So in misery and humiliation, cold and starving, we rode in a
disconsolate column across the vast snow-plain. The sun had
sunk, but still in the long northern twilight we pursued our
weary journey. Numbed and frozen, with my head aching from the
blows it had received, I was borne onward by Violette, hardly
conscious of where I was or whither I was going. The little mare
walked with a sunken head, only raising it to snort her contempt
for the mangy Cossack ponies who were round her.
But suddenly the escort stopped, and I found that we had halted
in the single street of a small Russian village.
There was a church on one side, and on the other was a large
stone house, the outline of which seemed to me to be familiar. I
looked around me in the twilight, and then I saw that we had been
led back to Dobrova, and that this house at the door of which we
were waiting was the same house of the priest at which we had
stopped in the morning. Here it was that my charming Sophie in
her innocence had translated the unlucky message which had in
some strange way led us to our ruin.
Pages:
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233