My last words fell on the willing ears of good neighbors and Christians who brought me not only one bottle but three, Chablis, Pouilly, and Irancy, and I, like a sailor setting out on a voyage, let down a rope out of my window; they put the wine in an old basket, tied the rope to its handle, and I pulled it up gently, my last best friend! After this, though the others had gone, I was not quite so lonely, but I kept no count of time, and could not tell now how the hours passed or rather how they seemed to be stolen from me, perhaps it was by the spirits in my trio of bottles, from which came voices and replies, but Colas Breugnon was not there to hear them. Towards midnight I appeared to be seated in a strawberry bed looking up at the sky through the branches of a tree. How dark the earth was, and how the stars twinkled, the moon too was smiling at me, and all around were twisted distorted old stems and roots, like a nest of serpents grinning horribly.--What was I doing there? My head was spinning, but I seemed to say to myself, “Up with you, Colas! and lie no longer on that old mattress; the bottles are empty, out with you to the garden!” I wanted also to pick some cloves of garlic, because they are said to be a cure for the plague, but scarcely had I set foot on the ground when everything seemed to be enchanted; the sky arched over me like a huge tree, and from its drooping branches hung the stars like glittering fruit, and they all had eyes to look at me; they laughed, and so did the strawberries; high up among the leaves was a golden pear all ripe and juicy, and she sang in a sweet little voice: “Grow like me From the tree, Little man below. Reach your hand to mine, Cling like stems of vine; Shake off all your woe, Grow with me As we upward go!” And the heavens and earth seemed like one big orchard full of fruits all singing, “Grow with me!” Then I stuck my arms into the soft warm earth up to the elbows, and sank down till I was all enfolded from head to heel, as if on my mother’s breast. From the July night rose the Song of Songs, the bright bunches of stars swung before my eyes, and the deep voice of St. Martin’s struck the hour; twelve o’clock, fourteen, sixteen o’clock? Surely there was something strange in the old time-piece! And the star fruit above and below began to strike too, or was it chiming? with such celestial sounds that they pierced my heart, and vibrated in my ears like distant thunder. Then it seemed as I lay that a tree of Jesse was growing from me and I mounted with it, up, up among the chiming branches towards a bright planet dancing on the highest tree-top, and that I stretched out my arms to reach it, singing: “You are mine, Star wine, Spirit of the living vine, Halleluia!”