Free The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma Page A

had passed by—some with great meaning and significance, others without. Did it matter, really, which way they had lived? Which way anyone lived?
    My guide was continuing to snake ahead of me. I picked up my pace just in time to turn the corner and face the first stack of bones.
    Despite myself, I slowed my pace. My panic had ebbed. The long, sloping walls were encased with bones—neat stacks of femurs, precise piles of tibias. Intricate, ornate patterns were spelled out in clavicles and ribs. Directly ahead of me was a column of grinning skulls. I thought of those hiding in the catacombs. Of course it mattered how people lived. The resistance fighters knew that. They must have looked at these bones and realized that the horrors underground were nothing compared to the horrors that were being committed above them, in the occupied streets of Paris, of Lodz, of Berlin, of Amsterdam. All resistance fighters, wherever they lived, must have realized that it would be better to face the terror than try to ignore it.
    Suddenly the young man stopped at the entranceway of a new tunnel. It was separated from the one we had followed by a piece of rusted iron fencing. The tunnel was dark. My guide moved the fence to one side and turned into the blackness. He paused and looked behind at me, making sure I was following.I moved uncertainly out of the anemic light as his back disappeared in front of me. I took a few more steps. Then my foot knocked against something. A wooden rattle filled the air, and I froze. As I did, light flared around me. My guide had snapped on his flashlight. Suddenly I wished he hadn’t. The gruesome orderliness was gone. Bones were everywhere—scattered across the floor around our feet, cascading from loose stacks against the walls. The glare from the flashlight caught on waves of dust and tendrils of cobwebs that hung from the ceiling.
    “ Ça c’est pour vous, ” said my guide. He thrust the flashlight at me. As I took it, he brushed past me.
    “What—” I began to call out.
    Before I could finish my question, the man snapped, “ Il vous rencontrera ici. ” And then he was gone, leaving me alone, fifty feet underground, a solitary human being standing in a sea of the dead.
    There was nothing to distract me now. The air was still but the tunnel walls seemed to be squeezing in on me. The ceiling appeared to shudder—I was sure that, at any moment, it would come crashing down. This isn’t real, I tried to tell myself. This is an anxiety attack. But panic was beating through me, threatening to tear me apart. I wanted to lean against something, to hold myself up, but I was too afraid to move through the bones.
    After what seemed like hours but was probably only a few seconds, I heard the sound of footsteps.
    A small man appeared out of the shadows. “ C’est moi, Antoine ,” the figure announced. Just as he did, I began to sway.
    “ Mon dieu! ” said Antoine. He grabbed my arm and steadied me. Then he moved to a gap between the piles of bones alongthe wall. He retrieved two small folding stools and brought them to the middle of the tunnel, unfolding them on the uneven ground.
    “ Asseyez-vous, ” he said. “Sit, sit.”
    Antoine was probably in his fifties, white curly hair surrounding a pale, wrinkled face. He wore small round glasses and something that approached a dark lab coat. Like Ahmet, he had a kind face, but there was a studious air about him.
    “I apologize for making you wait here for me,” said Antoine. “I’m working this evening—restoration. Gradually, the bones settle, fall over. And there have been incidents of vandalism. It is a constant effort.”
    My breathing was beginning to slow. The one good thing about my panic attacks was that they didn’t last long. It was as if my body simply couldn’t sustain the energy they required. I wiped my brow and muttered, “It’s okay.”
    Antoine nodded and smiled gently. “I’m not surprised you don’t like it down here,” he