(_She lifts a little piece to her lips, and suddenly bursts into an extravagant and frenzied laugh._
_The others also nibble a little bit as she does and drink a mouthful of wine._
_They recount to each other the stories of their martyrs; grief becomes exalted! libations redouble. Their tear-swimming eyes are fixed upon each other's faces. They stammer with intoxication and grief; gradually hands touch hands, lips join themselves to lips, and they seek each other upon the tombs, between the cups and the torches._
_The sky begins to whiten. The fog makes damp their garments; and, without appearing even to know one another, they depart by different ways and seek their homes._
_The sun shines; the weeds and the grass have grown higher; the face of the plain is changed._
_And Anthony, looking between tall bamboos, sees distinctly a forest of columns, of bluish-grey color. These are tree-trunks, all originating from one vast trunk. From each branch of the colossal tree descend other branches which may bury themselves in the soil; and the aspect of all these horizontal and perpendicular lines, indefinitely multiplied, would closely resemble a monstrous timber-work, were it not that they have small figs[7] growing upon them here and there, and a blackish foliage, like that of the sycamore._
_He perceives in the forkings of their branches, hanging bunches of yellow flowers, violet flowers also, and ferns that resemble the plumes of splendid birds._
_Under the lowest branches the horns of a bubalus gleam at intervals, and the bright eyes of antelopes are visible; there are hosts of parrots; there are butterflies flittering hither and thither; lizards lazily drag themselves up or down; flies buzz and hum; and in the midst of the silence, a sound is audible as of the palpitation of a deep and mighty life._
_Seated upon a sort of pyre at the entrance of the wood is a strange being--a man--besmeared with cow-dung, completely naked, more withered than a mummy; his articulations form knots at the termination of bones that resemble sticks. He has bunches of shells suspended from his ears; his face is very long, and his nose like a vulture's beak. His left arm remains motionlessly erect in air, anchylosed, rigid as a stake; and he has been seated here so long that birds have made themselves a nest in his long hair._