Then we plough our way upwards again; up fungus-covered ladders, and wet, slippery stairs, upon which it is most difficult to keep a footing, until we arrive at decidedly the finest sight there—the salle du sabbat. Here the guides send up a spirit-balloon, to show us the height and extent of the vast cavern, and we are rather awe-struck, particularly as, in order that we may see the full effect, the other guide plants us on three chairs and takes away both the lamps, leaving us seated in the darkness, on the edge of a precipice. The blackness is so thick about us that we can almost feel it; and the silence is that of death. My youngest girl slips her little hand in mine, and whispers, ‘Mamma, supposing he weren’t to come back again!’ and I can’t say the prospect pleases. However, the balloon reaches the top of the cavern, and is hauled back again; and the guide does come back; and, whilst he is assisting his fellow to pack it away, I sing a verse of ‘God save the Queen,’ for the children to hear the echo, which is stupendous.
Then we see the prettiest thing, perhaps, we have seen yet. At the top of the salle du sabbat there is a kind of breakage in the side, and a large cluster of stalactites. One guide climbs up to this place and holds his lamp behind the group, whilst the other calls out ‘la femme qui repose;’ when lo! before us there appears almost an exact representation of a woman, reclining with crossed legs, and a child on her bosom. It is so good an imitation, that it might be a figure carved in stone and placed there, and I think the sight gave us more pleasure than anything in the grotto. We have come upon several groups of stalactites already, to which the guides have given names, such as l’ange de la résurrection, l’oreille de l’éléphant, and le lion Belge; but though they have, of course, borne some resemblance to the figures mentioned, the likeness is only admitted for want of a better. This likeness, however, is excellent, could hardly be more like; and we are proportionately pleased. With the salle du sabbat and the balloon the exhibition is ended; and we are thankful to emerge into the fresh air again, and to leave slippery staircases and the smell of fungi behind us.
We feel very heated when we stand on the breezy hill again, for the grotto, contrary to our expectation, has proved exceedingly warm, and the exercise has made us feel more so; and daylight looks so strange that we can scarcely persuade ourselves we have not been passing the night down below. We have picked up several little loose bits of stone and stalactite during our progress, and when we reach home, we spread them out before us on the table, and try to remember where they came from. Here is a bit of marble, veined black-and-white; and here is white stone, glistening and silvery. Here is the stalactite, a veritable piece of ‘frozen tears’ and couchant houris.
Well, we have been a little disappointed with the grottoes of Rochefort, perhaps; we have not found the crystallisations quite so purple-and-amber as we anticipated, or the foundations quite so clean; but, after all, it is what we must expect in this life. If the grotto is not so brilliant as we expected, it is at least a very wonderful and uncommon sight; and so in this life, if we can but forget the purple-and-gold, we may extract a great deal of amusement from very small things, if we choose to try. With which bit of philosophy I conclude.
A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE;
Or, The Amateur Detective.
I am an author. I am something worse than that—I am a Press writer. I am worse than that still—I am a Press writer with a large wife and a small family. And I am an Amateur Detective! I don’t mean, of course, that I reckon the last item as part of my profession, but my friends always come to me if they are in any difficulty, and set me to do all kinds of queer jobs, from restoring and reconciling a truant husband to his wife, to making the round of the ‘Homes for Lost Dogs’ in order to find Lady Softsawder’s pet poodle. Even Jones couldn’t complete his great work, ‘The Cyclopædia of the Brain,’ without asking my assistance (for a consideration, of course) with his fifth section, ‘The Origin of Dreams.’ Jones is full of fire and imagination, but he does not care for plodding, and he knew me of old for a good steady compiler. I agreed with alacrity. ‘The Origin of Dreams’ would fill those hungry little mouths of mine for three months at the very least. But how to do it whilst they gaped around me!—how to cover the one table in my solitary sitting-room with valuable works of reference at the risk of their being touched by greasy fingers!—how to wade through volume after volume, placing a mental mark there and a material one here, whilst my offspring either surreptitiously removed the one or irretrievably obliterated remembrance of the other, by attracting my attention to the manner in which they attempted to scalp each other’s heads or gouge out each other’s eyes! I tried it for a week in vain.
My Press work I had been accustomed to do at office, but this, which was to be based upon the contents of certain ponderous black-lettered tomes which Jones had been collecting for ages past, must be carried on at home, and the noisy, wearisome day gave me no time for reflection, and left me without energy to labour at night. I was about to resign the task in despair—to tell Jones to give it to some more capable or more fortunate labourer in the wide field of speculation—when Fate came to my rescue in the person of the Hon. Captain Rivers, Lord Seaborne’s son.