bunches of fruit, spoke to them of the rich fertility of the soil, while the Abyssinian Euphorbia, the prickly, deformed, tapering stems of which--covered with horrid excrescences--they could espy in the darkness, seemed to perspire with sap, with the overflowing flux of their fiery growth. But by degrees as the lovers' glances dived into the corners of the conservatory, the darkness was filled with a more furious debauchery of leaves and stems; they could not distinguish on the stages the Marantas, soft like velvet, the Gloxinias with violet bells, the Dracænas resembling blades of old varnished lacquer; it was a round dance of living plants pursuing each other with unquenched tenderness. At the four corners, at the point where the curtains of tropical creepers formed arbours, their carnal fancy grew madder again, and the supple shoots of the Vanillas, the Indian berries, the Quisqualis and the Bauhinias seemed to be the interminable arms of lovers who could not be seen, but who distractedly lengthened their embrace to draw all scattered delights towards them. These endless arms drooped with lassitude, locked together in a spasm of love, sought for each other, entwined together like a crowd bent on copulation. It was, indeed, the immense copulation of the conservatory, of this bit of virgin forest ablaze with the foliage and the flowers of the tropics. Maxime and Renée, with their senses perverted, felt themselves carried away amid these mighty nuptials of nature. The soil burnt their backs through the bearskin, and drops of heat fell upon them from the lofty palms. The sap which arose in the tree trunks penetrated them as well, and imparted to them mad desires of immediate growth, of gigantic procreation. They took part in the copulation of the conservatory. It was then, in the pale glimmer, that visions stupefied them, nightmares amid which, during long intervals, they beheld the amours of the palms and ferns; the foliage assumed a confused, equivocal aspect, which their desires transformed into something sensual; murmurs, whispers were wafted to them from the clumps of shrubs, faint voices, sighs of ecstasy, stifled cries of pain, distant laughter, all that was noisy in their own kisses and that echo sent them back. At times they thought themselves shaken by an earthquake, as if the earth itself, in a crisis of satisfied desire, had burst forth into voluptuous sobs.