... The eagerness, the ignorance, the odd fairy-tale
world spun about those groups, so that the coloured domes of the
churches, the silver network of the stars, the wooden booths, the mist
of candles before the Ikons, the rough painted pictures on the shops
advertising the goods sold within--all these things shared in that crude
idealistic, cynical ignorance, in that fairy-tale of brutality,
goodness, cowardice, and bravery, malice and generosity, superstition
and devotion that was so shortly to be offered to a materialistic,
hard-fighting, brave and unthinking Europe!...
That, however, was not now my immediate business--enough of that
presently. My immediate business, as I very quickly discovered, was to
pluck up enough strength to drag my wretched body home. The events of
the week had, I suppose, carried me along. I was to suffer now the
inevitable reaction. I felt exactly as though I had been shot from a gun
and landed, suddenly, without breath, without any strength in any of my
limbs in a new and strange world. I was standing, when I first realised
my weakness, beside the wooden booths in the Sadovaya.
Pages:
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427