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resemblance to the actor Ed Harris, same high cheek bones and grin and same shaven widow's peak on his dome. Like all cataphiles, he goes by his cave handle, his catanym: Lezard Peint, translated as "The Painted Lizard," makes me think, rightly in his case, of the chameleon. For Lezard, whose real name is Eric Valleye, is known as a master of subterfuge, one of the nastiest pranksters in the underworld. "Christopher, watch out with Peint," one cata·girl had counseled. "He is feared by many. Sometimes he steals people's lights and maps and backpacks, and then you must find your way out in the dark. Fortunately, you don't stay lost for long, someone else usually comes along. Still, he once forced a friend of mine to walk out of the catacombs naked." map. We doubled back, cut right, left, got swamped in some very high water, and about-faced once more. Gadget was delighted. "This is where it gets good," he said. "This is why we descend. This is when you feel like a child again or like a young man who has just made love." We stumbled down a tunnel thick with smoke, acrid choking fumes that stung the eyes. Lezard had been here. Visibility dropped to two feet, blue in our light. "You guys ever get hurt down here?" I asked. "Anyone ever die?" "Oh, people open their skulls on the ceilings or they trip and hurt their ankles, but there is only one death we know for certain," replied Gadget, descending a staircase out of the plume. "Philibert Aspairt. Two hundred years ago." And now, after much turning and twisting, When I first met Lezard in a cafe on the Left Bank, I confronted him with these stories. Hearing his own legend recounted amused him to no end. Lezard does not live what would be considered a healthy life. For starters, he never sees the sun, saying it makes him sleepy and weak. He plans his life accordingly, turning in at dawn and waking at dusk, freelancing his web services from his home. (Generally, he refused to meet or interview before midnight. "I'm still digesting breakfast," he'd tell me around 9 PM.) This has been his biological schedule for close to ten years, so you'd think his bones would have gone brittle from lack of vitamin D, and that he'd be pale, sickly and rotten-toothed. But his Cheshire-cat grin is testament that he has thrived on this unconventional lifestyle and is proud of the litany of his perceived crimes. "The naked guy? I've done that many times," he told me. "Many times! We always make it hard on the neophytes, the newbies. But I did not force these people to do what they did. They were complaining about their wet tennis shoes - amateurs, not much courage in them - and they greeted me in misery, and I said, screamed more like, 'No! We do not talk! Get naked! Now! It is june 8, the day in the catacombs when we wear only the right sock!'" And, according to Lezard, the young men took off their clothes. just like that. They could've told Lezard to go to hell-he wasn't armed, wasn't I physically threatening them, it was four against two- but they didn't. They departed with one sock, a key for home, a candle and two matches. So it was no surprise that when we broke camp, Lezard started lighting firecrackers to ease his boredom. Smoke and echoing blasts, confusion, yowling, laughter and voila: Lezard and three of his buddies had vanished. I was left with a squirrelly little bespectacled clown named Gadget, who was coughing and half-blinded and tittering maniacally, and a quiet stocky older guy named Christophe, both of whom I'd known for exactly two hours. "Come," said Gadget, in kooky English. He extended a hand. "Come wiz me. I take you. Dead or alive. Come wiz me." Soon we were very lost. "I'm missing something here," said Christophe, consulting his we were passing by Aspairt's white limestone tomb, which was a good sign, it meant Christophe had gotten his bearings. Aspairt is a revered, almost mythical figure. His grave is a pilgrimage spot for cataphiles, who decorate it with fresh lilies and votive candles. Aspairt, a porter at the Val de Grace hospital, visited the catacombs on what became a famous mission of theft: He hoped to pilfer the wine caves of the monks of Chartreux. Aspairt disappeared on All Saint's Day in 1793. His body was discovered 11 years later. He died clutching an enormous ring of keys, just a few yards from an exit. The irony was not lost on his discoverers who buried him where he lay. It is believed that somewhere along the journey Aspairt's torch went out. He likely roamed in the darkness for days. We stood silently at the grave for a moment before heading down another tunnel. From the approaching distance we heard footsteps not our own. Were they behind us? Beyond the wall? Lezard and his crew shadowing us, playing games? "Shht!" said Gadget. "Police?" "Shht!" "Maybe police," Gadget finally said, and we threw ourselves headfirst into the hole. *** The cataphiles are in relentless war, "une guerre souterraine," as Gadget calls it. Headlamped cave- cops cruise the underground, chasing out trespassers, handing out l,ooo-franc fines (approx. US$140). Manholes are soldered from above; whole teams descend hauling cement and cinder-blocks-an awful sweaty job-to block off passages and seal up the rabbit-holes. To no avail. Within days, the cataphiles go on the attack, using crowbars, sledgehammers, shovels, hydraulic jacks, high- powered rock drills: smashing the walls, busting the careful solders. One legendary manhole was closed, reopened and closed again twenty times in one week. The police, of course, find this infuriating; the cataphiles think it's hilarious. The most famous of the cata-cops, Gadget tells me, was jean-Claude Saratte, recently retired, a fat old man with a pug nose, loud voice and truculent