“It was afterwards that she became a wanderer, entirely devoted to some mysterious and desperate quest: a philter to create souls within the hairy flesh of prowling goat-foots. She lifted up enormous stones with her frail hands but, instead of a balm or talisman, there were toads or stagnant water sleeping there. Snakes slithered under the dry leaves, hatched from golden eggs, which she believed to be those of peacocks or doves; a seething poison, where a remedy had been promised...”
Henri de Regnier, 1897
