The wall,
which was rather thick and built of granite, formed a low partition
between the stairway and the cellar whence the groans were issuing.
Presently she saw an individual, clothed in a goatskin, enter the cave
beneath her, and move about, without making any sign of eager search.
Impatient to discover if she had any chance of safety, Mademoiselle de
Verneuil waited with anxiety till the light brought by the new-comer
lighted the whole cave, where she could partly distinguish a formless
but living mass which was trying to reach a part of the wall, with
violent and repeated jerks, something like those of a carp lying out
of water on a shore.
A small pine torch threw its blue and hazy light into the cave. In
spite of the gloomy poetic effects which Mademoiselle de Verneuil's
imagination cast about this vaulted chamber, which was echoing to the
sounds of a pitiful prayer, she was obliged to admit that the place
was nothing more than an underground kitchen, evidently long
abandoned. When the formless mass was distinguishable it proved to be
a short and very fat man, whose limbs were carefully bound before he
had been left lying on the damp stone floor of the kitchen by those
who had seized him. When he saw the new-comer approach him with a
torch in one hand and a fagot of sticks in the other, the captive gave
a dreadful groan, which so wrought upon the sensibilities of
Mademoiselle de Verneuil that she forgot her own terror and despair
and the cramped position of her limbs, which were growing numb.
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