‘It is time, indeed.’
The huge mountains sleep; the green, clear sky sleeps over the region of eternal silence.
February 1878.
THE OLD WOMAN
I was walking over a wide plain alone.
And suddenly I fancied light, cautious footsteps behind my back.... Some one was walking after me.
I looked round, and saw a little, bent old woman, all muffled up in grey rags. The face of the old woman alone peeped out from them; a yellow, wrinkled, sharp-nosed, toothless face.
I went up to her.... She stopped.