"But when I turn me toward the wind of the North, my antlers, more thickly bristling than a battalion of lances, give forth a sound of howlings: the forests are startled with fear; the rivers remount toward their sources; the husks of fruits burst open; and the bending grasses stand erect on end, like the hair of a coward.
(_He bends his branching antlers forward: hideous and discordant cries proceed from them. Anthony feels as though his heart were torn asunder._
_And his horror augments upon beholding_)--
(_A gigantic red lion, with human face, and three rows of teeth_):
"The gleam of my scarlet hair mingles with the reflection of the great sands. I breathe through my nostrils the terror of solitudes. I spit forth plague. I devour armies when they venture into the desert.
"My claws are twisted like screws, my teeth shaped like saws; and my curving tail bristles with darts which I cast to right and left, before and behind!
(_The Martichoras shoots forth the keen bristles of his tail, which irradiate in all directions like a volley of arrows. Drops of blood rain down, spattering upon the foliage._)
(_A black buffalo with a pig's head, falling to the ground, and attached to his shoulders by a neck long, thin, and flaccid as an empty gut._
_He wallows flat upon the ground, and his feet entirely disappear beneath the enormous mane of coarse hair which covers his face_):
"Fat, melancholy, fierce--thus I continually remain, feeling against my belly the warmth of the mud. So heavy is my skull that it is impossible for me to lift it. I roll it slowly all around me, open-mouthed; and with my tongue I tear up the venemous plants bedewed with my breath. Once, I even devoured my own feet without knowing it!
"No one, Anthony, has ever beheld mine eyes,--or at least, those who have beheld them are dead. Were I to lift my eyelids--my pink and swollen eyelids, thou wouldst forthwith die!"
ANTHONY. "Oh, that one! Ugh! As though I could desire it?--Yet his stupidity fascinates me! No, no! I will not!"
_But the weeds take fire; and amidst the contorsions of the flames, arises_)--
(_A great violet serpent, with trilobate crest, and two fangs, one above, one below_):
"Beware, lest thou fall into my jaws! I drink fire. I am fire!--and I inhale it from all things: from clouds, from flints, from dead trees, the fur of animals, the surface of marshes. My temperature maintains the volcanoes: I lend glitter to jewels: I give colours to metals!"