And he gulped down a breath of hot air that nearly made him faint.
As I had not the same desperate reasons as M. le Vicomte for accepting
death, I returned, after giving him a word of encouragement, to my
panel, but I had made the mistake of taking a few steps while speaking
and, in the tangle of the illusive forest, I was no longer able to find
my panel for certain! I had to begin all over again, at random,
feeling, fumbling, groping.
Now the fever laid hold of me in my turn ... for I found nothing,
absolutely nothing. In the next room, all was silence. We were quite
lost in the forest, without an outlet, a compass, a guide or anything.
Oh, I knew what awaited us if nobody came to our aid ... or if I did
not find the spring! But, look as I might, I found nothing but
branches, beautiful branches that stood straight up before me, or
spread gracefully over my head. But they gave no shade. And this was
natural enough, as we were in an equatorial forest, with the sun right
above our heads, an African forest.
M. de Chagny and I had repeatedly taken off our coats and put them on
again, finding at one time that they made us feel still hotter and at
another that they protected us against the heat. I was still making a
moral resistance, but M. de Chagny seemed to me quite "gone." He
pretended that he had been walking in that forest for three days and
nights, without stopping, looking for Christine Daae! From time to
time, he thought he saw her behind the trunk of a tree, or gliding
between the branches; and he called to her with words of supplication
that brought the tears to my eyes. And then, at last: "Oh, how thirsty I am!" he cried, in delirious accents.
I too was thirsty. My throat was on fire. And, yet, squatting on the
floor, I went on hunting, hunting, hunting for the spring of the
invisible door ... especially as it was dangerous to remain in the
forest as evening drew nigh. Already the shades of night were
beginning to surround us. It had happened very quickly: night falls
quickly in tropical countries ... suddenly, with hardly any twilight.
Now night, in the forests of the equator, is always dangerous,
particularly when, like ourselves, one has not the materials for a fire
to keep off the beasts of prey. I did indeed try for a moment to break
off the branches, which I would have lit with my dark lantern, but I
knocked myself also against the mirrors and remembered, in time, that
we had only images of branches to do with.