faintest breath of it
could be heard. Only the full moon swam out with a rush into the sky and
suddenly hung high and motionless overhead. I remember raising my hairy
face to it for a moment. Then, I verily believe, I dozed off, too, bent
double on my log with my head towards the fierce blaze.

"You know what an impermanent thing such slumber is. One moment you
drop into an abyss and the next you are back in the world that you would
think too deep for any noise but the trumpet of the Last Judgment.
And then off you go again. Your very soul seems to slip down into a
bottomless black pit. Then up once more into a startled consciousness. A
mere plaything of cruel sleep one is, then. Tormented both ways.

"However, when my orderly appeared before me, repeating: 'Won't your
Honour be pleased to eat?... Won't your Honour be pleased to eat?...' I
managed to keep my hold of it--I mean that gaping consciousness. He was
offering me a sooty pot containing some grain boiled in water with a
pinch of salt. A wooden spoon was stuck in it.

"At that time these were the only rations we were getting regularly.
Mere chicken food, confound it! But the Russian soldier is wonderful.
Well, my fellow waited till I had feasted and then went away carrying
off the empty pot.

"I was no longer sleepy. Indeed, I had become awake with an exaggerated
mental consciousness of existence extending beyond my immediate
surroundings. Those are but exceptional moments with mankind, I am glad
to say. I had the intimate sensation of the earth in all its enormous
expanse wrapped in snow, with nothing showing on it but trees with their
straight stalk-like trunks and their funeral verdure; and in this aspect
of general mourning I seemed to hear the sighs of mankind falling to die
in the midst of a nature without life. They were Frenchmen. We didn't
hate them; they did not hate us; we had existed far apart--and suddenly
they had come rolling in with arms in their hands, without fear of God,
carrying with them other nations, and all to perish together in a long,
long trail of frozen corpses. I had an actual vision of that trail:
a pathetic multitude of small dark mounds stretching away under the
moonlight in a clear, still, and pitiless atmosphere--a sort of horrible
peace.

"But what other peace could there be for them? What else did they
deserve? I don't know by what connection of emotions there came into my
head the thought that the earth was a pagan plane