"'I leave thee!' replies the Centaur. And he stifles a plaintive murmur on the lips of his captive. 'I leave thee! Where is the Pirithous, the Alcides who dare come to dispute my conquest with me? Have I not my javelins? Have I not my heavy club? Have I not my swift speed? Has not Neptune given to the Centaur the impetuous strength of the storm?' "Then suddenly he bounded away full of courage, confidence and happiness. Cymothoë balanced as if she was hung in a moving net under these green vaults, or like as though borne in a chariot of clouds by Zephyrus, henceforth rids herself of her useless terrors and abandons herself to the raptures of this strange lover. "Again he stops and she admires the way nature has delighted to mate in him the lovely form of a horse with the majestic features of a man. Intelligent thought animates his glance, so proud and yet so gentle; beneath that broad breast dwells a heart touched by her charms.... What a splendid slave to Cymothoë and to love! "She soon stops looking; a burning blush covers her cheeks and her eyelids droop; then, as her lover redoubles his caresses, and unfastens her girdle-- "'Stay!' she says to him, 'stay, beauteous Centaur! Dost thou not hear the fiery pack of hounds? Do not the arrows whistle in thy ears.... I do not indeed hate thee; but leave me! Leave me!' "But neither Dryas nor his hounds nor slaves come that way, and those were not the reason of Cymothoë's fears. He, smiling-- "'Calm thy fright; come, let us cross the river, and do not dread the sacrifice we are about to offer to the-powerful Venus on the other side!... Soon, alas! the forests will see no more such nuptials. Our fathers have succumbed, betrayed by the wedding of Thetis and Peleus; we are now few in number, solitary, fugitive, not from man, weaker and less noble than we, but before Death who pursues us. The laws of a mysterious nature have thus decreed it; the reign of our race is nearly over! "'This globe, deprived of the love of the gods who made it, must grow old and the weak replace the strong; debased mortals will have nothing but vain memories of the early joys of the world. Thou art perhaps the last daughter of men destined to be allied with our race; but thou wilt at least have been the most beautiful and the happiest! Come!' "Thus speaks the man-horse, and replacing his delightsome burden on his bare back, he runs to the river and rushes into the midst of the waves, which sparkle round him in diamond sheaves burning with the setting fire of a summer sun. His eyes fixed on those of the beauty which intoxicates him, he swims across the stream and is lost to sight in the green depths which stretch from the other side to the foot of the high mountains...."