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his fingers remained open, his eyes fixed. He scarcely breathed.
A man was standing in the doorway, behind Dea. He was clad in black,
with a hood. He wore a wig down to his eyebrows, and held in his hand
an iron staff with a crown at each end. His staff was short and massive.
He was like Medusa thrusting her head between two branches in Paradise.
Ursus, who had heard some one enter and raised his head without loosing
his hold of Homo, recognized the terrible personage. He shook from head
to foot, and whispered to Gwynplaine,--
"It's the wapentake."
Gwynplaine recollected. An exclamation of surprise was about to escape
him, but he restrained it. The iron staff, with the crown at each end,
was called the iron weapon. It was from this iron weapon, upon which the
city officers of justice took the oath when they entered on their
duties, that the old wapentakes of the English police derived their
qualification.
Behind the man in the wig, the frightened landlord could just be
perceived in the shadow.
Without saying a word, a personification of the Muta Themis of the old
charters, the man stretched his right arm over the radiant Dea, and
touched Gwynplaine on the shoulder with the iron staff, at the same time
pointing with his left thumb to the door of the Green Box behind him.
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