vigorous; he ascribes it to the powerful odors of certain trees which
affect his brain. These trees he destroys around him, but his
uneasiness continues; he ascribes it to his food, the insipidity of
the fish which he has eaten without salt, since his quarter of pork is
consumed, and his stores of pickled fish exhausted. In fact, the flesh
of fish has for some time given him a nausea, occasioned frequent
indigestions; he renounces it; his stomach recovers its tone; but his
fits of torpor and melancholy continue.

This state of suffering is most painful at those moments of profound
calm, common between the tropics, when the birds are silent, when from
the thickets and burrows issue no murmurs, when the insect seems to
sleep within the closed corollas of the flowers; when the leaves of
the mimosa fold themselves; when the tree-tops are not swayed by the
slightest breath of air, and the sea, motionless, ceases to dash
against the shore. What an inexpressible weight such a silence adds to
isolation! And yet it is not an unbroken silence, for then a shrill
and harsh sound seems to grate upon the ear. It is as if in this
muteness of nature, one could hear the motion of the earth on its
axis; then, above his head, in the depths of immensity, the whirling
of the celestial spheres and myriads of worlds which gravitate in
space. Thought becomes troubled and exhausted before this overwhelming
and terrible immobility, and the man who, at such a moment, cannot
have recourse to his kind, to distract or re-assure him, is
overpowered with his own insignificance.

Sometimes the solitary calls on himself to break this oppressive and
painful silence; he articulates a few words aloud, and his voice
inspires him with fear; it seems formidable and unnatural.