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THINGS OF THE NIGHT
After the departure of the ruffians, the Rue Plumet resumed
its tranquil, nocturnal aspect.
That which had just taken place in this street would not have
astonished a forest.
The lofty trees, the copses, the heaths, the branches rudely
interlaced, the tall grass, exist in a sombre manner; the savage
swarming there catches glimpses of sudden apparitions of the invisible;
that which is below man distinguishes, through the mists, that
which is beyond man; and the things of which we living beings
are ignorant there meet face to face in the night.
Nature, bristling and wild, takes alarm at certain approaches
in which she fancies that she feels the supernatural.
The forces of the gloom know each other, and are strangely
balanced by each other.
Teeth and claws fear what they cannot grasp.
Blood-drinking bestiality, voracious appetites, hunger in
search of prey, the armed instincts of nails and jaws which have
for source and aim the belly, glare and smell out uneasily the
impassive spectral forms straying beneath a shroud, erect in its
vague and shuddering robe, and which seem to them to live with
a dead and terrible life.
These brutalities, which are only matter, entertain a confused
fear of having to deal with the immense obscurity condensed into
an unknown being. A black figure barring the way stops the wild
beast short. That which emerges from the cemetery intimidates
and disconcerts that which emerges from the cave; the ferocious
fear the sinister; wolves recoil when they encounter a ghoul.
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