nd superior _and_ uninteresting from
Petrograd and Moscow.

Over the wall a long row of interested Galician peasants and soldiers
passing in carts or on horseback. Seeing the ikon, the priest, the
blowing candles, hearing the singing they would take off their hats,
cross themselves, for a moment their eyes would go dreamy, mild,
forgetful, then on their hats would go again, back they would turn
their horses, cursing them up the hill, chaffing the Galician women,
down deep in the everyday life again.

The service ended. The priest turns to us, the gold Cross is raised,
we advance one by one: the generals, the colonels, the lieutenants,
the Sisters, Semyonov, Nikitin, Goga, then the choir, then the
sanitars, even to hunch-backed Alesha, who is always given the
dirtiest work to do and is only half a human being; one by one we kiss
the Cross, the candles are blown out, the ikon folded up and put away
in a cardboard box, we are introduced to the generals, there is
general conversation, and the stars and the moon come out "blown
straight up, it seems, out of the bosom of the Nestor...."

It was a very happy and innocent evening. For extracting the utmost
happiness possible out of the simplest materials the Russians have
surely no rivals. How our generals and our colonels enjoyed that
evening! A wonderful dinner was cooked between two stones in the
garden--little pig, young chickens, _borshtsh_, that most luxurious of
soups, and ices--yes, and ices. Then there were speeches, many, many
glasses of tea, strawberry and cherry jam, biscuits and cigarettes. We
were all very, very happy....

It was arranged on the morning after the feast that I should go again
to the cholera village with Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov. Under a
morning of a blazing relentless heat, bars of light ruling the sky, we
started, the three of us, at about ten o'clock, in the little low
dogcart, followed by the kitchen and the boiler. Marie Ivanovna sat
next to Semyonov, I facing them. Semyonov was happier than I had ever
seen him before. Happiness was not a quality with which I would ever
have charged him; he had seemed to despise it as something too simple
and sentimental for any but sentimental fools--but now this morning (I
had noticed something of the same thing in him the evening before) he
was quite _simply_ happy, looking younger by many years, the ironical
curve of his lip gone, his eyes smiling, his attitude to the world
gentle and almost benevol