“‘Au pas, comerade, au pas,
La route est belle!
J’aura du frictiti la bas,
Dans la gamelle!’
“It was this which made him keep step.
“One gets tired of singing very quickly in the catacombs, because the voice does not carry; so when we had got tired M. Longuet asked a hundred more questions. He asked me how many meters there were over our heads. I told him that that could vary, from the latest reports, from 5m.82 and 79 meters. Sometimes, I told him, the crust of earth was so thin that it was necessary to extend the foundations of the tombs as far as the bottom of the catacombs. So that we might, in the course of our peregrinations, encounter the pillars of Saint Sulpice de St. Etienne du Mont, of the Pantheon of the Val de Grace, of the Odeon. These monuments are erected in some way on the subterranean pilings.
“‘Really, in the course of our peregrinations we risk encountering some of these subterranean pilings.’ But he had his own fixed idea.
“‘And in the course of our peregrinations, is there any chance of our coming upon an exit? Are there many ways out of the catacombs?’
“‘There are not,’ I replied; ‘there is need of them. First of all, there are egresses into the quarter.’
“‘So much the better,’ he interrupted.