It seems to me as if silence is digging itself into the brains and lungs of the dark prisoners who imprison us, and that we are listening to it.
He rambles more loudly now, as if he bore a stifling secret; he calls up multitudes, and still more multitudes.

He is obsessed by multitudes--"Men, men!" he says.

The soil is caressed by some sounds of sighs, terribly soft, by confidences which are interchanged without their wishing it.

Now and again, the sky collapses into light, and that flash of instantaneous sunshine changes the shape of the plain every time, according to its direction.

Then does the night take all back again athwart the rolling echoes.
"Men! Men!" "What about them, then ?" says a sudden jeering voice which falls like a stone.
"Men _must_ not awake," the shining shadow goes on, in dull and hollow tones.
"Don't worry!" says the ironical voice, and at that moment it terrifies me.
Several bodies arise on their fists into the darkness--I see them by their heavy groans--and look around them.
The shadow talks to himself and repeats his insane words:-- "Men _must_ not awake." The voice opposite me, capsizing in laughter and swollen with a rattle, says again:-- "Don't worry!" Yonder, in the hemisphere of night, comets glide, blending their cries of engines and owls with their flaming entrails.