"What wonder, look around you!" cried Constantine. He hesitated a moment then said softly: "To-morrow is the Annunciation--the recollection of that festival made me think. Look around!"
The tumulus stood out sheer and stark, a grim relic of a bygone age. There was a faint rustling through last year's wormwood. The air arose from the plains in a crescendo of quivering chords, gushing upward like a welling spring. There was the scent of decaying foliage. The sky beyond had darkened, charged to the brim with mystery. The atmosphere became moist and cold; the valley lay beneath--empty, boundless, a region of illimitable space.
"Yes, it is waking. Do you hear the soft stir and shudder among the roots of the flowers and grass? The whisper of the trees, the tremor of leaves and fronds? It is the earth's joyful welcome to the Spring."
Constantine shook his head: "Not joy ... sorrow. The air is permeated with the scent of decay. To-morrow will see the Annunciation, a great festival, little brother, and that recollection has set me thinking. Look round you! Everywhere are savages--men gone mad with blood and terror. Death, famine, barbarity ride the world! Idolatry is still rampant: to this day men believe in wood-spirits, witches and the devil--and God, oh yes, men still believe in God! They bury their dead when the bodies should be burnt. They seek to drive away typhus by religious processions!"
"I stood the whole time in the train to avoid infection. But the people do not even think of that: their one thought is bread. I wanted to sleep through the journey; but a wretched woman, starving before my very eyes, prevented me. She said she was going to a sister so as to get milk to drink. She made me feel sick; she could not say bread, meat, milk, and butter, but called them 'brud,' 'mate,' 'mulk,' and 'buzzer'. 'Ah, for a bit of buzzer--how I will ate it and enjoy it!' she kept muttering.
"I tell you, Vilyashev, the people are bewildered. The world is returning to savagery. Remember the history of all times and of all peoples--an endless repetition of schisms, deceptions, stupidity, superstition and cannibalism--not so long ago--as late as the Thirty Years War--there was cannibalism in Europe; human flesh was cooked and eaten.... Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! How fine they sound! But better for Fraternity ever to remain a mere ideal than to be introduced by the butt-end of a rifle."