The wall surrounding the cartridge plant was swept away, the masonry crumbled to pieces, the walls of the buildings cracked and parted like scenery, or as if a sudden torrent of water had burst forth, and, in a green Bengal light with the color of a glaucous and phosphorescent sea, unwonted human forms whirled about before his eyes, more rapid and more fleeting than a luminous bank of fishes, or than the thousand candles quivering before the pupil of an apoplectic^s eye. In the horrible bustling of these apparitions, Laurent distinguished trunks without members, hands and feet amputated from bodies, and what dismayed him the most was the imploring or terrified expression in the gleaming eyes of those bloodless heads, the same youthful roguish eyes that he had seen a few seconds before, and the grin, the convulsion, the grimace of horrible suffering upon these mouths, the same mouths that only just now had been so willful and so bantering, and the frank, courageous beauty of these children, now twisted in he knew not what convulsion.
Was he watching a shipwreck or a fire? He saw again, but together, the martyrized children of the Fulton shipyards, and the emigrants who had gone down on The Gina. And one of these faces, that of young Frans Verwinkel, extraordinarily resembled that of his dear Pierket, Henriette's youngest brother and her living image, but a stubborn and determined version of that pensive image.
This phantasmagoria lasted but one brief second, after which the green light died down, the walls closed up, the fence rose once more, and the hideous factory took on its sullen, but normal aspect.
"What now!" said Paridael to himself. "Am I going mad?"
