Everything was dreaming; everything was taking its ease luxuriously round about; everything seemed to be gazing upward, stretching itself out, motionless, expectant... What was it that that warm, not yet sleeping night, was waiting for? It was waiting for a sound; that sensitive stillness was waiting for a living voice--but everything maintained silence. The nightingales had long since ceased their song ... and the sudden booming of a beetle as it flew past, the light smacking of a tiny fish in the fish-pond behind the lindens at the end of the garden, the sleepy whistle of a startled bird, a distant cry in the fields,--so far away that the ear could not distinguish whether it was a man, or a wild animal, or a bird which had uttered it,--a short, brisk trampling of hoofs on the road: all these faint sounds, these rustlings, only rendered the stillness more profound... My heart yearned within me, with an indefinite feeling, akin not precisely to expectation, nor yet to a memory of happiness. I dared not stir; I was standing motionless before this motionless garden steeped in moonlight and in dew, and, without myself knowing why, was staring importunately at those two windows, which shone dimly red in the soft half-darkness, when suddenly a chord rang out of the house,--rang out and rolled forth in a flood.... The irritatingly-resonant air thundered back an echo.... I gave an involuntary start. The chord was followed by the sound of a woman's voice... I began to listen eagerly--and ... can I express my amazement?... two years previously, in Italy, at Sorrento, I had heard that selfsame song, that selfsame voice.... Yes, yes... "Vieni pensando a me segretamente ..." It was they; I had recognised them; those were the sounds... This is the way it had happened. I was returning home from a long stroll on the seashore. I was walking swiftly along the street; night had long since descended,--a magnificent night, southern, not calm and sadly-pensive as with us, no! but all radiant, sumptuous, and very beautiful, like a happy woman in her bloom; the moon shone with incredible brilliancy; great, radiant stars fairly throbbed in the dark-blue sky; the black shadows were sharply defined against the ground illuminated to yellowness. On both sides of the street stretched the stone walls of gardens; orange-trees reared above them their crooked branches; the golden globes of heavy fruit, hidden amidst the interlacing leaves, were now barely visible, now glowed brightly, as they ostentatiously displayed themselves in the moonlight. On many trees the blossoms shone tenderly white; the air was all impregnated with fragrance languishingly powerful, penetrating, and almost heavy, although inexpressibly sweet.