Without doubt I was going to pass the night in that sylvan jail; nothing would get me out of it before day. The toads of the pool in the Fonval direction called me in vain; vainly the steeple clock of Grey rang out the hours to tell me of the other resting-place--for belfries are really sonorous lighthouses--I was a prisoner. A prisoner! It made me smile. Long ago how frightened I should have been! A prisoner in the Ardennes! At the mercy of Brocéliande, the monstrous forest which with its cavernous shade held a world in darkness between its boundaries, one being at Blois and the other in Constantinople! Brocéliande! that scene of epic tales and puerile legends, country of the four sons of Aymon and of Hop-o’-my-Thumb, the forest of druids and goblins, the wood in which Sleeping Beauty fell into slumber while Charlemagne kept watch! What fantastic stories had not its thickets for a stage--were not the trees themselves living persons? “Oh, Aunt Lidivine,” I murmured, “how well you could give life to all those nonsensical tales every evening after dinner! The dear lady! Did she ever suspect the influence of her stories? Aunt, did you know that all your astounding puppets invaded my life by passing through my dreams? Do you know that a flourish of enchanted trumpets still sounds in my ears sometimes; you who made my nights at Fonval resound with the oliphant of Roland and the horn of Oberon?” At that moment I could not check a movement of vexation; the head-lamps had just gone out after an agonized throb. For a second the darkness was total, and at the same time there was such a profound silence that I could well believe I had suddenly become blind and deaf. Then my eyes gradually became unsealed, and soon the crescent moon appeared, shedding its snowy light on the cold night. The forest became lit up with a frozen whiteness. I shivered. In my aunt’s lifetime it would have been with terror; I should have beheld in the darkness, where the vapors were creeping, dragons wallowing and serpents gliding. An owl flew off. I should have considered that bird the winged helm of a paladin--an enchanted paladin. The birch tree, standing straight up, shone with a lance-like gleam. An oak tree--a son perhaps of the magic tree which was the husband of the Princess Leélina--quivered. It was huge and druidical--a bunch of mistletoe hung on its main branch, and the moon cut through it with a shining sacred sickle.