The observer of this dismal prospect leaned heavily on his arm, and cast his glance out along the beautified corruption of the canal.

His eye seemed quickened to detect the smallest repellant details of the scene; every cypress stump that stood in, or overhung, the slimy water; every ruined indigo-vat or blasted tree, every broken thing, every bleached bone of ox or horse--and they were many--for roods around.

As his eye passed them slowly over and swept back again around the dreary view, he sighed heavily and said: "Dissolution," and then again--"Dissolution! order of the day--" A secret overhearer might have followed, by these occasional exclamatory utterances, the course of a devouring trouble prowling up and down through his thoughts, as one's eye tracks the shark by the occasional cutting of his fin above the water.
He spoke again: "It is in such moods as this that fools drown themselves." His speech was French.

He straightened up, smote the tree softly with his palm, and breathed a long, deep sigh--such a sigh, if the very truth be told, as belongs by right to a lover.

And yet his mind did not dwell on love.
He turned and left the place; but the trouble that was plowing hither and thither through the deep of his meditations went with him.