"Another?"
"Yes—and this one branches off into two in the middle. Beyond that there is a labyrinth of turns and zigzags, because the miners have to make galleries which, when they are worked out, are deserted and left to their fate. Go on Choto."
Choto slipped into a little opening that looked scarcely bigger than a rabbit-hole, followed by the doctor and his guide, who felt his way along the dark, narrow, crooked passage with his stick. There could be no better evidence of the delicacy and subtlety of the sense of touch, extending beyond the skin of a human hand through a piece of senseless wood. They went forwards, at first in a curve, and then round corner after corner, and all the way between walls of damp, and half-rotten planking.
"Do you know what this reminds me of?" said the doctor, perceiving that his guide took pleasure in similes and comparisons. "Of nothing so much as the thoughts of perverse man. We represent the consciousness of evil, when he looks into his conscience and sees himself in all his vileness."
Golfin fancied that he had used a metaphor rather above his companion's comprehension; but the blind boy proved that he was mistaken, for he said at once:
"For those to whom that inner world looks dark and gloomy, these galleries must be dismal indeed; but I, who live in perpetual darkness, find here something which has an affinity with my own nature. I can walk here as you would in the broadest road. If it were not for the want of air in some parts and the excessive damp in others, I should prefer these subterranean passages to any place I know."
"That is an idea of brooding fancy."
"I feel as if there were in my brain a narrow passage—a rabbit-hole—like this that we are walking in, and there my ideas run riot grandly."
"Ah! what a pity that you should never have seen the azure vault of the sky at mid-day!" the doctor exclaimed involuntarily. "Tell me, does this dark hole—in which your ideas run riot so grandly—lead out anywhere?"
"Oh yes! we shall be outside quite soon now. The vault of the sky you said—I fancy it must be a perfect, equal curve, which looks as if we could touch it with our hands, but we cannot really."