The gloom in the narrow streets was already
deepening, though it was scarcely two hours after mid-day, and the
heavy air had begun to thicken with a cold gray haze, even in the broad,
straight Przikopy, the wide thoroughfare which has taken the place and
name of the moat before the ancient fortifications, so that distant
objects and figures lost the distinctness of their outlines. Winter in
Prague is but one long, melancholy dream, broken sometimes at noon by an
hour of sunshine, by an intermittent visitation of reality, by the shock
and glare of a little broad daylight. The morning is not morning,
the evening is not evening; as in the land of the Lotus, it is ever
afternoon, gray, soft, misty, sad, save when 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.
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