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 this 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 draught 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 wapentake.

The justice of the quorum, taking Gwynplaine’s 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 Gwynplaine stood out clearly from the surrounding shadow in its strange relief.

At the same time, the wapentake bent down, took the man’s temples between his hands, turned the inert head towards Gwynplaine, and with his thumbs and his first fingers lifted the closed eyelids.

The prisoner saw Gwynplaine.  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,—­

“’Tis he!  Yes; ’tis he!”

And he burst into a horrible laugh.

“’Tis he!” he repeated.

Then his head fell back on the ground, and he closed his eyes again.

“Registrar, take that down,” said the justice.

Gwynplaine, though terrified, had, up to that moment, preserved a calm exterior.  The cry of the prisoner, “’Tis 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.  Gwynplaine lost his footing in his terror, and protested.  He began to stammer incoherent 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.