The sun had set, and the wild spirits of the storm had drawn a translucent
drapery of vapour from the dark thundercloud hovering overhead to where the
fringe of the forest broke the blood-stained bar upon the horizon's verge,
and this luminous orange-coloured curtain was crossed every moment upwards
and downwards by silvery shafts of lightning. Such an effect of sunset
combined with storm was like a new revelation of nature, and the sublimity
of the spectacle would have held me fast to the patch of wild heath if the
rain had not begun to fall in splashes. The long summer day was over, and
the night came forth in trouble and with gushing tears. The roar of the
thunder grew louder, and the flash of the lightning brightened every
minute.
I returned to the monastery, and found the postulant quite anxious to
have done with me, and to put me into the bishop's room. He was
sleepy--everybody gets sleepy in these country places at about nine
o'clock, irrespective of canonical hours, whereas I grow livelier, like
a night-bird, as the dusk deepens. All the monks must have been in their
cells snoring with the clear conscience which is the gift of the day that
has been well filled up when I reluctantly entered the only room in the
place that had any pretension to comfort, but which to me was like a
prison.
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