In the valley below lay thousands of corpses with fixed eyes widely open gazing at the dark mysterious heavens. Their intent gaze seemed to wish to penetrate the darkness as though obstinately asking heaven whither had passed that something which had animated their bodies that very morning, and what had become of the last sigh which escaped from their bayonet-pierced or bullet-riddled breasts. But the dark inaccessible sky regarded them sadly from above, letting fall now and then cold tears on these disfigured faces.
The Major could not get to sleep. He turned and turned again under the felt cloak which served him as a blanket, throwing it aside and pulling it over himself again, recommencing for the tenth time to read a newspaper and letting it fall, casting furtive glances at the slumbering Turk, and hearing the vague words which escaped him in his uneasy sleep. Weary with his restlessness, the Major tried to oblige himself to think of something else, but his thoughts always returned to the same point.
Even when he had finally closed his eyes and his breath had become more equal, when night had cast its soft spell over the room, his thoughts continued without change to work in the same direction. He dreamt of children, not the prisoner's unfortunate brats, but of his own surrounded by all the care of a mother and sheltered from danger in the midst of the profound quiet of the steppe which surrounded the little Russian town where his family dwelt. His thoughts flew to them over thousands of versts.
All else had vanished; nothing of the present remained, neither the battles, nor the innumerable corpses, nor that ocean of disasters which for a long time had been rolling its blood-stained waves under the Major's eyes.
This is what he saw--a moderately-sized room with a sacred icon[1] in one corner. A night-light burns softly before the icon as though intimidated by the constant sight of the saint's austere face, whose expression appears still more sombre in contrast with the silver ornaments of the frame in which it is set. The feeble rays of this pale light show in the shadow the outlines of two little beds with very white curtains from behind which proceeds the sound of equable breathing. The Major lifts one of these curtains; the little girl in this bed is too hot; she has pushed off her coverlet, and all rosy with sleep, she slumbers without dreaming, her little plump legs gathered up close to her body, and her pulpy mouth half-open. The little monkey is tired with running about the whole day. She has rolled down ice-slopes, she has teased her favourite fowls and her cock, she has fed the pigeons, and among other things she has fought with her little brother. Now she slips her little fat hand under her head. She seems about to open her eyes and close them again, smiling at the sight of her father's face as he hangs over her. He takes a long look at her.