280 THE EMPTY VASE. 
ferocious blacks had chanced to come under my foot I should not have 
turned aside. 
The unfortunate empty vase continually reminded me of what had 
occurred, and held me as by a spell. On the evening of the 11th we 
were still seated on the ground before it, with our chin in our hand, 
completely absorbed in thought. Our gaze plunged into its depths. 
We persisted in longing for a sign of life to appear upon its perfect 
immobility, a something which might still say that all was not finished. 
This firm resolve seemed to have the potency of an evocation, and as 
if our desires had recalled to daylight some miserable spirit of the 
widowed city, one of the victims which had escaped made its appear- 
ance, and hurried headlong away from the field of death. And we 
perceived that it carried a cradle. 
Night came, and it was in a completely strange locality, surrounded 
by enemies. A few holes, whieh one might mistake for places of refuge, 
were precisely the mouths opening into the Inferno of the blacks. The 
unhappy fugitive, with its misfortune increased by the burden of its 
infant, ran distractedly, and without knowing whither. I followed it 
with my eyes and heart, until the darkness concealed it from me. 
