A policeman—­turbanless and fast asleep—­lies across the road on the way to the Mosque of Wazir Khan.  A bar of moonlight falls across the forehead and eyes of the sleeper, but he never stirs.  It is close upon midnight, and the heat seems to be increasing.  The open square in front of the Mosque is crowded with corpses; and a man must pick his way carefully for fear of treading on them.  The moonlight stripes the Mosque’s high front of coloured enamel work in broad diagonal bands; and each separate dreaming pigeon in the niches and corners of the masonry throws a squab little shadow.  Sheeted ghosts rise up wearily from their pallets, and flit into the dark depths of the building.  Is it possible to climb to the top of the great Minars, and thence to look down on the city?  At all events the attempt is worth making, and the chances are that the door of the staircase will be unlocked.  Unlocked it is; but a deeply sleeping janitor lies across the threshold, face turned to the Moon.  A rat dashes out of his turban at the sound of approaching footsteps.  The man grunts, opens his eyes for a minute, turns round, and goes to sleep again.  All the heat of a decade of fierce Indian summers is stored in the pitch-black, polished walls of the corkscrew staircase.  Half-way up, there is something alive, warm, and feathery; and it snores.  Driven from step to step as it catches the sound of my advance, it flutters to the top and reveals itself as a yellow-eyed, angry kite.  Dozens of kites are asleep on this and the other Minars, and on the domes below.  There is the shadow of a cool, or at least a less sultry breeze at this height; and, refreshed thereby, turn to look on the City of Dreadful Night.

Dore might have drawn it!  Zola could describe it—­this spectacle of sleeping thousands in the moonlight and in the shadow of the Moon.  The roof-tops are crammed with men, women, and children; and the air is full of undistinguishable noises.  They are restless in the City of Dreadful Night; and small wonder.  The marvel is that they can even breathe.  If you gaze intently at the multitude, you can see that they are almost as uneasy as a daylight crowd; but the tumult is subdued.  Everywhere, in the strong light, you can watch the sleepers turning to and fro; shifting their beds and again resettling them.  In the pit-like court-yards of the houses there is the same movement.

The pitiless Moon shows it all.  Shows, too, the plains outside the city, and here and there a hand’s-breadth of the Ravee without the walls.  Shows lastly, a splash of glittering silver on a house-top almost directly below the mosque Minar.  Some poor soul has risen to throw a jar of water over his fevered body; the tinkle of the falling water strikes faintly on the ear.  Two or three other men, in far-off corners of the City of Dreadful Night, follow his example, and the water flashes like heliographic signals.  A small cloud passes over the face of the Moon, and