CHAPTER V

THINGS OF THE NIGHT


After the departure of the ruffians, the Rue Plumet resumed its tranquil,
nocturnal aspect. That which had just taken place in this street
would not have astonished a forest. The lofty trees, the copses,
the heaths, the branches rudely interlaced, the tall grass,
exist in a sombre manner; the savage swarming there catches glimpses
of sudden apparitions of the invisible; that which is below
man distinguishes, through the mists, that which is beyond man;
and the things of which we living beings are ignorant there
meet face to face in the night. Nature, bristling and wild,
takes alarm at certain approaches in which she fancies that she
feels the supernatural. The forces of the gloom know each other,
and are strangely balanced by each other. Teeth and claws fear what
they cannot grasp. Blood-drinking bestiality, voracious appetites,
hunger in search of prey, the armed instincts of nails and jaws
which have for source and aim the belly, glare and smell out
uneasily the impassive spectral forms straying beneath a shroud,
erect in its vague and shuddering robe, and which seem to them
to live with a dead and terrible life. These brutalities,
which are only matter, entertain a confused fear of having to deal
with the immense obscurity condensed into an unknown being.
A black figure barring the way stops the wild beast short.
That which emerges from the cemetery intimidates and disconcerts
that which emerges from the cave; the ferocious fear the sinister;
wolves recoil when they encounter a ghoul.