The chamber had nothing in particular, save that, although night had fallen, it was unlit, and that the guests saw towering ominous before them and leaning slightly towards one another like the pillars of a headless door, two huge standing stones. These causes sufficed, indeed, to give it a lugubrious miasma. Glittered indeed in the room many beads and chains and jewelled ornaments; yet even Sacqueville-Danglars, greed-besotten though he were, durst not lay hand on any of the treasure.
"Hou!" cried M. de Villefaramir. "It is terrifying indeed."
The baroness de Sacqueville-Danglars tried to stammer some words that no one understood.
"Isn't it?" said Monte Fato. "See how this bed is bizarrely placed, what a bloody and sombre curtain! See how these stones point upwards like jagged teeth out of crimson gums! And these two portraits, do they not seem to say, with their glaring eyes that shine with the green-white light of absinthe de Morgoule, I have seen!"
Villefaramir became livid, and the baroness fell onto a chaise longue placed near the fireplace.
"Oh!" said Mme. de Villefaramir smiling. "You have great courage to seat yourself on a chair where perhaps crime has been committed!" Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars rose abruptly.
