ity long after the police have
sounded the hour for retiring; the couples that wander through the
streets seem unable to find their way home; young fellows march along
arm-in-arm, in long rows stretching the whole width of the road, as if
advancing to battle against some invisible enemy, singing all the while
as tenderly and sweetly as they know how, or else shrieking and yelling
like a troop of wild Indians. Here and there, where a window stands
open and a _sonata_ of Beethoven floats out into the night, they
suddenly hush their noise and listen, only to break out in a wild burst
of applause the moment the music ceases. On such a night solitary youth
lies dreaming, with open eyes, till long past midnight, of the glories
of the future; and solitary age thinks sadly how glorious the past was;
and at last they fall asleep over their musing, and slumber quietly,
until some young cock in a neighboring roost, who cannot sleep himself,
gives a glance up to heaven and begins to crow with such vigor at the
setting moon, which he mistakes for the rising sun, that the sleepers
start up again, throw off the bedclothes from their hot limbs, and
creep to the window to see whether the night is really at an end. After
this there is no more sleep for the aged; but they who are young lie
down once more and soon make up for all that they have lost.

Such was the night that followed that Sunday. Of those in whose fate
and adventures we are interested, none went to bed before midnight,
though in truth some other sprite than the charm of the sultry night
had possession of their hearts and senses. Even the good Angelica, who
to the best of our knowledge was not in love, and who rejoiced moreover
in that softest of pillows, a good conscience, sat at the open window
of her little virgin bower, in which a lamp was dimly burning, half
through the night, twining her curls and heavily sighing and dropping
into a doze, until her head would strike against the window-sash,
when she would start up and begin once more to spin her sorrowful
summer-night's thoughts. She had been at Julie's door that afternoon to
inquire what had been the upshot of this bad business. But no one was
at home. And so she was waiting impatiently for the following day.

It was later still before Julie could bring herself to go to bed. The
windows in her chamber stood open so as to let in the night-air through
the openings in the closed blinds. But with the air the magical
moo