For we not only saw the water, but WE HEARD IT!...We heard
it flow, we heard it ripple!...Do you understand that word
"ripple?"...IT IS A SOUND WHICH YOU HEAR WITH YOUR TONGUE!
...You put your tongue out of your mouth to listen to it better!
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 river-bank! 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.
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