It was now quite night. He liked to walk late at night. All things were so peaceful, or at the least seemed so. You did not see the gashes in the lopped trees, the scars in the burned hill-side, the wounds in the mule's loins, the bloodshot eyes of the working ox, the goitered throat of the child rolling in the dust. Night, kindly friend of dreams, cast her soft veil over all woes, and made the very dust seem as a silvered highway to the throne of a beneficent God. He went now through the balmy air, the rustling canes, the low-hanging boughs of the fruit-laden peach trees, and the sheaves of cut corn leaning one up against another under the maples, or the walnut trunks. He followed the course of the water, a shallow thread at this season, glistening under the moon in its bed of shingle and sand. He passed the mill-house perforce on his homeward way; he saw the place of the weir, made visible even in the dark by the lanterns which swung on a cord stretched from one bank to another, to entice any such fish as there might still be in the shallows. The mill-walls stood down into the water, a strong place built in olden days; the great black wheels were now perforce at rest; the mules champed and chafed in their stalls, inactive, like the mill; for the next three months there would be nothing to do unless a storm came and brought a freshet from the hills. The miller would have the more leisure to nurse his wrongs, thought Don Gesualdo; and his heart was troubled. He had never met with these woes of the passions; they oppressed and alarmed him. As he passed the low mill windows, protected from thieves by their iron gratings, he could see the interior, lighted as it was by the flame of oil lamps, and through the open lattices he heard voices, raised high in stormy quarrel, which seemed to smite the holy stillness of the night like a blow. The figure of Generosa stood out against the light which shone behind her. She was in a paroxysm of rage; her eyes flashed like the lightnings of the hills, and her beautiful arms were tossed above her head in impassioned imprecation. Tasso Tassilo seemed for the moment to crouch beneath this rain of flame-like words; his face, on which the light shone full, was deformed with malignant and impotent fury, with covetous and jealous desire; there was no need to hear her words to know that she was taunting him with her love for Falko Melegari. Don Gesualdo was a weak man and physically timid, but here he hesitated not one instant. He lifted the latch of the house door and walked straightway into the mill kitchen. 'In the name of Christ, be silent!' he said to them, and made the sign of the cross. The torrent of words stopped on the lips of the young woman; the miller scowled and shrank from the light, and was mute. 'Is this how you keep your vows to Heaven and to each other?' said Gesualdo.