noon
Although they had been here several days and were already familiar with the view before them , they nevertheless sat there and marveled that this was the way the Provence looked . And this really was the Provence ! A clayey river with flakes of muddy sand , and endless shores of stone-gray gravel ; pale-brown fields without a blade of grass , pale-brown slopes , pale-brown hills and dust-colored roads , and here and there near the white houses , groups of black trees , absolutely black bushes and trees . Over all this hung a whitish sky , quivering with light , which made everything still paler , still dryer and more wearily light ; never a glimmer of luxuriant , satiated hues , nothing but hungry , sun-parched colors ; not a sound in the air , not a scythe passing through the grass , not a wagon rattling over the roads ; and the town stretching out on both sides was also as if built of silence with all the streets still as at noon time , with all the houses deaf and dumb , every shutter closed , every blind drawn , each and every one ; houses that could neither see nor hear . Mrs. Fonss viewed this lifeless monotony with a resigned smile , but it made Elinor visibly nervous ; not actively nervous as in the case of annoyance , but mournful and weary , as one often becomes after many days of rain , when all one 's gloomy thoughts seem to pour down upon one with the rain ; or as at the idiotically consoling tick-tack of a clock , when one sits and grows incurably tired of one 's self ; or at watching the flowers of the wall-paper , when the same chain of worn-out dreams clanks about against one 's will in the brain and the links are joined and come apart and in a stifling endlessness are united again . It actually had a physical effect upon her , this landscape , almost causing her to faint . To-day everything seemed to have conspired with the memories of a hope which was dead and of sweet and lively dreams which had become disagreeable and nauseous ; dreams which caused her to redden when she thought of them and which yet she could not forget .