“From the third cellar, from which we were so unluckily driven away. We will go back there now.⁠ ⁠… I will tell you,” said the Persian, with a sudden change in his voice, “I will tell you the exact place, sir: it is between a set piece and a discarded scene from Roi de Lahore , exactly at the spot where Joseph Buquet died.⁠ ⁠… Come, sir, take courage and follow me! And hold your hand at the level of your eyes!⁠ ⁠… But where are we?”

The Persian lit his lamp again and flung its rays down two enormous corridors that crossed each other at right angles.

“We must be,” he said, “in the part used more particularly for the waterworks. I see no fire coming from the furnaces.”

He went in front of Raoul, seeking his road, stopping abruptly when he was afraid of meeting some waterman. Then they had to protect themselves against the glow of a sort of underground forge, which the men were extinguishing, and at which Raoul recognized the demons whom Christine had seen at the time of her first captivity.