A Look Round Literature

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Prefatory Note

Most of the articles in this volume are reprinted from the critical and other periodical papers of the day. They have no arbitrary connection with each other, but they sufficiently indicate the point of view of a writer whose opinions are somewhat independent of current criticism.

Some of these opinions will doubtless awaken animadversion in quarters self-considered authoritative ; but the literary Inquisition, like its religious prototype, will soon be a thing of the past, and, in the meanwhile, I am fortunately not alone in refusing to accept all literary religions merely because they are based on good historical evidence, and possess quasi-miraculous pretensions. At the same time, I have quite as great a distrust of my own discernment^ as of that of any of my contemporaries. I simply put down my impressions for what they are worth, and leave the rest to the common-sense of the reading public in general.

R. B.

London, October, 1886.

n w

To THE QUARTERLY REVIEWER.

Sir, — Permit me to inscribe these Essays to you, as a slight expression of the estimation in which I hold you. If you survive long enough to read them (for the booksellers report that you are fast sinking, with a circulation so languid as to be hardly perceptible in the pulsation) they may perhaps do you a little good ; at any rate, they will so far gratify and serve you as to remind the world of your existence; and when you are dead and buried, they may perhaps help to preserve your name from unmerited oblivion.

I know that you have many enemies, who rejoice at your decadence and downfall. I shall do nothing of the kind, for I hold you have done good public service by bringing pedantic criticism into discredit. When you were young and strong and clever, you had the courage of your opinions, and cordially hating every form of literary revolt, you served the cause of retrogression with no little success. Later on, even, your very audacity in evil-doing made you amusing. But that is all over now. Your time has come, and in your last sickness you have this one consolation — that you have been evenly and triumphantly malicious, thoroughly and roundly unintelligent, from the first to the last of your career. You have never said a generous word to help a rising reputation ; you have never failed to crawl obsequiously on the ground before every form of mediocrity. You have seen a poetaster in Mr. Tennyson, and a brilliant poet in the writer of the **Lays of Ancient Rome." You have hated progress, derided originality, insulted every honest spirit of your period. It may comfort you a little on your deathbed, to know that even your opponents admit your consistency.

It is sad to reflect that the doom of dotage has fallen upon a spirit that once seemed so playful. The day appears to have passed when public interest could be awakened by the appearance of some half-dozen ill-natured pamphlets in a paper cover, or by the phenomenon of an antiquated literary watchman rushing out into publicity, months after the henroost is robbed or the house burnt down, with cries of ** fox I " and ** fire ! " The spitefulness you once expanded into a long article, is now concentrated by your successors into half a newspaper column. You affected to be scholarly ; they pretend only to be plainspoken. Other times, other manners. When I read the journals which have superseded you, I almost regret your extinction. Be comforted, however, by the assurance that no critic of the future will ever surpass you in the sincerity of his endeavours to promote the science of misconstruction and the art of nepotism, or exhibit a more splendid record of literary mistakes.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient Servant,

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

Contents

I. Prometheus

II. GiLLIATT III. ^SCHYLUS .

IV. The One God

I. Prometheus

The scene is Mount Caucasus, a craggy desert, silent, inaccessible ; the clouds come and go silently above, the Euxine glimmers faintly far away. All the eye beholds is sombre, terrible, colossal, shadowed with the mystery of some awful event. Three gigantic Shapes rise, leading a fourth in chains. The first is the god Hephcestos, accompanied by two formless and awful figures, Kratos and Bia.* He whom they lead is Prometheus, called the Fire-bringer, because he has brought fire to men, and thus incurred the wrath and avenging hate of Zeus, the " new tyrant " of Olympus. He is silent, while Kratos speaks. " Bind this crafty one to these rocks, and so fulfil the behests of the Father." Reluctantly, tenderly,

♦ Generally, with an unpleasant allegorical flavour, translated " Strength " and " Force ; " but they are entities, not abstractions, and it would be as reasonable to introduce Prometheus simply as ** Foresight," or " Forethought."

as beseems a god, Hephoestos performs his duty, uttering at the same time a prophecy of almost inconceivable suffering.

And thou shalt here behold Nor face nor form of any living man, But scorching in the fiery breath o' the sun, Shalt lose thy skin's fair bloom ; and thou shalt joy To see the spangled night devour the day, And yet again to see the sun return Scattering the dews of dawn ; and evermore The ever-present ill shall crush thee down.

The crucifixion is complete; arms, legs, ribs, every joint and thew, are fast bound, and to complete all, the sharp tooth of the adamantine wedge is driven right through the Titan's chest. At last the servants of Zeus withdraw, leaving the sufferer alone with Nature ; and now, but not till now, the pent-up agony of his heart bursts forth in one great wail, one passionate appeal of immortal pain : ** O holy ether, and swift-winged winds, O springs of rivers and innumerable laughter of the ocean waves, O earth, mother of all — you I invoke, and the all-beholding circle of the sun.'' This, in the most wonderful of untranslatable iambics, followed by a scream of indignant anapaests equally untranslatable : " O see by what pitiful bonds worn away, I shall wrestle through aeons of pain!" His call is quickly answered. A music and odour are blown to him from the far-off sea, and soon the air trembles with the stir of wonderful wings. The Chorus rises — beautiful ocean spirits hovering over him with soft and soothing song. As they float above him, fixing their gentle eyes on the lineaments of his sorrowful countenance, he tells them who and what he is, his story, and the story of his offence against Zeus.

When confusion and anarchy arose among the

FROM uESCHYLUS TO VICTOR HUGO. 3

gods, some wanting to depose Kronos that Zeus might reign, others striving that Zeus might never reign, Prometheus was the only Titan who stood on Zeus's side ; and by his help Zeus conquered.

But this disease exists in sovereignty, Never to trust one's friends.

No sooner was Zeus seated on the ancestral throne, than he began to persecute the race of men, with a view to their utter annihilation and the creation of a new order of creatures. But Prometheus interposed on behalf of humanity ; firstly, by teaching men to be less fearful of the supernatural, to cease, in other words, from "dwelling on their doom;" and secondly, by teaching them the use of fire, parent of innumerable arts. The Titan has arrived at this point of his narration, when the Chorus alight on the ground, surrounding him, and simultaneously Okeanos their father arrives, riding on a gryphon. The ancient seagod comes ta proffer counsel, which is gloomily received, for he recommends a certain amount of submission to the powers that be. He will himself, he suggests, intercede with Zeus. For reply, Prometheus reminds him of the fate of the other Titans — Atlas and Typhon :

And by the fortunes of my brother Atlas My soul is troubled ; — he who stands i' the west Upbearing on his shoulders silently A burden borne not easily by arms.

The pillar of the heaven and of the earth. And troubled was my soul when I beheld The earth-born dweller in Sicilian caves, The hundred-headed Typhon, fierce as fire, Crushed down ; for he, the foe of all the gods. Rose hissing horror with terrific jaws. And from his eyes a gorgon fury glared, Threat'ning red havoc on the rule of Zeus. But on his head flashed Zeus's fiery levin,

B 2

The burning and unsleeping thunderbolt, Which clave him even as he threatened. Smit to the vitals, to a cinder burned, His force devoured by lightning, prone he fell ; And now a corse effete, outstretched he lies Close to that ocean strait prest down between The leaden weights of Aetna ; and Hephoestos Forgeth the liquid mass of glowing flame. Seated above him on the mountain heights, Whence in the time hereafter shall outspring Rivers of flame with fiery mouths devouring The furrowed fields of fruitful Sicily.*

Finding his task hopeless, Okeanos withdraws. The Chorus surround the Titan, uttering music of infinite tenderness. His voice trembles as he tells them of his gentle deeds, his love for humanity. It was not enough to give men fire ; he gave them living souls. Before his beneficence, they had been as "phantoms seen in dreams " {ovftpaToav dXiyKioi fiop(l>ai(rt). They dragged their weary lives along. Houses they had none whether of wood or stone, but they dwelt, numerous as gnats, in the sunless hearts of caverns ; and they knew not how to distinguish the seasons, until Prometheus instructed them in the risings and the settings of the stars. He then taught them Number (dpidfibv), and the arrangement of letters (ypapfidT(ov a-wdeaeis), and Memory, handmaid and Mother of the Muses. Nor was this all. He instructed them in horse-taming and horsemanship, and in navigation of the ocean ; what medicines to use in sickness, where to find, and how to combine them ; how to divine auguries and omens, both ordinary and extraordinary ; and how, delving in the deep earth, to discover the precious metals. He concludes —

Summed in one little sentence hear the truth, All arts to mortals from Prometheus came !

* This and the other renderings in the text are original. — R. B.

The dialogue now touches on divine Mysteries. Prometheus prophesies. After thousands upon thousands of years, he is to find a deliverer. The thing is fated^ and even Zeus is the creature of fate. " What, then, shall be the fate of Zeus ? '^ ask the Okeanides ; but Prometheus refuses to answer, the time being not yet ripe. An unconscious answer comes, however, through a sudden apparition. lo, in the shape of a white heifer, enters, rolling her wild eyes round and wailing loudly. In a frantic song, she bewails her miserable fate, and calls upon Zeus to pity her. She is still moaning, when Prometheus utters her name — "lo, daughter of Inachos, who filled the heart of Zeus with love, and who is now, through the hate of Her4 driven from land to land." Presently, while her soul is soothed for a time by the sympathy of Prometheus and the Maidens, she tells the whole story of the divine love and persecution.

But now in clear narration you shall know

All of these things ye crave ; but ah, I grieve

EVn while of that same heaven-sent storm I tell,

And of the cruel changing of my form,

The way it came upon me miserable !

For ever thronging in my virgin bowers

Came nightly dreams with smooth and honeyed words

BeguiHng me : " O maiden, triply blest.

Why linger on in cold virginity

When most exalted wedlock waits for thee !

For shafts of love outshooting from thine eyes

Are burning in the breast of highest Zeus,

Who now would mingle with thee amorously.

Wherefore, O child, disdain not Zeus's bed.

But hie thee forth to Lerna's deep green mead,

Where feed thy father's oxen, flocks and herds,

That so the Eye Divine from its desire

At last may cease." At voices such as these

I wretched trembled nightly, till at last

I dared to whisper in my father's ears

My visions. Then did he send messengers

To Pytho and Dodona frequently,

Seeking to know how best to please the gods In words or deeds ; and ever they returned With numberless ambiguous oracles, Most dim of meaning' and most dark to read. At last there came a clearer oracle Charging upon my father Inachos To thrust me from his threshold and his land That I might wander homeless, desolate, On the remotest limits of the earth ; And threatening if he failed in this dark deed, That fiery lightnings should be sent from Zeus To sweep away the remnant of his race. So, overawed by Loxias' oracle Unwilling he drave me unwilling too Out of his house, since Zeus*s cruel curb Constrained him to this deed in love's despite. Then suddenly my senses and my shape Became transformed, and even as ye behold. Horned as any beast and driven on By the fierce pricks of the sharp stinging fly, With maniac leaps I rushed until I came To the soft stream Kerchneian and the fount Of Lerna. And the Herdsman born of earth. The fierce and headstrong Argus, followed me, Watching my track with eyes innumerable. Him sudden accident surprised and slew, But I abide, by maddening pangs impelled From region into region of the earth.

The Okeanides utter their pity in loud wails. Then Prometheus describes to lo the whole of her future fortune; and to prove the truth of his prophetic powers, he follows with a recital of her wanderings past, describing point by point, and picture by picture, the whole extent of her toilsome journey. Midway in his recital, he comes to a more explicit prophesy concerning the fall of Zeus. A day shall come when a child of Zeus, mightier than himself, as Zeus was mightier than Kronos, shall hurl him down from heaven ; before or about the occurrence of this event, a child of lo, the third - generation after her,, shall release Prometheus from his bonds. Not to be misunderstood by too dark an augury, the Titan concludes by recurring to the end of lo's wanderings and the birth of the Deliverer : —

Remotest of the land, a City stands,

Canopus, at the very mouth of Nile ;

There verily shall Zeus restore thy soul

Smoothing thee only with his outstretched hand.

Touching, not terrifying thee ; and lo !

Of that same touch thou shalt conceive and bear

The dark-skinned Epaphos, " Touch-born ; " and he

Shall gather in the fruit of every land

Whose fields are watered by broad-bosom'd Nile.

There in the generation fifth from him

Shall fifty children come of female seed,

And these against their will shall journey back

To Argos, flying nuptials with their kin,

These kin their cousins ; and these last, as kites

Not lingering long behind the doves they seek,

Shall come pursuing evil marriages,

But God shall grudge to yield unto their arms

The bodies of the virgins. And at last

In bloody woman-watches of the night,

Those men shall perish, stab'd and smit to death,

Darkly, within the land Pelasgian ;

For by his bride shall every husband die,

Staining with his red blood the two-edged sword.

But love shall soften one of those fierce maids,

To be deemed weak than to turn murderess,

This one shall spare the sharer of her bed ;

And from her seed shall spring the royal race

At Argos. Long and tedious 'twere to tell

These things at length and clearly ; but i' the end,

Of this same seed a hero shall be born

Mighty to bend the bow and hurl the dart,

And he it is who from my sufferings

At last shall set me free ! This oracle

The Titan Themis, my ancestral mother.

Rehearsed unto me darkly long ago ;

But how and when the thing shall come to pass

Tedious it were to tell, tedious to hear.

Nor could ye gain at all by hearkening.

As he ceases, lo bursts into renewed lamentations, and stung* again by her grief, rushes onward down

* It is rather puerile to render the oiarpos of v. 567 and 880 literally, as most of our translators do, as if this ol<rrpos were the mountain side. In a low monotonous song, the Okeanides sing, while Prometheus falls into a gloomy trance ; awakening from which, with a bitter smile, he repeats his awful threats against the King of Heaven. His words are wrapt in mystic darkness, trenchant and terrible though they be. One point is certain — Zeus is to fall. The Okeanides, again surrounding him, look on him sadly, for the frightful power of the Deity has terrified them, and they regard the Titan, still with the old pity, but with a new despair. Their terror and submission irritates him anew, and he exclaims :

Worship then, flatter him, the King of the Hour ! For me, I care for Zeus, yea less than nought. Let him abide this little while, and rule Even as he pleases, — long he shall not rule 0*er the immortal gods !

As he speaks, he beholds, brightly approaching, the god Hermes. The terrible threat has been heard in Olympus, and the messenger of Zeus has been sent to demand, in no measured language, the full explanation of when and by whom Zeus is to be overthrown. In the angry scene that follows, Prometheus still preserves his dignity, coldly refusing to gratify his persecutor with one syllable of the awful truth, but still defying him to do his worst. That worst is soon to come. Horror is to be heaped on horror, torture on torture. Even as Hermes speaks, the earth begins to tremble, the heavens to flash fire.

the o^varofios fivoDyjr of v. 674. Still more ridiculous does it seem to conceive that the Spectre of Argus of which lo raves in v. 568 was actually present on the stage. Professor Plumptree, in his excellent translation, falls into this error of stage direction — " Enter lo,'' etc., followed by thg Spectre of Argus — as if he were glaring in the background, ' like Banquo's ghost, and rolling his hundred eyes to aft'right the groundlings.

While the Okeanides cower and moan, Hermes withdraws, and on the Titan's head falls the full thunderbolt of Zeus. To the very last the mighty voice is heard intoning :

Yea, now, in very deed,

No longer only in word,

The earth is shaken and stirr'd,

The fiery levin is freed.

The thunder roUeth by.

Storms whirl the dust on high.

Downward with maddened motion

The mighty whirlwinds leap.

The sky is blent with the ocean.

And deep is mingled with deep.

Such is the horror hurPd

From Zeus*s terrible hand.

In dark confusion whirl'd

I tremble and shake,' yet stand.

O holy Mother, see ;

O all-encircling air,

Light of all things that be,

Behold what wrongs I bear !

With the immortal appeal, the voice ceases; all is silence and darkness.

Such is a brief sketch of the "Prometheus Bound" of ^schylus, a work so familiar to students that a detailed description of it would be superfluous, were such a description not absolutely necessary for the purpose of the comparisons to be instituted in the present article. This immortal piece bears the same relation to tragedy that the " Laocoon " does to sculpture ; it is absolutely solitary and supremely great.* In the depth and infinity of its suggestions,

* Thirty pages of close print would contain this masterpiece. It is about as long as a single book of " Paradise Lost," and not very much longer than Mr. Tennyson's '* Enoch Arden." The whole trilogy, of which it was a part, could have been included in the space of one of the volumes of an ordinary three volume novel !

lo A LOOK ROUND LITERATURE.

it is even more pregnant now than it was to the contemporaries of its author ; every century adds to its significance, every literary remove heightens its grandeur. It has no equal because it has no rival. It deals with shapes so colossal, with ideas so sublime,, that we still tremble before them in wonder akin tosuperstition. If the Bible overshadows us like a cloud,, the Prometheus overawes us like a mountain. Its peaks touch the stars, its base is rooted deep in human soil ; wind, rain, and snow abide upon it, and mystery dwells upon it ; it stirs with the blind motion of supernatural powers — Zeus slipping like an avalanche to his doom, the Titan towering far above in the beauty of unimaginable power. A Voice comes from it, with such music as shall be never heard again, for " that large utterance of the early gods "' is dead for ever.

II. Gilliatt

I HAVE given one picture. Let me turn now to the other.

The scene is scarcely less wild and desolate thaiv was the Scythian Caucasus. It is a lonely reef of rocks in the midst of the ocean; nothing is seen, but the cloud, rock, and the water, no sound is heard save the sound of sea-birds, the plash of the silent sea. Suddenly the eye becomes conscious of twothings that it had not seen before — of a large vessel

FROM jESCHYLUS TO VICTOR HUGO. ii

wrecked and sucked up between two mighty masses of rock, where it hangs suspended, and of a solitary figure which stands behind it, looking upward — the figure of a man. This man, too, is Titanic ; so at least he seems in the dim low light that surrounds him. This form too is in revolt, not against a cruel and malignant Deity, but against those powers of Nature which are even more cruel and malignant; and he too will endeavour to conquer, but by active resistance, not sublime endurance. His work lies before him. If, in defiance of the elements, he can detach that suspended wreck from its niche, piece it again into a goodly vessel, set it again afloat upon the sea, and all this by the unaided craft of his own brain, and the strength of his own arm, why then, the Tyrant is conquered, and the human Spirit rises irresistible and supreme. The man, however, has a lower end in view — he hopes, by his miracle of salvage, to win to himself the love of a woman, the daughter of the man whose wealth has been lost in that missing vessel. For this being in mid-ocean is no Titan, no colossal comrade of gods and demigods, but only a poor Toiler of the Sea, dwelling in a poor home in the island of Guernsey, and earning his subsistence by the work of his own hands. " Tel ^tait Gilliatt. Les filles le trouvaient laid. II n'etait pas laid. II ^tait beau peut-^tre. II avait dans le profil quelque chose d'un barbare antique. Au repos, il ressemblait k une Dace de la colonne trajane." He was thirty years old, but he appeared five-and-forty ; for he "wore the dark mask of the wind and the sea." Gilliatt, then, is here on the Douvres, a desolate reef of rocks out in mid-channel, resolved upon a work which, to all intents and purposes, is impossible — the rescue of a steam-ship, which, instead of sinking to the bottom as is the usual fate of wrecks, has been suspended miraculously in mid-air.

La coque dtait perdue, la machine ^tait intacte. Ces hasards sont frequents dans les naufrages comme dans les incendies. La logique du ddsastre nous dchappe.

Les mits cassds ^taient tombds, la cheminde n'^tait pas m^me ploy^e ; la grande plaque de fer qui supportait la mdcanique Tavait maintenue ensemble et tout d'une pi^ce. Les rev^tements en planches des tambours dtaient disjoints k peu pr^s comme les lames d'une persienne ; mais k travers leurs claires-voies on distinguait les deux roues en bon dtat. Quelque pales manquaient.

Outre la machine, le grand cabestan de Tarri^re avait rdsistd II avait sa chaine, et, grice k son robuste emboitement dans un cadre de madriers, il pouvait rendre encore des services, pourvu toutefois que reflfort du tournevire ne fit pas fendre le plancher. Le tablier du pont fldchissait presque sur tous les points. Tout ce diaphragme dtait branlant.

En revanche le trongon de la coque engagd entre les Douvres tenait ferme, nous I'avons dit, et semblait solide. Cette conservation de la machine avait on ne sait quoi de ddrisoire et ajoutait Pironie k la catastrophe. La sombre malice de Finconnu delate quelquefois dans ces esp^ces de moqueries am^res. La machine etait sauvde, ce qui ne I'emp^chait point d'etre perdue. IVOcdan la gardait pour la ddmolir k loisir. Jeu de chat.

His first care is to find a place of shelter for himself while he remains on the reef, and this he at last finds in a sort of hole in the rock. As he prepares his lodging, multitudes of sea-birds hover above him. " C^^taient des mouettes, des goelands, des frigates,* des cormorans, des mauves, une nu^e des oiseaux de mer, ^tonn^s." A week passes away. This first week

* It is as consistent to introduce the " frigate-bird " here as to write of the sea-serpent. The mistake is trifling, but it points to a general want of veracity, which would be repelling in a writer of less genius. Further on, he describes a purely impossible flight of cormorants. Here as elsewhere, he writes like a man who has got his notion of the sea from books, and had never seen a sea-bird. Who doubts the genius? but it is genius reckless of all consequences and indifferent to all verification.

IS employed in gathering together all the flotsam and jetsam of the wreck — ropes, chains, pieces of wood, " broken yards," blocks and pulleys. Then —

A la fin de la semaine, Gilliatt avait dans ce hangar de granit tout Pinforme bric-k-brac de la temp^te mis en ordre. II y avait, le coin des ^couets et le coin des ecoutes ; les boulines n'dtaient point m^ldes avec les dresses ; les bigots dtaient rangds selon la quantity de trous qu'ils avaient ; les emboudinures, soigneusement ddtachdes des organeaux des ancres brisdes, dtaient rouldes en dcheveaux ; les moques, qui n'ont point de rouet, dtaient sdpardes des moufles ; les cabellots, les margouillets, les pataras, les gabarons, les joutereaux, les calebas, les galoches, les pantoires, les oreilles d'ine, les racages, les bosses, les boute-hors, occupaient, pourvu quMls ne fussent pas completement ddfigurds par Pavarie, des compartiments diflfdrents ; toute la charpente, traversins, piliers, dpontilles, chouquets, mantelets, jumelles, hiloires, etait entass(5e k part ; chaque fois que cela avait €i€ possible, les planches des fragments de franc-bord embouflfete avaient €\,€ rentrdes l^s unes dans les autres ; il n*y avait nulle confusion des garcettes de ris avec les garcettas de tournevire, ni de araigndes avec les tou^es, ni des poulies, ni des morceaux de virure avec les morceaux de vibord, un recoin avait €x.€ rdservd k une partie du trelingage de la Durande, qui appuyait les haubans de hune et les gambes de hune. Chaque debris avait sa place. Tout le naufrage dtait Ik, classd et ^tiquetd C^tait quelque chose comme le chaos en magasin.

These disjecta membra were arranged in one great hollow of the crag which he used as a storehouse. Another hollow close by he determines to use as a forge. The preparation of the forge need not be described in detail, but it is successfully accomplished. With forge and magazine all prepared, Gilliatt sets to work in earnest, with a " fiert^ de cyclope, maitre de Fair, de I'eau, et de feu.^^ It is necessary, however, to nourish himself while so doing, and he therefore spends a certain portion of the day in searching for crabs and other shell-fish. While so doing, he penetrates, through* a narrow fissure, into a mighty watercavern situated in the very heart of the rocks. The water therein is of ^^ molten emerald ^^ {de Vdmeraude

H A LOOK ROUND LITERATURE,

en fusion), a cloud of delicate beryl covers the shadowy walls and overhanging arches, pearls drop momently from the long water-mosses that cluster overhead, and through all the dimness the sea shudders like a palpitating heart. Beautiful as this cavern appears, it is fatal. Empty of all life as it seems, it is nevertheless a habitation. An evil spirit dwells within it, a monstrous and horrible Oceanform. Of this master of the mansion, Gilliatt, during his first visit, got only a glimpse.

Tout i coup, k quelques pieds au-dessous de lui, dans la transparence charmante de cette eau qui dtait comme de la pierrerie dissoute, il apergut quelque chose d'inexprimable. Une esp^ce de long haillon se mouvait dans I'oscillation des lames. Ce haillon ne flottait pas, il voguait, il avait un but, il allait quelque part, il ^tait rapide. Cette guenille avait la forme d'une marotte de bouffon avec des pointes ; ces pointes, flasques, ondoyaient ; elle semblait couverte d'une poussi^re impossible k mouiller. Cdtait plus qu'horrible, c'dtait sale. II y avait de la chim^re dans cette chose ; c'dtait un ^tre, k moins que ce ne fiit une apparence. Elle semblait se dinger vers le c6td obscur de la cave, et s'y enfongait. Les dpaisseurs d'eau devinrent sombres sur elle. Cette silhouette glissa et disparut, sinistre.