The whole day we wandered over the Charred Wood. At evening--the sunset
had not yet begun to redden in the sky, but the shadows from the trees
already lay long and motionless, and in the grass one could feel that
chill that comes before the dew--I lay down by the roadside near the
cart in which Kondrat, without haste, was harnessing the horses after
their feed, and I recalled my cheerless reveries of the day before.
Everything around was as still as the previous evening, but there was
not the forest, stifling and weighing down the spirit. On the dry moss,
on the crimson grasses, on the soft dust of the road, on the slender
stems and pure little leaves of the young birch-trees, lay the clear
soft light of the no longer scorching, sinking sun. Everything was
resting, plunged in soothing coolness; nothing was yet asleep, but
everything was getting ready for the restoring slumber of evening and
night-time. Everything seemed to be saying to man: 'Rest, brother of
ours; breathe lightly, and grieve not, thou too, at the sleep close
before thee.' I raised my head and saw at the very end of a delicate
twig one of those large flies with emerald head, long body, and four
transparent wings, which the fanciful French call 'maidens,' while our
guileless people has named them 'bucket-yokes.' For a long while, more
than an hour, I did not take my eyes off her. Soaked through and
through with sunshine, she did not stir, only from time to time turning
her head from side to side and shaking her lifted wings ... that was
all. Looking at her, it suddenly seemed to me that I understood the
life of nature, understood its clear and unmistakable though, to many,
still mysterious significance. A subdued, quiet animation, an
unhasting, restrained use of sensations and powers, an equilibrium of
health in each separate creature--there is her very basis, her
unvarying law, that is what she stands upon and holds to. Everything
that goes beyond this level, above or below--it makes no
difference--she flings away as worthless. Many insects die as soon as