II
The day was as bright and white, but the spring was already advanced.
The wet soil smelt of spring. Clear cold water ran everywhere from
under the loose, thawing snow. The branches of the trees were springy
and elastic. For miles and miles around, the country opened up in
clear azure stretches.
Yet the clearness and the joy of the spring day were not in the
village. They were somewhere outside the village, where there were no
people--in the fields, the woods and the mountains. In the village the
air was stifling, heavy and terrible as in a nightmare.
Gabriel Andersen stood in the road near a crowd of dark, sad,
absent-minded people and craned his neck to see the preparations for
the flogging of seven peasants.
They stood in the thawing snow, and Gabriel Andersen could not
persuade himself that they were people whom he had long known and
understood. By that which was about to happen to them, the shameful,
terrible, ineradicable thing that was to happen to them, they were
separated from all the rest of the world, and so were unable to feel
what he, Gabriel Andersen, felt, just as he was unable to feel what
they felt.
Pages:
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419