us equipages with impatient horses, the open
carriages in which the great personages of the court saw the view and
let themselves be seen. Enormous coachmen held the reins high. Lively
young women, negligently reclining against the cushions, displayed their
new Paris toilettes, and kept young officers on horseback busy with
salutes. There were all kinds of uniforms. No talking was heard.
Everyone was kept busy looking. There rang in the pure, thin air only
the noise of the champing bits and the tintinnabulation of the bells
attached to the hairy Finnish ponies' collars. And all that, so
beautiful, fresh, charming and clear, and silent, it all seemed more
a dream than even that which hung in the pools, suspended between the
crystal of the air and the crystal of the water. The transparence of the
sky and the transparence of the gulf blended their two unrealities so
that one could not note where the horizons met.

Rouletabille looked at the view and looked at the general, and in all
his young vibrating soul there was a sense of infinite sadness, for he
recalled those terrible words in the night: "They have gone into all the
corners of the Russian land, and they have not found a single corner of
that land where there are not moanings." "Well," thought he, "they have
not come into this corner, apparently. I don't know anything lovelier or
happier in the world." No, no, Rouletabille, they have not come here.
In every country there is a corner of happy life, which the poor are
ashamed to approach, which they know nothing of, and of which merely the
sight would turn famished mothers enraged, with their thin bosoms, and,
if it is not more beautiful than that, certainly no part of the earth
is made so atrocious to live in for some, nor so happy for others as in
this Scythian country, the boreal country of the world.

Meanwhile the little group about the general's rolling-chair had
attracted attention. Some passers-by saluted, and the news spread
quickly that General Trebassof had come for a promenade to "the Point."
Heads turned as carriages passed; the general, noticing how much
excitement his presence produced, begged Matrena Petrovna to push his
chair into an adjacent by-path, behind a shield of trees where he would
be able to enjoy the spectacle in peace.

He was found, nevertheless, by Koupriane, the Chief of Police, who was
looking for him. He had gone to the datcha and been told there that the
general, accompanied by his