I looked down at my companion. She had slipped from my hold of her, and lay across my knees. Her hair curled low on her forehead; her eyelids were misted with a faint blue shadow, like the sheaths of hyacinth buds before they open; her lips were a little parted, as Love had left them. Mon Dieu! there is no sight so tender and so pathetic as that of a fair child asleep; and what was Carinne but a child!
In an access of emotion I bent and softly touched the lips with mine. This infant so brave and so forlorn, whose head should have been pillowed on flowers, whose attendants should have been the lady fairies!
“She is very pretty,” said the deadman.
“Ha, ha!” I cried. “Hast thou found it out? There shall spring a blossom for thee yet, old Gusman, in this lifeless city of thine!”
He twirled his torch for the first time, so that it spouted fire like a hand-grenade.
“Blossoms!” he barked. “But thou shalt know I have my garden walks down here—bowers of mildew, parterres of fine rank funguses, royal worms even, that have battened for centuries on the seed of men.”
He crooked his knees, so that he might stare into my face.
“Not altogether a city of the dead,” said he.
“Is it peopled with ghosts, then?”
“Very thickly, without doubt. Thou shalt see them swarm like maggots in its streets.”