“‘Here are two galleries; which are you going to take? One goes almost directly back to our starting-point, the other directly away from it.’ As our design was to go away from our starting-point, M. Longuet showed me the first gallery.
“‘I was sure of it!’ I exclaimed. ‘But you disregard the entire principle. The experimental method has for centuries demonstrated that at the bottom of the catacombs all individuals who wish to come back to their point of setting out (to the entrance of the catacombs) go away from it; then the whole logic of it is, to go away from one’s point of starting out, one must take the way which apparently brings one back to it.’ And so we decided on the gallery which seemed to us to bring us back over our steps, so we were sure of not having made a useless trip. That system was excellent, for it led us into a certain region of the catacombs that no one had visited before, since the fourteenth century, otherwise it would have been known.”
CHAPTER XXXII
A Dissertation on Fish
M. LONGUET had from the first been complaining of his great hunger. He was getting very weak, and the end of the thirty-sixth hour saw him cursing their misfortune. However, what would have been the good of a little food? They were buried alive, and food would have been like a buoy to a shipwrecked sailor, alone in the middle of the ocean. It could only serve to prolong the agony.
M. Mifroid was more philosophical. He said that if there had been anything to eat to give them strength to continue their way, he would have been the first to suggest their stopping. But, with the exception of some mushrooms, probably poisonous, that his watchful eye had seen, there was nothing, so he urged M. Longuet to tramp on. M. Longuet, however, was unreasonable; he said he was hungry, and yet did not seem able to exert himself to get out of the catacombs.
He asked M. Mifroid question after question as to the catacombs and what he could eat to stay his terrible hunger. M. Mifroid tried to keep him interested by telling him of a visit he had made to the laboratory in the catacombs of M. M. Edwards. He told him of the fauna and the flora in obscure and cavernous places, of which, if necessary, he could make a meal.
Although the conversation was in vain, as far as its effects on Théophraste were concerned, M. Mifroid kept on. Hungry men are always eager to talk of things to eat, and although he didn’t wish to acknowledge his hunger, he spoke of these things, and in endeavoring to put spirit into Théophraste allayed his own feelings.