they all threw themselves upon him, and the cruel hunt of the man round and round the dungeon began, the cudgels falling on his body, beat his head or his legs indifferently, pursuing him into corners, following him as with a desperate bound he reached the opposite wall, opening the way with his bent head, his back resounding like an empty box beneath the blows.  Now and then the desperation of pain inflamed the victim, the lamb turned into a wild beast, and before falling to the ground, cowering like a child before superior numbers, he would throw himself on the executioners, tearing them, and trying to bite them.  Gabriel kept a button from the lieutenant’s uniform which had remained in his fingers after one of these revolts of his weakness.

Afterwards, his tormentors, wearied by the inutility of their violence, left him forgotten in the dungeon.  A loaf of bread and some bits of dry salt cod were his only food.  Thirst, an infernal thirst, racked his bowels, contracted his throat, and burnt his mouth.  At first he called piteously under the door for water, but afterwards he would beg no more, knowing beforehand what the answer would be.  It was a calculated torture; they promised him as much water as he wished, after he should have disclosed the names of the guilty, confessing things of which he had no knowledge.  Hunger strove in him against thirst, but fearing this latter most, he would throw this salted food into a corner as though it were poison.  He was delirious with the delirium of a shipwrecked man tormented with visions of fresh water in the midst of the salt waves.  In his nightmare he saw clear and murmuring brooks, great rivers; and seeking freshness for his mouth he would pass his tongue over the filthy walls, finding a certain alleviation in the lime of the whitewash.

The privations and the incarceration disturbed his mind with horrible ravings; often Gabriel was surprised at finding himself on all fours, growling and barking opposite the door without knowing how or why.

His tormentors seemed to forget him; they had other prisoners to look after.  The jailors gave him water, but whole months passed without anyone entering his cell.  Some nights he would hear vaguely and far off through the greasy walls wailing and sobs in the adjacent dungeons.  One morning he was awoke by sounds as of thunder, in spite of a tiny ray of sunlight filtering through his loophole; hearing the jailors in the corridors near, he understood the mystery.  They had been shooting some of the prisoners.

Luna received as a happiness this hope of death; he would renounce with pleasure that shadow of a life in a small stone box, tormented by physical pain and the fear of men’s ferocity.  His stomach, weakened by all these privations, refused for many days, with horrible nausea, to receive the bitter bread and the coppery mess.  His want of exercise, the want of air, and the bad and scanty nourishment had made him fall into a mortal anaemia; he coughed continually, suffering great oppression on his chest.  The knowledge he had acquired of the human body in his thirst for knowing everything did not admit of his being mistaken; he would die as poor Lucy had died.