the sun, being at his meridian height, pierces the dim streets and sweeps the open places with low, slanting waves of pale brightness.  And yet these same dusky streets are thronged with a moving multitude, are traversed ever by ceaseless streams of men and women, flowing onward, silently, swiftly, eagerly.  The very beggars do not speak above a whisper, the very dogs are dumb.  The stillness of all voices leaves nothing for the perception of the hearing save the dull thread of many thousand feet and the rough rattle of an occasional carriage.  Rarely, the harsh tones of a peasant, or the clear voices of a knot of strangers, unused to such oppressive silence, startle the ear, causing hundreds of eager, half-suspicious, half-wondering eyes to turn in the direction of the sound.

And yet Prague is a great city, the capital of the Bohemian Crownland, the centre of a not unimportant nation, the focus in which are concentrated the hottest, if not the brightest, rays from the fire of regeneration kindled within the last half century by the Slavonic race.  There is an ardent furnace of life hidden beneath the crust of ashes:  there is a wonderful language behind that national silence.

The Wanderer stood in deep thought under the shadow of the ancient Powder Tower.  Haste had no further object now, since he had made every inquiry within his power, and it was a relief to feel the pavement beneath his feet and to breathe the misty frozen air after having been so long in the closeness of his carriage.  He hesitated as to what he should do, unwilling to return to Unorna and acknowledge himself vanquished, yet finding it hard to resist his desire to try every means, no matter how little reasonable, how evidently useless, how puerile and revolting to his sounder sense.  The street behind him led directly towards Unorna’s house.  Had he found himself in a more remote quarter, he might have come to another and a wiser conclusion.  Being so near to the house of which he was thinking, he yielded to the temptation.  Having reached this stage of resolution, his mind began to recapitulate the events of the day, and he suddenly felt a strong wish to revisit the church, to stand in the place where Beatrice had stood, to touch in the marble basin beside the door the thick ice which her fingers had touched so lately, to traverse again the dark passages through which he had pursued her.  To accomplish his purpose he need only turn aside a few steps from the path he was now following.  He left the street almost immediately, passing under a low arched way that opened on the right-hand side, and a moment later he was within the walls of the Teyn Kirche.

The vast building was less gloomy than it had been in the morning.  It was not yet the hour of vespers, the funeral torches had been extinguished, as well as most of the lights upon the high altar, there were not a dozen persons in the church, and high up beneath the roof broad shafts of softened sunshine, floating above the mists of the city without, streamed through the narrow lancet windows and were diffused in the great gloom below.  The Wanderer went to the monument of Brahe and sat down in the corner of the blackened pew.  His hands trembled a little as he clasped them upon his knee, and his head sank slowly towards his breast.