y the navel and spinning like tops, and winged bellies which
flutter like gnats.

They rain down from the sky; they spring out of the ground; they glide
from the rocks. Everywhere eyes flash, mouths roar; the breasts bulge
out; the claws lengthen; the teeth gnash; the flesh quivers. Some of
them bring forth their young; others with a single bite, devour one
another.

Suffocating from their very numbers, multiplying by their contact, they
climb on top of one another; and they all keep stirring about Antony
with a regular swaying motion, as if the soil were the deck of a vessel.

He feels close to his calves the trailing of slugs, and on his hands the
cold touch of vipers; and spiders spinning their webs enclose him in
their network.

But the circle of monsters begins to open; the sky suddenly becomes
blue, and the unicorn makes its appearance:

"Off I gallop! Off I gallop!

"I have hoofs of ivory, teeth of steel, a head coloured purple, a body
like snow, and the horn on my forehead has the varied hues of the
rainbow.

"I travel from Chaldea to the Tartar desert, on the banks of the Ganges,
and into Mesopotamia. I outstrip the ostriches. I run so rapidly that I
draw the wind along with me. I rub my back against the palm-trees; I
roll myself in the bamboos. With one bound I jump across the rivers.
Doves fly above my head. Only a virgin can bridle me.

"Off I gallop! Off I gallop!"

Antony watches him flying away.

And, keeping his eyes still raised, he perceives all the birds that are
nourished by the wind: the Gouith, the Ahuti, the Alphalim, the Jukneth
from the mountains of Caff, and the Homai of the Arabs, which are the
souls of murdered men. He hears the parrots utter human speech, then the
great web-footed Pelasgians, who sob like children or chuckle like old
women.

A briny breath of air strikes his nostrils. A seashore is now before
him.

At a distance rise waterspouts, lashed up by the whales; and at the
extremity of the horizon the beasts of the sea, round, like leather
bottles, flat, like strips of metal, or indented, like saws, advance,
crawling over the sand:

"You are about to come with us into our unfathomable depths, never
penetrated by man before. Different races dwell in the country of the
ocean. Some are in the abode of the tempests; others swim openly in the
transparency of the cold waves, browse like oxen over the coral plains,
sniff in with their nostrils the ebbing tide, or carry on