Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LIGHT IN DARKNESS. Lux in Tenebris Lucet. There come sometimes in the autumn, especially in November, days so wet, cold and overcast that life even to the robust is dreary. Since Kamiouka fell ill and had stopped working on his statue of ' Mercy,' the bad weather annoyed him more than his illness. Every morning, dragging himself from his bed, he rubbed off the moisture on his studio window and looked up, hoping to see even a small bit of blue sky, but every morning he was disappointed. Heavy, leaden mist hung over the earth; there was no rain, yet even the cobblestones looked like wet sponges. Everything was damp and clammy, soakedthrough with moisture, and the water slowly dripping from the eaves sounded with a monotony of despair, as if measuring the weary, slowly dragging hours of gloom. The window of his studio faced the yard which merged into the garden. The grass beyond the fence was of a sickly green color, breathing death and decomposition. The trees, with their fewremainingyellow leaves and branches black from moisture, seemed ghost like through the mist. Every evening the migrating crows would roost upon the trees and add to the desolation by their cawing and the flapping of their wings. On such days the studio became as dismal as a sepulchre. Marble and plaster require bright weather, but in this leaden light they appeared somber; images of dark terra cotta, having lost distinctness of outline, seem to change into grewsome and hideous shapes. Dust and disorder added to the general melancholy; the floor was covered with a thick layer of dirt, caused by the mixture of crushed terra cotta with mud from the streets. The walls were dark, ornamented here and there with plaster models of hands and feet. Not far from the window hung a mirror, and over it was t...
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