One moment it seemed there was nothing in the whole world except stillness and emptiness, and the night was a mantle thick and black upon the shoulders of the hills. At the next the air was full of sound: shouts of men, the shrill tongues of women, bleat of goats and the sharp clatter of donkeys' hooves upon the arch of an ancient bridge. The dark, too, was full of lights, as if the starry sky had drawn intimately near to earth. Constellations moved along it, as groups of peasants passed with lanterns in their hands, and sometimes a torch flared like a comet trailing its smoky tail across the lesser stars.