d man makes a
movement, so that he will fall lower down. But they will have no more
burial than if they were the last men of all.

* * * * * *

There is one upright presence which I catch a glimpse of, so near, so
near; and I want to see it. In making the effort with my elbow on the
horse's ballooned body I succeed in altering the direction of my head,
and of the corridor of my gaze. Then all at once I discover a quite
new population of bronze men in rotten clothes; and especially, erect
on bended knees, a gray overcoat, lacquered with blood and pierced by a
great hole, round which is collected a bunch of heavy crimson flowers.
Slowly I lift the burden of my eyes to explore that hole. Amid the
shattered flesh, with its changing colors and a smell so strong that it
puts a loathsome taste in my mouth, at the bottom of the cage where
some crossed bones are black and rusted as iron bars, I can see
something, something isolated, dark and round. I see that it is a
heart.

Placed there, too--I do not know how, for I cannot see the body's full
height--the arm, and the hand. The hand has only three fingers--a
fork---- Ah, I recognize that heart! It is his whom I killed.
Prostrate in the mud before him, because of my defeat and my
resemblance, I cried out to the man's profundity, to the superhuman
man. Then my eyes fell; and I saw worms moving on the edges of that
infinite wound. I was quite close to their stirring. They are whitish
worms, and their tails are pointed like stings; they curve and flatten
out, sometimes in the shape of an "i," and sometimes of a "u." The
perfection of immobility is left behind. The human material is
crumbled into the earth for another end.

I hated that man, when he had his shape and his warmth. We were
foreigners, and made to destroy ourselves. Yet it seems to me, in face
of that bluish heart, still attached to its red cords, that I
understand the value of life. It is understood by force, like a
caress. I think I can see how many seasons and memories and beings
there had to be, yonder, to make up that life,--while I remain before
him, on a point of the plain, like a night watcher. I hear the voice
that his flesh breathed while yet he lived a little, when my ferocious
hands fumbled in him for the skeleton we all have. He fills the whole
place. He is too many things at once. How can there be worlds in the
world? That established notion wou