noon
All were gone , save a few infirm paupers , seated in the sun , at the door of the lowest description of inns ; and some invalids , past all hope of recovery , who might be seen , during the hottest hours of the day , dragging their feeble steps along , and treading the withered leaves that had fallen from the poplars during the night . The autumn was mild , but had set in early . The leaves which had been blighted by the morning frost fell in roseate showers from the vines and chestnut-trees . Until noon , the mist overspread the valley , like an overflowing nocturnal inundation , covering all but the tops of the highest poplars in the plain ; the hillocks rose in view like islands , and the peaks of mountains appeared as headlands in the midst of ocean ; but when the sun rose higher in the heavens , the mild southerly breeze drove before it all these vapors of earth . The rushing of the imprisoned winds in the gorges of the mountains , the murmur of the waters , and the whispering trees , produced sounds melodious or powerful , sonorous or melancholy , and seemed in a few minutes to run through the whole range of earth 's joys and sorrows its strength or its melancholy . They stirred up one 's very soul , then died away like the voices of celestial spirits , that pass and disappear . Silence , such as the ear has no preception of elsewhere , succeeded , and hushed all to rest .