On the right and left the ploughed hill-land showed like vast, grey, vague seas intersected by this ribbon, this roadway white with frost, and brilliant as with metallic lustre.

Up above, on a level with the horizon, lights shone from a few windows in the Faubourg, resembling glowing sparks.

By degrees Miette and Silvere had walked fully a league.

They gazed at the intervening road, full of silent admiration for the vast amphitheatre which rose to the verge of the heavens, and over which flowed bluish streams of light, as over the superposed rocks of a gigantic waterfall.

The strange and colossal picture spread out amid deathlike stillness and silence.