I have sought to impart this relief to the more serious passages in the book, not only because I believe myself to be justified in doing so by the laws of Art -- but because experience has taught me (what the experience of my readers will doubtless confirm) that there is no such moral phenomenon as unmixed tragedy to be found in the world
around us. Look where we may, the dark threads and the light cross each other perpetually in the texture of human life.
It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all
around us were covered with a white blanket.
Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up; the clothes well tucked
around us, leaning against the head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two noses bending over them, as if our knee-pans were warming-pans.
On we toiled, the perspiration starting from our bodies in floods, our limbs torn and lacerated with the splintered fragments of the broken canes, until we had proceeded perhaps as far as the middle of the brake, when suddenly it ceased raining, and the atmosphere
around us became close and sultry beyond expression.
Lo, what fullness is
around us! And out of the midst of superabundance, it is delightful to look out upon distant seas.
And while we ate and drank and laughed and chatted, the books
around us were weaving their spells.
Such is the lot For ever of the great and wise, Whose tombs
around us rise; Man honours where the grave remembers not.
I had the same feeling of mystery and danger
around us. In the gloom of the trees there seemed a constant menace and as we looked up into their shadowy foliage vague terrors crept into one's heart.
Around us were solitudes of snow, arcades picked out in pearl and silver, long avenues of untrodden marble whence sprang the cathedral columns of the firs.
If the fall continues, the vapor of our breath will fall in snow
around us."
"There is a terrible mystery
around us, madame, around you, around Christine, a mystery much more to be feared than any number of ghosts or genii!"
"There are things going on
around us which no one can understand.