"There is typhus and barbarity in every peasant's hut," Constantine muttered. Then he, too, lapsed into silence, listening.
Beyond some huts on a village by-path girls' voices could be heard singing an Annunciation hymn. In the vasts depths of silence it sounded solemn, simple, sane. The two princes felt it to be as immutable as the Spring with its law of birth. They remained standing there a long while, resting first on one foot, then on the other. Each felt that mankind's blood and energy still flowed bright and unsullied despite the world upheaval.
"Good! That is infinitely touching. That will not die," declared
Vilyashev. "It has come down to us through the Ages."
"Aye," replied Prince Constantine bitterly, "wonderfully good.
Pathetically good. Abominably good!"
From the bend in the road the girls appeared in their coloured aprons; they passed decorously in pairs, singing:
"Rejoice, O Virgin Mother! Blessed art Thou amongst women"….
The earth was moist and exhaled a sweet, delicate odour of rich, fresh vegetation. Reluctantly, at last, the two brothers resumed their way. They heard the weird midnight-crowing of the cock. A pale silvery moon—the last before Easter Day—rose gently in the East, letting down its luminous web from the sky, flinging back the dark shadows of the night.
On reaching home, the cabin seemed damp and cold and inexpressibly dreary—as on the day Natalya died; when the door had slammed incessantly. The brothers went hastily to their rooms without speaking or lighting up. Constantine lay on Natalya's bed.
At dawn he awoke Vilyashev.
"I am going. Goodbye! It is ended! I am going out of Russia, out of Europe. Here, where were we born, they have called us their masters, their fathers—carrion crows, vultures! Like the fierce Russian tribes of old, they have let loose the hounds of destruction on wolves and hares and men alike! Woe!… Ibn-Sadif!"