The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cossacks, by Leo Tolstoy
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Title: The Cossacks
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translator: Louise and Aylmer Maude
Release Date: January 18, 2009 [EBook #4761]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE COSSACKS
A Tale of 1852
By
Leo Tolstoy (1863)
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
Chapter I
All is quiet in Moscow. The squeak of wheels is seldom heard in the
snow-covered street. There are no lights left in the windows and the
street lamps have been extinguished. Only the sound of bells, borne
over the city from the church towers, suggests the approach of morning.
The streets are deserted. At rare intervals a night-cabman's sledge
kneads up the snow and sand in the street as the driver makes his way
to another corner where he falls asleep while waiting for a fare. An
old woman passes by on her way to church, where a few wax candles burn
with a red light reflected on the gilt mountings of the icons. Workmen
are already getting up after the long winter night and going to their
work--but for the gentlefolk it is still evening.
From a window in Chevalier's Restaurant a light--illegal at that
hour--is still to be seen through a chink in the shutter. At the
entrance a carriage, a sledge, and a cabman's sledge, stand close
together with their backs to the curbstone. A three-horse sledge from
the post-station is there also. A yard-porter muffled up and pinched
with cold is sheltering behind the corner of the house.
'And what's the good of all this jawing?' thinks the footman who sits
in the hall weary and haggard. 'This always happens when I'm on duty.'
From the adjoining room are heard the voices of three young men,
sitting there at a table on which are wine and the remains of supper.
One, a rather plain, thin, neat little man, sits looking with tired
kindly eyes a
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