...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.
in this way, they gradually arrived beneath the huge cellars below the stage.they must at this time have been at the very bottom of the "tub" and at an extremely great depth, when we remember that the earth was dug out at fifty feet below the water that lay under the whole of that part of paris.[6]
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[6] all the water had to be exhausted, in the building of the opera.
to give an idea of the amount of water that was pumped up, i can tell the reader that it represented the area of the courtyard of the louvre and a height half as deep again as the towers of notre dame.and nevertheless the engineers had to leave a lake.
sounding on the floor of the upper portions of the theater.
the persian touched a partition-wall and said: