With its point upwards, it stood up at the bottom of a hole where Donovan’s nails still showed their marks, among less recent scratches. When one examined these latter, which had been made by strong and powerful paws, the only possible conclusion was that the first digger must have been a dog of large size--apparently Nell, at the time when she wandered about the park in complete freedom. A leg was attached to this foot, and only lightly covered with earth. I clung to the possibility of some anatomical _débris_, but without much conviction. A hairy body followed the leg--a whole corpse, hardly clothed, and far advanced in decomposition! It had been buried aslant--the head, lower down than the feet, still remained buried. It was with a trembling spade that I uncovered the chin, whiskers that were almost blue, then a thick mustache--finally a face. I now knew what fate had overtaken all the personages who were grouped in the photograph.... _Otto Klotz, half unburied, with his head in the earth, was lying there before me!_ I identified him without any hesitation. It was quite unnecessary to uncover him completely--on the contrary, it was best to fill in the hole, so as to leave no traces of my escapade. However, all of a sudden, I seized the pick in frenzy, and began digging away by the side of the dead man. _Here_ rose up a bone like a white and spongy mushroom. Were there other things buried _there_? Oh!! I dug and dug. I was in a fever. White spots flickered before my eyes, and it seemed to me that tongues of fire were raining on my maddened eye like a pentecostal deluge. I dug and dug, and uncovered a whole cemetery, but thank God! a cemetery of animals--some, mere skeletons, others, with their feathers or fur--dry or oozy! Guinea-pigs, rabbits, dogs, cats--sometimes whole, sometimes in bits, the rest of which had gone to feed the pack. The leg of a horse! Ah, dear Biribi, it was yours; and under a layer of earth which had been recently stirred, bits of butcher’s meat wrapped up in a dappled skin--the remains of Pasiphaë! A fetid stench choked me. Exhausted, I leaned over my filthy pick, in the midst of the charnel-house. The sweat which poured from me, stung my eyes. I was gasping for breath. At that moment, my eyes lighted, by chance, on a skull--that of a cat. Immediately I picked it up. It was a regular pipe’s bowl! That is to say, a great circular hole took the place of the crown. I then took up another--a rabbit’s, if I remember rightly. Here too, was the same peculiarity. Four--sixteen other skulls, each showing its gaping hole, but with some differences in its position. Here and there the bony tops of skulls strewed the clearing with their large or tiny cups--some deep--some flat. One would have said that all those creatures had been massacred in a scientific hecatomb--a carefully reasoned-out sacrifice.