The drawing-room
had not so far been touched; the gilt backs of books still glittered
from behind glass cases in the study. Oh books! Will not your poison
and your delights still abide?
Prince Prozorovsky went out into the fields; they were barren but for
dead rye-stalks that stuck up starkly from the earth. Wolves were
already on the trail. He wandered all day long, drank the last wine
of autumn and listened to the ravens' wedding cries.
When he had beheld this bird's carnival as a child, he had clapped
his hands, crying: "Hurrah for my wedding! Hurrah for my wedding!" He
had never had a wedding. Now his days were numbered. He had lived for
love. He had known many affections, had felt bitter pangs. He had
tasted the poison of the Moscow streets, of books and of women; had
been touched by the autumnal sadness of Bielokonsky, where he always
stayed in the autumn. Now he knew grief!
He walked aimlessly through the trackless fields and down into
hollows; the aspens glowed in a purple hue around him; on a hill
behind him the old white house stood amid the lilac shrubbery of a
decaying park. The crystal clear, vast, blue vista was immeasurably
distant.
The hair on his temples was already growing thin and gray--there was
no stopping, no returning!
He met a peasant, a rough, plain man in a sheep-skin jacket, driving
a cart laden with sacks.
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