Page:Gaston Leroux--The man with the black feather.djvu/286

262 a slight and painful numbness which followed my recovery from the insensibility into which I had been plunged by the inevitable shock. I was, then, in the Catacombs. At once I said to myself, 'Above all things I must not be old-fashioned.'

"It would have been old-fashioned, for example, to utter cries of despair, to appeal to Providence, or to strike my brow against the wall of the passage. It would have been old-fashioned to find at the bottom of my pocket a bar of chocolate and at once divide it into eight pieces which would have represented assured sustenance for eight days. It would have been equally old-fashioned to find a candle-end in my pocket—a place in which no rational human being ever keeps candle-ends—and five or six matches, and so create the harrowing problem whether one ought to let the candle burn once it was lighted, or blow it out and rekindle it at the cost of another match, a problem which often interferes with the digestions of whole families who read romances.

"I had nothing in my pocket. I assured myself of the fact with extreme satisfaction; and in the darkness of the Catacombs I slapped my pockets, repeating: 'Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!'