Through the arches at its summit, where swung the Spanish queen's bells, he saw the slow-burning stars.

The silent bats, with flickering wings, threw their dancing shadows on the pallid surface of the venerable facade.
Not the faintest chirring of a cricket broke the silence.

The bees were asleep.

In the grasses, in the trees, deep in the calix of punka flower and magnolia bloom, the gnats, the caterpillars, the beetles, all the microscopic, multitudinous life of the daytime drowsed and dozed.

Not even the minute scuffling of a lizard over the warm, worn pavement of the colonnade disturbed the infinite repose, the profound stillness.
Only within the garden, the intermittent trickling of the fountain made itself heard, flowing steadily, marking off the lapse of seconds, the progress of hours, the cycle of years, the inevitable march of centuries.