right, dead faces, little children with eyes that
were afraid and indifferent, hungry and mad, all this crowd swaying
before us, with the cannon muttering beyond the walls, and the thin
miserable thread of the funeral hymn trickling like water under our
feet.... I looked from these to Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna, they in
their white overalls working at the meat kitchen and the huge
bread-baskets, radiant in their love, their success, their struggle,
confident, both of them, this morning that they had the fire of life
in their hands to do with it as they pleased.

I have not wished during the progress of this book, which is the
history of the experiences of others rather than of myself, to lay any
stress on my personal history, and here I would only say that any one
who is burdened with a physical disease or encumbrance that will
remain to the end of life must know that there are certain moments
when this hindrance leaps up at him like the grinning face of a
devil--despairing hideous moments they are! I have said that during
our drive I had felt a confident happy participation in the joy of
those others who were with me ... now as we stood there feeding that
company of scarecrows, a sudden horror of my own lameness, a sudden
consciousness that I belonged rather to that band of miserable
diseased hungry fugitives than to the two triumphant figures on the
other side of me, overwhelmed and defeated me. I bent my head; I felt
a shame, a degradation as though I should have crept into some shadow
and hidden.... I would not mention this were it not that afterwards,
in retrospect, the moment seemed to me an omen. After all, life is not
always to the victorious!...

Our scarecrows wanted, horribly, their food. It was dreadful to see
the anxiety with which they watched the portioning of the thick heavy
hunks of black bread. They had to show Marie Ivanovna their dirty
little scraps of paper which described the portions to which they were
entitled. How their bony fingers clutched the paper afterwards as they
pressed it back into their skinny bosoms! Sometimes they could not
wait to return home, but would squat down on the ground and lap their
soup like dogs. The day grew hotter and hotter, the world smelt of
disease and dirt, waste and desolation. Marie Ivanovna's face was
soft with tenderness as she watched them. Semyonov had always his eye
upon her, seeing that she did not touch them, sometimes calling out
sharply: "Now! Marie!