Soon, Trompette lay sprawled on the cast-iron floor, motionless, like a heap. He still didn’t move, lost in the nightmare of that dark, endless hole, that deep room echoing with uproar. They were beginning to untie him when Bataille, unhitched a moment earlier, approached and stretched out his neck to sniff this companion who had fallen from the earth like this. Perhaps he breathed in the sweet scent of open air, the long-forgotten smell of sunshine on the grass. And suddenly, he broke into a loud neigh, a melody of joy, carrying the tenderness of a sob. It was a welcome, the joy of those old things, of which a puff reached him—a melancholy for one more prisoner who would only ascend again in death.