“It is strength that I feel,” said he to himself, Samson. Standing there, up to his ankles in the brook, he existed all alone against a rugged landscape that seemed to have laid itself out behind him: rocks mixed with dirty-white clay, and briery bushes. The earth was flat in one of the directions, and mildly sloped upwards in the other. Further out, hills rolled into the beginnings of mountain regions. From that great distance, and towards him, the wind blew thin sleeves of clouds as if to soften the sun’s heat. But the heat he felt anyhow, and he noticed it rallied him rather than phased him. He saw all these. He heard them, smelled them too, and he tried to breathe them. “I feel…strong,” said he again. And he leapt out of the brook, and he began to run.