“I cannot,” replied Lenore.
“I am sorry for you, mother. There is a pleasure in it; and, God knows, we have few pleasures left.”
“What pleasure, Sophia?”
“The pleasure of changing everything about one to one’s own mood; of staining these snows, and blasting these pine woods, and dimming the sun and stars.”
“The pleasure of a child that beats the floor, of an idiot that grinds his teeth: the pleasure of spite. My poor child! is this your best pleasure?”
“Mother, all is changed in the same way, and at once, so that there is no struggle, like the child’s or the idiot’s. I never was so calm in my life as I have been since we left Warsaw.”
“Because you hate all. You say there is no struggle.”
“I hate all that has to do with the Emperor. This waste of snow, and these woods are his.”
“And the sun and stars?”
“The sun and stars of Siberia, mother; and every thing that moves on his territory.”