noons
The young man stalked into his vacant nunnery in a rage , a dismal pomp of emotion : reason telling him that a friend had spoken sense , imagination clothing him in the sceptred pall of tragedy . Yet one of these unwelcome words had stuck : he was Werther , it was true -- a man who came too late . Another word was soon fulfilled ; for the hot weather came , sudden , tropical , ferocious . Without gradation , the vernal days and languid noons were gone in a twinkling . The change came like another act of a play . One morning -- though the dawn stirred cool and fragrant as all dawns before -- the `` boy '' laid out Rudolph 's white tunic , slipped in the shining buttons , smeared pipe-clay on his heaviest helmet ; and Rudolph , looking from his window , saw that on the river , by the same instinct , boatmen were stretching up their bamboo awnings . Breakfast was hardly ended , before river , and convex field , and huddling red tiles of the town , lay under a blurred , quivering distortion .