XXV. «TONNEAUX TONNEAUX AVEZ-VOUS DES TONNEAUX À VENDRE?»

XXV

“BARRELS BARRELS HAVE YOU BARRELS TO SELL?”

(Continuation of the Persian’s narrative)

I have said that the room in which we found ourselves, the Viscount de Chagny and I, was regularly hexagonal and entirely lined with mirrors. Since then, notably in certain exhibitions, people have seen such rooms arranged exactly thus and called: “house of mirages” or “palace of illusions.” But the invention belongs entirely to Erik, who, before my very eyes, constructed the first room of this kind during the *Rose Hours of Mazenderan.* It sufficed to place some decorative motif in the corners, such as a column, for instance, to have instantly a palace of a thousand columns, for, by the effect of the mirrors, the real room was augmented by six hexagonal rooms, each of which multiplied itself to infinity. Formerly, to amuse “the little sultana,” he had thus arranged a setting that became the “innumerable temple”; but the little sultana soon wearied of so childish an illusion, and then Erik transformed his invention into a chamber of torments. Instead of the architectural motif placed in the corners, he put in the first scene an iron tree. Why was this tree, which perfectly imitated life, with its painted leaves, made of iron? Because it had to be solid enough to withstand all the attacks of the “patient” shut up in the chamber of torments. We shall see how, twice, the decor thus obtained was instantly transformed into two other successive decors, thanks to the automatic rotation of the drums that were in the corners and that had been divided into thirds, following the angles of the mirrors and each supporting a decorative motif that appeared in turn.

The walls of this strange hall offered no hold to the patient, since, apart from the decorative motif of proof against everything, they were solely lined with mirrors—mirrors thick enough to have nothing to fear from the rage of the wretch thrown in there, whose hands and feet, moreover, were bare.

No furniture. The ceiling was luminous. An ingenious system of electric heating, since imitated, made it possible to raise the temperature of the walls at will and thus give the room the desired atmosphere...

I take pains to enumerate all the precise details of a wholly natural invention producing this supernatural illusion, with a few painted branches, of an equatorial forest set ablaze by the noonday sun, so that no one may call into doubt the present tranquillity of my brain, so that no one may have the right to say:

“This man has gone mad” or “this man lies” or “this man takes us for fools”[11].

If I had simply related things thus: “Having descended to the bottom of a cellar, we met an equatorial forest ablaze with the noonday sun,” I should have obtained a fine effect of stupid astonishment; but I seek no effect, my aim in writing these lines being to tell exactly what happened to the Viscount de Chagny and myself in the course of a terrible adventure which, for a time, occupied the courts of this country.

I now resume the facts where I left them.

When the ceiling lit up and, around us, the forest shone, the vicomte’s stupefaction surpassed all that can be imagined. The appearance of this impenetrable forest whose countless trunks and branches entwined us *to infinity* plunged him into frightful consternation. He passed his hands over his brow as if to chase away a dream-vision, and his eyes blinked like those of one who, on waking, can scarce regain consciousness of the reality of things. For a moment, he forgot even *to listen!*

I have said that the appearance of the forest did not surprise me. So I listened to what was happening in the room next to ours for the two of us. In short, my attention was drawn less by the decor, from which my mind detached itself, than by the very mirror that produced it. This mirror, in places, *was broken.*

Yes, it had scratches; they had managed to “star” it, despite its solidity, and this proved to me, beyond all doubt, that the chamber of torments in which we found ourselves *had already been used!*

Some unhappy soul, whose feet and hands were less bare than the condemned of the *Rose Hours of Mazenderan,* had certainly fallen into this “mortal illusion,” and, mad with rage, had struck these mirrors which, despite their slight wounds, had nonetheless continued to reflect his agony! And the branch of the tree where he had ended his torment was arranged in such a way that, before dying, he had been able to see, writhing with him—supreme consolation—a thousand hanged men!

Yes! yes! Joseph Buquet had passed that way!...

Were we to die like him?

I did not think so, for I knew we had some hours before us and that I could employ them more usefully than Joseph Buquet had been able to do.

Did I not have thorough knowledge of most of Erik’s “tricks”? This was the time, if ever, to make use of them.

First, I gave no thought at all to returning by the passage that had brought us into this accursed chamber; I did not concern myself with the possibility of making the inner stone that closed this passage move again. The reason was simple: I had no means to do so!... We had jumped too high into the chamber of torments, and no furniture now allowed us to reach that passage, not even the branch of the iron tree, not even one of our shoulders as a step.

There was but one possible exit, the one opening onto the Louis-Philippe room, and in which were Erik and Christine Daaé. But if this exit was in the ordinary state of a door on Christine’s side, it was absolutely invisible to us... So we had to attempt to open it without even knowing where it was placed, which was no ordinary task.

When I was quite sure there was no longer any hope for us, on Christine Daaé’s side, when I had heard the monster drag, or rather haul, the unhappy girl out of the Louis-Philippe room *so that she might not disturb our torment,* I resolved to set to work at once, that is to say, to search for the trick of the door.

But first I had to calm M. de Chagny, who was already pacing the clearing like a man hallucinated, uttering incoherent cries. The fragments of conversation he had managed to catch, despite his emotion, between Christine and the monster, had no small part in throwing him beside himself; if you add to that the blow of the magic forest and the burning heat that was beginning to make the sweat stream down his temples, you will readily understand that M. de Chagny’s humor was beginning to suffer a certain exaltation. Despite all my warnings, my companion showed no further prudence.

He went to and fro without reason, hurling himself toward a nonexistent space, believing he was entering an alley leading him to the horizon, and, after a few steps, striking his forehead against the very reflection of his forest illusion!

As he did so, he cried: Christine! Christine!... and he waved his pistol, calling the monster still at the top of his lungs, challenging the Angel of Music to a duel to the death, and he likewise insulted his illusory forest. It was the torment producing its effect on an unprepared mind. I tried as best I could to combat it, reasoning with the poor vicomte as calmly as possible in the world: making him touch with his finger the mirrors and the iron tree, the branches on the drums, and explaining to him, according to the laws of optics, all the luminous imagery in which we were enveloped and of which we could not, like common ignoramuses, be the victims!

“We are in a room, a small room; that is what you must repeat to yourself unceasingly... and we shall leave this room when we have found its door. Well then! let us look for it!”

And I promised him that, if he would let me work, without stunning me with his cries and his mad pacing, I would have found the trick of the door within an hour.

Then he stretched out on the floor, as one does in the woods, and declared he would wait until I had found the door of the forest, since he had nothing better to do! And he thought fit to add that, from where he was, “the view was splendid.” (The torment, despite all I had said, was acting.)

As for me, *forgetting the forest,* I undertook a panel of mirrors and began to feel it in every direction, *seeking the weak point* on which one had to press to make the doors turn according to Erik’s system of pivoting doors and traps. Sometimes this weak point could be a simple spot on the glass, as big as a pea, and beneath which was the spring to be set off. I searched! I searched! I felt as high as my hands could reach. Erik was about the same height as me, and I thought he had not placed the spring higher than needed for his stature—this was but a hypothesis, but my only hope.—I had decided to go thus, without weakness, and minutely around the six mirror panels, and afterward to examine equally attentively the floor.

Even as I felt the panels with the greatest care, I strove not to lose a minute, for the heat was gaining on me more and more and we were literally roasting in that flaming forest.

I had been working thus for half an hour and had already finished with three panels when our ill fortune willed that I should turn around at a muffled exclamation from the vicomte.

“I am stifling!” said he... “All these mirrors throw back an infernal heat!... Are you going to find your spring soon?... If you delay, we shall roast here!”

I was not displeased to hear him speak thus. He had not said a word of the forest, and I hoped my companion’s reason might struggle long enough yet against the torment. But he added:

“What comforts me is that the monster gave Christine until tomorrow evening at eleven o’clock: if we cannot get out of here and bring her aid, at least we shall be dead before her! Erik’s mass may serve for everyone!”

And he drew in a breath of hot air that all but made him faint...

As I had not the same desperate reasons as the Viscount de Chagny to accept death, I turned back, after a few words of encouragement, to my panel; but I had been wrong to take a few steps in speaking; so that in the unheard-of tangle of the illusory forest, I surely could no longer find my panel! I saw myself forced to begin all over again, at random... So I could not help showing my disappointment, and the vicomte understood that all was to be done again. That gave him a fresh blow.

“We shall never get out of this forest!” he groaned.

And his despair did nothing but grow. And, as it grew, his despair made him more and more forget that he had to do only with mirrors, and more and more believe that he was grappling with a true forest.

As for me, I had gone back to searching... to feeling... Fever, in my turn, was seizing me... for I found nothing... absolutely nothing... In the next room it was still the same silence. We were indeed lost in the forest... without exit... without compass... without guide... without anything. Oh! I knew what awaited us if no one came to our aid... or if I did not find the spring... But search as I might for the spring, I found only branches... admirable beautiful branches that rose straight before me or curved precious above my head... But they gave no shade! This was natural enough, besides, since we were in an equatorial forest with the sun right above our heads... a forest of the Congo...

Several times, M. de Chagny and I had taken off and put on our coats again, finding now that it gave us more heat and now that it shielded us, on the contrary, from that heat.

As for me, I still resisted morally, but M. de Chagny seemed quite “gone.” He claimed it was fully three days and three nights that he had been walking without stopping in this forest, in search of Christine Daaé. From time to time, he thought he caught sight of her behind a tree trunk or slipping through the branches, and he called to her with supplicating words that brought tears to my eyes. “Christine! Christine!” said he, “why do you flee from me? do you not love me?... Are we not betrothed?... Christine, stop!... You see well that I am exhausted!... Christine, have pity!... I am going to die in the forest... far from you!...”

“Oh! I am thirsty!” he said at last with a delirious accent.

I too was thirsty... my throat was on fire...

And yet, now crouched on the floor, that did not keep me from searching... searching... searching for the spring of the invisible door... all the more since the stay in the forest was becoming dangerous toward evening... Already the shadow of night was beginning to enfold us... it had come very quickly, as night falls in equatorial lands... suddenly, with scarce a twilight...

Now night in the equatorial forests is always dangerous, especially when, like us, one has nothing to light a fire with to keep off the wild beasts. I had indeed tried, leaving for a moment the search for my spring, to break branches which I would have lit with my dark lantern, but I too had run into the famous mirrors, and that reminded me in time that we had to do only with images of branches...

With daylight, the heat had not gone, on the contrary... It was now even hotter under the blue gleam of the moon. I recommended to the vicomte to keep our weapons ready to fire and not to stray from the place of our encampment, while I still searched for my spring.

Suddenly the roar of the lion was heard, a few steps away. It rent our ears.

“Oh!” whispered the vicomte, “he is not far!... Do you not see him?... there... through the trees! in that thicket... If he roars again, I fire!...”

And the roar began again, more tremendous. And the vicomte fired, but I do not think he hit the lion; only, he broke a mirror; I noted it the next morning at dawn. During the night, we must have made good progress, for we suddenly found ourselves at the edge of the desert, an immense desert of sand, stones, and rocks. It was truly not worth leaving the forest to fall into the desert. War-weary, I had stretched out beside the vicomte, personally tired of searching for springs I could not find.

I was quite astonished (and I said so to the vicomte) that we had met with no other ill encounters during the night. Ordinarily, after the lion, there was the leopard, and then sometimes the buzzing of the tsetse fly. These were very easy effects to produce, and I explained to M. de Chagny, while we rested before crossing the desert, that Erik obtained the lion’s roar with a long tambourine, ended at one of its extremities by an ass’s skin. Across this skin is stretched a gut string attached at its center to another string of the same kind which traverses the drum in its full height. Erik then has only to rub this string with a glove coated in rosin, and, by the way he rubs, he imitates to perfection the voice of the lion or the leopard, or even the buzzing of the tsetse fly.

The idea that Erik might be in the next room, with his tricks, suddenly threw me into the resolve to enter into parley with him, for, evidently, we had to give up the idea of surprising him. And now he must know what to think of the inhabitants of the chamber of torments. I called him: Erik! Erik!... I cried as loud as I could across the desert, but no one answered my voice... All around us, silence and the naked immensity of that *kneaded* desert... What were we to become in the midst of that dreadful solitude?...

Literally, we were beginning to die of heat, hunger, and thirst... thirst above all... At length, I saw M. de Chagny raise himself on his elbow and point to a spot on the horizon... He had just discovered the oasis!...

Yes, far away there, there, the desert gave way to the oasis... an oasis with water... limpid water like a mirror... water that reflected the iron tree!... Ah, this was the scene of the *mirage*... I recognized it at once... the most terrible... None had been able to resist it... none... I strove to keep all my reason... *and not to hope for the water*... because I knew that if one hoped for the water, the water that reflected the iron tree, and if, after having hoped for the water, one struck the mirror, there was but one thing to do: hang oneself from the iron tree!...

So I cried to M. de Chagny: “It is the mirage!... it is the mirage!... do not believe in the water!... it is still the trick of the mirror!...” Whereupon he sent me, as they say, straight off to the devil, with my mirror trick, my springs, my revolving doors, and my palace of mirages!... He affirmed, in a rage, that I was mad or blind to imagine that all that water flowing yonder, between such beautiful innumerable trees, was not true water!... And the desert was true! And the forest too!... He was not one to be “taken in”... he had traveled enough... and in all countries...

And he dragged himself along, saying:

“Water! Water!...”

And his mouth was open as if he were drinking...

And I too had my mouth open as if I were drinking...

For not only did we see the water, but *we heard it!*... We heard it flow... lap!... Do you understand that word *lap?... It is a word one hears with the tongue!*... The tongue draws out of the mouth to listen better!...

At length, a torment more intolerable than all, we heard the rain, and it was not raining! This was the demonic invention... Oh! I knew very well also how Erik obtained it! He filled a very narrow and very long box with little stones, cut at intervals by sluices of wood and metal. The little stones, falling, met these sluices and ricocheted from one to the other, and there resulted jerky sounds that mimicked to a fault the sputtering of a storm rain.

... So one should have seen how we stuck out our tongues, M. de Chagny and I, dragging ourselves toward the lapping shore... *our eyes and our ears were full of water, but our tongue remained dry as horn!*...

Arrived at the mirror, M. de Chagny licked it... and I too... I licked the mirror...

It was burning hot!...

Then we rolled on the ground, with a despairing rattle. M. de Chagny brought the last loaded pistol to his temple, and I looked, at my feet, at the Punjab lasso.

I knew why, in this third decor, the iron tree had returned!...

The iron tree was waiting for me!...

But as I looked at the Punjab lasso, I saw a thing that made me start so violently that M. de Chagny was arrested in his suicidal movement. Already he murmured: “Farewell, Christine!...”

I had seized his arm. And then I took the pistol from him... and then I dragged myself on my knees to what I had seen.

I had just discovered, near the Punjab lasso, in the groove of the floor, a black-headed nail whose use was not unknown to me...

At last! I had found the spring!... the spring that would set the door in motion!... that would give us liberty!... that would deliver Erik to us.

I felt the nail... I showed M. de Chagny a radiant face!... The black-headed nail yielded under my pressure...

And then...

... And then it was not a door that opened in the wall, but a trap that released itself in the floor.

At once, from that black hole, fresh air reached us. We leaned over that square of shadow as over a limpid spring. Chin in the cool shadow, we drank it.

And we bent more and more over the trap. What could there be in that hole, in that cellar which had just mysteriously opened its door in the floor?...

Perhaps, in there, there was water?...

Water to drink...

I stretched my arm into the darkness and met a stone, and then another... a staircase... a black staircase descending to the cellar.

The vicomte was already ready to throw himself into the hole!...

In there, even if one found no water, one could escape the radiant grip of those abominable mirrors...

But I stopped the vicomte, for I feared a new trick of the monster, and, my dark lantern lit, I descended first...

The staircase plunged into the deepest darkness and turned upon itself. Ah! the adorable coolness of the staircase and the darkness!...

This coolness must have come less from the system of ventilation necessarily established by Erik than from the very freshness of the earth, which must have been all saturated with water at the level where we were... And then, the lake could not be far!...

We were soon at the bottom of the staircase... Our eyes began to grow accustomed to the shadow, to distinguish around us, forms... round forms... upon which I directed the luminous jet of my lantern...

Barrels!...

We were in Erik’s cellar!

It was there he must have locked up his wine and perhaps his drinking water...

I knew Erik was a great lover of fine vintages...

Ah! there was something to drink there!...

M. de Chagny caressed the round forms and repeated tirelessly:

“Barrels! barrels!... What barrels!...”

In fact, there were a certain number aligned very symmetrically in two rows between which we found ourselves...

They were small barrels, and I imagined Erik had chosen them of that size for ease of transport in the House of the Lake!...

We examined them one after another, seeking whether one of them had not some spigot indicating thereby that one had drawn from it from time to time.

But all the barrels were very hermetically sealed.

Then, after lifting one halfway to ascertain it was full, we got on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife I had on me, I set about making the “bung” jump.

At that moment, it seemed to me I heard, as coming from very far, a sort of monotonous chant whose rhythm was known to me, for I had heard it very often in the streets of Paris:

“Barrels!... Barrels!... Have you barrels... to sell?...”

My hand froze on the bung... M. de Chagny had heard it too. He said to me:

“It is funny!... one would say it is the barrel that is singing!...”

The chant resumed, more distantly...

“Barrels!... Barrels!... Have you barrels to sell?...”

“Oh! oh! I swear to you,” said the vicomte, “that the chant is moving away *inside* the barrel!...”

We rose and went to look behind the barrel...

“It is inside!” said M. de Chagny; “it is inside!...”

But we heard nothing more... and we were reduced to accusing the bad state, the real disorder, of our senses...

And we came back to the bung. M. de Chagny put his two joined hands beneath it, and with a final effort I made the bung jump.

“What is that?” cried the vicomte at once... “It is not water!”

The vicomte had brought his two full hands near my lantern... I leaned over the vicomte’s hands... and at once I threw my lantern so abruptly far from us that it broke and went out... and was lost to us...

What I had just seen in M. de Chagny’s hands... was powder!

[Note 11: At the time the Persian was writing, one readily understands that he took such precautions against the spirit of incredulity; today, when everyone has been able to see such rooms, they would be superfluous.]

“Stories of the world, in your language.”