Before, however, undertaking this aspect I shall attempt to
represent for my own benefit as well as the reader's certain more obvious
elements of that stasis which greeted the candidates for disintegration
upon their admittance to our select, not to say distinguished, circle.
Or: I shall describe, briefly, Apollyon and the instruments of his power,
which instruments are three in number: Fear, Women and Sunday.
By Apollyon I mean a very definite fiend. A fiend who, secluded in the
sumptuous and luxurious privacy of his own personal _bureau_ (which as a
rule no one of lesser rank than the Surveillant was allowed, so far as I
might observe--and I observed--to enter) compelled to the unimaginable
meanness of his will by means of the three potent instruments in question
all within the sweating walls of La Ferte--that was once upon a time
human. I mean a very complete Apollyon, a Satan whose word is dreadful
not because it is painstakingly unjust, but because it is
incomprehensibly omnipotent. I mean, in short, Monsieur le Directeur.
I shall discuss first of all Monsieur le Directeur's most obvious weapon.
Fear was instilled by three means into the erstwhile human entities whose
presence at La Ferte gave Apollyon his job.
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