.

And yet the houses, with their windows barred like those of a harem, are in no way singular--except that they are shut and silent.

It is all this whiteness, perhaps, which freezes us.

And then, too, the silence is not, in fact, like that of the desert, which did at least seem natural, inasmuch as there was nothing there; here, on the contrary, there is a sense of innumerable presences, which shrink away as you pass but nevertheless continue to watch attentively.

.