872 Les Miserables
A human being was put inside, with a coverlid of stone on
top. This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in
pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that
lofty peep-hole on a level with the river’s current, that box
of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this
difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that
soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls,—
what declaimers!