If, hereafter, by any caprice of curiosity or suspicion, the coffin
should be exhumed, and the body it enclosed examined, no chemistry could
detect a trace of poison, nor the most cautious examination the
slightest mark of violence.

I had myself been at the utmost pains to mystify inquiry, should my
disappearance excite surmises, and had even written to my few
correspondents in England to tell them that they were not to look for a
letter from me for three weeks at least.

In the moment of my guilty elation death had caught me, and there was no
escape. I tried to pray to God in my unearthly panic, but only thoughts
of terror, judgment, and eternal anguish crossed the distraction of my
immediate doom.

I must not try to recall what is indeed indescribable--the multiform
horrors of my own thoughts. I will relate, simply, what befell, every
detail of which remains sharp in my memory as if cut in steel.

"The undertaker's men are in the hall," said the Count.

"They must not come till this is fixed," answered Planard. "Be good
enough to take hold of the lower part while I take this end." I was not
left long to conjecture what was coming, for in a few seconds more
something slid across, a few inches above my face, and entirely excluded
the light, and muffled sound, so that nothing that was not very distinct
reached my ears henceforward; but very distinctly came the working of a
turnscrew, and the crunching home of screws in succession. Than these
vulgar sounds, no doom spoken in thunder could have been more