She returned to life, hovering through the air, and felt so light and unencumbered, and was whiter than ever and naked.
And on her tender shoulders she felt two new wings quivering...!
She hovered over her own body into a drifting cloud, a mist of fragrance, which farther on she lost sight of; and light, white, and rarefied, she looked wonderingly at her trampled body and laughed. Strange, clear, and childlike sounded her laugh in the cloud and vapoury fragrance....
Chapter XXVI
The triumphal chariot rattled on madly. Emeralda stretched out her sceptre, on the top of which glowed a star of destroying rays. When she stretched out the sceptre and directed the rays, she scorched monuments, palaces, and parks to a white ash, and, for her cruel jubilant procession, she cut down everything that came in her way. The thick white ashes flew up like dust; the jubilant multitude were scorched; the palaces of jaspar and malachite shrivelled up like burnt paper; the breath of the horses blew away, like ash, the white burnt gardens. And right over everything went Emeralda, scorching as she went. Powerful, foolish, arrogant, and proud she was, and more unfeeling than ever, spiteful and cruel, hurt in her pride; and she scorched, and made the way smooth before her. Behind her lay all the town, and she drove through her kingdom, filling the air with her rays. She drove through valleys and burnt up the harvest; she reduced villages to dust; she dried up rivers; and before her, the mountains split asunder.
Her sceptre made a way for her, and no law of nature resisted her power. The air was grey with the clouds of ash, which rained down upon the earth.
She went along as swiftly as an arrow, swiftly as lightning, swiftly as light, swiftly as thought. She went so swiftly, that in a single hour she had gone all round her wide kingdom intoxicated with the pride of annihilation, and she drove her maddened horses through endless plains of sand.
Desert after desert she consumed; the lions fled before her; she overtook them in a moment; clouds of sand she sent up into the air....
But then she relaxed her speed. She stopped.