M. LONGUET FISHES IN THE CATACOMBS
"We awoke the next morning with the appetites of youth. In the middle
of our exiguous breakfast it occurred to me that we were behaving in an
extremely old-fashioned way. The heroes of Romance invariably divide
their bar of chocolate into a number of pieces. We, with our ham, were
showing ourselves as commonplace as they. I imparted these reflections
to M. Longuet, and suggested that instead of making our hundred and
fifty-eight ounces of ham last for twenty days, we should eat ten
ounces each a day, and be content to let them last eight.
"M. Longuet objected firmly. He said:
"'In the first place the admirable discovery of M. Fletcher of the
United States has proved that such a quantity of food is unnecessary
for the sustenance of the human being.' (I learned later that this
was a misstatement.) 'In the second place, it is our duty as French
citizens to postpone the degrading practice of cannibalism to the last
possible moment.'
"He spoke with a vigorous emphasis there was no gainsaying. I admired
his strength of character, and was silent.
"Immediately after breakfast we resumed our journey.
"In about half an hour M. Longuet complained of thirst; and I explained
to him that in our circumstances all complaints were utterly futile:
a statement which, for all its undeniable logic, seemed to afford
him very little comfort. But fortunately at the end of another hour
our ears were greeted by the agreeable sound of rippling water; and
presently the ray of our electric lamp gleamed on a little stream which
ran from some subterranean spring across the passage. M. Longuet flung
himself down and began to drink. I hesitated, for it appeared to me,
as a logician, that since we could not carry water along with us, _to
drink would only make us thirsty_. Then I reflected that we should find
other springs, and presently followed his example.
"We went on our way; and presently M. Longuet inquired of me whether
there was no nourishment of any kind in the Catacombs on which we
might sustain life when we had exhausted the resources of ham and
the survivor of cannibalism. Fortunately I had visited the laboratory
of the Catacombs of M. Milne-Edwards; and I could entertain him with
an account of the fauna and flora of these caverns, on which he would
be able, at need, to keep himself alive. I am bound to say that,
contrary to my usual habit, I took great pleasure in this conversation
about edible things. I felt indeed that such a subject was extremely
old-fashioned; doubtless my pleasure in it arose from the exiguity of
my breakfast.
"'My dear friend,' I said, 'it is always possible not to die of hunger,
even if you never get out of the Catacombs. The flora, the cryptogamic
vegetation, the mushrooms, in a word, of the Catacombs, will not
suffice, I fear, to keep you alive. But fortunately wherever you
find water in these caverns, you find food. You can always become an
ichthyophagus."
"'What on earth is that?' he said suspiciously.
"'An ichthyophagus is a fish-eater.'
"'Ah!' he exclaimed with an immense satisfaction, 'there are fish
in the waters of the Catacombs! I am very fond of fish!' He paused;
then he added in a musing tone, 'After all, it is better to be an
ichthyophagus than a cannibal.'
"'They are not large fish; but certain streams contain incalculable
quantities of them.'
"'Really? Incalculable quantities?... Incalculable?... How large are
they?' he said with great animation.
"'Oh, they are of different sizes. Generally they are small. But they
are not at all disagreeable to eat. I was told about them when I went
down to visit the Fountain of the Samaritan, a very pretty, good-sized
spring in the Ossuary.'
"'Is it far from here?' he said eagerly.
"'I cannot tell you at the moment. All I know is that this fountain
was built in 1810 by M. Héricourt de Thury, Engineer of Subterranean
Passages. As a matter of fact, this fountain is frequented by copepodes
(Cyclops Fimbriatus)...'
"'Ah! Copepodes! Are they fishes?'
"'Yes; and they present modifications of tissue and coloration peculiar
to themselves. They have a beautiful red eye.'
"'What? One eye?'
"'Yes; that is why they are called cyclops. But you need not be
astonished that this fish has only one eye, for the Asellus Aquaticus,
which also lives in the running streams of the Catacombs, a little
aquatic isopode, as its name indicates, often has no eyes at all.'
"'Impossible!' cried M. Longuet. 'How do they see?'
"'They have no need to see, since they live in darkness. Nature is
perfect. She is perfect in giving eyes to those who need them; she is
perfect in taking away eyes from those who do not need them.'
"M. Longuet appeared to reflect a little; then he said: 'Then, if we
continued to live in the Catacombs, we should end by no longer having
eyes?'
"'Evidently: we should begin by losing the use of our sight and
then our sight itself. Our descendants would soon lose their eyes
altogether.'
"'Our descendants!' he cried.
"We laughed at this little slip; and then he pressed me to continue my
description of the fishes of the Catacombs.
"I discussed at length the modification of organs, their excessive
development or their atrophy, according to the environment in which
the species lives. I described the different kinds of fishes also at
length.
"But at last he said: 'All this about their organs is very interesting.
But how do you catch them?'
"'I can only tell you that the Catacombs which contain all these
millions of bones cannot offer us a single maggot in the way of bait.'
"'No matter,' said Theophrastus. 'There are more ways of killing a dog
than hanging him. An angler has more than one trick in his basket; and
the Asellus Aquaticus had better look out.'
"That day and the days which followed it were very much alike. Whenever
we came to a stream we stopped and drank. Always M. Longuet wanted
to stop and fish. This was not wholly hunger; the sportsman's ardour
burned in his soul. But I represented to him that, for anything we
knew, we had the whole three hundred and ten miles of Catacombs to
traverse before we came to the exit, and that it was our first duty to
walk and walk. We might have fallen into them at the furthest end.
"By eleven o'clock, not only the sustaining but also the satisfying
effect of the ounce of ham appeared to be exhausted; we were not
only extremely hungry, but we were moving at a much slower pace. I
represented to M. Longuet that it would be wise to have our déjeuner
at once. But his dreadful middle-class instincts were too strong for
us. He had the habit of a regular life so ingrained in him that he
would not hear of déjeuner before noon. Also I marvelled at his power
of endurance: I had never suspected that the manufacture of rubber
stamps could endow a man with those muscles of steel. None the less we
talked very little between eleven and noon.
"That ounce of ham was one of the most delicious meals I have ever
eaten. M. Longuet, who seemed in the course of our conversation to have
caught some of my scientific spirit, timed the meal by my watch. It was
a source of great satisfaction to him that he took from nine to eleven
seconds longer over each mouthful than I did. After it we proceeded on
our way with renewed vigour; and since I found that he was of the truly
receptive type of mind, I found our conversation very enjoyable.
"The afternoon was exactly like the morning. We walked, conversing
about a dozen different subjects. The next morning was exactly like
the last afternoon; and the days which followed were exactly like one
another. The second and third days were the least comfortable. On
those days the satisfying effects of our ounces of ham appeared to
exhaust themselves more quickly. But after the third day I began to
realise the great value of the discovery of M. Fletcher of the United
States. Our appetites had become quite normal; an ounce of ham blunted
them till the next meal. We were losing weight indeed, especially M.
Longuet, whose waistcoat hung somewhat limply down in front. But the
muscles of our legs appeared to have grown stronger; and undoubtedly
our intellects had grown quicker and more alert. When we had exhausted
my subjects, I learned from M. Longuet the process of making rubber
stamps, with a thoroughness which fits me to embark at any moment on
that career. I found that he was even quicker to acquire the knowledge
which goes to the making of an able Commissary of Police.
"It would indeed have been a very pleasant walking tour, thanks to
that unlikeness of our natures which produces the most harmonious
companionship, had it not been for the monotony of the scenery through
which our way lay. The subterranean passages, illumined by our lamps,
were sometimes vast, sometimes narrow, sometimes rounded like the
naves of the cathedrals, sometimes square, angular, and mean, like
the corridors of workhouses. But they presented no spectacle of great
variety. When he had said, 'Look, stone! Look, clay! Look, sand!' we
had said everything, because we had seen everything.
"It was on the afternoon of the fourteenth day that M. Longuet embarked
on a subject of conversation extremely distasteful to me, the edible
qualities of the human body. I tried gently to divert him from it; but
it appeared to have become one of his fixed ideas; and he harped on it
for two very tedious hours. That evening I halted for supper on the
banks of a stream, nearly eighteen inches wide, which ran across the
passage we were in; and after supper I suggested that, before retiring
for the night, he should for once glut his sportsman's ardour.
"Though indeed he had no hooks, he fell to his angling with the
liveliest eagerness. We turned the light of our lamp on to the waters
of the stream, and presently out of the hole in the wall from which it
issued, there came swimming a little fish. Then we found that hooks
were unnecessary in the sport of the Catacombs. Owing to the fact that
the little fish had no eyes, M. Longuet was able to lay his hand on
the bed of the stream, which was, perhaps, at that point three inches
deep, and when the little fish came swimming over it, to jerk up his
hand and fling it on the bank. We examined his catch in the light of
our lamp; but I was unable to say whether it was an Asellus Aquaticus
or a Cyclops Fimbriatus.
"In the course of the next quarter of an hour we caught three more
of these little fishes (they were nearly four inches long); then,
at the sight of fresh fish, a wolfish gleam came into M. Longuet's
eyes; and he suggested that we should repeat the supper we had only
just finished. After his distasteful conversation of the afternoon,
I made no objection. But with his ineradicable middle-class instinct
he complained that we had no means of cooking our catch. I explained
to him that our early ancestors, the cave-men, probably ate most of
their food raw, and whatever else we were, we were, at the moment,
undoubtedly cave-men. With this new intellectual alertness, acquired
by following the method of M. Fletcher of the United States, he saw
my point. We cleaned the fish with the knife of Signor Petito and ate
them. They were delicious.
"But, as I should have foreseen, so much rich food coming suddenly
after the rational diet on which we had subsisted during the last
fortnight was too much for us, and for several hours we suffered the
most acute pangs of indigestion. Moreover, with the greedy haste of
gourmands, we had not timed ourselves over the meal, and had eaten the
fish far too quickly. However, no experience is wasted on a rational
man; and I realised that one Asellus Aquaticus, after ham, is enough
for the logical Fletcherite.
"After the passing of our indigestion, we slept soundly; and the next
morning we resumed our journey entirely free from any anxiety: it might
take us six months, or it might take us a year, but sooner or later we
should find the Ossuary and the exit from the Catacombs, sustained in
our task by the Asellus Aquaticus. Indeed it was extremely improbable
that it would take us more than a few days longer, for since I had
never missed a chance of taking a passage which appeared to lead back
to our starting-point, we must necessarily have drawn further and
further from it.
"This expectation was realised sooner than I expected, for on the night
of the seventeenth day, just as, at the close of a very interesting
discussion on the neglect of the logical faculty by the great majority
of men, we had turned our thoughts to supper and sleep, we were
suddenly confronted by two skeletons.
"They were fastened against the wall on either side, and _an arm of
either, like the arm of a finger-post, pointed down the passage ahead_.