If one knew the password, the voice resumed, "Enter on the right."
One then perceived on the right, facing the window, a glass door surmounted by a frame glazed and painted gray.
On raising the latch and crossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impression as when one enters at the theatre into a grated baignoire, before the grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only the grating of it was not of gilded wood, as at the opera; it was a monstrous lattice of iron bars, hideously interlaced and riveted to the wall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched fists.
The first minutes passed; when one''s eyes began to grow used to this cellar-like half-twilight, one tried to pass the grating, but got no further than six inches beyond it.
There he encountered a barrier of black shutters, re-enforced and fortified with transverse beams of wood painted a gingerbread yellow.
These shutters were divided into long, narrow slats, and they masked the entire length of the grating. They were always closed.