Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume X).djvu/252

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POEMS IN PROSE

as though to say, 'Eat, and welcome, passing guest!'

A cock suddenly crows and fussily flaps his wings; he is slowly answered by the low of a calf, shut up in the stall.

'My word, what oats!' I hear my coachman saying. … Oh, the content, the quiet, the plenty of the Russian open country! Oh, the deep peace and well-being!

And the thought comes to me: what is it all to us here, the cross on the cupola of St. Sophia in Constantinople and all the rest that we are struggling for, we men of the town?

A CONVERSATION

'Neither the Jungfrau nor the Finsteraarhorn has yet been trodden by the foot of man!'

The topmost peaks of the Alps. … A whole chain of rugged precipices. … The very heart of the mountains.

Over the mountain, a pale green, clear, dumb sky. Bitter, cruel frost; hard, sparkling snow; sticking out of the snow, the sullen peaks of the ice-covered, wind-swept mountains.

Two massive forms, two giants on the sides

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