Next hours passed . . . or seconds. In the end Patrice had a feeling that he was falling asleep, but as a man sleeps in hell, suffering the moral and physical tortures of the damned. He was back at the bottom of the black pit, which he was making desperate efforts to leave, like a man who has fallen into the sea and is trying to reach the surface. In this way, with the greatest difficulty, he passed through one waste of water after another, the weight of which stifled him. He had to scale them, gripping with his hands and feet to things that slipped, to rope-ladders which, possessing no points of support, gave way beneath him. Meanwhile the darkness became less intense. A little muffled daylight mingled with it. Patrice felt less greatly oppressed. He half-opened his eyes, drew a breath or two and, looking round, beheld a sight that surprised him, the embrasure of an open door, near which he was lying in the air, on a sofa. Beside him he saw Coralie, on another sofa. She moved restlessly and seemed to be in great discomfort. "She is climbing out of the black pit," he thought to himself. "Like me, she is struggling. My poor Coralie!" There was a small table between them, with two glasses of water on it. Parched with thirst, he took one of them in his hand. But he dared not drink. At that moment some one came through the open door, which Patrice perceived to be the door of the lodge; and he observed that it was not old Siméon, as he had thought, but a stranger whom he had never seen before. "I am not asleep," he said to himself. "I am sure that I am not asleep and that this stranger is a friend." And he tried to say it aloud, to make certainty doubly sure. But he had not the strength. The stranger, however, came up to him and, in a gentle voice, said: "Don't tire yourself, captain. You're all right now. Allow me. Have some water." The stranger handed him one of the two glasses; Patrice emptied it at a draught, without any feeling of distrust, and was glad to see Coralie also drinking. "Yes, I'm all right now," he said. "Heavens, how good it is to be alive! Coralie is really alive, isn't she?" He did not hear the answer and dropped into a welcome sleep. When he woke up, the crisis was over, though he still felt a buzzing in his head and a difficulty in drawing a deep breath. He stood up, however, and realized that all these sensations were not fanciful, that he was really outside the door of the lodge and that Coralie had drunk the glass of water and was peacefully sleeping. "How good it is to be alive!" he repeated. He now felt a need for action, but dared not go into the lodge, notwithstanding the open door. He moved away from it, skirting the cloisters containing the graves, and then, with no exact object, for he did not yet grasp the reason of his own actions, did not understand what had happened to him and was simply walking at random, he came back towards the lodge, on the other front, the one overlooking the garden.