Page:Under the Sun.djvu/88

64 calor is intolerable. It chokes the breath by its dead intensity, like the fell atmosphere that hung round the dragon-daughter of Ypocras in her bedevilled castle in the Isle of Colos.

A wind makes pretense of blowing, but while it borrows heat from the ground, it does not lend it coolness. The city, however, is abroad again. Children go by with their nurses; the shops are doing business. In the bazaars the every-day crowd is noisy, along the roads the red-aproned bheesties sprinkle their feeble handfuls, and the world is out to enjoy such pleasures as it may on May-day “in the plains.” In the country the peasant is brisk again, and trudges away from his work cheerily; bands of women affect to make merry with discordant singing as they pass along the fields; the miry cattle are being herded in the villages. And in the garden the birds assemble to say good-night. They are all in the idlest of humors, and, their day’s work over, are sauntering about in the air and from tree to tree, or congregating in vagrom do-nothing crowds — the elders idle, the younger mischievous. In birddom the crows take the place of gamins, and spend the mauvais quart d’heure in vexing their betters. An old kite, tired with his long flights and sulky under the grievance of a shabbily-filled stomach, crouches on the roof, his feathers ruffled about him. He is not looking for food; it is getting too late, and he knows that in half an hour his place will be taken by the owls, and that before long the jackals will be trying to worry a supper off the bones which he scraped for his breakfast. But the crow is in no humor for sentiment. He has stolen during the day, and eaten, enough to make memory a joy forever. On his full stomach he grows