"
"I do not like leaving the poor beggar alone all night," said Paul.
"There may be wolves--the crows in the early morning."
"Bah! that is because you are so soft-hearted. My dear fellow, what
business is it of ours if the universal laws of nature are illustrated
upon this unpleasant object? We all live on each other. The wolves and
the crows have the last word. Tant mieux for the wolves and the crows!
Come, let us carry him to that tree."
The moon was just rising over the line of the horizon. All around them
the steppe lay in grim and lifeless silence. In such a scene, where life
seemed rare and precious, death gained in its power of inspiring fear.
It is different in crowded cities, where an excess of human life seems
to vouch for the continuity of the race, where, in a teeming population,
one life more or less seems of little value. The rosy hue of sunset was
fading to a clear green, and in the midst of a cloudless sky,
Jupiter--very near the earth at that time--shone intense, and brilliant
like a lamp. It was an evening such as only Russia and the great North
lands ever see, where the sunset is almost in the north and the sunrise
holds it by the hand. Over the whole scene there hung a clear,
transparent night, green and shimmering, which would never be darker
than an English twilight.
The two living men carried the nameless, unrecognizable dead to a
resting-place beneath a stunted pine a few paces removed from the road.
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