92
THE MAN WHO LAUGHS.
The lane, as we have said, was nothing but a little passage, paved with flints, enclosed between two walls. There is one of the same kind in Brussels called Rue d'une Personne. The walls were unequal in height. The high one was the prison; the low one, the cemetery (the enclosure for the mortuary remains of the jail), was not higher than the ordinary stature of a man. In it, almost opposite the prison wicket, was a gate. The dead had only to cross the street; the cemetery was but twenty yards from the jail. Above the high wall loomed a gallows; on the low one was sculptured a Death's head. Neither of these walls made its opposite neighbour more cheerful.
