noon
Their boughs stirred not ; no voice of birds broke the stillness of their gloomy verdure : the eye turned from them , as from the sad moral that belongs to existence . In proceeding to Trarbach , Gertrude was seized with another of those fainting fits which had so terrified Trevylyan before ; they stopped an hour or two at a little village , but Gertrude rallied with such apparent rapidity , and so strongly insisted on proceeding , that they reluctantly continued their way . This event would have thrown a gloom over their journey , if Gertrude had not exerted herself to dispel the impression she had occasioned ; and so light , so cheerful , were her spirits , that for the time at least she succeeded . They arrived at Trarbach late at noon . This now small and humble town is said to have been the Thronus Bacchi of the ancients . From the spot where the travellers halted to take , as it were , their impression of the town , they saw before them the little hostelry , a poor pretender to the Thronus Bacchi , with the rude sign of the Holy Mother over the door . The peaked roof , the sunk window , the gray walls , checkered with the rude beams of wood so common to the meaner houses on the Continent , bore something of a melancholy and prepossessing aspect .