It was a victorious revolt, it was revolutionary nature constructing barricades out of the overturned altars, and wrecking the church which had for centuries cast too deep a shadow over it.  The other combatants had fallen back, and let the plants, the thyme and the lavender and the lichens, complete the overthrow of the building with their ceaseless little blows, their constant gnawing, which proved more destructive than the heavier onslaught of the stronger assailants.

Then, suddenly, the end came.  The rowan-tree, whose topmost branches had already forced their way through the broken windows under the vaulted roof, rushed in violently with its formidable stream of greenery.  It planted itself in the centre of the nave and grew there monstrously.  Its trunk expanded till its girth became so colossal that it seemed as though it would burst the church asunder like a girdle spanning it too closely.  Its branches shot out in knotted arms, each one of which broke down a piece of the wall or thrust off a strip of the roof, and they went on multiplying without cessation, each branch ramifying, till a fresh tree sprang out of each single knot, with such impetuosity of growth that the ruins of the church, pierced through and through like a sieve, flew into fragments, scattering a fine dust to the four quarters of the heavens.

Now the giant tree seemed to reach the stars; its forest of branches was a forest of legs, arms, and breasts full of sap; the long locks of women streamed down from it; men’s heads burst out from the bark; and up aloft pairs of lovers, lying languid by the edges of their nests, filled the air with the music of their delights.

A final blast of the storm which had broken over the church swept away the dust of its remains:  the pulpit and the confessional-box, which had been ground into powder, the lacerated holy pictures, the shattered sacred vessels, all the litter at which the legion of sparrows that had once dwelt amongst the tiles was eagerly pecking.  The great Christ, torn from the cross, hung for a moment from one of the streaming women’s curls, and then was whirled away into the black darkness, in the depths of which it sank with a loud crash.  The Tree of Life had pierced the heavens; it overtopped the stars.

Abbe Mouret was filled with the mad joy of an accursed spirit at the sight before him.  The church was vanquished; God no longer had a house.  And thenceforward God could no longer trouble him.  He was free to rejoin Albine, since it was she who triumphed.  He laughed at himself for having declared, an hour previously, that the church would swallow up the whole earth with its shadow.  The earth, indeed, had avenged itself by consuming the church.  The mad laughter into which he broke had the effect of suddenly awakening him from his hallucination.  He gazed stupidly round the nave, which the evening shadows were slowly darkening.  Through the windows he could see patches of star-spangled sky; and he was about to stretch out his arms to feel the walls, when he heard Desiree calling to him from the vestry-passage: