Large stars shone out in the dark velvet, alone illumining, with their mysterious gleams, the silent, refreshed fields, which incessantly displayed only the black solitude of slumber.

And across the Landes, through the valleys, between the hills, that carriage of wretchedness and suffering rolled on and on, over-heated, pestilential, rueful, and wailing, amidst the serenity of the august night, so lovely and so mild.
They had passed Riscle at one in the morning.

Between the jolting, the painful, the hallucinatory silence still continued.

At two o'clock, as they reached Vic-de-Bigorre, low moans were heard; the bad state of the line, with the unbearable spreading tendency of the train's motion, was sorely shaking the patients.

It was only at Tarbes, at half-past two, that silence was at length broken, and that morning prayers were said, though black night still reigned around them.