glanced carelessly to the right.
The morning was perfectly clear. Suddenly he saw, about twenty paces
away as it seemed to him at first glance, pure white gigantic masses
with delicate contours, the distinct fantastic outlines of their
summits showing sharply against the far-off sky. When he had realized
the distance between himself and them and the sky and the whole
immensity of the mountains, and felt the infinitude of all that beauty,
he became afraid that it was but a phantasm or a dream. He gave himself
a shake to rouse himself, but the mountains were still the same.

"What's that! What is it?" he said to the driver.

"Why, the mountains," answered the Nogay driver with indifference.

"And I too have been looking at them for a long while," said Vanyusha.
"Aren't they fine? They won't believe it at home."

The quick progress of the three-horsed cart along the smooth road
caused the mountains to appear to be running along the horizon, while
their rosy crests glittered in the light of the rising sun. At first
Olenin was only astonished at the sight, then gladdened by it; but
later on, gazing more and more intently at that snow-peaked chain that
seemed to rise not from among other black mountains, but straight out
of the plain, and to glide away into the distance, he began by slow
degrees to be penetrated by their beauty and at length to FEEL the
mountains. From that moment all he saw, all he thought, and all he
felt, acquired for him a new character, sternly majestic like the
mountains! All his Moscow reminiscences, shame, and repentance, and his
trivial dreams about the Caucasus, vanished and did not return. 'Now it
has begun,' a solemn voice seemed to say to him. The road and the
Terek, just becoming visible in the distance, and the Cossack villages
and the people, all no longer appeared to him as a joke. He looked at
himself or Vanyusha, and again thought of the mountains. ... Two
Cossacks ride by, their guns in their cases swinging rhythmically
behind their backs, the white and bay legs of their horses mingling
confusedly ... and the mountains! Beyond the Terek rises the smoke from
a Tartar village... and the mountains! The sun has risen and glitters
on the Terek, now visible beyond the reeds ... and the mountains! From
the village comes a Tartar wagon, and women, beautiful young women,
pass by... and the mountains! 'Abreks canter about the plain, and here
am I driving along and do not fear them! I have a gun,