CHAPTER V.
THINGS OF THE NIGHT.
After the departure of the bandits the Rue Plumet resumed its calm,nocturnal aspect. What had just taken place in this street would nothave astonished a forest, for the thickets, the coppices, the heather,the interlaced branches, and the tall grass, exist in a sombre way;the savage crowd catches glimpses there of the sudden apparitionsof the invisible world; what there is below man distinguishes therethrough the mist what is beyond man, and things unknown to us livingbeings confront each other there in the night. Bristling and savagenature is startled by certain approaches, in which it seems to feel thesupernatural; the forces of the shadow know each other and maintaina mysterious equilibrium between themselves. Teeth and claws fearthat which is unseizable, and blood-drinking bestiality, voracious,starving appetites in search of prey, the instincts armed with nailsand jaws, which have for their source and object the stomach, lookat and sniff anxiously the impassive spectral lineaments prowlingabout in a winding-sheet or standing erect in this vaguely-rustlingrobe, and which seems to them to live a dead and terrible life. Thesebrutalities, which are only matter, have a confused fear at havingto deal with the immense condensed obscurity in an unknown being. Ablack figure barring the passage stops the wild beast short; what comesfrom the cemetery intimidates and disconcerts what comes from the den;ferocious things are afraid of sinister things, and wolves recoil oncoming across a ghoul.