We had gathered enough from the officers of our
Division to know that something very disastrous "somewhere" had
occurred. It was the very vagueness of the thing that terrified us.
What could have happened? Only something very monstrous could have
compelled so general a retirement. We might all of us be prisoners
before the evening. That seemed to us, and indeed was afterwards
proved in reality, to have been no slender possibility. There was no
spot on earth that belonged to us. So firm and solid we had been at
M----. Even we had hung pictures on the walls and planted flowers
outside the dining-room. Now all that remained for us was this
horrible place with its endless looking-glasses, its bare gleaming
floors and the intolerable noise through its open windows of carts,
soldiers, horses, the smell of dung and tobacco, and the hot air, like
gas, that flung the dust into our faces.
Beyond the vague terrors of our uncertainty was the figure, seen quite
clearly by all of us without any sentiment, of Russia.
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