Towards the evening he wakes up, has some food, a drink at the bars by the star-flashing harbour, returning sober and early to his room.
There is no glass to the window of his room—not a pane of glass in the whole city, except maybe the coloured panes of the cathedral—and as he lies fully awake before sleeping, he can hear through the slats of the shutters, the voice of St. Pierre by night; the tune of a thousand rivulets, fountains, water-pipes.
The whole city is held by sleep, yet it sings the whole night long, answering the sea below, and the woods above.
CHAPTER XVIII
LOVE
In the south, at night, the trees are full of voices. Dare you sit in the woods of Martinique at night you would hear in the green twilight that the moon makes through the leaves, an orchestra louder and more fantastic than ever filled a midsummer’s night’s dream.
Here in the daytime there is silence. One can hear the waterfall, the distant river, the wind in the trees above, sounds that only serve to make the background of silence more apparent.
At high noon, when the light is fullest, when the heat is greatest, and the wind above stricken dead, the silence of the woods is terrific.
There is no silence in the whole world like to this, unless it be the dumbness of a great multitude.