and had felt no interest in them. I said to the queen:

"Then why in the world didn't you set them free?"

The question was a puzzler. She didn't know WHY
she hadn't, the thing had never come up in her mind.
So here she was, forecasting the veritable history of
future prisoners of the Castle d'If, without knowing it.
It seemed plain to me now, that with her training,
those inherited prisoners were merely property -- noth-
ing more, nothing less. Well, when we inherit prop-
erty, it does not occur to us to throw it away, even
when we do not value it.

When I brought my procession of human bats up