Pagina 435 de 788

The darkness was thickening; only in the woods and among the

willows along the streamlet the eyes of wolves shone like

candles, and farther off, on the narrowed borders of the horizon,

here and there were the fires of shepherds' camps. Finally the

moon lighted her silver torch, came forth from the wood, and

illumined both sky and land. Now they both, half uncovered from

the darkness, slept side by side, like a happy married pair; the

heaven took into its pure arms the breast of the earth, which

shone silvery in the moonlight.

Now, opposite the moon, first one star and then another began to

shine; now a thousand of them, and now a million twinkled. Castor

and his brother Pollux glittered at their head, once called among

the Slavs Lele and Polele;139 now they have been christened anew

in the people's zodiac; one is called Lithuania and the other the

Kingdom.140