n imprisoned calf
lows without haste, in reply.

"Hey, what fine oats!" the voice of my coachman makes itself heard....

O Russian contentment, repose, plenty! O free village! O tranquillity
and abundance!

And I thought to myself: "What care we for the cross on the dome of
Saint Sophia in Constantinople, and all the other things for which we
strive, we people of the town?"

February, 1878.

A CONVERSATION

"Never yet has human foot trod either the
Jungfrau or the Finsteraarhorn."

The summits of the Alps.... A whole chain of steep cliffs.... The very
heart of the mountains.

Overhead a bright, mute, pale-green sky. A hard, cruel frost; firm,
sparkling snow; from beneath the snow project grim blocks of ice-bound,
wind-worn cliffs.

Two huge masses, two giants rise aloft, one on each side of the horizon:
the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn.

And the Jungfrau says to its neighbour: "What news hast thou to tell?
Thou canst see better.--What is going on there below?"

Several thousand years pass by like one minute. And the Finsteraarhorn
rumbles in reply: "Dense clouds veil the earth.... Wait!"

More thousands of years elapse, as it were one minute.

"Well, what now?" inquires the Jungfrau.

"Now I can see; down yonder, below, everything is still the same:
party-coloured, tiny. The waters gleam blue; the forests are black;
heaps of stones piled up shine grey. Around them small beetles are still
bustling,--thou knowest, those two-legged beetles who have as yet been
unable to defile either thou or me."

"Men?"

"Yes, men."

Thousands of years pass, as it were one minute.

"Well, and what now?" asks the Jungfrau.

"I seem to see fewer of the little beetles," thunders the
Finsteraarhorn. "Things have become clearer down below; the waters have
contracted; the forests have grown thinner."

More thousands of years pass, as it were one minute.

"What dost thou see?" says the Jungfrau.

"Things seem to have grown clearer round us, close at hand," replies
the Finsteraarhorn; "well, and yonder, far away, in the valleys there is
still a spot, and something is moving."

"And now?" inquires the Jungfrau, after other thousands of years, which
are as one minute.

"Now it is well," replies the Finsteraarhorn; "it is clean everywhere,
quite white, wherever one looks.... Everywhere is our snow, level snow
and ice. Everything is congealed. It is well now, and calm."

"Good," said the Jungfra