Lastly—and this was the most pitiless torture of all—we heard the rain and it was not raining! This was an infernal invention. … Oh, I knew well enough how Erik obtained it! He filled with little stones a very long and narrow box, broken up inside with wooden and metal projections. The stones, in falling, struck against these projections and rebounded from one to another; and the result was a series of pattering sounds that exactly imitated a rainstorm.
Ah, you should have seen us putting out our tongues and dragging ourselves toward the rippling riverbank! Our eyes and ears were full of water, but our tongues were hard and dry as horn!
When we reached the mirror, M. de Chagny licked it … and I also licked the glass.
It was burning hot!
Then we rolled on the floor with a hoarse cry of despair. M. de Chagny put the one pistol that was still loaded to his temple; and I stared at the Punjab lasso at the foot of the iron tree. I knew why the iron tree had returned, in this third change of scene! … The iron tree was waiting for me! …
But, as I stared at the Punjab lasso, I saw a thing that made me start so violently that M. de Chagny delayed his attempt at suicide. I took his arm. And then I caught the pistol from him … and then I dragged myself on my knees toward what I had seen.
I had discovered, near the Punjab lasso, in a groove in the floor, a black-headed nail of which I knew the use. At last I had discovered the spring! I felt the nail. … I lifted a radiant face to M. de Chagny. … The black-headed nail yielded to my pressure. …
And then. …