ishonoured me!"

She falls back in tears.

"The world is abominable. My bosom feels the lack of air.

"O Mercury, inventor of the lyre, and conductor of souls, bear me away!"

She places a finger upon her mouth, and, describing an immense parabola,
topples over into the abyss.

And now nothing can be seen. The darkness is complete.

In the meantime two red arrows seem to escape from the pupils of
Hilarion.

Antony at length notices his high stature:

"Many times already, while you were speaking, you appeared to me to be
growing tall; and it was not an illusion. How is this? Explain it to me.
Your appearance appals me!"

Steps draw nigh.

"What is this now?"

Hilarion stretches forth his arms:

"Look!"

Then, under a pale ray of the moon, Antony distinguishes an interminable
caravan which defiles over the crest of the rocks; and each passenger,
one after another, falls from the cliff into the gulf.

First, there are the three great gods of Samothrace--Axieros, Axiokeros,
and Axiokersa--joined in a cluster, with purple masks, and their hands
raised.

AEsculapius advances with a melancholy air, without even seeing Samos and
Telesphorus, who question him with anguish. Sosipolis, the Elean, with
the form of a python, rolls out his rings towards the abyss.
Doesp[oe]na, through vertigo, flings herself in there of her own accord.
Britomartis, shrieking with fear, clasps the folds of her fillet. The
Centaurs arrive with a great galloping, and dash, pell-mell, into the
black hole.

Limping behind them come the sad group of nymphs. Those of the meadows
are covered with dust; those of the woods groan and bleed, wounded by
the woodcutters' axes.

The Gelludae, the Stryges, the Empusae, all the infernal goddesses
intermingling their hooks, their torches, and their snakes, form a
pyramid; and at the summit, upon a vulture's skin, Eurynomus, bluish
like flesh-flies, devours his own arms.

Then in a whirlwind disappears at the same time, Orthia the sanguinary,
Hymnia of Orchomena, the Saphria of the Patraeans, Aphia of AEgina, Bendis
of Thrace, and Stymphalia with the leg of a bird. Triopas, in place of
three eyeballs, has nothing more than three orbits. Erichthonius, with
spindle-shanks, crawls like a cripple on his wrists.

_Hilarion_--"What happiness, is it not, to see all of them in a state of
abjectness and agony? Mount with me on this stone, and you will be like
Xerxes reviewing his army.

"Yonder, at a