o my feet; the
wasps stick in my nostrils; and the parrots, the doves, and the ibises
alight upon my branches. Listen!"

He bends back his horns, from which issues an unutterably sweet music.

Antony presses both his hands above his heart. It seems to him as if
this melody were about to carry off his soul.

_The Sadhuzag_--"But, when I turn towards the north wind, my horns, more
bushy than a battalion of spears, emit a howling noise. The forests
thrill; the rivers swell; the husks of the fruit burst, and blades of
grass stand erect like a coward's hair. Listen!"

He bows down his branches, from which now come forth discordant cries.
Antony feels as if he were torn asunder, and his horror is increased on
seeing the Mantichor, a gigantic red lion with a human figure and three
rows of teeth:

"The silky texture of my scarlet hair mingles with the yellowness of the
sands. I breathe through my nostrils the terror of solitudes. I spit
forth the plague. I devour armies when they venture into the desert. My
nails are twisted like gimlets; my teeth are cut like a saw; and my
hair, wriggled out of shape, bristles with darts which I scatter, right
and left, behind me. Hold! hold!"

The Mantichor casts thorns from his tail, which radiate, like arrows, in
all directions. Drops of blood flow, spattering over the foliage.

The Catoblepas appears, a black buffalo, with a pig's head hanging to
the earth, and connected with his shoulders by a slender neck, long and
flabby as an empty gut. He is wallowing on the ground; and his feet
disappear under the enormous mane of hard hairs that descend over his
face:

"Fat, melancholy, savage, I remain continually feeling the mire under my
stomach. My skull is so heavy that it is impossible for me to carry it.
I roll it around slowly; and, opening my jaws, I snatch with my tongue
the poisonous herbs that are moistened with my breath. I once devoured
my paws without noticing it.

"No one, Antony, has ever seen my eyes, or those who have seen them are
dead. If I but raised my eyelids--my eyelids red and swollen--that
instant you would die."

_Antony_--"Oh! that thing! ... Well! well! As if I had any such longing!
Its stupidity attracts me. No! no! I will not!" He looks fixedly on the
ground. But the grass lights up, and, in the twistings of the flames,
stands erect the Basilisk, a huge, violet serpent, with a trilobate
crest and two teeth--one above, the other below:

"Take care! You ar