Presently he came
in sight. He saw me, stood still for a moment looking curiously,
and then, taking up the song again at the very line where he had
broken off, passed round an angle of the building and was gone. To
him I was no more than a moth fluttering in the candle, to drop
dead a moment later.
It was just on the verge of sunrise. There was the grayish-blue
light in the west, the top of a long range of forest was sharply
outlined against it, and a timorous darkness was hurrying out of
the zenith. In the east a sad golden radiance was stealing up and
driving back the mystery of the night, and that weird loneliness of
an arctic world. The city was hardly waking as yet, but straight
silver columns of smoke rolled up out of many chimneys, and the
golden cross on the cathedral caught the first rays of the sun. I
was not interested in the city; I had now, as I thought, done with
men. Besides the four soldiers who had brought me out, another squad
surrounded me, commanded by a young officer whom I recognized as
Captain Lancy, the rough roysterer who had insulted me at Bigot's
palace over a year ago.
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