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He gave that question pride of place in pursuance of a queer thought which had leaped into his brain during the enforced interval. But, if he had been thinking hard, so had Curtis, and the latter had outlined a plan of action which was fated to disrupt Steingall's, much as a harmless looking percussion cap may interfere with the smug torpor of a powder magazine.
The sight of the federates who paraded the faubourgs and the boulevards, vociferating, "The Republic for ever!" and "Death to the Royalists!" their sanguinary songs, the revolutionary airs played in our theatres, all tended to produce a fearful torpor in the public mind, and the issue of the impending events was anxiously awaited.
Down with the rich! Down with the priests! Down with the Jews! Down with the army! Down with the masters! Down with those who work! Down with everything!" all these cries roused the benumbed hearers. The Germans, who fomented all these riots, rendered us a real service without intending it. Those who had given themselves up to resignation were stirred out of their torpor.
The lieutenant astride on his chair, a glowing cheroot in the corner of his mouth, listened with a sly smile from behind the thick volumes of smoke that escaped from his compressed lips. The young sub-lieutenant, leaning with both elbows on the table, his head between his hands, looked on sleepily in the torpor induced by fatigue and the gin. Almayer talked on
Then it contracted swiftly, sucking in its sound until it left only a reverberant echo, which died upon the farther bank. Silence crept down again over the wet country; the faint dripping resumed, and suddenly a great shower of drops tumbled upon Gloria stirring her out of the trance-like torpor which the passage of the train had wrought.
The stillness of the air had become oppressive. A kind of torpor born of intense fatigue lulled the Terrorist's senses to somnolence. His head fell forward on his breast.... Then suddenly a shiver of excitement went right through him. He was fully awake now, with glowing eyes wide open and the icy calm of perfect confidence ruling every nerve. The sound of stealthy footsteps had reached his ear.
With me it hath been otherwise; every event of life hath conspired to feed my early prepossessions; and, in this awful crisis of my fate, I have placed myself and my throne rather under the guardianship of spirits than of men. This alone has reconciled me to inaction to the torpor of the Alhambra to the mutinies of my people.
In vain did Adrienne smile and seek to divert him from the thoughts that besieged him she was herself in a melancholy mood, without knowing why, and her endeavors were but wasted; if he abandoned the train of his reflections, it was merely to express a thought in rapid tones, and he seemed momentarily to shake off his torpor; he replied to his wife's forced smile by a mechanical grimace, and immediately relapsed into his nervously silent state.
But the spirit of nature, shifting and sporting with a lovely grace, infuses itself here and there into the vine, and amidst wondrous struggles lets itself be strained and refined, in order to descend along the magic channel of the palate into our inmost recesses, and there to rouse all our noblest energies out of the torpor and lethargy of their primitive chaos.
And everything was still again; there was only the faint gurgle of the water as before. I sank into a state of torpor. Moonlight, and night, and the river, and we in it.... 'What is that croaking noise? I asked Filofey. 'That? Ducks in the reeds... or else snakes. All of a sudden the head of the shaft-horse shook, his ears pricked up; he gave a snort, began to move.
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