Do we ever remember a cloud?
Pierre could no longer endure to stay in the room! This house, his father's house, crushed him.

He felt the roof weigh on his head, and the walls suffocate him.

And as he was very thirsty he lighted his candle to go to drink a glass of fresh water from the filter in the kitchen.
He went down the two flights of stairs; then, as he was coming up again with the water-bottle filled, he sat down, in his night-shirt, on a step of the stairs where there was a draught, and drank, without a tumbler, in long pulls like a runner who is out of breath.

When he ceased to move the silence of the house touched his feelings; then, one by one, he could distinguish the faintest sounds.

First there was the ticking of the clock in the dining-room which seemed to grow louder every second.
Then he heard another snore, an old man's snore, short, laboured, and hard, his father beyond doubt; and he writhed at the idea, as if it had but this moment sprung upon him, that these two men, sleeping under the same room--father and son--were nothing to each other! Not a tie, not the very slightest, bound them together, and they did not know it! They spoke to each other affectionately, they embraced each other, they rejoiced and lamented together over the same things, just as if the same blood flowed in their veins.