XXVI. FAUT-IL TOURNER LE SCORPION? FAUT-IL TOURNER LA SAUTERELLE?

XXVI

SHOULD THE SCORPION BE TURNED? SHOULD THE GRASSHOPPER BE TURNED?

(_End of the Persian's account._)

Thus, in descending to the bottom of the vault, I had touched the very depths of my thought, dreadful! The wretch had not deceived me with his vague threats against many of the human race! Outside humanity, he had built himself far from men a den of an underground beast, fully resolved to blow everything up with him in a blazing catastrophe if those above the earth came to hunt him in the lair where he had taken refuge in his monstrous ugliness.

The discovery we had just made threw us into such agitation that we forgot all our past sorrows, all our present sufferings... Our extraordinary situation, even though but a moment ago we had found ourselves on the very brink of suicide, had never yet appeared to us with more precise terror. We now understood all that the monster had meant and all that he had said to Christine Daaé, and all that the abominable phrase signified:

“Stories of the world, in your language.”