The midday sun
When the carriage stopped , there was a universal silence . The only sounds that reached them were the blowing of the horse in the shafts with the faint cry of a bird more than once repeated . The light at certain points illuminating the outskirts of the wood , left the interior in deep shadow , or else , attenuated in the foreground by a sort of twilight , it exhibited in the background violet vapours , a white radiance . The midday sun , falling directly on wide tracts of greenery , made splashes of light over them , hung gleaming drops of silver from the ends of the branches , streaked the grass with long lines of emeralds , and flung gold spots on the beds of dead leaves . When they let their heads fall back , they could distinguish the sky through the tops of the trees . Some of them , which were enormously high , looked like patriarchs or emperors , or , touching one another at their extremities formed with their long shafts , as it were , triumphal arches ; others , sprouting forth obliquely from below , seemed like falling columns . This heap of big vertical lines gaped open .