hey're gone! They're all gone! We're left last of all!" and "The
Austrians advancing a verst a minute!"

He took a last look at the house which had seemed yesterday so
absolutely to belong to them and now was already making preparations
for its new guests. As he gazed he thought of his agony in that field
below the house. Only last night and now what years ago it seemed!
What years, what years ago!

He climbed wearily again upon his wagon. There had entered into his
unhappiness now a new element. This was a sensation of cold despairing
anger that ground should be yielded so helplessly. About every field,
every hedge and lane and tree, as slowly they jogged along he felt
this. Only to-day this corn, these stones, these flowers were Russian,
and to-morrow Austrian! This, as it seemed, simply out of the air,
dictated by some whispering devil crouching behind a hedge, afraid to
appear! This, too, when only a few hours ago there had been that
battle of S---- won by them after a struggle of many days; that
position, soaked with Russian blood, to be surrendered now as a leaf
blows in the wind.

When they arrived at T---- and found our Otriad he was, I believe, so
deeply exhausted that he was not conscious of his actions. His account
to me of what then occurred is fantastic and confused. He discovered
apparently the house where we were; it was then one o'clock in the
morning. Every one was asleep. There seemed to be no place for him to
be, he could find neither candles nor matches, and he wandered out
into the road again. Then, it seems, he was standing beside a deep
lake. "I can remember nothing clearly except that the lake was black
and endless. I stood looking at it. I could see the bodies out of the
forest, only now they were slipping along the water, their skulls
white and gleaming. I had also a confused impression that Russia was
beaten and the war over. And that for me too life was utterly at an
end.... I remember that I deliberately thought of Marie because it
hurt so abominably. I repeated to myself the incidents of the night
before, all of them, talking aloud to myself. I decided then that I
would drown myself in the lake. It seemed the only thing to do. I took
my coat off. Then sat down in the mud and took off my boots. Why I did
this I don't know. I looked at the water, thought that it would be
cold, but that it would soon be over because I couldn't swim. I heard
the frogs, looked back at the flickering fires amo