"Törless had often heard the word in mathematics lessons. It had never meant anything in particular to him. The term kept on recurring; somebody had once invented it, and since then it had become possible to calculate with it as surely as with anything real and solid. It was whatever it stood for in the calculation; and beyond that Törless had never sought to understand it.
"But now it flashed through him, with strtling clarity, that there was something terribly disturbing about this word. It seemed to him like a concept that had been tamed and with which he himself had been daily going through his little circus tricks; and now all of a sudden it had broken loose. Something surpassing all comprehension, something wld and annihilating, that once had been put to sleep by some ingenious operation, had suddenly leapt awake and was there again in all its terrifying strength. There, in the sky, it was standing over him, alive and threatening and sneering."
