the fugitives, and we are greatly astonished. Where do the papers get such accounts? There's nothing dreadful here. Not so many sick people. Chiefly peasant women who have given birth to children in the forest, in the cold. Yes, that's so. But no deaths, no graves by the roadside, no horrors. Only where do they get such accounts from? The people are quiet. For instance, there are some who have stopped in front of me and got in my way. I grumble at them a little . . . or rather, I give them a good scolding, and they very obediently move to one side. So where do the papers get their picture from?
An idyll!
—Wait a little, madam, all is yet to come.
The nearer we get to Smolensk province the oftener do we meet with fugitives, oftener, oftener, oftener.
