"The road is lined with a sad seam of dead horses. Still other cadavers poison the air and entice swarms of greedy crows. The Russians have killed all cattle which they were unable to carry along quickly enough or to eat upon the spot, and then left the carcasses on or alongside the road: cattle, pigs, sheep have been shot down in this fashion, so that the pursuer should find no other booty than ashes and carrion. "At some distance from the line of march there may be left some untouched villages, sound, normal, human settlements. But one does not see them. Wherever the fighting has been going on, we pass by debris and ruins. Big villages have been burned from one end to the other into empty rows of chimneys and blackened heaps of tumbled-down houses. "The churches alone sometimes have been shown some respect. As far as they have not been riddled by shells or have not lost their roofs, they are still standing, clean and almost supernatural with their white or pink wooden walls, their shrilly blue or deep red domes, and their shining gilt decorations. Everything else has gone up in flames or has been shot to pieces. "Out of the general wreckage a few utensils and pieces of furniture stick out here and there: bent beds, crumpled-up sewing machines, half-melted pans and pots. Sometimes it is even possible to form an idea of the former appearance of a house from the design of its blackened wall paper or from a few remnants of some other decorations. Here and there small corners and nooks have been preserved as if by a miracle, and, in some unaccountable way, have survived the ruin that surrounds them on all sides: strips of a flower garden, or perhaps a summer-house with a table in it and a cover and breakfast dishes on the table. "Up on a chimney, half of which has tumbled down, stands a stork, as if he were meditating over the ruin wrought by human hands; suddenly he pulls himself together, spreads out his wings with quick decision, floats down into his familiar pond and forgets the raving of maddened mankind in the enjoyment of a juicy frog. Through the labyrinth of a fallen-down barn limps a big black cat, tousled and scratched, already half-maddened from hunger, vicious like a wounded panther. Along what had been once streets run packs of dogs gone wild, restlessly smelling at dirt and corpses, growing bolder day by day until finally they have to be shot down.