There was a point--roughly undistinguishable from the rest--where a welded mass of calcareous bone and rubbish lay upon the litter. This was, in effect, a door in one piece, with an infant’s skull for handle and concealed hinges of gut to one side to prevent its slipping out of place. Removed, it revealed a black mouth opening into an inner vacancy. “Underneath lies a great box or kennel of wood,” said Gusman, “with a manhole cut in its side; and round and over the box the stuff is piled. At the very word of warning, creep in and close the entrance. It is like enough ye will need it.” “And here we are to stay?” “That is according to your inclination.” “But _Mor’ Dieu_, my friend! if thou wert to forget or overlook us entombed in this oubliette?” “_Soyez content._ I might forget thou wert lacking food, but never that the citizen President gave thee a purse.” “But----” “Tst, tst! Wouldst thou explore farther my city of shadows? Here the wild quarries merge into the catacombs. Hence, a little space, thou wilt find company and to spare;--light, also, if Mademoiselle wills.” The poor child uttered a heart-moving sigh. “Come, then,” said Gusman, with a shrug of his shoulders. He preceded us the length of a single corridor, low and narrow--a mere human mole-run. All throughout it the rock seemed to grip us, the air to draw like wire into our lungs. And then, suddenly, we were come to a parapet of stone that cut our path like a whitewashed hoarding. For through a fissure in the plain above it a wedge of light entered--a very wise virgin with her lamp shining like snow;--and under the beam we stopped, and gazed upwards, and could not gaze enough. But, for Carinne--she was translated! She laughed; she murmured; she made as if she caught the sweet wash like water in her hands and bathed her face with it. “And now I am ready,” said she. Then we scaled the wall, jumping to a lower terrace of rock: and thereafter ran the corridor again, descending, but now of ample enough width and showing a design of masonry at intervals, and sometimes great stone supports to the roof where houses lay above. And in a moment our path swept into a monstrous field of bones--confused, myriad, piled up like slag about a pit-mouth; and we thridded our way therethrough along a dusty gully, and emerged at once into a high vaulted cavern and the view of living things. Living things!--_Grand Dieu!_ the bats of the living Terror. They peered from holes and alcoves; they mowed and chattered; they shook their sooty locks at us and hailed Gusman in the jargon of the underworld. Thieves and rogues and cowards--here they swarmed in the warrens of despair, the very sacristans of devil-worship, the unclean acolytes of the desecrated rock-chapels, whose books of the Gospel were long since torn for fuel.