i made him touch the mirrors and the iron tree and the branches and explained to him, by optical laws, all the luminous imagery by which we were surrounded and of which we need not allow ourselves to be the victims, like ordinary, ignorant people.
"we are in a room, a little room; that is what you must keep saying to yourself.and we shall leave the room as soon as we have found the door."and i promised him that, if he let me act, without disturbing me by shouting and walking up and down, i would discover the trick of the door in less than an hour's time.
then he lay flat on the floor, as one does in a wood, and declared that he would wait until i found the door of the forest, as there was nothing better to do! and he added that, from where he was, "the view was splendid!" the torture was working, in spite of all that i had said.
myself, forgetting the forest, i tackled a glass panel and began to finger it in every direction, hunting for the weak point on which to press in order to turn the door in accordance with erik's system of pivots.this weak point might be a mere speck on the glass, no larger than a pea, under which the spring lay hidden.
i hunted and hunted.i felt as high as my hands could reach.
erik was about the same height as myself and i thought that he would not have placed the spring higher than suited his stature.
while groping over the successive panels with the greatest care, i endeavored not to lose a minute, for i was feeling more and more overcome with the heat and we were literally roasting in that blazing forest.
i had been working like this for half an hour and had finished three panels, when, as ill-luck would have it, i turned round on hearing a muttered exclamation from the viscount.
"i am stifling," he said."all those mirrors are sending out an infernal heat! do you think you will find that spring soon?
if you are much longer about it, we shall be roasted alive!"i was not sorry to hear him talk like this.he had not said a word of the forest and i hoped that my companion's reason would hold out some time longer against the torture.but he added: