I do not remember our entering the forest. I know that first you climb a rough, rather narrow road up from the river, that the trees close about you very gradually, that there is a little church with a green turret and a fine view of the Nestor, and that there a broad solemn avenue of silver birch leads you forward, gently and without any sinister omens. Then again the forest clears and there are fields of corn and, built amongst the thin scattering of trees, the village of N----. It was here, on passing the first houses of the village, that I felt the heat to be almost unbearable; it seemed strange to me, I remember, that they (whoever "they" were), having so many trees here, a forest that stretched many miles behind them, should have chosen to pitch their village upon the only exposed and torrid bit of ground that they could find. Behind us was the forest, in front of us also the forest, but here, how the sun blazed down on the roofs and little blown patches of garden, how it glared in through the broken windows, and penetrated into the darkest corners of the desolate rooms! Poor N----! In the second month of the war it had been shelled and many of the houses destroyed. The buildings that remained seemed to have given up the struggle and abandoned themselves to inevitable degradation. Moreover, down the principal street, at every other door there hung the sinister black flag, a piece of dirty black cloth fastened to a stick, and upon the filthy wall was scrawled in Russian "cholera." Dead, indeed, under the appalling heat of the morning the whole place lay. No one was to be seen until we neared the ruins of what had once been a little town-hall or meeting-place, a procession turned the corner--a procession of a peasant with a tall lighted candle, another peasant with a tattered banner, a priest in soiled silk, a coffin of white wood on a haycart, and four or five white-faced and apathetic women. A doleful singing came from the miserable party. They did not look at us as we passed.... A rumble of cannon, once and again, sounded like the lazy snore of some sleeping beast. Near the town-hall we found a company of fantastic creatures awaiting us. They were pressed together in a dense crowd as though they were afraid of some one attacking them. There were many old men, like the clowns in Shakespeare, dirty beyond belief in tattered garments, wide-brimmed hats, broad skirts and baggy trousers; old men with long tangled hair, bare bony breasts and slobbering chins. Many of the women seemed strong and young; their faces were on the whole cheerful--a brazen indifference to anything and everything was their attitude. There were many children. Two gendarmes guarded them with rough friendly discipline. I thought that I had seen nothing more terrible at the war than the eager pitiful docility with which they moved to and fro in obedience to the gendarmes' orders. A dreadful, broken, creeping submission....