Chapter X

With such a vivid imagination, and such recent memories of her woes, it is not difficult to imagine the distressing reflections to which Madame de Gange succumbed. How many sighs came from her oppressed heart . . . how many tears drenched her cheeks as she contemplated her terrible plight! Cruelly agitated, she wandered around this great chamber, unable to discern its dimensions, when she thought she spied a small door ajar. It was still night, and the room was lit only by some faint and fleeting beams from a pale moon constantly hidden by the squalling clouds. She flies to this door . . . misfortune grasps wildly at anything that chance presents: a spluttering lamp reveals a glimpse of a chamber on the other side of the door; she enters . . . But what hideous object greets her eyes! There on a table before her, she sees an open cadaver, almost entirely ripped asunder, on which the castle surgeon had just been working . . . for this is his laboratory. Euphrasie recoils with a bloodcurdling scream. She loses her way, stumbles . . . only terror is keeping her alive; were it not for the intense agitation making her heart pound she would die . . . But there is no way out . . . no means of escape left; and without her so much as touching it, the door by which she entered this terrible place closes behind her.