It is difficult to say what impression this spectacle of a toilsome, rural autumn made on Stepan's mind, and whether he was at all aware of the labors going on in the incessant rain out in the boggy fields. One thing is certain, that the drab, tearful autumn sky oppressed him. It seemed to hang close down over his head and threaten to drown him in a deluge of mud. All he had to do was to look out through the window and watch the heavy masses of clouds. From the dawn on they covered the heavens, hanging motionless as if spellbound. Even after several hours they were still in the same place, without the slightest apparent change in hue or outline. In the morning, one cloud, heavy and black, had a ragged shape resembling a priest in a cassock with outstretched arms. It was clearly outlined on the pallid background of the upper clouds, and at noon it still had the identically same form. The right hand, it is true, had become shorter, and the left was stretched out in an ugly fashion and was sending down such a flood of rain that against the dark background of the sky there formed a streak still darker, almost black. Another huge shaggy lump of a cloud a little farther up hung over the village, threatening to smother it, you would think. Hours later it was still hanging in the same place, the same shaggy monster with outstretched paws, as though ready to pounce upon the earth. Clouds, clouds, nothing but clouds! Around five o'clock a change took place, darkness gradually enveloped heaven and earth, and soon the clouds disappeared completely, vanishing beneath a black shroud. They were the first to go, next followed the forest and the village, then the church, the chapel, the hamlet, the orchard, and finally the manor-house, several yards away. It has already become quite dark in the room, and there is no light. So what can one do but pace up and down? A morbid languor seizes Stepan's brain; his entire body, despite its idleness, is filled with an incomprehensible, indescribable feeling of fatigue. Just one thought moves in him and sucks at him--the grave, the grave, the grave! Those black dots which have recently been moving busily on the dark background of the boggy soil and near the village barns are not oppressed by that thought. They will not perish under the burden of despondency and weariness. If they do not challenge the sky directly, at least they struggle, build, make enclosures, repair their houses. Stepan did not question whether all this bustle was worth the while, but he was aware that even the nameless dots were incomparably superior to him, that he couldn't even struggle, that he had nothing to build, nothing to repair.