And it was so. The charm of my lone refuge was in the cedar wood and
in the mountains covered with these forests which stretched to every
horizon. The cedar is a splendid, powerful tree with wide-spreading
branches, an eternally green tent, attracting to its shelter every
living being. Among the cedars was always effervescent life. There the
squirrels were continually kicking up a row, jumping from tree to tree;
the nut-jobbers cried shrilly; a flock of bullfinches with carmine
breasts swept through the trees like a flame; or a small army of
goldfinches broke in and filled the amphitheatre of trees with their
whistling; a hare scooted from one tree trunk to another and behind him
stole up the hardly visible shadow of a white ermine, crawling on the
snow, and I watched for a long time the black spot which I knew to be
the tip of his tail; carefully treading the hard crusted snow approached
a noble deer; at last there visited me from the top of the mountain the
king of the Siberian forest, the brown bear. All this distracted me
and carried away the black thoughts from my brain, encouraging me to
persevere. It was good for me also, though difficult, to climb to the
top of my mountain, which reached up out of the forest and from which I
could look away to the range of red on the horizon. It was the red cliff
on the farther bank of the Yenisei. There lay the country, the towns,
the enemies and the friends; and there was even the point which I
located as the place of my family. It was the reason why Ivan had guided
me here. And as the days in this solitude slipped by I began to miss
sorely this companion who, though the murderer of Gavronsky, had taken
care of me like a father, always saddling my horse for me, cutting the
wood and doing everything to make me comfortable. He had spent many
winters alone with nothing except his thoughts, face to face with
nature--I should say, before the face of God. He had tried the horrors
of solitude and had acquired facility in bearing them. I thought
sometimes, if I had to meet my end in this place, that I would spend my