its thirst.

Now, suddenly, at intervals, the song of the nightingale was heard
expanding; it was as if stars of crystal had fallen upon the waves
and broken there. There was no other sound but the song of the
nightingale. Over the whole expanse of the silent hill nothing was
heard but the song of the nightingale. Night was merely the sobbing of
the nightingale.

Then in the groves dawn appeared, all rose-red because it was naked
amid the choirs of birds who still sang from a full throat for their
wings were heavy with love and morning dew. The quails in the grain
were not yet calling. The tom-tits with their black heads made a noise
in the thicket of fig-trees like the sound of pebbles moved by water.
A wood-pecker rent the azure with its cry, and then flew toward the
old, white-flowered apple-trees. It had almost the appearance of a
handful of grass torn from the golden meadows with a clover-flower as
its head.

The three hawks and the owl entered into these places abounding in
flowers, and not a single redbreast and not a single gold-finch and
not a single linnet was frightened by them. The birds of prey sat on
their perches with an arrogant and sad air, and kept their eyes fixed
on the sun; now and then they beat their steely wings against their
mottled, keel-like breasts.

The owl sought out the shadows of the hill, so that hidden in some
solitary cavern and happy in its darkness and wisdom, it might listen
to the plaint of the nightingale.

But the most wonderful shelter of all was that chosen by the doves.
They sat among the olive-trees, that were stirred by the evening
breeze. In this garden young girls dwelled, who were permitted to
enter here because of their animal-like grace. They included all the
young girls who sighed and were like to honey-suckle; all the young
girls who languish with all the doves that weep. And all the doves
were included here, those from Venice, whose wings were like cooling
fans to the boredom of the wives of the doges, as well as those
of Iberia whose lips had the orange and tobacco-yellow color of
fisherwomen and their provocative allurement. Here were all the doves
of dreams, and all the dreaming doves: the dove that drew Beatrice
heavenward and to which Dante gave a grain of corn; and the one which
the disenchanted Quitteria heard in the night. Here was the dove which
sobbed on Virginia's shoulder, when during the night she sought
in vain to calm the fires of her love in th