dejected nag. We set off.

I had been familiar with Ardalion Mihalitch's wood from my childhood. I
had often strolled in Tchapligino with my French tutor, Monsieur Desire
Fleury, the kindest of men (who had, however, almost ruined my
constitution for life by dosing me with Leroux's mixture every evening).
The whole wood consisted of some two or three hundred immense oaks and
ash-trees. Their stately, powerful trunks were magnificently black
against the transparent golden green of the nut bushes and
mountain-ashes; higher up, their wide knotted branches stood out in
graceful lines against the clear blue sky, unfolding into a tent
overhead; hawks, honey-buzzards and kestrels flew whizzing under the
motionless tree-tops; variegated wood-peckers tapped loudly on the stout
bark; the blackbird's bell-like trill was heard suddenly in the thick
foliage, following on the ever-changing note of the gold-hammer; in the
bushes below was the chirp and twitter of hedge-warblers, siskins, and
peewits; finches ran swiftly along the paths; a hare would steal along
the edge of the wood, halting cautiously as he ran; a squirrel would hop
sporting from tree to tree, then suddenly sit still, with its tail over
its head. In the grass among the high ant-hills under the delicate shade
of the lovely, feathery, deep-indented bracken, were violets and lilies
of the valley, and funguses, russet, yellow, brown, red and crimson; in
the patches of grass among the spreading bushes red strawberries were to
be found.... And oh, the shade in the wood! In the most stifling heat,
at mid-day, it was like night in the wood: such peace, such fragrance,
such freshness.... I had spent happy times in Tchapligino, and so, I
must own, it was with melancholy feelings I entered the wood I knew so
well. The ruinous, snowless winter of 1840 had not spared my old
friends, the oaks and the ashes; withered, naked, covered here and there
with sickly foliage, they struggled mournfully up above the young growth