Definition of "faintly"

So this was my future home, I thought! […] Backed by towering hills, the but faintly discernible purple line of the French boundary off to the southwest, a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.

1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company

Faintlier, faintlier came the footfalls to his ear, until of all the faint sounds that came, by the abandoned air, to his ear, not one was a footfall, as far as he could judge.

1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, Olympia Press