Such silence reigned in the whole detachment, that there could be plainly distinguished all the harmonious voices of the night, full of mysterious charm. The distant melancholy howls of jackals, sometimes like the wails of despair, sometimes like laughter; the monotonous ringing song of the cricket, the frog, the quail; a gradually approaching murmur, the cause of which I could not make clear to my own mind; and all those nocturnal, almost audible motions of nature, which it is so impossible either to comprehend or define,—unite into one complete, beautiful harmony which we call silent night.
This silence was broken, or rather was unified, by the dull thud of the hoofs, and the rustling of the tall grass through which the division was slowly moving.
Occasionally, however, was heard in the ranks the ring of a heavy cannon, the sound of clashing bayonets, stifled conversation, and the snorting of a horse.
Nature breathed peacefully in beauty and power.
Is it possible that people find no room to live together in this beautiful world, under this boundless starry heaven? Is it possible that amid this bewitching nature, the soul of man can harbor the sentiments of hatred and revenge, or the passion for inflicting destruction upon his kind? All ugly feelings in the heart of man ought, it would seem, to vanish away in this intercourse with nature,—with this immediate expression of beauty and goodness!
[17] The frogs in the Caucasus make a sound entirely different from the Kvakan'yé of the Russian frogs.
[18] German mispronunciation for Antichrist, the accent of which in Russian falls on the penult.
VII.
We had now been marching more than two hours. I began to feel chilly, and to be overcome with drowsiness. In the darkness the same indistinct objects dimly appeared: at a little distance, the same black shadow, the same moving spots. Beside me was the crupper of a white horse, which switched his tail and swung his hind-legs in wide curves. I could see a back in a white Circassian shirt, against which was outlined a carbine in its black case, and the handle of a pistol in an embroidered holster: the glow of a cigarette casting a gleam on a reddish mustache, a fur collar, and a hand in a chamois-skin glove.