Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate.”
The castle, with its buttresses and battlements, its high gables and overhanging towers, lends itself as readily to the pleasant humor of the kindly king that calm afternoon, as it will do to the horror and the gloom of the morrow. Then the night in which the murder was done is quite such a night as often comes in dead winter, yet fits in so well with the deed and the feeling it awakened in men’s hearts.
“Lennox. The night has been unruly: where we lay
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i’ the air; strange screams of death
And other prodigies.
Macb. ’Twas a rough night.
Len. My young remembrance cannot parallel
A fellow to it.”