What did happen? The matter is very obscure. I cannot do better than give Theophrastus Longuet's account of it in the actual words of his memoirs2 in the sandalwood box.
"I am a man with a healthy mind in a healthy body," he writes, "and a good citizen: that is, I have never transgressed3 the law. Laws are necessary; and I have always kept them. At least I believe I have.
"I have always hated the imagination; and by that I mean that in all circumstances, whether, for instance, it has been a case of conferring my friendship on anyone, or of having to decide on a line of conduct, I have always been careful to stick to common sense. The most simple always seemed to me the best.
"I suffered deeply, for instance, when I discovered that my old College friend Adolphe Lecamus was addicted4 to the study of Spiritualism.
"The man who says Spiritualism says rub bish. To try to question spirits by turning tables is utterly5 absurd. I know what I am talking about, for, wishing to prove the absurdities6 of his theories, I have taken part in séances with Adolphe and my wife. We sat for hours round a little table which absolutely refused to turn. I laughed at him heartily7; and that annoyed my wife, because women are always ready to put faith in the impossible and believe in the mysterious.
"He used to bring her books which she read greedily; and sometimes he would amuse himself by trying to send her to sleep by making passes before her face. I have never seen anything sillier. I should not indeed have stood it from anyone else; but I have a strong liking8 for Adolphe. He has a powerful face; and he has been a great traveller.
"He and Marceline called me a sceptic. I answered that I was not a sceptic in the sense of a man who believes in nothing or doubts everything. I believe in everything worthy9 of belief; for example, I believe in Progress. I am not a sceptic; I am a philosopher.
"During his travels Adolphe read a great deal; I manufactured rubber stamps. I am what people call 'an earthy spirit.' I do not make a boast of it; I merely state it.
[Pg 15]"I thought it well to give this sketch11 of my character to make it clear that what happened yesterday is no fault of mine. I went to see the prison as I might have gone to buy a neck-tie at the Louvre. I wished to improve my mind. I have plenty of spare time nowadays, since we have sold the business. I said, 'Let us do as the English do and see the sights of Paris.' It was a mere10 chance that we began with the Conciergerie.
"I am very sorry indeed that we did.
"Am I really very sorry? I am not sure. I am not sure of anything. At present I am quite calm. And I am going to write down what happened exactly as if it had happened to someone else. All the same, what a story it is!
"While we were going through the towers nothing happened worth setting down here. I remember saying to myself in Bon Bec tower:
"'What, was it here in this little chamber12, which looks just like a grocery, that there were so many agonies and so many illustrious victims martyred?'
"I tried honestly to picture to myself the horror of that chamber when the executioner and his assistants with their horrible instruments came to the prisoners with the intention of forcing them to confess crimes affecting the state. But owing to the little labels on the drawers, on which one reads 'Senna,' 'Hops,' I did not succeed.
"That Bon Bec tower! They used also to call it The Prattler13 on account of the horrible cries which burst from it and made the quiet passer-by shudder14 and quicken his steps along the quay15 at the sound of the King's justice.
"Now Bon Bec tower is peaceful and very still. I am not complaining of it: it is Progress.
"But when we penetrated16 to that part of the Conciergerie which has hardly changed for centuries and were walking quietly along between those bare stone walls which no fresh facing, no profane17 plaster has ever covered, an inexplicable18 fever began to fill my veins19; and when we were in the gloom at the end of Straw Alley20, I cried, 'Zounds! It's Straw Alley!'
"At once I turned to see who had spoken those words. They were all staring at me; and I perceived plainly that I had spoken them myself. Indeed, my throat was still quivering from their utterance22.
"The idiot of a guide asserted that we had passed Straw Alley. I contradicted him; and he shut up. I was sure of my facts, you understand, quite sure that it was Straw Alley. I told him that I had slept on the straw in it. But it is absurd. How do you suppose I could have slept on straw in Straw Alley when it was the first time I had ever been in the Conciergerie? Besides, was I sure? That is what worries me. I had an atrocious headache.
"My brow was burning even while I felt it swept by a strong current of cold air. Outside I was cool; inside I was a furnace.
"What had we been doing? I had a moment before walked quietly through the chapel23 of the Girondins; and while the guide was telling us the history of it, I played with my green umbrella. I was not in the least annoyed at having just behaved so oddly. I was my natural self. But as for that, I have never ceased to be my natural self.
"That which befell me later was also quite natural, since it was not the result of any effort. The unnatural24 is exactly what did not befall me.
"I remember finding myself at the bottom of a staircase in front of a grating. I was endowed with superhuman vigour25; I shook the grating and shouted, 'This way!' The others, who did not know, were slow coming. I do not know what I should have done to the grating, if the guide had not unlocked it for me. For that matter, I do not know what I should have done to the guide. I was mad. No: I have no right to say that. I was not mad; and that's a great pity. It is worse than if I had been mad.
"Undoubtedly26 I was in a state of great nervous excitement; but my mind was quite lucid27. I do not believe that I have ever seen so clearly; and yet I was in the dark. I do not believe that I have ever had clearer recollections; and yet I was in a place I did not know. Heavens! I did not recognise it and I did recognise it! I did not hesitate about my way. My groping hands found the stones they reached out in the darkness to find; and my feet trod a soil which could not have been strange to them.
"Who will ever be able to tell the age of that soil; who will ever be able to tell you the age of those stones? I do not know it myself. They talk of the origin of the palace. What is the origin of the old Frankish palace? They may be able to say when those stones will end; they will never be able to say when they began. And they are forgotten, those stones, in the thousand-year night of the cellars. The odd thing is that I remembered them.
"I crept along the damp walls as if the way were well known to me. I expected certain rough places in the wall; and they came to the tips of my fingers; I counted the edges of the stones and I knew that at the end of a certain number I had only to turn to see at the far end of a passage a ray which the sun had forgotten there since the beginning of the history of Paris. I turned and saw the ray; and I felt my heart beat loudly from the bottom of the centuries."
M. Longuet interrupts his narrative28 for a while to describe the whirl of his mind during this singular hour. He has the greatest difficulty in remaining master of his thought, the utmost difficulty in following it. It rushes on in front of him like a bolting horse whose reins29 he has let go. It leaves him behind and bounds ahead, leaving on the paper, as traces of its passage, words of such profundity30 that when he looks at them, he says, they make him giddy.
And he guides the pen with a feverish33 hand, as he goes on burying himself in the depths of these subterranean34 galleries:
"And that's the Prattler! These are the walls which have heard! It was not up above, in the sunlight, that the Prattler spoke21; it was here, in this night of the underworld. Here are the rings in the walls. Is it the ring of Ravaillac? I no longer remember.
"But towards the ray, towards the unique ray, motionless and eternal, the faint, square ray, which from the beginning of ages took and preserved the form of the air-hole, I advance; I advance in a stumbling hurry, while the fever consumes me, blazes, and dizzies my brain. My feet stop, but with such a shock that one would believe them caught by invisible hands, risen from the soil; my fingers run over the wall, groping and fumbling36 that spot in the wall. What do my fingers want? What is the thought of my fingers? I had a pen-knife in my pocket; and all at once I let my green umbrella fall to the ground to take my pen-knife from my pocket. And I scraped, with certainty, between two stones. I cleared away the dust and mortar37 from between two stones. Then my knife pierced a thing between the two stones and brought it out.
"That is why I know I am not mad. That thing is under my eyes. In my quietest hours, I, Theophrastus Longuet, can look at it on my desk between my latest models of rubber stamps. It is not I who am mad; it is this thing that is mad. It is a scrap of paper, torn and stained—a document whose age there is no telling and which is in every way calculated to plunge38 a quiet manufacturer of rubber stamps into the wildest consternation39. The paper, as you can guess, is rotted by the damp of the cellars. The damp has eaten away half the words, which seem from their red hue40 to have been written in blood.
"But in these words before me, in this document which was certainly written two centuries ago, which I passed under the square ray from the air-hole and gazed at with my hair rising on end in horror, I recognised my own handwriting."
Here copied clearly out is this precious and mysterious document:
"I rt uried
my treasures after betrayal
of April 1st
Go and take the air
at the Chopinettes
look at the Cock
Dig on the spot and you
will be rich."
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1
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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2
memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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3
transgressed
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| v.超越( transgress的过去式和过去分词 )；越过；违反；违背 | |
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4
addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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5
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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6
absurdities
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| n.极端无理性( absurdity的名词复数 )；荒谬；谬论；荒谬的行为 | |
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7
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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8
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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9
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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10
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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11
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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12
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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13
prattler
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| n.空谈者 | |
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14
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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15
quay
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| n.码头，靠岸处 | |
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16
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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17
profane
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| adj.亵神的，亵渎的；vt.亵渎，玷污 | |
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18
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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19
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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20
alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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21
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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22
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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23
chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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24
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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25
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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26
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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27
lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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28
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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29
reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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30
profundity
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| n.渊博；深奥，深刻 | |
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31
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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32
precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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33
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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34
subterranean
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| adj.地下的，地表下的 | |
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35
gall
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| v.使烦恼，使焦躁，难堪；n.磨难 | |
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36
fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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37
mortar
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| n.灰浆，灰泥；迫击炮；v.把…用灰浆涂接合 | |
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38
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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39
consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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40
hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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