Chapter IIBy now the darkness had become complete, compact, and the moon shone victoriously over the park. It looked like a huge golden disc, and at its call, certain nocturnal birds had already awakened in the forest and the wild cat was in full hunt. Around the towers fluttered the bats that had once filled the prince with terror but that now caused him just a few thrills of disgust and nothing more.
In the gardens, swarms of fireflies roamed from the nearby cornfields, full of their mature splendor.
Small intermittent dancing lights. Once Antonia had defined them as fallen stars looking for the way back to the sky; since then, he could only think of them in that unusual, unscientific, but certainly suggestive manner.
Besides, he had never forgotten what the housekeeper had told him d
