A great buzzing arose, whiffs of human breath blew hither and thither, and these alone enabled you to realise that thousands of serried, stifling creatures were gathered together in the black depths, like a living sea that was ever eddying and spreading.

There were even people hidden away under the trees beyond the Grotto, in distant recesses of the darkness of which one had no suspicion.
At last a few tapers began to shine forth here and there, like sudden sparks of light spangling the obscurity at random.

Their number rapidly increased, eyots of stars were formed, whilst at other points there were meteoric trails, milky ways, so to say, flowing midst the constellations.
The thirty thousand tapers were being lighted one by one, their beams gradually increasing in number till they obscured the bright glow of the Grotto and spread, from one to the other end of the promenade, the small yellow flames of a gigantic brasier.
"Oh! how beautiful it is, Pierre!" murmured Marie; "it is like the resurrection of the humble, the bright awakening of the souls of the poor." "It is superb, superb!" repeated M.de Guersaint, with impassioned artistic satisfaction.

"Do you see those two trails of light yonder, which intersect one another and form a cross ?" Pierre's feelings, however, had been touched by what Marie had just said.
He was reflecting upon her words.

There was truth in them.