This was the light which had at first dazzled Gwynplaine; 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 Saint 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 held immovable, in the horrible position of being quartered, and had the icy look of a livid corpse.

It was naked.  It was a man.

Gwynplaine, 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 ogives of the door, on 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—­wan, motionless, and ominous, holding a bunch of roses in his hand.

The bunch of roses would have enlightened any one less ignorant that Gwynplaine.  The right of judging with a nosegay 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.

His 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 Serjeant’s coif 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, in 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.