The reader may suppose that it is about time another Delectable Mountain
appeared upon his horizon. Let him keep his eyes wide open, for here one
comes....
Whenever our circle was about to be increased, a bell from somewhere afar
(as a matter of fact the gate which had admitted my weary self to La
Ferte upon a memorable night, as already has been faithfully recounted)
tanged audibly--whereat up jumped the more strenuous inhabitants of The
Enormous Room and made pell-mell for the common peephole, situated at the
door end or nearer end of our habitat and commanding a somewhat
fragmentary view of the gate together with the arrivals, male and female,
whom the bell announced. In one particular case the watchers appeared
almost unduly excited, shouting "four!"--"big box"--"five _gendarmes_!"
and other incoherences with a loudness which predicted great things. As
nearly always, I had declined to participate in the melee; and was still
lying comfortably horizontal on my bed (thanking God that it had been
well and thoroughly mended by a fellow prisoner whom we called The Frog
and Le Coiffeur--a tremendously keen-eyed man with a large drooping
moustache, whose boon companion, chiefly on account of his shape and
gait, we knew as The Lobster) when the usual noises attendant upon the
unlocking of the door began with exceptional violence.
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