ade my cautious way to the margin of
the cataract.

I was surprised to find for how long a time the phenomenon had absorbed
me. The moon was already high in the heavens, and making towards
the ravine with rapid steps. Far below, the tumbling waters flashed in
her rays, and on all sides great tiers of solemn, trees stood up at
attention to salute her.

When her disc silvered the inner rim of the slope I had descended, I
returned to my post of observation with tingling nerves. The field of
the great object lens was already suffused with the radiance of her
approach.

Suddenly my pupils shrank before the apparition of a ghastly grey light,
and all in a moment I was face to face with a segment of desolation
more horrible than any desert. Monstrous growths of leprosy that had
bubbled up and stiffened; fields of ashen slime--the sloughing of a world
of corruption; hills of demon, fungus swollen with the fatness of
putrefaction; and, in the midst of all, dim, convulsed shapes wallowing,
protruding, or stumbling aimlessly onwards, till they sank and
disappeared.

* * * * *

Madame Barbiere threw up her hands when she let me in at the door. My
appearance, no doubt, was ghastly. I knew not the hour nor the lapse
of time covered by my wanderings about the hills, my face hidden in my
palms, a drawn feeling about my heart, my lips muttering--muttering
fragments of prayers, and my throat jerking with horrible laughter.

For hours I lay face downwards on my bed.

"Monsieur has seen it?"

"I have seen it."

"I heard the rain on the hills. The lens will have been blurred. Monsieur
has been spared much."

"God, in His mercy, pity thee! And me--oh, Camille, and me too!"

"He has held out His white hand to me. I go, when I go, with a safe
conduct."

* * * * *

He went before the week was out. The drought had broken and for five days
the thunder crashed and the wild rain swept the mountains. On the
morning of the sixth a drenched shepherd reported in the village that a
landslip had choked the fall of Buet, and completely altered its shape.
Madame Barbiere broke into the room where I was sitting with Camille, big
with the news. She little guessed how it affected her listeners.

"The _bon Dieu_" said Camille, when she had gone, "has thundered His
curse on Nature for revealing His secrets. I, who have penetrated into
the forbidden, must perish."

"And I, Camille