e about to fall into my jaws! I drink fire. I am fire
myself; and from every quarter I suck it in--from clouds, from pebbles,
from dead trees, from the hair of animals, and from the surface of
marshes. My temperature supports the volcanoes. I cause the lustre of
precious stones and the colour of metals."

_The Griffin_, a lion with a vulture's beak, white wings, red paws, and
blue neck--"I am the master of the profound splendours. I know the
secret of the tombs where the old kings sleep. A chain, which issues
from the wall, keeps their heads erect. Near them, in basins of
porphyry, women whom they have loved float upon black liquids. Their
treasures are ranged in halls, in lozenges, in hillocks, and in
pyramids; and, lower, far below the tombs, after long journeys in the
midst of suffocating darkness, are rivers of gold with forests of
diamonds, meadows of carbuncles, and lakes of quicksilver. With my back
against the door of the vault, and my claws in the air, I watch with my
flaming eyes those who may think fit to come there. The immense plain,
even to the furthest point of the horizon, is quite bare and whitened
with travellers' bones. For you the bronze doors will open, and you will
inhale the vapour of the mines; you will descend into the caverns ...
Quick! quick!"

He digs the earth with his claws, crowing like a cock.

A thousand voices reply to him. The forest trembles.

And all sorts of horrible beasts arise: the Tragelaphus, half-stag,
half-ox; the Myrmecoleo, a lion in front, an ant behind, whose genitals
are turned backwards; the python, Aksar, of sixty cubits, who frightened
Moses; the great weasel, Pastinaca, which kills trees by its odour; the
Presteros, which renders idiotic those who touch it; the Mirag, a horned
hare dwelling in the islands of the sea. The Copard Phalmant bursts his
belly by dint of howling; the Senad, a bear with three heads, tears its
little ones with its mouth; the dog, Cepus, scatters on the rocks the
blue milk of its dugs. Mosquitoes begin to buzz, toads to jump, and
serpents to hiss. Lightnings flash; down comes the hail.

Then there are squalls, which reveal anatomical marvels. There are
alligators' heads with roebucks' feet, owls with serpents' tails, swine
with tigers' muzzles, goats with asses' rumps, frogs covered with hair
like bears, chameleons large as hippopotami, calves with two heads, one
of which weeps while the other bellows, four f[oe]tuses holding each
other b