_Lost in the Catacombs_
|WHEN M. Longuet had recovered from the emotion that M. Mifroid’s
explanation of the train had caused him, he went through his pockets and
handed over to M. Mifroid a revolver and a large knife that he had found
in Signor Petito’s pocket.
He was now perfectly rational and felt free from the influences of
Cartouche. He, however, dreaded the return of these fancies, and asked
M. Mifroid to accept these articles in order to defend himself should he
again be possessed with this evil spirit.
Continuing the search through his pockets, he produced seven lamps like
those of M. Mifroid, and so between them they had thirteen of these
lights, which would give them 520 hours of continuous light. They,
however, worked out that they could do ten hours a day without light
on account of sleep, and their calculations gave them fourteen hours of
light per day.
“M. Longuet,” said M. Mifroid, “you are wonderful. Cartouche
himself could not have done better; but what is the good of carrying
them around with us? They will only be a nuisance. Are you hungry, M.
Longuet? How long do you think you could remain without food?”
“I am sure,” he declared, “that I could remain this way
forty-eight hours.”
“Well, you will have to remain like this for seven days, perhaps. I
will throw these ten lamps away, as after the third one I am afraid we
shall not have much need of the rest.”
“Where are you going?” asked M. Longuet. “No matter where,”
answered his companion; “but we must go anywhere rather than stay
here, for there is not a ray of hope here. We will reflect while
walking. Walking is our only salvation, but by walking seven days we
will risk all chance of arriving anywhere, unless we make a plan.”
“Why not make an exact plan?” asked M. Longuet.
“Because I have observed in all the stories of the catacombs there
were always marked plans which the unfortunate wanderers have lost. They
were confused by the marked places, and not understanding anything
about it, they became overwhelmed with despair. In our situation it is
necessary to shun all causes for despair. You are not without hope, M.
Longuet?”
“Oh, by no means, M. Mifroid. I will add, even, that were I not so
hungry, your pleasant society aiding, I should not at all regret
the roofs of the Rue Gerondo. You must tell me some stories of the
catacombs, M. Mifroid, to let me forget my hunger.”
“Why, certainly, my friend. There is the story of the ‘Jailer,’
and the story of the ‘Four Soldiers.’”
“With which will you begin?”
“I am first going to tell you of the catacombs in general; this will
make you understand why it is necessary to walk a long time to get out
of them.”
Here M. Longuet interrupted him, asking why in ending his sentences he
always made a gesture with the thumb of his right hand.
“That means, M. le Commissioner, that the gesture has become a habit
with you—putting on thumb-screws?”
M. Mifroid declared that that was not the reason. He often gave himself
up to sculpture, and he explained to him that it was the habit of a
modeler. He buried his hand in his discoveries, just as he did in his
clay.”
M. Longuet expressed astonishment that a police commissioner should
interest himself in sculpture. However, it afterward transpired that M.
Mifroid’s knowledge of this art was the means of their final escape
from the catacombs.
M. Mifroid, in reporting, the events of the catacombs, wrote as follows:
“The way that we were following was a vast passage of four or five
meters high. The walls were very dry, and the electric light which lit
our way allowed us to see a hard stone, devoid of all vegetation, even
of moisture. That proof was not one to rejoice M. Longuet’s heart, for
he was beginning to be very thirsty. I knew that in the catacombs there
were some threads of running water. I thanked heaven for not putting us
on one of these threadlike streams, for we should only have lost time in
imbibing there, and, moreover, as we could not carry away any water, it
would only have made us more thirsty.
“M. Longuet objected to the idea that we were walking without caring
where. I resolved to make him understand the necessity of walking
on anywhere, in relating to him that which was the truth, that the
engineers, when repairing the track, had descended into the catacombs,
and had sought in vain to discover their limits, and to find an outlet
they were obliged to give it up, and they built those pillars as
supports, and built the arch with masons’ materials; they descended
directly into the hole, before closing it finally over our heads. Not
to discourage M. Longuet, I informed him that, to my knowledge, we
could count on at least 520 kilometers of catacombs, but there was not a
single reason why they should not have had more. Evidently, if I had
not warned him immediately of the difficulty of getting out of there, he
would have manifested his despair the second day of the walk.
“‘I think, then,’ I said to him, ‘that they have dug this soil
from the third to the seventeenth century. For during 1400 years, man
had removed from under the soil the materials that were necessary to
construct above. If at any time there was not enough above, there was
always more below. That above returns below, and goes out thence,’
and as we still found ourselves under the ancient Quarter d’Enfer, I
recalled to him that in 1777 a house in the Rue d’Enfer was swallowed
up by the earth below. It was precipitated to 28 meters below the soil
in its court. Some months later, in 1778, seven persons met death in a
similar caving in. I cited still several more recent examples, dwelling
upon the accident to persons. He understood, and said to me: ‘In
short, it is often more dangerous to walk above than below.’
“I kept on, seeing that he was impressed, and he spoke no more of his
hunger, and forgot his thirst. I profited by it to make him lengthen his
step, and I burst into the most entrancing song which came into my mind.
He took it up, and we sang in chorus:=
```“‘Au pas, comerade, au pas,
````La route est belle!
```J’aura du frictiti la bas,
````Dans la gamelle!’=
“It was this which made him keep step.
“One gets tired of singing very quickly in the catacombs, because
the voice does not carry; so when we had got tired M. Longuet asked a
hundred more questions. He asked me how many meters there were over our
heads. I told him that that could vary, from the latest reports, from
5m.82 and 79 meters. Sometimes, I told him, the crust of earth was so
thin that it was necessary to extend the foundations of the tombs as far
as the bottom of the catacombs. So that we might, in the course of our
peregrinations, encounter the pillars of Saint Sulpice de St. Etienne du
Mont, of the Pantheon of the Val de Grace, of the Odeon. These monuments
are erected in some way on the subterranean pilings.
“‘Really, in the course of our peregrinations we risk encountering
some of these subterranean pilings.’ But he had his own fixed idea.
“‘And in the course of our peregrinations, is there any chance of
our coming upon an exit? Are there many ways out of the catacombs?’
“‘There are not,’ I replied; ‘there is need of them. First of
all, there are egresses into the quarter.’
“‘So much the better,’ he interrupted.
“‘And other ways out that some know of, but by which none are ever
admitted, but which exist, nevertheless, in the caves of the Pantheon,
in those of the College of Henry IV, of the Hospital of the Undi, of
some houses in the Rue d’Enfer, of Vangirard, of the Tombe Issoire at
Passy, at Chaillot, at Saint Maur, at Clarenton, at Gentilly—more
than sixty. In order to safeguard building construction, an ordinance
was made which closed all the openings to the catacombs.
It is that ordinance, my dear M. Longuet, which has almost walled us
in.’
“At that moment we struck an enormous pillar. I examined its
construction, and said without stopping: ‘Here is a pillar which
was used by the architects of Louis XVI in 1778, then of the
Consolidation.’
“‘Poor Louis XVI!’ said M. Longuet. ‘He had better have
consolidated royalty.’
“M. Longuet had taken the electric lamp from my hands, and did not
cease to throw the rays to the right and left, as if he was looking for
something. I asked him the reason of this, which would fatigue the eyes.
“‘I am looking for some corpses,’ he said.
“‘Some corpses!’
“‘Skeletons. I have heard that the walls of the catacombs are hung
with skeletons.’
“‘Oh, my friend’—I already called him friend, his serenity
in such a serious emergency delighting me so much—‘that ghastly
tapestry is only a little longer than a kilometer. That kilometer justly
called an ossuary, on account of the skulls, the radius, the cubitus,
tibias, shin-bones, phalanges, the thorax, and other small bones which
were made into unique ornaments. But what ornaments! Ornaments of three
million skeletons, that were brought from the cemeteries and acropolis
of Saint Midard Clucy, Saint Lamdry of the Carmelites, the Benedictines,
and of the Innocents.
“‘All bones, the little bones well sorted, arranged, co-ordinated,
classified, labeled, which made on the walls and in the cross passages,
roses, parallelopipides, triangles, rectangles, volutes, crevices, and
many other figures of marvelous regularity.
“‘Let us wish, my friend, to reach that domain of the dead. It
will be life. For there there are always a number of people. It is much
frequented. But we are not there. What is one kilometer of dead men’s
bones in five hundred?’
“‘Clearly! How many kilometers do you think we have made, M.
Mifroid?’
“‘We have made nine.’
“‘What are nine kilometers in five hundred?’
“I induced M. Longuet not to make these useless calculations, and
he begged me to tell him the story of the ‘Jailer’ and that of the
‘Four Soldiers.’
“That made two histories which were not very long in telling. There
were only a few words in the first. There was once a jailer of the
catacombs who became lost in the catacombs. They found his corpse eight
days later. The second related to four soldiers of the Val-de-Graces,
who were descending, by the aid of a cord, into a well of eighty meters.
They were in the catacombs, and as they did not reappear some drummers
were sent down, who made the greatest noise that they could with their
drums, but in the catacombs sound does not carry, and no one responded
to the rolling. They hunted, and at the end of forty hours they found
them dying in a blind alley.
“‘They had no moral courage,’ said Théophraste.
“‘They were foolish,’ I added. ‘Whoever is foolish enough to
wander into the catacombs deserves no pity.’
“We were by this time come to a crossway, and M. Longuet turned to ask
which way we would follow.
“I could answer him without delay. I said:
“‘Here are two galleries; which are you going to take? One goes
almost directly back to our starting-point, the other directly away from
it.’ As our design was to go away from our starting-point, M. Longuet
showed me the first gallery.
“‘I was sure of it!’ I exclaimed. ‘But you disregard the entire
principle. The experimental method has for centuries demonstrated that
at the bottom of the catacombs all individuals who wish to come back to
their point of setting out (to the entrance of the catacombs) go away
from it; then the whole logic of it is, to go away from one’s point of
starting out, one must take the way which apparently brings one back to
it.’ And so we decided on the gallery which seemed to us to bring us
back over our steps, so we were sure of not having made a useless trip.
That system was excellent, for it led us into a certain region of the
catacombs that no one had visited before, since the fourteenth century,
otherwise it would have been known.”