"From the third cellar, from which we were so unluckily driven away.
We will go back there now ... I will tell you," said the Persian, with
a sudden change in his voice, "I will tell you the exact place, sir: it
is between a set piece and a discarded scene from ROI DE LAHORE,
exactly at the spot where Joseph Buquet died... Come, sir, take
courage and follow me! And hold your hand at the level of your eyes!
... But where are we?"
The Persian lit his lamp again and flung its rays down two enormous
corridors that crossed each other at right angles.
"We must be," he said, "in the part used more particularly for the
waterworks. I see no fire coming from the furnaces."
He went in front of Raoul, seeking his road, stopping abruptly when he
was afraid of meeting some waterman. Then they had to protect
themselves against the glow of a sort of underground forge, which the
men were extinguishing, and at which Raoul recognized the demons whom
Christine had seen at the time of her first captivity.
In this way, they gradually arrived beneath the huge cellars below the
stage. They must at this time have been at the very bottom of the
"tub" and at an extremely great depth, when we remember that the earth
was dug out at fifty feet below the water that lay under the whole of
that part of Paris.[4] The Persian touched a partition-wall and said: "If I am not mistaken, this is a wall that might easily belong to the
house on the lake."
He was striking a partition-wall of the "tub," and perhaps it would be
as well for the reader to know how the bottom and the partition-walls
of the tub were built. In order to prevent the water surrounding the
building-operations from remaining in immediate contact with the walls
supporting the whole of the theatrical machinery, the architect was
obliged to build a double case in every direction. The work of
constructing this double case took a whole year. It was the wall of
the first inner case that the Persian struck when speaking to Raoul of
the house on the lake. To any one understanding the architecture of
the edifice, the Persian's action would seem to indicate that Erik's
mysterious house had been built in the double case, formed of a thick
wall constructed as an embankment or dam, then of a brick wall, a
tremendous layer of cement and another wall several yards in thickness.
At the Persian's words, Raoul flung himself against the wall and
listened eagerly. But he heard nothing ... nothing ... except distant
steps sounding on the floor of the upper portions of the theater.
The Persian darkened his lantern again.
"Look out!" he said. "Keep your hand up! And silence! For we shall
try another way of getting in."