In proportion as the sun went down, the shadows of our bodies
lengthened, like two obelisks, always enlarging and marching on in front
of us. With the pieces of our staffs we planted the cross here and there
to mark the site of a cell. The night came on slowly, and black waves
spread over the earth, while an immense sheet of red still occupied the
sky.

"When I was a child, I used to amuse myself in constructing hermitages
with pebbles. My mother, close beside me, used to watch what I was
doing.

"She was going to curse me for abandoning her, tearing her white locks.
And her corpse remained stretched in the middle of the cell, beneath the
roof of reeds, between the tottering walls. Through a hole, a hyena,
sniffing, thrusts forward his jaws! ... Horror! horror!"

He sobs.

"No: Ammonaria would not have left her!

"Where is Ammonaria now?

"Perhaps, in a hot bath she is drawing off her garments one by one,
first her cloak, then her girdle, then her outer tunic, then her inner
one, then the wrappings round her neck; and the vapour of cinnamon
envelops her naked limbs. At last she sinks to sleep on the tepid floor.
Her hair, falling around her hips, looks like a black fleece--and,
almost suffocating in the overheated atmosphere, she draws breath, with
her body bent forward and her breasts projecting. Hold! here is my flesh
breaking into revolt. In the midst of anguish, I am tortured by
voluptuousness. Two punishments at the same time--it is too much! I can
no longer endure my own body!"

He stoops down and gazes over the precipice.

"The man who falls over that will be killed. Nothing easier, by simply
rolling over on the left side: it is necessary to take only one step!
only one!"

Then appears an old woman.

Antony rises with a start of error. He imagines that he sees his mother
risen from the dead.

But this one is much older and excessively emaciated. A winding-sheet,
fastened round her head, hangs with her white hair down to the very
extremities of her legs, thin as sticks. The brilliancy of her teeth,
which are like ivory, makes her clayey skin look darker. The sockets of
her eyes are full of gloom, and in their depths flicker two flames, like
lamps in a sepulchre.

"Come forward," she says; "what keeps you back?"

_Antony_, stammering--"I am afraid of committing a sin!"

She resumes:

"But King Saul was slain! Razias, a just man, was slain! Saint Pelagius
of Antioch was slain! Dominius of Alepp