He is surrounded by the grown-up people and the girls, and he is being questioned. Cheery, good-natured, impatient voices appeal to him.
“Do sing for us the International.”
Borya, a lad with pale, frowning forehead, and blue-black circles under his eyes, looks into the other’s face and implores more heartily than the rest.
The tall, broad-chested Mikhail Lvovich looks askance and stubbornly refuses to sing.
“I can’t,” he says gruffly. “My throat is not in condition.”
Borya and Natasha insist.
Mikhail Lvovich then makes a gesture with his hand and accedes not less gruffly.
“Very well, I’ll sing.”
Every one is overjoyed.
Mikhail Lvovich poses himself on his knees. Above the mist-white glade, above the white-faced lads, above the white mist itself, there rises toward the witching moon, floating tranquilly in the skies, the words of that proud, passionate hymn: