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The barking stopped; the dog had lost the scent. They heard his yap once again in the distance; then silence came upon the woods. Not a sound, only the mysterious hum of millions of creatures, insects, and creeping things, moving unceasingly, destroying the forest - the measured breathing of death, which never stops.
Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, trans. Gilbert Cannan, Holt, 1910, p. 151.
TIME: mid-19th C.
PLACE: woods near a village on the Rhine in Germany
CIRCUMSTANCE: a dog chases a hare
A storm was brewing. In their anger they had not seen it coming. The baking countryside resounded with the cries of insects. Suddenly all was still. They only grew aware of the silence after a few minutes. Their ears buzzed ... Silence. Not a wind stirred, hardly a fevered tremor that made the little leaves of the trees shiver now and then. Suddenly a whirling wind raised the dust, twisted the trees and lashed them furiously. And the silence came again, more terrible than before.
Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, trans. Gilbert Cannan, Holt, 1910, p. 161.
TIME: mid-19th c.
PLACE: a village on the Rhine in Germany
CIRCUMSTANCE: two boys await a storm
Then he would shut the door, sit down in a corner on an old trunk or on the window-ledge, or stay there without thinking, letting the indefinable buzzing and humming of the old house, which trembled with the lightest tread, thrill through him. His heart would tremble with it. He would listen anxiously for the faintest breath in or out of doors, for the creaking of floors, for all the imperceptible familiar noises; he knew them all. He would lose consciousness, his thoughts would be filled with the images of the past, and he would issue from his stupor only at the sound of St. Martin's clock, reminding him that it was time to go.
Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, trans. Gilbert Cannan, Holt, 1910, p. 216.
TIME: mid-19th c.
PLACE: a village on the Rhine in Germany
CIRCUMSTANCE: young Jean-Christophe thinks of the past
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