Phantom- Gunpowder

  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!
...
  “What’s this?” cried the viscount. “This isn’t water!”

  The viscount put his two full hands close to my lantern … I stooped to look … and at once threw away the lantern with such violence that it broke and went out, leaving us in utter darkness.

  What I had seen in M. de Chagny’s hands … was gun-powder!
...
Nevertheless, I had sufficient lucidity left to understand that, if the grasshopper were turned, it would hop … and with it many members of the human race! There was no doubt but that the grasshopper controlled an electric current intended to blow up the powder-magazine!
...
I open the little ebony caskets: mademoiselle, look at the little dears inside. Aren’t they pretty? If you turn the grasshopper, mademoiselle, we shall all be blown up. There is enough gun-powder under our feet to blow up a whole quarter of Paris.

-Chapters XXIV and XXV