is, protector of shadows, do not
leave me!"

The Cynocephalus vanishes.

She gives her child a shaking.

"But what aileth thee? ... thy hands are cold, thy head fallen back!"

Harpocrates has just died. Then she utters a cry so bitter, mournful,
and heartrending, that Antony replies to it by another cry, while he
opens his arms to support her.

She is no longer there. He hangs his head, overwhelmed with shame.

All that he has just seen becomes confused in his mind. It is like the
stunning effect of a voyage, the uncomfortable sensation of drunkenness.
Fain would he hate; and yet a vague pity softens his heart. He begins to
weep abundantly.

_Hilarion_--"What is it now that makes you sad?"

_Antony_, after questioning himself for a long time--"I am thinking of
all the souls lost through these false gods!"

_Hilarion_--"Do you not find that they have--in some
respects--resemblances to the true?"

_Antony_--"This is a trick of the Devil the better to seduce the
faithful. He attacks the strong through the spirit, and the others
through the flesh."

_Hilarion_--"But lust, in its furies, possesses the disinterestedness of
penitence. The frantic love of the body accelerates its destruction--and
by its weakness proclaims the extent of the impossible."

_Antony_--"How is it that this affects me? My heart revolts with disgust
against those brutish gods, always occupied with carnage and incest."

_Hilarion_--"Recall to yourself in the Scriptures all the things that
scandalise you because you cannot understand them. In the same way,
these gods, under the outward form of criminals, may contain the truth.
There are some of them left to see. Turn aside!"

_Antony_--"No! no! it is a peril!"

_Hilarion_--"A moment ago you wished to make their acquaintance. Do
falsehoods make your faith totter? What do you fear?"

The rocks in front of Antony have become a mountain.

A range of clouds intersects it half-way from the top; and overhead
appears another mountain, enormous, quite green, which hollows out the
valley unevenly, having on its summit, in a wood of laurels, a palace of
bronze, with tiles of gold and ivory capitals.

In the midst of the peristyle, upon a throne, Jupiter, colossal, and
with a naked torso, holds victory in one hand, and the thunderbolt in
the other; and his eagle, between his legs, erects its head.

Juno, close to him, rolls her great eyes, surmounted by a diadem, from
which escapes, like a va