| Quote #1 She skipped, she laughed. Chorb, hunching his back a bit, walked behind her—and it seemed to him that happiness itself had that smell, the smell of dead leaves (15). |
The way the seasons are arranged in "Chorb" is interesting; we pass from the Fall, a time of decay, to the Spring, a time of rebirth – except Chorb’s wife has died in the interim.
| Quote #2 A pale but jaunty lackey led Chorb down a crooked corridor reeking of dampness and boiled cabbage into a room which Chorb recognized—by the picture of a pink baigneuse in a gilt frame over the bed—as the very one in which he and his wife had spent their first night together (12). |
Chorb’s grief is intensified by the details around him; from the trees outside the Kellers’ house to the painting in the hotel room, everything reminds him of his wife.
| Quote #3 Her mother, in the meantime, led her closest friends, two by two, to inspect the bedroom meant for the young couple: with tender emotion, whispering under her breath, she pointed out the colossal eiderdown, the orange blossoms, the two pairs of brand-new bedroom slippers—large checkered ones, and tiny red ones with pompons—that she had aligned on the bedside rug, across which a Gothic inscription ran: "WE ARE TOGETHER UNTO THE TOMB." (12). |
Everything is spectral and eerie in this story – even the romantic trinkets intended for a wedding night. This creates an other-worldly atmosphere for the reader.