And now the vegetables are no longer distinguishable from the animals. Polyparies that seem like trees, have arms upon their branches. Anthony thinks he sees a caterpillar between two leaves: it is a butterfly that takes flight. He is about to step on a pebble: a grey locust leaps away. One shrub is bedecked with insects that look like petals of roses; fragments of ephemerides form a snowy layer upon the soil.
And then the plants become confounded with the stones.
Flints assume the likeness of brains; stalactites of breasts; the flower of iron resembles a figured tapestry.[2]
He sees efflorescences in fragments of ice, imprints of shrubs and shells—yet so that one cannot detect whether they be imprints only, or the things themselves. Diamonds gleam like eyes; metals palpitate.
And all fear has departed from him! He throws himself down upon the ground, and leaning upon his elbows, watches breathlessly.
Insects that have no stomachs persistently eat; withered ferns bloom again and reflower; absent members grow again.
At last he perceives tiny globular masses, no larger than pinheads, with cilia all round them. They are agitated with a vibratile motion):
Anthony (deliriously):
"O joy! O bliss! I have beheld the birth of life! I have seen the beginning of motion! My pulses throb even to the point of bursting! I long to fly, to swim, to bark, to bellow, to howl! Would that I had wings, a carapace, a shell,—that I could breathe out smoke, wield a trunk,—make my body writhe,—divide myself everywhere,—be in everything,—emanate with odours,—develop myself like the plants,—flow like water,—vibrate like sound—shine like light, squatting upon all forms—penetrate each atom—descend to the very bottom of matter,—be matter itself!"
(Day at last appears;—and, like tabernacle curtains uplifted, clouds of gold uprolling in broad volutes unveil the sky.