do not wish it at all. We have a dreadful fear of knowing it. Agony is mingled with a dim effort not to see the end. We do not own it to ourselves, but we would draw back if we dared. When we have advanced, we reproach ourselves for having done so. Thus did Ursus. He shuddered at the thought. Here are things going wrong. I should have found it absurd enough. What business had I to follow Gwynn Plain? Having made this reflection, man being but self-contradiction, he increased his pace, and mastering his anxiety, hastened to get nearer to the courtage. So as not to break, in the maze of small streets, the thread between Gwynn Plain and himself. The courtage of police could not move quickly, on account of its solemnity. The whoppin' take led it. The justice of the quorum closed it. This order compelled a certain deliberation of movement. All the majesty possible than an official shown in the justice of the quorum. His costume held the middle place between the splendid robe of a doctor of music of Oxford, and the sober black of elements of a doctor of divinity in Cambridge. He wore the dress of a gentleman under a long go-to-bear, which is a mantle trimmed with the fur of the Norwegian hair. He was half-gothic and half-modern, wearing a wig like Le Monion, and sleeves like Tristan Le Meet. His great round eye watched Gwynn Plain with the fixedness of an owl's. He walked with a cadence. Never did honest man look fiercer. Ursus, for a moment thrown out of his way in the tangled skein of streets, overtook close to St. Mary Overy, the courtage, which, unfortunately, had been retarded in the churchyard by a fight between children and dogs, a common incident in the streets in those days. Dogs and boys, say the old registers of police, placing the dogs before the boys. A man being taken before magistrate by the police was, after all, an everyday affair, and each one having his own business to attend to, the few who had followed sued disfersed. They remained but Ursus on the track of Gwynn Plain. They passed before two chapels opposite each other, belonging the one to the Recreative Religionists, the other to the Hallelujah League, sects which flourished then, and which exist to the present day. Then the courtage wound from street to street, making a zigzag, choosing by preference lanes not yet built on, roads where the grass grew, and deserted alleys. At length it stopped. It was in a little lane with no houses except two or three hobbles. This narrow alley was composed of two walls, one on the left, low, the other on the right, high. The high wall was black, and built in the Saxon style with narrow holes, scorpions, and large square gratings over narrow loopholes. There was no window on it, but here and there slits, old embrasures of pieriae and arch-gays. At the foot of this high wall was seen, like the hole in the bottom of a rat trap, a little wicked gate, very elliptical in its arch. This small door, encased in a full, heavy girding of stone, had a grated peephole, a heavy knocker, a large lock, hinges thick and knotted, a bristling of nails, an armour of plates, and hinges, so that altogether it was more of iron than of wood. There was no one in the lane, no shops, no passengers. But in it there was heard a continual noise, as if the lane ran parallel to a torrent. There was a tumult of voices and carriages. It seemed as if on the other side of the black edifice there must be a great street, doubtless the principal street of Southwick, one end of which ran into the Canterbury Road, and the other onto London Bridge. All the length of the lane, except the court-a-jay, which surrounded Gwyn Plain, a watcher would have seen no other human face than the pale profile of Ursus, hazarding a hall advance from the shadow of the corner of the wall, looking, yet fearing to see. He had posted himself behind the wall, at a turn of the lane. The constables grouped themselves before the wicket, when Plain was in the centre, the whoppin'-take and his baton of iron being now behind him. The justice of the quorum raised the knocker, and struck the door three times. The loophole opened. The justice of the quorum said, by order of her majesty, the heavy door of oak and iron turned on its hinges, making a chilly opening, like the mouth of a cavern, a hideous depth yawned in the shadow. Ursus, song Gwyn Plain, disappeared within it. After five, a fearful place. The whoppin'-take entered behind Gwyn Plain, then the justice of the quorum, then the constables, the wicket, was closed. The heavy door swung to, closing hermetically on the stone sills, without anyone seeing who had opened or shut it, it seemed as if the bolts re-entered their sockets of their own act. Some of these mechanisms, the invention of ancient intimidation, still exist in old prisons, doors of which you saw no doorkeeper. With them the entrance to a prison becomes like the entrance to a tomb. This wicket was the lower door of south work jail. There was nothing in the harsh and worm-eaten aspect of this prison to soften its appropriate air of rigor. Originally a pagan temple, built by the cateochlins for the mogans, ancient English gods, it became a palace for ethyl-wolf and a fortress for Edward the Confessor. Then it was elevated to the dignity of a prison in 1199 by John Lackland. Such was south work jail. This jail, at first intersected by a street like Shenonceau via river, had been for a century or two a gate. That is to say, the gate of the suburb, the passage had then been walled up. There remain in England some prisons of this nature. In London, Newgate, at Canterbury, Westgate at Edinburgh, Cannongate. In France the Bastille was originally a gate. Almost all the jails of England present the same appearance, a high wall without and a hive of cells within. Nothing could be more funerial than the appearance of those prisons, where spiders and justice spread their webs, and where John Howard, that ray of light, had not yet penetrated. Like the old Gehana of Brussels, they might well have been designated Turenberg, the House of Tears. Men felt before such buildings, at once so savage and inhospitable, the same distress that the ancient navigator suffered before the hell of slaves mentioned by Plautus, islands of creaking change, ferre crepedite insule, when they passed near enough to hear the clank of the fetters. Southwick Jail, an old place of exorcisms and torture, was originally used solely for the imprisonment of sorcerers, as was proved by two verses engraved on a defaced stone at the foot of the wicket. Sunt e repetiti e vexati demoni multo est energumenus quem demon possidet unus. Lines which draw a subtle, delicate distinction between the demoniac and man possessed by a devil. At the bottom of this inscription, nailed flat against the wall, was a stone ladder, which had been originally of wood, but which had been changed into stone by being buried in earth of petrifying quality, at a place called Absley-Gowis, near Woburn Abbey. The prison of Southwick, now demolished, opened on two streets, between which, as a gate, it formerly served as a means of communication. It had two doors, and the large street, a door, apparently used by the authorities, and in the lane, the door of punishment used by the rest of the living and by the dead also, because, when a prisoner in the jail died, it was by that issue that his corpse was carried out. A liberation not to be despised. Death is released into infinity. It was by the gate of punishment that windplane had been taken into prison. The lane, as we have said, was nothing but a little passage, paved with flints, confined between two opposite walls. There was one of the same kind at Brussels called Rue d'une personné. The walls were unequal in height. The high one was the prison, the low one, the cemetery. The enclosure for the mortuary remains of the jail was not higher than the ordinary stature of a man. In it was a gate almost opposite the prison wicket. The dead had only to cross the street. The cemetery was but twenty paces from the jail. On the high wall was a fixed agallos, and the low one was sculptured a death's head. Neither of these walls made its opposite neighbor more cheerful. Second of Section 72, Recording by William Tomko, Section 73 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo, This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dawn Nissencind, The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo, Part 2, Book IV, Chapter 6, The Kind of Majesties Under the Wigs of Former Days. Unobserving at that moment the other side of the prison, its façade, would have perceived the high street of south work, and might have remarked stationed before the monumental and official entrance to the jail a traveling carriage recognized as such by its imperial. A few idlers surrounded the carriage. On it was a coat of arms, and a personage had been seen to descend from it and enter the prison. Probably a magistrate conjectured the crowd. Many of the English magistrates were noble, and almost all had the right of bearing arms. In France, blason and robe were almost contradictory terms. The Duke Saint Simon says, in speaking of magistrates, people of that class. In England, a gentleman was not despised for being a judge. There are traveling magistrates in England. They are called judges of circuit, and nothing was easier than to recognize the carriage as the vehicle of a judge on circuit. That which was less comprehensible was that the supposed magistrate got down, not from the carriage itself, but from the box, a place which is not habitually occupied by the owner. Another unusual thing. People traveled at that period in England in two ways, by coach, at the rate of a shilling for five miles, and by post, paying three half pence per mile and two pence to the postillian after each stage. A private carriage, whose owner desired to travel by relays paid as many shillings per horse per mile as the horsemen paid pence. The carriage drawn up before the jail and south work had four horses and two postillians, which displayed princely state. Finally, that which excited and disconcerted conjectures to the utmost was the circumstance that the carriage was sedulously shut up. The blinds of the windows were closed up, the glasses in front were darkened by blinds, every opening by which the eye might have penetrated was masked. From without, nothing within could be seen, and most likely from within, nothing could be seen outside. However, it did not seem probable that there was anyone in the carriage. South work, being in Surrey, the prison was within the jurisdiction of the sheriff of the county. Such distinct jurisdictions were very frequent in England. Thus, for example, the Tower of London was not supposed to be situated in any county, that is to say that legally it was considered to be in error. The tower recognized no authority of jurisdiction except in its own constable, who was qualified as Kustos Turis. The tower had its jurisdiction, its church, its court of justice, and its government apart. The authority of its Kustos, or constable, extended beyond London over twenty-one hamlets. As in Great Britain, legal singularities engraft one upon another the office of the master gunner of England was derived from the Tower of London. Other legal customs seemed still more whimsical. Thus, the English Court of Admiralty consults and applies the laws of Rhodes and of Oluron, a French island which was once English. The sheriff of a county was a person of high consideration. He was always an esquire and sometimes a knight. He was called Spectabolus in the Old Deeds, a man to be looked at. Kind of intermediate title between illustrious and clarissimus, less than the first, more than the second. Long ago, the sheriffs of the counties were chosen by the people, but Edward II and after him, Henry VI, having claimed their nomination for the crown, the office of sheriff became a royal emanation. They all received their commissions from majesty, except the sheriff of Westmoreland, whose office was hereditary, and the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who were elected by the livery in the common hall. Sheriffs of Wales and Chester possessed certain fiscal prerogatives. These appointments are all still in existence in England, but subjected little by little to the friction of manners and ideas, they have lost their old aspects. It was the duty of the sheriff of the county to escort and protect the judges on circuit. As we have two arms, he had two officers, his right arm, the under sheriff, his left arm, the justice of the quorum. The justice of the quorum, assisted by the bailiff of the hundred, termed the wappentake, apprehended, examined, and under the responsibility of the sheriff, imprisoned for trial by the judges of circuit, thieves, murderers, rebels, vagabonds, and all sorts of felons. The shade of difference between the under sheriff and the justice of the quorum in their hierarchical service towards the sheriff was that the under sheriff accompanied and the justice of the quorum assisted. The sheriff held two courts, one fixed in central, the county court, and a movable court, the sheriff's turn. He thus represented both unity and ubiquity. He might as judge be aided and informed on legal questions by the sergeant of the coiff called Surgeon's Quiffa, who is a sergeant at law, and who wears under his black skull cap a fillet of white Cambry lawn. The sheriff delivered the jails. When he arrived at a town in his province, he had the right of summary trial of the prisoners, of which he might cause either the release or the execution. This was called a jail delivery. The sheriff presented bills of indictment to the 24 members of the grand jury. If they approved, they wrote above Villaverra. If the contrary, they wrote Ignoramus. In the latter case, the accusation was annulled and the sheriff had the privilege of tearing up the bill. If, during the deliberation, a juror died, this legally acquitted the prisoner and made him innocent, and the sheriff, who had the privilege of arresting the accused, had also that of setting him at liberty. That which made the sheriff singularly feared and respected was that he had the charge of executing all the orders of Her Majesty, a fearful latitude, an arbitrary power lodges in such commissions. The officers termed vergers, the coroners making part of the sheriff's courtage, and the clerics of the market as escort, with gentlemen on horseback and their servants in livery, made a handsome suite. The sheriff, says Chamberlain, is the life of justice, of law, and of the country. In England, an insensible demolition constantly pulverizes and deceivers laws and customs. You must understand in our day that neither the sheriff, the wappentake, nor the justice of the quorum could exercise their functions as they did then. There was in the England of the past a certain confusion of powers, whose ill-defined attributes resulted in their overstepping their real bounds at times, a thing which would be impossible in the present day. The usurpation of power by police and justices has ceased. We believe that even the word wappentake has changed its meaning. It implied a magisterial function. Now it signifies a territorial division. It specified the centurion. It now specifies the hundred centum. Moreover, in those days, the sheriff of the county combined with something more and something less and condensed in his own authority, which was at once royal and municipal, the two magistrates formally called in France the civil lieutenant of Paris and the lieutenant of police. The civil lieutenant of Paris, Montjeur, is pretty well described in an old police note. The civil lieutenant has no dislike to domestic quarrels because he always has the pickings, 22nd July, 1704. As to the lieutenant of police, he was a redoubtable person, multiple and vague. The best personification of him was Rene DeArgensen, who, as was said by St. Simon, displayed in his face the three judges of hell united. The three judges of hell sat, as has already been seen, at Bishopsgate, London. End of section three. Chapter 74 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by William Tomko. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Section 74. Part two, Book IV. Chapter VII. Shuddering. When Gwyn Plain heard the wicked shut, creaking in all its bolts, he trembled. It seemed to him that the door which had just closed was the communication between light and darkness, opening on one side on the living human crowd and on the other on a dead world. And now that everything illumined by the sun was behind him, that he had stepped over the boundary of life and was standing without it, his heart contracted. What were they going to do with him? What did it all mean? Where was he? He saw nothing around him. He found himself in perfect darkness. The shutting of the door had momentarily blinded him. The window in the door had been closed as well. No loophole, no lamp. Such were the precautions of old times. It was forbidden to light the entrance to the jails so that newcomers should take no observations. Gwyn Plain extended his arms and touched the wall on the right side and on the left. He was in a passage. Little by little, a cavernous daylight exuded. No one knows whence and which floats about dark places and to which the dilation of the pupil adjusts itself slowly, enabled him to distinguish a feature here and there, and the corridor was vaguely sketched out before him. Gwyn Plain, who had never had a glimpse of penal severities saved in the exaggerations of urses, felt as though seized by a sort of vague, gigantic hand. To be caught in the mysterious toils of the law is frightful. He who is brave in all other dangers is disconcerted in the presence of justice. Why? Is it that the justice of man works in twilight and the judge gropes his way? Gwyn Plain remembered what urses had told him of the necessity for silence. He wished to see Dea again. He felt some discretionary instinct which urged him not to irritate. Sometimes to wish to be enlightened is to make matters worse. On the other hand, however, the weight of the adventure was so overwhelming that he gave way at length and could not restrain a question. Gentlemen, said he, whither are you taking me? They made no answer. It was a law of silent capture and Norman text is formal. Ah, solente aree is osteo prepositis introducti sunt. This silence froze Gwyn Plain. Up to that moment, he had believed himself to be firm. He was self-sufficing. To be self-sufficing is to be powerful. He had lived isolated from the world and imagined that being alone he was unassailable. And now, all at once, he felt himself under the pressure of a hideous collective force. How was he to combat that horrible anonima, the law? He felt faint under the perplexity. A fear of an unknown character had found a fissure in his armor. Besides, he had not slept. He had not eaten. He had scarcely moistened his lips with a cup of tea. The whole night had been passed in a kind of delirium and the fever was still on him. He was thirsty, perhaps hungry, the craving of the stomach disorders everything. Since the previous evening, all kinds of incidents had assailed him. The emotions which had tormented 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 to the tearset. 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. End of Section 74. Recording by William Tomko. Section 75 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Part 2, Book IV, Chapter 8, 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 weapon take, then Gwyn Plain, then the justice of the quorum, then the constables advancing in a group and blocking up the passage behind Gwyn Plain as with a bung. The passage narrowed. Now Gwyn Plain 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. Anyone trying to escape through it would have been compelled to move slowly. The passage twisted. All in trails 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 appalled. 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 portentious. Nothing is more fearful than the vague evils to which we are led by imperceptible degrees. It is awful to descend into unknown depths. How long had they proceeded thus, Gwyn Plain could not tell. Moments passed under such crushing agony seemed immeasurably prolonged. Suddenly they halted. The darkness was intense. The corridor widened somewhat. Gwyn Plain heard close to him a noise of which only a Chinese gong could give an idea. Something like a blow struck against the diaphragm of the abyss. It was the weapon-take striking his wand against a sheet of iron. That sheet of iron was a door. Not a door on hinges, but a door which was raised and let down. Something like a portcullis. There was a sound of creaking in a groove and Gwyn Plain was suddenly face to face with a bit of square light. The sheet of metal had just been raised into a slit in the vault like the door of a mousetrap. An opening had appeared. The light was not daylight but glimmer, but on the dilated eyeballs of Gwyn Plain the pale and sudden rays struck like a flash of lightning. It was some time before he could see anything. To see with dazzled eyes is as difficult as to see in darkness. At length, by degrees, the pupil of his eye became proportioned to the light just as it had been proportioned to the darkness and he was able to distinguish objects. The light which at first had seemed too bright settled into its proper hue and became livid. He cast a glance into the yawning space before him and what he saw was terrible. At his feet were about twenty steps, steep, narrow, worn, almost perpendicular, without balustrade on either side. A sort of stone ridge cut out from the side of a wall into stairs entering and leading into a very deep cell. They reached to the bottom. The cell was round, roofed by an OG vault with a low arch from the fault of level in the topstone of the frieze, a displacement common to cells under heavy edifices. The kind of hole acting as a door which the sheet of iron had just revealed and on which the stairs are buttered was formed in the vault so that the eye looked down from it as into a well. The cell was large and if it was the bottom of a well it must have been a cyclopean one. The idea that the old word kudibasphos awakens in the mind can only be applied to it if it were the layer of wild beasts. The cell was neither flagged nor paved. The bottom was of that cold, moist earth peculiar to deep places. In the midst of the cell four low and disproportionate columns sustained a porch heavily ojivel of which the four moldings united in the interior of the porch something like the inside of a mitre. This porch, similar to the pinnacles under which sarcophagi were formally placed, rose nearly to the top of the vault and made a sort of central chamber in the cavern if that could be called a chamber which had only pillars in place of walls. From the key of the arch hung a brass lamp round and barred like the window of a prison. This lamp threw around it on the pillars, on the vault, on the circular wall which was seen dimly behind the pillars a one light cut by bars of shadow. This was the light which had at first dazzled Green Plain now it threw out only a confused redness. There was no other light in the cell neither window nor door nor loophole. Between the four pillars exactly below the lamp in the spot where there was most light a pale and terrible form lay on the ground. It was lying on its back. A head was visible of which the eyes were shut a body of which the chest was a shapeless mass. Four limbs belonging to the body in the position of the cross of St. Andrew were drawn towards the four pillars by four chains fastened to each foot and each hand. These chains were fastened to an iron ring at the base of each column. The form was healed immovable in the horrible position of being quartered and had the icy look of a livid corpse. It was naked. It was a man. Green Plain as if petrified stood at the top of the stairs looking down. Suddenly he heard a rattle in the throat. The corpse was alive. Close to the spectre in one of the ojives of which the door at each side of a great seat which stood on a large flat stone stood two men swathed in long black cloaks and on the seat an old man was sitting dressed in a red robe one motionless and ominous holding a bunch of roses in his hand. The bunch of roses would have enlightened anyone less ignorant than Gwyn Plain. The right of judging with a nose-gay in his hand implied the holder to be a magistrate at once royal and municipal. The Lord Mayor of London still keeps up the custom. To assist the deliberations of the judges was the function of the earliest roses of the season. The old man seated on the bench was the sheriff of the county of Surrey. He was the majestic rigidity of a Roman dignitary. The bench was the only seat in the cell. By the side of it was a table covered with papers and books on which lay the long white wand of the sheriff. The men standing by the side of the sheriff were two doctors, one of medicine, the other of law. The latter recognizable by the sergeant's coiff over his wig. Both wore black robes, one of the shape worn by judges, the other by doctors. Men of these kinds wear mourning for the deaths of which they are the cause. Behind the sheriff at the edge of the flat stone under the seat was crouched, with a writing-table near to him, a bundle of papers on his knees, and a sheet of parchment on the bundle, a secretary in a round wig with a pen in his hand in the attitude of a man ready to write. This secretary was of the class called Keeper of the Bag, as was shown by a bag at his feet. These bags and former times employed in law processes were termed bags of justice. With folded arms leaning against a pillar was a man entirely dressed in leather, the hangman's assistant. These men seemed as if they had been fixed by enchantment in their funereal postures round the chained man. None of them spoke or moved. They're brooded over all a fearful calm. What Gwyn Plain saw was a torture chamber. There were many such in England. The crypt of Beecham Tower long served this purpose, as did also the cell in the Lollards prison. A place of this nature is still to be seen in London called the Vaults of Lady Place. In this last mentioned chamber there is a grate for the purpose of heating the irons. All the prisons of King John's time and Southwick Jail was one had their chambers of torture. The scene which is about to follow was in those days a frequent one in England and might even by criminal process be carried out today since the same laws are still unrepealed. England offers the curious sight of a barbarous code living on the best terms with liberty. We confess that they make an excellent family party. Some distrust however might not be undesirable. In the case of a crisis a return to the penal code would not be impossible. English legislation is a tamed tiger with a velvet paw, but the claws are still there. Cut the claws of the law and you will do well. Law almost ignores right. On one side is penalty on the other humanity. Philosophers protest but it will take some time yet before the justice of man is assimilated to the justice of God. Respect for the law, that is the English phrase. In England they venerate so many laws that they never repeal any. They save themselves from the consequences of their veneration by never putting them into execution. An old law falls into disuse like an old woman and they never think of killing either one or the other. They cease to make use of them, that is all. Both are at liberty to consider themselves still young and beautiful. They may fancy that they are as they were. This politeness is called respect. Norman custom is very wrinkled. That does not prevent many an English judge casting sheep's eyes at her. They stick amourously to an antiquated atrocity so long as it is Norman. What can be more savage than the gibbet? In 1867 a man was sentenced to be cut into four quarters and offered to a woman. The Queen. Footnote the Fenian Burke. End footnote. Still torture was never practised in England. History asserts this as a fact. The assurance of history is wonderful. Matthew of Westminster mentions that the Saxon law, very clement and kind, did not punish criminals by death and adds that it limited itself to cutting off the nose and scooping out the eyes. That was all. Gwynn Plains scared and haggard stood at the top of the steps trembling in every limb. He shuddered from head to foot. He tried to remember what crime he had committed. To the silence of the weapon-take had succeeded the vision of torture to be endured. It was a step indeed forward but a tragic one. He saw the dark enigma of the law under the power of which he felt himself increasing in obscurity. The human form lying on the earth rattled in its throat again. Gwynn Plain felt someone touching him gently on his shoulder. It was the weapon-take. Gwynn Plain knew that meant that he was to descend. He obeyed. He descended the stairs step by step. They were very narrow, each eight or nine inches in height. There was no handrail. The descent required caution. Two steps behind Gwynn Plain followed the weapon-take holding up his iron weapon and at the same interval behind the weapon-take the justice of the quorum. As he descended the steps Gwynn Plain felt an indescribable extinction of hope. There was death in every step and each one that he descended there died a ray of the light within him. Growing paler and paler he reached the bottom of the stairs. The lava-lying chain to the four pillars still rattled in its throat. A voice in the shadow said, Approach! It was the sheriff addressing Gwynn Plain. Gwynn Plain took a step forward. Closer said the sheriff. The justice of the quorum murmured in the ear of Gwynn Plain so gravely that there was solemnity in the whisper you are before the sheriff of the county of Surrey. Gwynn Plain advanced towards the victim extended in the centre of the cell. The weapon-take and the justice of the quorum remained where they were allowing Gwynn Plain to advance alone. When Gwynn Plain reached the spot under the porch close to that miserable thing which he had hitherto perceived only from a distance but which was a living man his fear rose to terror. The man who was chained there was quite naked except for that rag so hideously modest which might be called the vine-leaf of punishment. The sick kingulum of the Romans and the christipanos of the Goths of which the old Gaelic jargon mate Cripagni Christ wore but that shred on the cross. The terror-stricken sufferer whom Gwynn Plain now saw seemed a man of about fifty or sixty years of age. He was bald, grisly hairs of beard bristled on his chin. His eyes were closed, his mouth open. Every tooth was to be seen. His thin and bony face was like a death's head. His arms and legs were fastened by chains to the four stone pillars in the shape of the letter X. He had on his breast and belly a plate of iron and on this iron five or six large stones were laid. His rattle was at times a sigh, at times a roar. The sheriff, still holding his bunch of roses took from the table with the hand which was free, his white wand, and standing up said, obedience to her majesty. Then he replaced the wand upon the table. Then in words long drawn as a knell without a gesture and immovable as the sufferer the sheriff raising his voice said, man who liest here bound in chains listen for the last time to the voice of justice who have been taken from your dungeon and brought to this jail legally summoned in the usual forms formalius verbus presus not regarding to lectures and communications which have been made and which will now be repeated to you inspired by a bad and perverse spirit of tenacity you have preserved silence and refused to answer the judge. This is a detestable license which constitutes among deeds punishable by cashlet the crime and misdemeanor of overseness. The sergeant of the coiff on the right of the sheriff interrupted him and said with an indifference indescribably legubrious in its effect over her nessa, laws of Alfred and of Gudrun chapter the sixth. The sheriff resumed, the law is respected by all except by scoundrels who infest the woods where the Heinz bear young. Like one clock striking after another the sergeant said, qui faciunt vestum in foresta ubi damoi solent fontanari he who refuses to answer the magistrate said the sheriff is suspected of every vice he is reputed capable of every evil the sergeant interposed every vice said the sheriff means every crime he who confesses nothing confesses everything he who holds his peace before the questions of the judge is in fact a liar and a parasite mendax etch parasuda said the sergeant the sheriff said, man it is not permitted to absent oneself by silence to pretend contumatiousness is a wound given to the law it is like Diomedi wounding a goddess tess eternity before a judge is a form of rebellion treason to justice is high treason nothing is more hateful or rash he who resists interrogation steals truth the law has provided for this for such cases the English have always enjoyed the right of the fos, the fork, and chains Anglicar Charter year 1088 said the sergeant then with the same mechanical gravity he added ferrum et fossum et fercus com alias libertaitibus the sheriff continued man for as much as you have not chosen to break silence though of sound mind and having full knowledge in respect of the subject concerning which justice demands an answer and for as much as you are diabolically refractory you have necessarily been put to torture and you have been by the terms of the criminal statutes tried by the pinae forte et dure this is what has been done to you for the law requires that I should fully inform you you have been brought to this dungeon you have been stripped of your clothes you have been laid on your back naked on the ground your limbs have been stretched and tied to the four pillars of the law a sheet of iron has been placed on your chest and as many stones as you can bear have been heaped on your belly and more says the law Puski affirmed the sergeant the sheriff continued in this situation and before prolonging the torture a second summons to answer and to speak has been made you by me sheriff of the county of Surrey and you have satanically kept silent though under torture chains, shackles, fetters and irons Attaccia mentaligalia said the sergeant on your refusal and contumacy said the sheriff it being right that the obstinacy of the law should equal the obstinacy of the criminal the proof has been continued according to the edicts and texts the first day you were given nothing to eat or drink Hoc est supergiginari said the sergeant there was silence the awful hiss of the man's breathing was heard from under the heap of stones the sergeant at law completed his quotation ade augmentum abstinentie suborum diminutione consuentudo britannica art 504 the two men the sheriff and the sergeant alternated nothing could be more dreary than their imperturbable monotony the mournful voice responded to the ominous voice it might be said that the priest and the deacon of punishment were celebrating the savage mess of the law the sheriff resumed on the first day you were given nothing to eat or drink on the second day you were given food but nothing to drink between your teeth were thrust three mouthfuls of barley bread on the third day they gave you to drink but nothing to eat they poured into your mouth at three different times and in three different glasses a pint of water taken from the common sewer of the prison the fourth day is come it is today now if you do not answer you will be left here till you die justice wills it the sergeant ready with his reply appeared morso rei homagium esponei leghi and while you feel yourself dying miserably resumed the sheriff no one will attend to you even when the blood rushes from your throat your chin and your armpits and every pore from the mouth to the loins athrotabola said the sergeant itpabu et subhirkus et a grugno uske ad cruponum the sheriff continued man attend to me because the consequences concern you if you renounce your execrable silence and if you confess you will only be hanged and you will have a right to the meldifio which is a sum of money damlum confitians said the sergeant habi et le meldifio liges ne chapter the twentieth which sum, insisted the sheriff, shall be paid and deutkins, suskins, and gala helpins the only case in which this money is to pass according to the terms of the statute of abolition in the third of Henry the fifth and you will have the right and enjoyment of scortum ante mortem and then be hanged on the gibbet such are the advantages of confession does it please you to answer to justice the sheriff ceased and waited the prisoner lay motionless the sheriff resumed man silence is a refuge in which there is more risk than safety the obstinate man is damnable and vicious he who is silent before justice is a felon to the crown do not persist in this unfilial disobedience think of her majesty do not oppose our gracious queen when I speak to you answer her be a loyal subject the patient rattled in the throat the sheriff continued so after the seventy-two hours of the proof here we are at the fourth day man this is the decisive day the fourth day has been fixed by the door for the confrontation fourth day frontum ad frontum ad duce grow the sergeant the wisdom of the law continued the sheriff has chosen this last hour to hold what our ancestors called judgment by mortal cold seeing that it is the moment when men are believed on their yes or their no the sergeant on the right confirmed his words judicium pro fraud motel quad hominace credenti sint persum yah et persum no charter of king Adelstan volume the first page one hundred and sixty three there was a moment's pause then the sheriff bent his stern face towards the prisoner man who are lying there on the ground he paused man he cried do you hear me the man did not move in the name of the law said the sheriff open your eyes the man's lids remained closed the sheriff turned to the doctor who was standing on his left doctor give your diagnostic probee de diagnosticum said the sergeant the doctor came down with magisterial stiffness approached the man lent over him put his ear close to the mouth of the sufferer felt the pulse of the wrist the armpit and the thigh then rose again well said the sheriff he can still hear said the doctor can he see inquired the sheriff the doctor answered he can see on a sign from the sheriff the justice of the quorum and the wappentake advanced the wappentake placed himself near the head of the patient the justice of the quorum stood behind Gwynn Plain the doctor retired a step behind the pillars then the sheriff raising the bunch of roses as a priest about to sprinkle holy water called to the prisoner in a loud voice and became awful oh wretched man speak the law supplicates before she exterminates you you who feign to be mute remember how mute is the tomb you who appear deaf remember that damnation is more deaf think of the death which is worse than your present state repent you are about to be left alone in this cell listen you who are my likeness for I am a man listen my brother because I am a Christian listen my son because I am an old man look at me for I am the master of your sufferings and I am about to become terrible the terrors of the law make up the majesty of the judge believe that I myself tremble before myself my own power alarms me do not drive me to extremities I am filled by the holy mellus of chastisement feel then wretched man the salutary and honest fear of justice and obey me the hour of confrontation is come and you must answer do not harden yourself in resistance do not that which will be irrevocable think that your end belongs to me half man half corpse listen at least let it not be your determination to expire here exhausted for hours days and weeks by frightful agonies of hunger and foulness under the weight of those stones alone in the cell deserted forgotten annihilated left as food for the rats and the weasels gnawed by creatures of darkness while the world comes and goes buys and sells whilst carriages roll in the streets above your head unless you would continue to draw painful breath without remission in the depths of this despair grinding your teeth weeping blaspheming without a doctor to appease the anguish of your wounds without a priest to offer a divine draft of water to your soul oh, if only that you may not feel the frightful froth of the sepulchre ooze slowly from your lips I adjure and conjure you to hear me I call you to your own aid have pity on yourself do what is asked of you give way to justice open your eyes and see if you recognize this man the prisoner neither turned his head nor lifted his eyelids the sheriff cast a glance first at the justice of the quorum and then at the Wappentake the justice of the quorum taking Gwyn Plains hat and mantle put his hands on his shoulders and placed him in the light by the side of the chained man the face of Gwyn Plains stood out clearly from the surrounding shadow in its strange relief at the same time the Wappentake bent down took the man's temples between his hands turned the inert head towards Gwyn Plains and with his thumbs and his first fingers lifted the closed eyelids the prisoner saw Gwyn Plains then raising his head voluntarily and opening his eyes wide he looked at him he quivered as much as a man can quiver with a mountain on his breast and then cried out to see yes to see and he burst into a horrible laugh to see he repeated and his head fell back on the ground and he closed his eyes again Registrar take that down said the justice Gwyn Plains though terrified had up to that moment preserved a calm exterior the cry of the prisoner does he overwhelmed him completely the words Registrar take that down froze him it seemed to him that a scoundrel had dragged him to his fate without his being able to guess why and that the man's unintelligible confession was closing round him like the clasp of an iron collar he fancied himself side by side with him in the posts of the same pillory Gwyn Plains lost his footing in his terror and protested he began to stammer in coherent words in the deep distress of an innocent man and quivering terrified lost uttered the first random outcries that rose to his mind and words of agony like aimless projectiles it is not true it was not me I cannot know the man he cannot know me since I do not know him I have my part to play this evening what do you want of me I demand my liberty nor is that all why have I been brought to this dungeon are there laws no longer you may as well say at once that there are no laws my lord judge I repeat that it is not I I am innocent of all that can be said I know I am I wish to go away this is not justice there is nothing between this man and me you can find out my life is not hidden up they came and took me away like a thief why did they come like that how could I know the man I am a travelling mountain bank who plays farce at fairs and markets I am the laughing man plenty of people have seen me we are staying in Terrenso Field I have been earning an honest livelihood these fifteen years I am five and twenty I lodge at the Tadcaster Inn I am called Gwyn Plain my lord let me out you should not take advantage of the lower state of the unfortunate have compassion on a man who has done no harm who is without protection and without defence you have before you a poor mountain bank I have before me said the sheriff Lord Firmane Clanchali Baron Clanchali and Hunkable Marquis of Corleone in Sicily and a peer of England rising and offering his chair to Gwyn Plain the sheriff added my lord will your lordship deign to seat yourself End of section 75 Recording by John Trevidic Section 76 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by J.K. Neely The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Part 2 Book 5 Chapter 1 The Durability of Fragile Things Destiny sometimes proffers us a glass of madness to drink A hand is thrust out of the mist and suddenly hands us the mysterious cup in which is contained the latent intoxication Gwyn Plain did not understand He looked behind him to see who it was who had been addressed A sound may be too sharp to be perceptible to the ear An emotion too acute conveys no meaning to the mind There is a limit to comprehension as well as the hearing The whoppin' take and the justice of the quorum approached Gwyn Plain and took him by the arms He felt himself placed in the chair which the sheriff had just vacated He let it be done without seeking an explanation When Gwyn Plain was seated the justice of the quorum and the whoppin' take retired a few steps and stood upright and motionless behind the seat Then the sheriff placed his bunch of roses on the stone table put on spectacles which the secretary gave him drew from the bundles of papers which covered the table a sheet of parchment yellow, green, torn, and jagged in places which seemed to have been folded in very small folds and of which one side was covered with writing Standing under the light of the lamp he held the sheet close to his eyes and in his most solemn tone red as follows In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost this present day the 29th of January 1690th year of our Lord has been wickedly deserted on the desert coast of Portland with the intention of allowing him to perish of hunger, of cold, and of solitude a child ten years old that child was sold at the age of two years by order of his most gracious majesty, King James II that child is Lord Permane Clan Charlie the only legitimate son of Lord Linnaeus Clan Charlie Baron Clan Charlie and Hunkerville Marquis of Corleone and Sicily a peer of England and of Anne Bradshaw, his wife both deceased that child is the inheritor of the estates and titles of his father for this reason he was sold, mutilated, disfigured and put out of the way by desire of his most gracious majesty that child was brought up and trained to be a mountbank at markets and fares he was sold at the age of two after the death of the peer his father and ten pounds sterling were given to the king as his purchase money as well as for diverse concessions, tolerations and immunities Lord Permane Clan Charlie at the age of two years was bought by me, the undersigned who write these lines and mutilated and disfigured by a flimming of Flanders called Hard Quinone who alone is acquainted with the secrets and modes of treatment of Doctor Conquest the child was destined by us to be a laughing-mask masca read-ins with this intention Hard Quinone performed on him the operation Bucca Fissa Usque at Aure's which stamps an everlasting laugh upon the face the child, by means known only to Hard Quinone was put to sleep and made insensible during its performance knowing nothing of the operation which he underwent he does not know that he is Lord Clan Charlie he answers to the name of Gwyn Plain this fact is the result of his youth and the slight powers of memory he could have had when he was bought and sold being then barely two years old Hard Quinone is the only person who knows how to perform the operation Bucca Fissa and the said child is the only living subject upon which it has been assayed the operation is so unique and singular that though after long years this child should have come to be an old man instead of a child and his black lock should have turned white he would be immediately recognized by Hard Quinone at the time that I am writing this Hard Quinone who has perfect knowledge of all the facts and participated as principal therein is detained in the prisons of his highness the Prince of Orange commonly called King William the Third Hard Quinone was apprehended and seized as being one of the band of Comperchikos or Cheolas he is imprisoned in the dungeon of Chatham it was in Switzerland near the lake of Geneva between Lausanne and Vevi in the very house in which his father and mother died that the child was in obedience with the orders of the king sold and given up by the last servant of the deceased Lord Linnaeus which servant died soon after his master so that this secret and delicate matter is now unknown to anyone on earth accepting Hard Quinone who is in the dungeon of Chatham and ourselves now about to perish we the undersigned brought up and kept for eight years for professional purposes the little Lord bought by us of the king today flying from England to avoid Hard Quinone's o-fortune our fear of the penal indignments, prohibitions and fulminations of parliament has induced us to desert at nightfall on the coast of Portland the said child wind-plane who is lord for main clan Charlie now we have sworn secrecy to the king but not to God tonight at sea overtaken by a violent tempest by the will of Providence full of despair and distress kneeling before him who could save our lives and may perhaps be willing to save our souls having nothing more to hope from men but everything to fear from God having for only anchor and resource repentance of our bad actions resigned to death and content if divine justice be satisfied humble, penitent and beating our breasts we make this declaration and confide and deliver it to the furious ocean to use as it best may according to the will of God and may the holy virgin aid us and we attach our signatures the sheriff interrupted, saying here are the signatures, all in different handwriting and he resumed Jan Grate Jacques Corteurs Alias Le Narmenet Loupe Pierre Calqueroup from the galleys of Mahon the sheriff, after a pause, resumed a note written in the same hand as the text and the first signature and he read Galdaisoun Ave Maria Thief the sheriff, interspersing his reading with his own observations, continued at the bottom of the sheet is written at sea, on board of the Matatina Viscay Hooker from the Gulf de Posages this sheaf, added the sheriff is a legal document bearing the mark of King James II on the margin of the declaration and in the same handwriting there is this note the prosent declaration is written by us on the back of the royal order which was given us as our receipt we bought the child turn the leaf and the order will be seen the sheriff turned the parchment and raised it in his right hand to expose it to the light a blank page was seen if the word blank can be applied to a thing so moldy and in the middle of the page three words were written two Latin words Yusu Regis and a signature Jeffries Yusu Regis, Jeffries said the sheriff passing from a gray voice to a clear one Gwynn Plain was as a man on whose head a tile falls from the palace of dreams he began to speak like one who speaks unconsciously Gernardus, yes, the doctor an old sad-looking man I was afraid of him Geistora, captain, that means chief there were women, Asuncion, and the other and in the province hall his name was Capcaroup he used to drink out of a flat bottle on which there was a name written in red Behold it, said the sheriff he placed on the table something which the secretary had just taken out of the bag it was a gourd with handles like ears covered with wicker this bottle had evidently seen service and had sojourned in the water shells and seaweed adhered to it it was encrusted and damascened over with the rust of the ocean there was a ring of tar round its neck showing that it had been hermetically sealed now it was unsealed and open they had, however, replaced in the flask a sort of bung made of tarred opum which had been used to cork it it was in this bottle, said the sheriff that the men about to perish placed the declaration which I have just read this message addressed to justice has been faithfully delivered by the sea the sheriff increased the majesty of his tones and continued in the same way that Harrow Hill produces excellent wheat which is turned into fine flour for the royal table so the sea renders every service and its power to England and when a noble man is lost finds and restores him then he resumed on this flask as you say there is a name written in red he raised his voice turning to the motionless prisoner your name, Malfactor, is here such are the hidden channels by which truth swallowed up in the gulf of human actions floats to the surface the sheriff took the gourd and turned to the light one of its sides which had, no doubt, been cleaned for the ends of justice between the interstices of wicker was a narrow line of red reed blackened here and there by the action of water and of time the reed, notwithstanding some breakages traced distinctly in the wicker these twelve letters hardquinone then the sheriff resuming that monotonous tone of voice which resembles nothing else and which may be termed a judicial accent turned toward the sufferer hardquinone when by us the sheriff this bottle on which is your name was for the first time shown exhibited and presented to you you at once and willingly recognized it as having belonged to you then the parchment being read to you which was contained folded and enclosed within it you would say no more and in the hope doubtless that the lost child would never be recovered and that you would escape punishment you refused to answer as the result of your refusal you have had applied to you the PNA Forte et Dure and the second reading of the said parchment on which is written the declaration and confession of your accomplices was made to you but in vain this is the fourth day and that which is legally set apart for the confrontation and he who was deserted on the 29th of January 1690 having been brought into your presence your devilish hope has vanished you have broken silence and recognized your victim the prisoner opened his eyes lifted his head and with a voice strangely resonant of agony but which had still an indescribable calm mingled with its hoarseness pronounced in excruciating accents from under the mass of stones words to pronounce each of which he had to lift that which was like the slab of a tomb placed upon him he spoke I swore to keep the secret I have kept it as long as I could men of dark lives are faithful and hell has its honor now silence is useless so be it for this reason I speak well yes, tis he we did it between us the king and I the king by his will I by my art and looking at Gwynnplain now laugh forever and he himself began to laugh this second laugh wilder yet than the first might have been taken for a sob the laugh ceased and the man lay back his eyelids closed the sheriff who had allowed the prisoner to speak resumed all of which is placed on record he gave the secretary time to write and then said hard quinone by the terms of the law after confrontation followed by identification after the third reading of the declarations of your accomplices since confirmed by your recognition and confession and after your renewed avowal you are about to be relieved from these irons and placed at the good pleasure of her majesty to be hung as plasury plasury said the sergeant of the quaff that is to say a buyer and seller of children law of the Visigoths seventh book third chapter qui puerus windis pleiarius estibi nomen the sheriff placed the parchment on the table laid down his spectacles took up the nose-gay and said la piane forte adore hard quinone thank her majesty by a sign the justice of the quorum said in motion the man dressed in leather this man who was the executioner's assistant groom of the gibbet the old charters call him went to the prisoner took off the stones one by one from his chest and lifted the plate of iron up exposing the wretches crushed sides then he freed his wrists and ankle bones from the four chains that fasten him to the pillars the prisoner released a like from stones and chains lay flat on the ground his eyes closed his arms and legs apart like a crucified man taken down from a cross hard quinone said the sheriff arise the prisoner did not move the groom of the gibbet took up a hand and let it go the hand fell back the other hand being raised fell back likewise the groom of the gibbet seized one foot and then the other and the heels fell back on the ground the fingers remained inert and the toes motionless the naked feet of an extended corpse seam as it were to bristle the doctor approached and drawing from the pocket of his robe a little mirror of steel put it to the open mouth of hard quinone then with his fingers he opened the eyelids they did not close again the glassy eyeballs remained fixed the doctor rose up and said he is dead and he added he laughed that killed him tis of little consequence said the sheriff after confession life or death is a mere formality then pointing to hard quinone by a gesture with the nose gay of roses the sheriff gave the order to the wop and take a corpse to be carried away tonight the wop and take acquiesced by a nod and the sheriff added the cemetery of the jail is opposite the wop and take nodded again the sheriff holding in his left hand the nose gay and in his right the white wand placed himself opposite quinplane who was still seated and made him a low bow then assuming another solemn attitude he turned his head over his shoulder and looking when quinplane in the face said to you here present we philip denzel parson's knight, sheriff of the county of Surrey assisted by Aubrey Dominic Esquire our clerk and registrar and by our usual officers duly provided by the direct and special commands of her majesty in virtue of our commission and the rights and duties of our charge and with authority from the Lord Chancellor of England the affidavits had been drawn up and recorded regard being had to the documents communicated by the admiralty after verification of attestations and signatures after declarations read and heard after confrontation made all the statements and legal information having been completed exhausted and brought to a good and just issue we signify and declare to you in order that right may be done that you are for main clan charlie bearing clan charlie and hunkerville marquis de corleone in sicily and a pier of england and god keep your lordship and he bowed to him the sergeant on the right the doctor the justice of the quorum the wappentake the secretary all the attendants except the executioner repeated his salutations still more respectfully and bowed to the ground before guinplain ah said guinplain awake me and he stood up pale as death I come to awake you indeed said a voice which had not yet been heard a man came out from behind the pillars as no one had entered the cell since the sheet of iron had given passage to the courtage of police it was clear that this man had been there in the shadow before guinplain had entered that he had a regular right of attendance and had been presented by appointment and mission the man was fat and Percy and were a court wig and a traveling cloak he was rather old and young and very precise he saluted guinplain with ease and respect with the ease of a gentleman in waiting and without the awkwardness of a judge yes he said I have come to awaken you for twenty five years you have slept you have been dreaming it is time to awake you believe yourself to be guinplain you are clan charlie you believe yourself to be one of the people you belong to the peerage you believe yourself to be one of the lowest rank you are of the highest you believe yourself a player you are a senator you believe yourself poor you are wealthy you believe yourself to be of no account you are important awake my lord guinplain in a low voice in which a trimmer of fear was be distinguished murmured what does it all mean it means my lord said the fat man that I am called Barcl Fajro that I am an officer of the admiralty that this wave, the flask of hard quinone was found on the beach and was brought to be unsealed by me according to the duty and prerogative of my office that I opened it in the presence of two sworn jurors of the Jetsom office both members of parliament William Brothwaite from the city of Bath and Thomas Giroy for Southampton that the two jurors deciphered and attested the contents of the flask and signed the necessary affidavit conjointly with me that I made my report to Her Majesty and by order of the queen all necessary and legal formalities carried out with the discretion necessary in a matter so delicate that the last form, the confrontation has just been carried out that you have 40,000 pounds a year that you are a peer of the United Kingdom of Great Britain a legislator and a judge a supreme judge a sovereign legislator dressed in purple and ermine equal to princes like unto emperors that you have on your brow the coronet of a peer and that you are about to wed a duchess the daughter of a king under this transfiguration overwhelming him like a series of thunderbolts Gwen Plaine fainted End of Section 76 Recording by J. K. Neely of Texas