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Then I discovered that it was full of nests, whence tiny heads,
nearly indistinguishable, kept popping out with a chirp or two, and
disappearing again. For a while there were rustlings and stirrings
and little prayers; but as the darkness grew, the small heads became
still, and at last every feathered mother had her brood quiet
under her wings, the talk in the little beds was over, and God's
bird-nursery at rest beneath the waves of sleep. Once more a few
flutterings made me look up: an owl went sailing across. I had only
a glimpse of him, but several times felt the cool wafture of his
silent wings. The mother birds did not move again; they saw that
he was looking for mice, not children.
About midnight I came wide awake, roused by a revelry, whose noises
were yet not loud. Neither were they distant; they were close to
me, but attenuate. My eyes were so dazzled, however, that for a
while I could see nothing; at last they came to themselves.
I was lying on my withered leaves in the corner of a splendid hall.
Before me was a crowd of gorgeously dressed men and gracefully robed
women, none of whom seemed to see me. In dance after dance they
vaguely embodied the story of life, its meetings, its passions, its
partings. A student of Shakspere, I had learned something of every
dance alluded to in his plays, and hence partially understood several
of those I now saw--the minuet, the pavin, the hey, the coranto,
the lavolta. The dancers were attired in fashion as ancient as
their dances.
A moon had risen while I slept, and was shining through the
countless-windowed roof; but her light was crossed by so many
shadows that at first I could distinguish almost nothing of the
faces of the multitude; I could not fail, however, to perceive
that there was something odd about them: I sat up to see them
better.--Heavens! could I call them faces? They were skull fronts!
--hard, gleaming bone, bare jaws, truncated noses, lipless teeth
which could no more take part in any smile! Of these, some flashed
set and white and murderous; others were clouded with decay, broken
and gapped, coloured of the earth in which they seemed so long to
have lain! Fearfuller yet, the eye-sockets were not empty; in each
was a lidless living eye! In those wrecks of faces, glowed or
flashed or sparkled eyes of every colour, shape, and expression. The
beautiful, proud eye, dark and lustrous, condescending to whatever
it rested upon, was the more terrible; the lovely, languishing eye,
the more repulsive; while the dim, sad eyes, less at variance with
their setting, were sad exceedingly, and drew the heart in spite of
the horror out of which they gazed.
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