irresistible blows; and even the grass, the grass whose dry blades
slipped beneath the great door, stiffened itself into steel-like spears
and made its way down the nave, where it forced up the flagstones with
powerful levers. It was a victorious revolt, it was revolutionary nature
constructing barricades out of the overturned altars, and wrecking the
church which had for centuries cast too deep a shadow over it. The
other combatants had fallen back, and let the plants, the thyme and the
lavender and the lichens, complete the overthrow of the building with
their ceaseless little blows, their constant gnawing, which proved more
destructive than the heavier onslaught of the stronger assailants.

Then, suddenly, the end came. The rowan-tree, whose topmost branches had
already forced their way through the broken windows under the vaulted
roof, rushed in violently with its formidable stream of greenery. It
planted itself in the centre of the nave and grew there monstrously.
Its trunk expanded till its girth became so colossal that it seemed as
though it would burst the church asunder like a girdle spanning it too
closely. Its branches shot out in knotted arms, each one of which broke
down a piece of the wall or thrust off a strip of the roof, and they
went on multiplying without cessation, each branch ramifying, till a
fresh tree sprang out of each single knot, with such impetuosity of
growth that the ruins of the church, pierced through and through like a
sieve, flew into fragments, scattering a fine dust to the four quarters
of the heavens.

Now the giant tree seemed to reach the stars; its forest of branches was
a forest of legs, arms, and breasts full of sap; the long locks of women
streamed down from it; men's heads burst out from the bark; and up aloft
pairs of lovers, lying languid by the edges of their nests, filled the
air with the music of their delights.

A final blast of the storm which had broken over the church swept away
the dust of its remains: the pulpit and the confessional-box, which
had been ground into powder, the lacerated holy pictures, the shattered
sacred vessels, all the litter at which the legion of sparrows that had
once dwelt amongst the tiles was eagerly pecking. The great Christ,
torn from the cross, hung for a moment from one of the streaming women's
curls, and then was whirled away into the black darkness, in the depths
of which it sank with a loud crash. The Tree of Life had pierced the