Niels Lyhne by J.P. Jacobsen — Read

Autumn had come; there were no flowers any more on the graves up there in the churchyard, and the fallen leaves lay brown and moldering in the wet under the trees of Lønborggård.

Niels Lyhne went about in the empty rooms in bitter despondency. Something had given way in him the night the child died. He had lost faith in himself, lost his belief in the power of human beings to bear the life they had to live. Existence had sprung a leak, and its contents were seeping out through all the cracks without plan or purpose.