the thought of them whole summers. But the winters passed one after
another, and Skavinski lived only to this,--that they whitened his head.
At last he grew old, began to lose energy; his endurance was becoming
more and more like resignation, his former calmness was tending toward
supersensitiveness, and that tempered soldier was degenerating into a
man ready to shed tears for any cause. Besides this, from time to time
he was weighed down by a terrible homesickness which was roused by any
circumstance,--the sight of swallows, gray birds like sparrows, snow on
the mountains, or melancholy music like that heard on a time. Finally,
there was one idea which mastered him,--the idea of rest. It mastered
the old man thoroughly, and swallowed all other desires and hopes. This
ceaseless wanderer could not imagine anything more to be longed for,
anything more precious, than a quiet corner in which to rest, and wait
in silence for the end. Perhaps specially because some whim of fate had
so hurried him over all seas and lands that he could hardly catch his
breath, did he imagine that the highest human happiness was simply not
to wander. It is true that such modest happiness was his due; but he was
so accustomed to disappointments that he thought of rest as people in
general think of something which is beyond reach. He did not dare to
hope for it. Meanwhile, unexpectedly, in the course of twelve hours he
had gained a position which was as if chosen for him out of all the
world. We are not to wonder, then, that when he lighted his lantern in
the evening he became as it were dazed,--that he asked himself if that
was reality, and he did not dare to answer that it was. But at the same
time reality convinced him with incontrovertible proofs; hence hours one
after another passed while he was on the balcony. He gazed, and
convinced himself. It might seem that he was looking at the sea for the
first time in his life. The lens of the lantern cast into the darkness
an enormous triangle of light, beyond which the eye of the old man was
lost in the black distance completely, in the distance mysterious and