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To the west, the earth, still gilded by the sun, shone with a

gloomy, yellowish-red tint; already the cloud, spreading out its

shadows like a net, was catching the remnants of the light and

flying after the sun as if it wished to seize upon it before it

set. Blasts of wind whistled sharply below; they rushed by, one

after another, bringing drops of rain, large, clear, and rounded

as hailstones.

Suddenly the winds grappled, split asunder, struggled, whirled

about, and in whistling columns circled over the ponds, stirring

the waters in the ponds to their depths; they fell upon the

meadows and whistled through the willows and the grass. The

willow branches snapped, the swaths of grass were borne on the

wind like hair torn out by handfuls, mixed with ringlets from the

sheaves. The winds howled; they fell upon the field, wallowed,

dug into the earth, snatched up clods, and made an opening for a

third wind, which tore itself from the field like a pillar of

black earth, and rose and whirled like a moving pyramid, boring

into the ground with its brow and from its feet sprinkling sand

in the eyes of the stars; it broadened at every step and opened

out at the summit, and with its immense trumpet it proclaimed the

storm.