best translate the dismayed impression instantly produced on the spectators of the scene by the perverse uselessness of this grandiose décor.
Meantime, while they wandered lost in the last shreds of shadow still lingering over these uplands, the pounding of a runaway horse's hoofs could be heard, and soon the animal appeared filling the deserted plateau with the noise of its furious galloping, its body covered with foam which it tossed wildly around it on every side, while on its back—and apparently the very centre of those convulsions which at moments started it frantically plunging—could be seen an empty saddle. Then they both recognized—and with a shudder of sudden anguish identified by that empty saddle —Herminien's favourite horse.
Fallen in the grass, coiled in the grass, more motionless than a meteoric stone, with the strange floating uncertainty of his wide-open corpse's eyes, as though revived in his face after death by the secret hand, and with the disquieting insinuations of an embalmer, the eyelids seemingly touched by the majestic makeup of death, Herminien lay nearby, and his uncovered face in the icy nakedness of the morning radiated a silent horror, as though, through the effect of a bloody irony, the blackness of a crime accomplished without a witness were painted on the face of the victim himself. Near him a block of sandstone half hidden in the grass was the very one on which his horse's hoof must have stumbled.
Silently they lifted him, removed his clothes, and his torso appeared, white, vigorous and soft—and their eyes obstinately avoided each other—and in his side below his ribs, appeared the hideous wound where the horse's shoe had struck, black and bloody, circled with clotted blood as though the haemorrhage had been stopped only by the effect of a charm or of a philtre. Little by little, they felt life returning under their fingers and it was not long before the doors of the castle closed behind the wounded man in a silence full of foreboding. And all during the grey and ghostly day, filled with the same magic as the night, while the sun's white disc remained obstinately hidden behind heavy mists, Albert continued to wander through the long empty corridors lighted, as though by the eerie reflections of the snow, by the continuously diffused light of the white sky, soft, and with a look of blindness, a prey to an intense agitation comparable only to the highest state of tension of one who keeps vigil. And whenever he passed in front of the closed door of Herminien's room, behind which the timid clink of a glass, and the musical and surprising sound of an isolated sigh in the heart of the tense silence acquired the majestic and uncertain accents of life and death themselves, all the blood in his veins would leap up in a fiery surge.
Worn out with fatigue, he at last lay down outside that forbidden door, and was soon visited by funereal visions. His dream seemed to take him back to those far-off days when, with Herminien on calm summer nights, their intoxicating walks would take them all over sleeping Paris, revealing to them, in the midst of a conversation inordinately interrupted by silence and invariably leading them by capricious roundabout ways to the vicinity of the jardin du Luxembourg, mysteriously deserted at that hour, the splendour of the nocturnal leaves, more entrancing than a stage setting in the light of the street lamps. And now, for the last few moments, their ears, no longer heeding their own desultory words, seemed to distinguish besides the hypnotic hissing of the arc lights, a similar and surprisingly moving noise coming from behind the high black walls cutting off their view on all sides, which was, it soon became evident, the collective murmuring of a kneeling invisible crowd praying in the middle of the street in a perfect delirium of unrestrained fervour. And now they found themselves drawn by these sounds into the maze of narrow and perpetually deserted streets
Meantime, while they wandered lost in the last shreds of shadow still lingering over these uplands, the pounding of a runaway horse's hoofs could be heard, and soon the animal appeared filling the deserted plateau with the noise of its furious galloping, its body covered with foam which it tossed wildly around it on every side, while on its back—and apparently the very centre of those convulsions which at moments started it frantically plunging—could be seen an empty saddle. Then they both recognized—and with a shudder of sudden anguish identified by that empty saddle —Herminien's favourite horse.
Fallen in the grass, coiled in the grass, more motionless than a meteoric stone, with the strange floating uncertainty of his wide-open corpse's eyes, as though revived in his face after death by the secret hand, and with the disquieting insinuations of an embalmer, the eyelids seemingly touched by the majestic makeup of death, Herminien lay nearby, and his uncovered face in the icy nakedness of the morning radiated a silent horror, as though, through the effect of a bloody irony, the blackness of a crime accomplished without a witness were painted on the face of the victim himself. Near him a block of sandstone half hidden in the grass was the very one on which his horse's hoof must have stumbled.
Silently they lifted him, removed his clothes, and his torso appeared, white, vigorous and soft—and their eyes obstinately avoided each other—and in his side below his ribs, appeared the hideous wound where the horse's shoe had struck, black and bloody, circled with clotted blood as though the haemorrhage had been stopped only by the effect of a charm or of a philtre. Little by little, they felt life returning under their fingers and it was not long before the doors of the castle closed behind the wounded man in a silence full of foreboding. And all during the grey and ghostly day, filled with the same magic as the night, while the sun's white disc remained obstinately hidden behind heavy mists, Albert continued to wander through the long empty corridors lighted, as though by the eerie reflections of the snow, by the continuously diffused light of the white sky, soft, and with a look of blindness, a prey to an intense agitation comparable only to the highest state of tension of one who keeps vigil. And whenever he passed in front of the closed door of Herminien's room, behind which the timid clink of a glass, and the musical and surprising sound of an isolated sigh in the heart of the tense silence acquired the majestic and uncertain accents of life and death themselves, all the blood in his veins would leap up in a fiery surge.
Worn out with fatigue, he at last lay down outside that forbidden door, and was soon visited by funereal visions. His dream seemed to take him back to those far-off days when, with Herminien on calm summer nights, their intoxicating walks would take them all over sleeping Paris, revealing to them, in the midst of a conversation inordinately interrupted by silence and invariably leading them by capricious roundabout ways to the vicinity of the jardin du Luxembourg, mysteriously deserted at that hour, the splendour of the nocturnal leaves, more entrancing than a stage setting in the light of the street lamps. And now, for the last few moments, their ears, no longer heeding their own desultory words, seemed to distinguish besides the hypnotic hissing of the arc lights, a similar and surprisingly moving noise coming from behind the high black walls cutting off their view on all sides, which was, it soon became evident, the collective murmuring of a kneeling invisible crowd praying in the middle of the street in a perfect delirium of unrestrained fervour. And now they found themselves drawn by these sounds into the maze of narrow and perpetually deserted streets
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