“I kept on, seeing that he was impressed, and he spoke no more of his hunger, and forgot his thirst. I profited by it to make him lengthen his step, and I burst into the most entrancing song which came into my mind. He took it up, and we sang in chorus:= ```“‘Au pas, comerade, au pas, ````La route est belle! ```J’aura du frictiti la bas, ````Dans la gamelle!’= “It was this which made him keep step. “One gets tired of singing very quickly in the catacombs, because the voice does not carry; so when we had got tired M. Longuet asked a hundred more questions. He asked me how many meters there were over our heads. I told him that that could vary, from the latest reports, from 5m.82 and 79 meters. Sometimes, I told him, the crust of earth was so thin that it was necessary to extend the foundations of the tombs as far as the bottom of the catacombs. So that we might, in the course of our peregrinations, encounter the pillars of Saint Sulpice de St. Etienne du Mont, of the Pantheon of the Val de Grace, of the Odeon. These monuments are erected in some way on the subterranean pilings. “‘Really, in the course of our peregrinations we risk encountering some of these subterranean pilings.’ But he had his own fixed idea. “‘And in the course of our peregrinations, is there any chance of our coming upon an exit? Are there many ways out of the catacombs?’ “‘There are not,’ I replied; ‘there is need of them. First of all, there are egresses into the quarter.’ “‘So much the better,’ he interrupted. “‘And other ways out that some know of, but by which none are ever admitted, but which exist, nevertheless, in the caves of the Pantheon, in those of the College of Henry IV, of the Hospital of the Undi, of some houses in the Rue d’Enfer, of Vangirard, of the Tombe Issoire at Passy, at Chaillot, at Saint Maur, at Clarenton, at Gentilly—more than sixty. In order to safeguard building construction, an ordinance was made which closed all the openings to the catacombs. It is that ordinance, my dear M. Longuet, which has almost walled us in.’ “At that moment we struck an enormous pillar. I examined its construction, and said without stopping: ‘Here is a pillar which was used by the architects of Louis XVI in 1778, then of the Consolidation.’ “‘Poor Louis XVI!’ said M. Longuet. ‘He had better have consolidated royalty.’ “M. Longuet had taken the electric lamp from my hands, and did not cease to throw the rays to the right and left, as if he was looking for something. I asked him the reason of this, which would fatigue the eyes. “‘I am looking for some corpses,’ he said. “‘Some corpses!’ “‘Skeletons. I have heard that the walls of the catacombs are hung with skeletons.’