A magnificent and terrific sight was now added to the beauty of the summer night. It was the blaze of the conflagration of the neighbouring country. At one place the flames went slowly and majestically along the sky; at another, meeting with something combustible in their progress, they whirled suddenly round, hissed and flew up to the very stars, and their fiery tongues disappeared in the most distant clouds. Here a burnt cloister, blackened by the fire, stood like a hard-featured Carthusian monk, showing its stern gloomy outlines at every blaze; next to it a garden was burning. It seemed as if one might hear how the trees hissed wrapt in smoke; and as the fire happened to catch some new place its phosphoric violet light shone suddenly on the ripe bunches of plums, or threw a brilliant golden hue on the yellow pears; and in the midst of all this was to be seen, dangling from the wall of the building or from the bough of a tree, the corpse of some poor Jew or monk, doomed, like the building itself, to become the prey of the flames. Over the conflagration, hovering far away, were to be seen birds looking like so many dark diminutive crosses on a fiery field. The city seemed to be slumbering; its spires, its roofs, its palisades and its walls were sometimes illuminated by the reflection of the distant conflagration. Andrew walked round the Cossacks' encampment. The bonfires at which the sentries were sitting were going out, and the sentries had fallen asleep; having, it would seem, too much indulged their Cossack appetites. Andrew marvelled at such carelessness, and thought it lucky that no strong forces of the enemy were at hand, and that there was nothing to fear. At last, he went to one of the carts, climbed into it and lay down on his back, bending his arms backwards and putting them under his head. He could not yet sleep, and remained a long time looking at the sky. It appeared all open to him; the air was pure and transparent; the compact mass of stars forming the milky way seemed to be all overflowing with light. At times, Andrew felt a sort of oblivion, and slumber, like a light fog, hid for a minute the sky from his sight; but the next moment it cleared away, and again he saw the heavens. At this time, it seemed to him that a strange human face had passed before him. Thinking that it was nothing but an illusion of sleep, which would disappear, he opened his eyes wider, and saw that really an emaciated dried-up face bent over him and looked straight into his eyes. Long and coal-black locks of hair, uncombed and dishevelled, stole from beneath a veil thrown over the head. The strange brightness of the eyes, and the deathlike swarthiness of the strongly marked features, would almost have led to the supposition that it was a phantom. Andrew convulsively seized a matchlock and exclaimed, "Who art thou? If thou be an evil spirit--disappear; if thou be a human creature, thy joke is out of place. I'll kill thee at once!"