Gaston Leroux

“ Balaoo was saved on the day when he set eyes once more on the place where he had seen his mother for the last time. It was three days' march from Batavia, a few hundred yards from the mangroves which, for a thousand years and more, had been digging their roots to the very heart of the earth. He recognized the disposition of the glade and the thick leafy vaults that cast the same shadow and the same light; for it takes hundreds of centuries to alter those landscapes created by the last upheavals of the world and the first vigour of the universal sap. ”

“ And, when the denizens of the forest, the real wild brothers of Bandong, gradually drew closer to the new family in the mangrove village and, on spring evenings, formed a circle around Balaoo and listened to his tales of men, Balaoo would say in their language, after a short prayer to Patti Palang Raing:
"Animals are animals and gods are gods, but men are nothing at all! ”

“ She had forgotten her Paris fashions and dressed in leaves. And she was glad to learn no more geography. Coriolis had lost the habit of talking man language and confined the expression of his thoughts to a few anthropoid monosyllables. ”