roofs. . . . Since I was mounting upwards everything seemed vanishing
into a pit. The cross on the church, burnished by the rays of the
setting sun, gleamed brightly in the abyss and vanished. Nothing
was left but the oaks, the pines, and the white road. But then our
carriage came out on a level country, and that was all left below
and behind us. Alexandr Ivanitch jumped out and, smiling mournfully,
glanced at me for the last time with his childish eyes, and vanished
from me for ever. . . .

The impressions of the Holy Mountains had already become memories,
and I saw something new: the level plain, the whitish-brown distance,
the way side copse, and beyond it a windmill which stood with out
moving, and seemed bored at not being allowed to wave its sails
because it was a holiday.


THE STEPPE

_The Story of a Journey_

I

EARLY one morning in July a shabby covered chaise, one of those
antediluvian chaises without springs in which no one travels in
Russia nowadays, except merchant's clerks, dealers and the less
well-to-do among priests, drove out of N., the principal town of
the province of Z., and rumbled noisily along the posting-track.
It rattled and creaked at every movement; the pail, hanging on
behind, chimed in gruffly, and from these sounds alone and from the
wretched rags of leather hanging loose about its peeling body one