Darker and darker as we descend through this tunnel. Orpheus going to find Eurydice. No Cerberus about, thank goodness. Wonder if any rats or blackbeetles? By the way, Cerberus would have been a nasty one for rats. Cerberus, with three to one on him ("Heads I win--tails you rats lose"), doing a match against time in killing rats, is a fine subject for a weird classical picture yet to be painted. What R.A. could grapple with so tremendous a composition? On returning to "carp the upper air," must mention the subject to Sir FREDERICK the Great. Cerberus would be a nasty one for rats to tackle. My ideas of anything alive underground are generally associated with suchlike warmint. At last--out of the tunnel! and now, I presume, in the caves. Here someone, gradually assuming a palpable form, emerges from somewhere out of a dark corner, and hands to each of us a long piece of wood about the length of a harlequin's bat (_note_, pantomime again), only that this is an inch or so thick and quite two inches wide at one end, where presently a candle is fixed by an attendant sprite,--the slave of the tallow candle,--and the wand, so to speak, tapers off towards the handle. _À propos_ of "tapers off"--the question occurs to me, later on, as we pass through labyrinths of dark passages, where should I be in the case of "taper off"? Beautiful title for sensational story--"Lost in the Catacombs." Our trusty guide, M. VESQUIER, is well ahead, and DAUBINET follows closely at my heels. Thus we proceed, and if this order is preserved throughout, I feel that the sensational romance above mentioned will not be written, at least not on this occasion. We are in stalactite caverns; I expect a subterranean lake,--of still champagne of course,--and a boat; strange silver foil and gold foil fish ought to be swimming about, and the name of the subterranean lake should be Loch Foil, Loch Gold or Silver Foil, according to the material. No, nothing of the sort. It is all quite dry; uncommonly dry; atmosphere dry; ground dry; and, gradually, throats dry. Probably, champagne also dry. But remembering what I have heard of someone else's experience of Dock-visiting, which I presume is similar to cave-visiting, I do not mention my sudden drought. I feel that, while down here, if I took one glass of champagne, my head first, and then my legs, might become unsteady, whereupon nothing would be more likely than for me to take the wrong turning and lose my companions; if I did, what are the chances against my ever finding them again? Or if my legs failed me and I disappeared between the casks, who would think of looking for me there? Then, years afterwards, in some specially and unaccountably good vintage year, when there would be a run upon these particular casks, my mouldering skeleton would be found, among the sawdust, between the barrels, and some purveyor of ballads would write a song whereof the burden would not be unlike that of the once popular