The Man Who Laughs


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face to face with a bit of square light. The sheet of metal had just  
been raised into a slit in the vault, like the door of a mouse-trap.  
An opening had appeared.  
The light was not daylight, but glimmer; but on the dilated eyeballs of  
Gwynplaine the pale and sudden ray struck like a flash of lightning.  
It was some time before he could see anything. To see with dazzled eyes  
is as difficult as to see in darkness.  
At length, by degrees, the pupil of his eye became proportioned to the  
light, just as it had been proportioned to the darkness, and he was able  
to distinguish objects. The light, which at first had seemed too bright,  
settled into its proper hue and became livid. He cast a glance into the  
yawning space before him, and what he saw was terrible.  
At his feet were about twenty steps, steep, narrow, worn, almost  
perpendicular, without balustrade on either side, a sort of stone ridge  
cut out from the side of a wall into stairs, entering and leading into  
a very deep cell. They reached to the bottom.  
The cell was round, roofed by an ogee vault with a low arch, from the  
fault of level in the top stone of the frieze, a displacement common to  
cells under heavy edifices.  
The kind of hole acting as a door, which the sheet of iron had just  
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Page
600 601 602 603 604

Quick Jump
1 236 472 708 944