Now we
were tired and over-wrought. Good news there was none--indeed every
day brought disastrous tidings. We, ourselves, must look back upon a
hundred versts of fair smiling country that we had conquered with the
sacrifice of many thousands of lives and surrendered without the
giving of a blow. And always the force that compelled us to this was
sinister and ironical by its invisibility.
It was the Russian temperament to declare exactly what it felt, to
give free rein to its moods and dislikes and discomforts. The weather
was beginning to be fiercely hot, there were many rumours of cholera
and typhus--we, all of us, lost colour and appetite, slept badly and
suffered from sudden headaches.
Three days after our arrival at Mittoevo we had all discovered private
hostilities and resentments. I was as bad as any one. I could not
endure the revolutionary student, Ivan Mihailovitch. I thought him
most uncleanly in his habits, and I was compelled to sleep in the same
room with him. Certainly it was true that washing was not one of the
most important things in the world to him.
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