"'Behold the year '40, the famous year '40 has come! Ah! ah! ah! What will it bring forth? What will it produce? An ox or an egg? Perhaps one, perhaps the other! ah! ah! ah! Peasants turn up your sleeves! And you wealthy, sweep your hearthstones. Make way, make way for the year '40! The year '40 is cold and hungry and in need of food; and no wonder! Its teeth chatter, its limbs shiver, its children have no shoes, and its daughters possess not even a ribbon to adorn their locks on Sunday; they have not even a beggarly dime lying idle in their poverty-stricken pockets to buy drink wherewith to refresh themselves and their lovers! Ah! ah! what wretchedness! Were it not too dreadful it would seem ludicrous. Did you come here, gossip, to see this topsy-turvy world? Come quickly, there is room for all.... Stay, you raven looking in at the window, and that vulture beating its wings. Ah! ah! ah! The year '40 is cold, is an hungered, in need of food! What will it bring forth ...?' "And the song died away in the distance, and mingled with the murmur of the wind which was wailing without.... "Then began the apparitions. There were twelve of them, all livid and weighted with chains and bleeding, each holding its dissevered head in its hand, each wrapped in a shroud, green with the moss of its sepulchre, each carrying in front of it the mark of the twelve great passions, the mystic link which unites man to the Creator. They advanced as some dark shadow of night falls upon the mountains. It was one of those terrifying groups, which one sees in the days of torment, in the midst of the cross-roads of the seething city; the citizens question one another by signs, and ask each other-- "'Do you see those awful faces down there? Who on earth are those men, and how come they to wander spectre-like among the excited crowd?' "And on the head of the one who walked first, like that of an over-thrown king, so splendid was its pallor and its regal lips scornful, a crown of fire was burning with this word written in letters of blood, '_Lacenairisme!_' Dumb and led by the figure who seemed to be their king, the phantoms grouped themselves in a semi-circle at the foot of the dilapidated bed, as though at the foot of some seat of justice; and _he who is_, after fixing his earnest glance upon them for some moments questioned them in the following terms-- "'Who are you?' "'Sorrow's elect, apostles of hunger.' "'Your names?' "'A mysterious letter.' "'Whence come you?' "'From the shades.' "'What do you demand?' "'Justice.' "The echoes repeated, 'Justice!' "And at a signal from their king, the phantoms intoned a ringing hymn in chorus ..."