heart.
Before us the road ran like a broad, sinuous ribbon through cornfields
glittering with dew. Here and there a dark bush or young birch-tree cast
a long shadow over the ruts and scattered grass-tufts of the track. Yet
even the monotonous din of our carriage-wheels and collar-bells could
not drown the joyous song of soaring larks, nor the combined odour of
moth-eaten cloth, dust, and sourness peculiar to our britchka overpower
the fresh scents of the morning. I felt in my heart that delightful
impulse to be up and doing which is a sign of sincere enjoyment.
As I had not been able to say my prayers in the courtyard of the inn,
but had nevertheless been assured once that on the very first day when
I omitted to perform that ceremony some misfortune would overtake me,
I now hastened to rectify the omission. Taking off my cap, and stooping
down in a corner of the britchka, I duly recited my orisons, and
unobtrusively signed the sign of the cross beneath my coat. Yet all the
while a thousand different objects were distracting my attention, and
more than once I inadvertently repeated a prayer twice over.
Soon on the little footpath beside the road became visible some slowly
moving figures. They were pilgrims. On their heads they had dirty
handkerchiefs, on their backs wallets of birch-bark, and on their feet
bundles of soiled rags and heavy bast shoes. Moving their staffs in
regular rhythm, and scarcely throwing us a glance, they pressed onwards
with heavy tread and in single file.
'Where have they come from?' I wondered to myself, 'and whither are they
bound? Is it a long pilgrimage they are making?' But soon the shadows
they cast on the road became indistinguishable from the shadows of the
bushes which they passed.
Next a carriage-and-four could be seen approaching us. In two seconds
the faces which looked out at us from it with smiling curiosity had
vanished. How strange it seemed that those faces should have nothing
in common with me, and that in all probability they would never meet my
eyes again!
Next came a pair of post-horses, with the traces looped up to their
collars. On one of them a young postillion-his lamb's wool cap cocked to
one side-was negligently kicking his booted legs against the flanks
of his steed as he sang a melancholy ditty. Yet his face and attitude
seemed to me to express such perfect carelessness and indolent ease that
I imagined it to be the height of happiness to be a postillion and to
sing melancholy songs.
Far off, through a cutting in the road, there soon stood out against
the light-blue sky, the green roof of a village church. Presently the
village itself became visible, together with the roof of the manor-house
and the garden attached to it. Who lived in that house? Children,
parents, teachers? Why should we not call there and make the
acquaintance of its inmates?
Next we overtook a file of loaded waggons--a procession to which our
vehicles had to yield the road.
'What have you got in there?' asked Vassili of one waggoner who was
dangling his legs lazily over the splashboard of his conveyance and
flicking his whip about as he gazed at us with a stolid, vacant look;
but he only made answer when we were too far off to catch what he said.
'And what have YOU got?' asked Vassili of a second waggoner who was
lying at full length under a new rug on the driving-seat of his vehicle.
The red poll and red face beneath it lifted themselves up for a
second from the folds of the rug, measured our britchka with a cold,
