THE GROTTOES OF HAN. 239 



thing. It is only a great deafening roar which, by 

 the way, you hear just as well outside, as if you had 

 paid your half-franc extra " for a fine headache," as a 

 sober English vicar put it last summer. 



Armed with two paraffin lamps, one at each end 

 of a crossbar, are the lads and lasses who walk one 

 between every two or three visitors to show the way 

 through the Stygian darkness of the caves. We fall 

 into line and start off down stone steps into the gloom 

 of the grotto. At first we follow apparently the wind- 

 ings of the river channels, and in succession pass 

 through a series of caves, or salles, representing the 

 slower work of water as regards their excavation. 



The Salles Maree and Nouvelle are thus passed 

 through, and then comes the Salle des Scarabees, 

 deriving its name from the beetles which fed on the 

 remains of the prey devoured therein by the foxes, 

 which have given their name to the adjoining Salle 

 des Renards. Now and then the guide, whose con- 

 versation is of a highly voluble kind, stops to direct 

 attention to the wondrous limestone formations that 

 mark the interior of the various caves. There are 

 stalactites and stalagmites by the hundred, large and 

 small. 



Occasionally you may fancy you are standing in the 

 nave of some cathedral, while at the next step you 

 come face to face with a mass of limestone which has 

 dripped and dripped through the long ages and in the 

 silence and darkness until it has come to assume the 

 form of a veritable solidified sheet of water. Hence 

 the name of " cascade " it has received. The glare 

 of the lamps causes this mass of limestone to glisten 

 as if it were frozen water. Then we ascend higher, 

 until we come to the Salle Vigneron and its curious 



