I was so deeply engrossed in thought, that I did not notice that the bell was ringing for eleven o'clock, and the general was riding past me with his suite. The rearguard was just at the fortress gate. I galloped at full speed across the bridge, amid a crush of cannon, caissons, military wagons, and commanding officers shouting at the top of their voices. After reaching the gate, I rode at a brisk trot for almost a verst, past the army stretched out and silently moving through the darkness, and overtook the general. As I made my way past the mounted artillery dragging their ordnance, amid the cannon and officers, a German voice, like a disagreeable dissonance interrupting soft and majestic harmony, struck my ear. It screamed, "Agkhtingkhist,[18] bring a linstock." And a soldier's voice replied, quick as a flash, "Chevchenko! the lieutenant asks for a light!" The greater part of the sky had become enveloped in long steel-gray clouds: here and there gleamed from between them the lustreless stars. The moon was now sinking behind the near horizon of dark mountains which were on the right; and it shed on their summits a feeble, waning, half light, which contrasted sharply with the impenetrable darkness that marked their bases. The air was mild, and so still, that not a single grass-blade, not a single mist-wreath, moved. It became so dark, that it was impossible to distinguish objects, even though very near at hand. On the side of the road, there seemed to me sometimes to be rocks, sometimes animals, sometimes strange men; and I knew that they were bushes only when I heard them rustle, and felt the coolness of the dew with which they were covered. In front of me I saw a dense, waving black shadow, behind which followed a few moving spots; this was the van-guard of cavalry, and the general with his suite. Between us moved another similar black mass, but this was not as high as the first; this was the infantry. Such silence reigned in the whole detachment, that there could be plainly distinguished all the harmonious voices of the night, full of mysterious charm. The distant melancholy howls of jackals, sometimes like the wails of despair, sometimes like laughter; the monotonous ringing song of the cricket, the frog, the quail; a gradually approaching murmur, the cause of which I could not make clear to my own mind; and all those nocturnal, almost audible motions of nature, which it is so impossible either to comprehend or define,--unite into one complete, beautiful harmony which we call silent night. This silence was broken, or rather was unified, by the dull thud of the hoofs, and the rustling of the tall grass through which the division was slowly moving. Occasionally, however, was heard in the ranks the ring of a heavy cannon, the sound of clashing bayonets, stifled conversation, and the snorting of a horse. Nature breathed peacefully in beauty and power.