He looked out into a vast blue-gray space sown with points of light, winking lamps, and steady slow-burning stars.

Below him was the sleeping city.

All the lesser staccato noises of the day had long since died to silence; there only remained that prolonged and sullen diapason, coming from all quarters at once.

It was like the breathing of some infinitely great monster, alive and palpitating, the sistole and diastole of some gigantic heart.

The whole existence of the great slumbering city passed upward there before him through the still night air in one long wave of sound.
It was Life, the murmur of the great, mysterious force that spun the wheels of Nature and that sent it onward like some enormous engine, resistless, relentless; an engine that sped straight forward, driving before it the infinite herd of humanity, driving it on at breathless speed through all eternity, driving it no one knew whither, crushing out inexorably all those who lagged behind the herd and who fell from exhaustion, grinding them to dust beneath its myriad iron wheels, riding over them, still driving on the herd that yet remained, driving it recklessly, blindly on and on toward some far-distant goal, some vague unknown end, some mysterious, fearful bourne forever hidden in thick darkness..