The ways seemed untrodden, and moss was thick on doorsteps; in the
market-place huddled figures lay asleep. A scent of incense came wafted
through the gateway, of incense and burned poppies, and there was a hum of
the echoes of distant bells. I said to the sentinel in the tongue of the
region of Yann, "Why are they all asleep in this still city?"

He answered: "None may ask questions in this gate for fear they will wake
the people of the city. For when the people of this city wake the gods
will die. And when the gods die men may dream no more." And I began to ask
him what gods that city worshipped, but he lifted his pike because none
might ask questions there. So I left him and went back to the _Bird of the
River_.

Certainly Mandaroon was beautiful with her white pinnacles peering over
her ruddy walls and the green of her copper roofs.

When I came back again to the _Bird of the River_, I found the sailors
were returned to the ship. Soon we weighed anchor, and sailed out again,
and so came once more to the middle of the river. And now the sun was
moving toward his heights, and there had reached us on the River Yann the
song of those countless myriads of choirs that attend him in his progress
round the world. For the little creatures that have many legs had spread
their gauze wings easily on the air, as a man rests his elbows on a
balcony and gave jubilant, ceremonial praises to the sun, or else they
moved together on the air in wavering dances intricate and swift, or
turned aside to avoid the onrush of some drop of water that a breeze had
shaken from a jungle orchid, chilling the air and driving it before it, as
it fell whirring in its rush to the earth; but all the while they sang
triumphantly. "For the day is for us," they said, "whether our great and
sacred father the Sun shall bring up more life like us from the marshes,