the sun, midday
Assuredly , Providence and society had been equally unjust ; such an excess of unhappiness and of torture was not necessary to break so frail a creature . There she lay , lost in the shadows , buried , hidden , immured . Any one who could have beheld her in this state , after having seen her laugh and dance in the sun , would have shuddered . Cold as night , cold as death , not a breath of air in her tresses , not a human sound in her ear , no longer a ray of light in her eyes ; snapped in twain , crushed with chains , crouching beside a jug and a loaf , on a little straw , in a pool of water , which was formed under her by the sweating of the prison walls ; without motion , almost without breath , she had no longer the power to suffer ; Phœbus , the sun , midday , the open air , the streets of Paris , the dances with applause , the sweet babblings of love with the officer ; then the priest , the old crone , the poignard , the blood , the torture , the gibbet ; all this did , indeed , pass before her mind , sometimes as a charming and golden vision , sometimes as a hideous nightmare ; but it was no longer anything but a vague and horrible struggle , lost in the gloom , or distant music played up above ground , and which was no longer audible at the depth where the unhappy girl had fallen . Since she had been there , she had neither waked nor slept . In that misfortune , in that cell , she could no longer distinguish her waking hours from slumber , dreams from reality , any more than day from night . All this was mixed , broken , floating , disseminated confusedly in her thought .