"At the moment of my fall, even while I was so rapidly covering the space which separated me from the soil of the Catacombs, my presence of mind did not forsake me. I was aware that I was falling into those thousand-year-old subways which interlace their innumerable and capricious windings under the soil of Paris. The next thing I was aware of was a slight and painful numbness which followed my recovery from the insensibility into which I had been plunged by the inevitable shock. I was, then, in the Catacombs. At once I said to myself, 'Above all things I must not be old-fashioned.' "It would have been old-fashioned, for example, to utter cries of despair, to appeal to Providence, or to strike my brow against the wall of the passage. It would have been old-fashioned to find at the bottom of my pocket a bar of chocolate and at once divide it into eight pieces which would have represented assured sustenance for eight days. It would have been equally old-fashioned to find a candle-end in my pocket--a place in which no rational human being ever keeps candle-ends--and five or six matches, and so create the harrowing problem whether one ought to let the candle burn once it was lighted, or blow it out and rekindle it at the cost of another match, a problem which often interferes with the digestions of whole families who read romances. "I had nothing in my pocket. I assured myself of the fact with extreme satisfaction; and in the darkness of the Catacombs I slapped my pockets, repeating: 'Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!' "At the same moment it occurred to me that it would be quite up-to-date for a man in my situation to illuminate without further delay the opaque darkness which weighed so heavily on my eyes and tired them, with a sudden and radiant electric star. Had I not, before falling into this hole, bought half a dozen electric lamps of the latest pattern? The parcel must have accompanied me in my fall. Without stirring I groped about and laid my hand on it. By great good luck the lamps were unbroken; I took one of them and pressed the button. The excavation was lighted by a fairy glow; and I could not refrain from smiling at the unfortunate wretch who, shut up in some cavern, invariably crawls along, holding his breath, behind a miserable little flame which presently he hurriedly blows out. "I rose to my feet, and examined the ceiling. I had known that the streets were up, and that the work was nearly finished. I was the less surprised therefore, on looking up through the hole through which I had fallen, to see no spark of daylight, and to realise that it had been quite bricked up. Now several yards of earth separated me from living creatures, without the slightest possibility of my boring through them, even if the ceiling had not been far too high for me to reach. I satisfied myself of this without any feeling of annoyance; then, having turned my electric ray on the floor, I perceived a body.