noon
He had been deceived in supposing that he must inevitably find the names of those he sought upon the ordinary registers which chronicle the arrival and departure of travellers . He lost no time , he spared no effort , driving from place to place as fast as two sturdy Hungarian horses could take him , hurrying from one office to another , and again and again searching endless pages and columns which seemed full of all the names of earth , but in which he never found the one of all others which he longed to read . 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 .