..a dark staircase leading into the cellar.
The viscount wanted to fling himself down the hole; but I,
fearing a new trick of the monster's, stopped him, turned on
my dark lantern and went down first.
The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness.
But oh, how deliciously cool were the darkness and the stairs?
The lake could not be far away.
We soon reached the bottom. Our eyes were beginning to accustom
themselves to the dark, to distinguish shapes around us...
circular shapes...on which I turned the light of my lantern.
Barrels!
We were in Erik's cellar: it was here that he must keep his wine
and perhaps his drinking-water. I knew that Erik was a great lover
of good wine. Ah, there was plenty to drink here!
M. de Chagny patted the round shapes and kept on saying:
"Barrels! Barrels! What a lot of barrels!..."
Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged
in two rows, one on either side of us. They were small barrels
and I thought that Erik must have selected them of that size
to facilitate their carriage to the house on the lake.
We examined them successively, to see if one of them had not
a funnel, showing that it had been tapped at some time or another.
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