The moon turned each rock into a broken column, crumbling capital, or stretch of wall pierced with mysterious arches.

On high slumbered the mass of the Garrigues, suffused with a milky tinge, and resembling some immense Cyclopean city whose towers, obelisks, houses and high terraces hid one half of the heavens; and in the depths below, on the side of the plain, was a spreading ocean of diffused light, vague and limitless, over which floated masses of luminous haze.

The insurrectionary force might well have thought they were following some gigantic causeway, making their rounds along some military road built on the shore of a phosphorescent sea, and circling some unknown Babel.
On the night in question, the Viorne roared hoarsely at the foot of the rocks bordering the route.

Amidst the continuous rumbling of the torrent, the insurgents could distinguish the sharp, wailing notes of the tocsin.

The villages scattered about the plain, on the other side of the river, were rising, sounding alarm-bells, and lighting signal fires.
Till daybreak the marching column, which the persistent tolling of a mournful knell seemed to pursue in the darkness, thus beheld the insurrection spreading along the valley, like a train of powder.