He persuaded himself that they were simply a band of vagrants or mountebanks out of employment, living by marauding, and waiting under cover of that ruin for the spring to come, or perhaps in hiding there because of some crime. That laughter, those strange costumes outlined on the wall like Chinese ghosts, those long harangues, those animated dialogues were connected perhaps with the study of some burlesque art. "If I were nearer to them," he thought, "I might be amused; no man is ever ill received in any company, however bad it may be, if he enters it offering his purse with a good grace." So he took up his lantern and was preparing to descend, when the conversations, songs and laughter changed into cries of animals, so lifelike, so perfectly imitated, that one would have said that it was a whole barnyard in commotion. There were the ox, the ass, the horse, the goat, the rooster, the duck and the lamb, all braying and crowing together. Then they all ceased, as if to listen to the barking of a pack of hounds, the blast of the horn--all the typical noises of a hunt. Was it a game? Did it occur to the actors to look at themselves on the wall? They did not seem to be imitating the actions of the beasts whose cries they mimicked. In the midst of the uproar a child cried out in a shrill voice, perhaps to do as the others did, perhaps because he was frightened in his sleep; and Bois-Doré saw the shadow of a tiny person pass, with gestures like those of a monkey. Next there came a huge head crowned by a sort of plumed helmet, with an absurd nose outlined against the bright wall; then a long-haired head which seemed to wear a priest's cap, and which conversed with a long shadow that stood for many minutes as motionless as a statue. Then all the noises suddenly ceased, and naught could be heard save a low groaning, which resembled the groaning caused by physical pain, and which Bois-Doré had constantly detected, recurring at intervals, like a doleful chord on an organ, in the pauses of that wild charivari. The tumult stilled, the shadow of a gigantic crucifix was thrown upon the wall. The light seemed to change its position, and the cross became very small; at last it disappeared, and its place was taken by a single figure very sharply outlined, while a sepulchral voice recited in a monotonous tone a prayer which seemed to be the prayer for those who are in the death agony. XLVI Bois-Doré, who had held his place, detained by the amusement he derived from that phantasmagoric spectacle and those strange noises, was beginning to feel so cold that his teeth fairly chattered when this tedious ceremony began. This time, although he had determined to go to see what was taking place, he was withheld by the appalling resemblance presented by the last apparition. It became more precise and more unmistakable as the sepulchral voice proceeded with its sepulchral prayer, and the marquis, as if fascinated, could not remove his eyes from it.