The bookshelves are dominated by the thirty-five volumes of
Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers of Messieurs Diderot and d'Alembert. There are also popular novels, including the rather scandalous
Les Liaisons dangereuses of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.
Doctor North attempts to examine the books cautiously.
He makes not a sound as he explores with nimble fingers each tome.
A sudden burst of insight leads him to pull
The Castle of Otranto (the second edition, in which Horace Walpole acknowledges his authorship) from the shelf. Not only is it the only English work to be found, rendering it notable, but its fantastic content -- including secret passages! -- is appropriate, denoting an ironical sense of humor on the part of the one who selected it.
Once the volume is removed an ingenious mechanical arrangement causes the bookshelf to slide noiselessly aside, revealing a small opening to prisoner's cell. He can be barely seen by the lantern's glow, as if the gloomy environs in which he is kept absorb the light that enters. At first one might think him dead, but it soon becomes clear that he is in a very deep sleep, brought on no doubt by exhaustion.