A new exhalation now arises from the lake of blood, and spreads itself on its surface. It is a sort of greenish, transparent mist; it resembles the vertical section of a canal filled with water. At first he sees the bed of the canal covered in by a thick vase formed of numberless reptiles usually imperceptible to the unassisted eye, but which, enlarged, as if viewed through a microscope, assume monstrous forms, vast proportions relatively to their actual size. It is no longer mud, but a compact, living, crawling mass,--an inextricable conglomeration which wriggles and curls; so close, so dense, that a sullen and low undulation hardly stirs the level of this vase, or rather bed of foulest animalculæ. Above trickles gently--gently, a turbid stream, thick and stagnating, which, in its dilatory flow, disturbs the filth incessantly vomited by the sewers of a great city,--fragments of all sorts, carcasses of animals, etc., etc. Suddenly the Schoolmaster hears the plash of a body, which falls heavily on the water; in its recoil the water sprinkles his very face. In the midst of the air-bubbles which rise thick and fast to the surface of the canal he sees the body of a woman, which sinks rapidly as she struggles--struggles. Then he sees himself and the Chouette running hastily along the banks of St. Martin's Canal, carrying with them a box covered with black cloth; and yet he is still present during all the variations of agony suffered by the victim whom he and the Chouette have thrown into the canal. After the first immersion the victim rises to the surface and moves her arms in violent agitation like some one who, not knowing how to swim, tries in vain to save herself. Then she utters a piercing cry,--a cry of one in the last extremity,--despairing--which ends in the sullen, stifled sound of involuntary choking; and the woman the second time sinks beneath the troubled waters. The screech-owl, which hovers continually motionless, imitates the convulsive rattle of the drowning wretch, as she mocked the dying groans of the cattle-dealer. In the midst of bursts of deathlike laughter the screech-owl utters, "Glou! glou! glou!" The subterranean echoes repeated the sound.