But above all, before going to bed I would stand a long time at my casement, and often I would rise in the middle of the night to look out upon the night breathing softly in its sleep. I would lean out and plunge my hands in the fresh leaves of a clump of cherry laurels; the water from the spring would be gurgling over a mossy stone; from time to time a cow would kick her hoof against the door of the byre: I could almost smell the odour of straw and hay. Monotonous and dogged as the beat of the heart would sound the stridulations of a grasshopper; against the infinite silence and the sky’s
...more
