I am so near to him that I alone gather the rest of his voice, and he says to me very quietly:—
"I have confidence in the abyss of the people."
And those words stabbed me to the heart and dilated my eyes with horror, for it seemed to me suddenly, in a flash, that he understood what he was saying! A picture comes to life before my eyes—that prince, whom I saw from below, once upon a time, in the nightmare of life, he who loved the blood of the chase. Not far away a shell turns the darkness upside down; and it seems as if that explosion also has considered and shrieked.
Heavy night is implanted everywhere around us. My hands are bathed in black blood. On my neck and cheeks, rain, which is also black, bleeds.
The funeral procession of silver-fringed clouds goes by once more, and again a ray of moonlight besilvers the swamp that has sunk us soldiers; it lays winding-sheets on the prone.
All at once a swelling lamentation comes to life, one knows not where, and glides over the plain:—
"Help! Help!"
"Now then! They're not coming to look for us! What about it?"
And I see a stirring and movement, very gentle, as at the bottom of the sea.
Amid the glut of noises, upon that still tepid and unsubmissive expanse where cold death sits brooding, that sharp profile has fallen back. The cloak is quivering. The great and sumptuous bird of prey is in the act of taking wing.