The sun dropped behind that curtain: a ray piercing through the crown of a thicket sparkled like a carbuncle set in the sombre foliage; the light diverging between the trunks and branches projected heightening columns and mobile arabesques upon the sward. Below were lilacs, azaleas, annulated creepers with gigantic sheaves; above, the clouds, some fixed, like promontories or old towers, others fleeting, like rosy vapours or carded silk. By means of successive transformations, one saw the mouths of furnaces opening up in those clouds, heaps of embers piling themselves up, streams of lava flowing: all was dazzling, radiant, gilded, opulent, saturated with light. After the Morean insurrection in 1770, some Greek families took refuge in Florida; they could still believe themselves in that Ionian climate which seems to have relented, together with men's passions: at Smyrna, in the evening, nature sleeps like a courtesan wearied with love. On our right were ruins belonging to the great fortifications that were found on the Ohio, on our left an old savage camp. The island on which we were, pictured in the water and reproduced by a mirage, poised its double perspective before us. In the east, the moon rested upon distant hills; in the west, the vault of the sky was melted into a sea of diamonds and sapphires, in which the sun, half-immersed, appeared to be dissolving. The animals of creation were keeping watch; the earth, in adoration, seemed to offer incense to the sky, and the amber exhaled from its bosom fell back upon it in the form of dew, as prayers fall back upon those who pray. Abandoned by my companions, I lay resting by the edge of a clump of trees: its darkness, glazed with light, formed the penumbra in which I sat. Fire-flies gleamed among the crape-covered shrubs and became obscured when they passed through the irradiations of the moon. I heard the sounds made by the rise and fall of the lake, the leap of the gold-fish, and the rare cry of the diver. My eyes were fixed upon the water; I gradually lapsed into the state of drowsiness known to men who travel the world's highways: I lost all clearness of recollection; I felt myself living and vegetating with nature in a kind of pantheism. I leant back against the trunk of a magnolia-tree and fell asleep; my slumbers floated upon a vague surface of hope. When I emerged from this Lethe, I found myself between two women: the odalisks had returned; they did not wish to arouse me; they had sat down silently by my side; whether they had feigned sleep or had really slumbered, their heads had fallen on my shoulders.