really supposed these terms to be mere inventions of the
writers of books and nothing more! For not only were they incapable of a
distinct conception of their real meaning, but some had even given up
the very hope of ever being able to earn so much as a living, and
preferred not to reach out into the world with their thoughts, straining
them for nothing, that is, for the sake of a thing so plainly out of
the question as a competence. At night the whole town was overspread by
a sky which, if not grey with clouds, was of a troubled and washed-out
blue. But the people were better off than by day. Tired out,
overwrought, exhausted, prematurely aged as they were, they sought and
found comfort in the lap of the dreamy, secret, inscrutable night. Their
misery was left far behind, and they felt no more grief and pain.

An unknown power hid everything from them as though with a thick, damp,
stone wall, and they heard and saw nothing.

They did not hear the weak voices, like the mewing of blind kittens, of
their pining children, begging all day for food as though on purpose--as
though they knew there was none to give them. They did not hear the
sighs and groans of their friends and neighbors, filling the air with
the hoarse sound of furniture dragged across the floor; they did not
see, in sleep, Death-from-hunger swing quivering, on threads of
spider-web, above their heads.

Even the little fires that flickered feverishly on their hearths, and
testified to the continued existence of breathing men, even these they
saw no longer. Silence cradled everything to sleep, extinguished it, and
caused it to be forgotten.

Hardly, however, was it dawn, hardly had the first rays pierced beneath
the closed eyelids, before a whole world of misery awoke and came to
life again.

The frantic cries of hundreds of starving children, despairing
exclamations and imprecations and other piteous sounds filled the air.
One gigantic curse uncoiled and crept from house to house, from door to
door, from mouth to mouth, and the population began to move, to bestir
themselves, to run hither and thither.

Half-naked, with parched bones and shrivelled skin, with sunken yet
burning eyes, they crawled over one another like worms in a heap,
fastened on to the bites in each other's mouth, and tore them away--

But this is summer, and they are feeling comparatively cheerful, bold,
and free in their movements. They are stifled and suffocated, they are
in a mel