For some minutes after the departure of the guerillero, the melancholy¹ caravan² silently continued its journey. The last words uttered by Cuéllar had gone home, however: the count and the vaquero felt involuntarily restless, and without daring to impart their gloomy presentiments⁴ to each other, they advanced with excessive prudence⁵, sniffing⁶ the air, so to speak, and starting at the least suspicious movement in the bushes. It was a little past five a.m.: it was that moment when nature appears to be sunk in contemplation, and when day and night, struggling together with almost equal force, melt into each other and produce that opaline gleam, whose misty⁷ tints⁸ impart to objects a vague and undetermined appearance, which renders them somewhat fantastic. A greyish vapour rose from the ground and produced a transparent⁹ fog, which the sunbeams, gradually growing in intensity¹⁰, rent at spots, lighting¹¹ up one part of the landscape and leaving the other in shadow: in a word, it was no longer night and not yet day. In the distance the numerous domes¹² of the buildings of Puebla appeared, standing¹³ out in confused masses against the dark blue sky: the trees, washed by the abundant night dew, had grown green: on each leaf trembled a crystalline drop of water and their branches

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