Then other voices answer from the depths of the ruins, voices very diverse, but all sinister.

Some are only able to mew on two long-drawn notes: some yelp like jackals round a cemetery, and others again imitate the sound of a steel spring slowly unwinding itself.

And this concert comes always from above.

Owls, ospreys, screech-owls, all the different kinds of birds, with hooked beaks and round eyes, and silken wings that enable them to fly noiselessly, have their homes amongst the granites massively upheld in the air; and they are celebrating now, each after its own fashion, the nocturnal festival.

Intermittent calls break upon the air, and long-drawn infinitely mournful wailings, that sometimes swell and sometimes seem to be strangled and end in a kind of sob.