A few
minutes later the vehicle was rolling over the dusty high-road.
Panna, wrapped in her shawl, sat on a bundle of straw which the peasant
had put in to furnish a seat for his passenger, staring with dilated
eyes at the landscape, illumined by a soft radiance. It was a
marvellously beautiful night in May. The full moon was shining in a
cloudless sky, the ripening grain waved mysteriously to and fro in the
white light, over the darker meadows a light mist was rising which,
stirred by the faint breeze, gathered into strange shapes, then
dispersed again, now rose a little, now sank, so that the straggling
bushes scattered here and there alternately appeared above the floating
vapour and were submerged in it; the fragrance of the wild flowers
mingled with the fresh exhalations from the damp earth and gave the
warm air a stimulating aroma. Now and then, where the bushes grew more
thickly along the edge of the road, the rapturous songs of the
nightingales were heard, the only sound, except the distant barking of
a dog, or the buzzing of a huge night-beetle flitting past the waggon,
which, at times, interrupted the silence of the night.
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