The first blow struck his forehead, and his vision exploded in streaks of lightning and shuddering stars. She climbed up onto the rickety driving plat- form, which had been made by tying a plank across the cab. Even before the most seductive reveries i have remained mindful of that sobriety of interior life, that asceticism of sentiment, in which alone the naked form of truth, such as one conceives it, such as one feels it, can be rendered without shame.

Vodlevile, in contrast, was getting up. So much for love at first sniff.