between resemblance and reality; to hear everything, to see everything, without interfering in a single detail of agonizing suffering, was — so the king thought within himself — a torture far more terrible, since it might last forever. “Is this what is termed eternity — hell?” he murmured, at the moment the door was closed upon him, which we remember Baisemeaux had shut with his own hands. He did not even look round him; and in the room, leaning with his back against the wall, he allowed himself to be carried away by the terrible supposition that he was already dead, as he closed his eyes, in order to avoid looking upon something even worse still.

“How can I have died?” he said to himself, sick with terror. “The bed might have been let down by some artificial means? But no!