took possession of my soul. My lamp, by falling down, had got out
of order. I had no means of repairing it. Its light was already becoming
paler and paler, and soon would expire.

With a strange sense of resignation and despair, I watched the luminous
current in the coil getting less and less. A procession of shadows moved
flashing along the granite wall. I scarcely dared to lower my eyelids,
fearing to lose the last spark of this fugitive light. Every instant it
seemed to me that it was about to vanish and to leave me forever--in
utter darkness!

At last, one final trembling flame remained in the lamp; I followed it
with all my power of vision; I gasped for breath; I concentrated upon it
all the power of my soul, as upon the last scintillation of light I was
ever destined to see: and then I was to be lost forever in Cimmerian and
tenebrous shades.

A wild and plaintive cry escaped my lips. On earth during the most
profound and comparatively complete darkness, light never allows a
complete destruction and extinction of its power. Light is so diffuse,
so subtle, that it permeates everywhere, and whatever little may remain,
the retina of the eye will succeed in finding it. In this place
nothing--the absolute obscurity made me blind in every sense.

My head was now wholly lost. I raised my arms, trying the effects of the
feeling in getting against the cold stone wall. It was painful in the
extreme. Madness must have taken possession of me. I knew not what I
did. I began to run, to fly, rushing at haphazard in this inextricable
labyrinth, always going downwards, running wildly underneath the
terrestrial crust, like an inhabitant of the subterranean furnaces,
screaming, roaring, howling, until bruised by the pointed rocks, falling
and picking myself up all covered with blood, seeking madly to drink the
blood which dripped from my torn features, mad because this blood only
trickled over my face, and watching always for this horrid wall which
ever presented to me the fearful obstacle against which I could not dash
my head.

Where was I going? It was impossible to say. I was perfectly ignorant of
the matter.

Several hours passed in this way. After a long time, having utterly
exhausted my strength, I fell a heavy inert mass along the side of the
tunnel, and lost consciousness.

CHAPTER 25

THE WHISPERING GALLERY

When at last I came back to a sense of life and being, my face was wet,
but wet, as I soon knew