| 712 | 713 | 714 | 715 | 716 |
| 1 | 236 | 472 | 708 | 944 |
|
A knell makes an ugly punctuation in space. It breaks the preoccupation
of the mind into funereal paragraphs. A knell, like a man's
death-rattle, notifies an agony. If in the houses about the
neighbourhood where a knell is tolled there are reveries straying in
doubt, its sound cuts them into rigid fragments. A vague reverie is a
sort of refuge. Some indefinable diffuseness in anguish allows now and
then a ray of hope to pierce through it. A knell is precise and
desolating. It concentrates this diffusion of thought, and precipitates
the vapours in which anxiety seeks to remain in suspense. A knell speaks
to each one in the sense of his own grief or of his own fear. Tragic
bell! it concerns you. It is a warning to you.
There is nothing so dreary as a monologue on which its cadence falls.
The even returns of sound seem to show a purpose.
What is it that this hammer, the bell, forges on the anvil of thought?
Ursus counted, vaguely and without motive, the tolling of the knell.
Feeling that his thoughts were sliding from him, he made an effort not
to let them slip into conjecture. Conjecture is an inclined plane, on
which we slip too far to be to our own advantage. Still, what was the
meaning of the bell?
He looked through the darkness in the direction in which he knew the
gate of the prison to be.
714
Page
Quick Jump
|