People fall unconscious. Here indeed only the stronger can stand the strain. The hungry crush the hungry in order that they may squeeze into a better place in the line and receive their bit of bread sooner. The women, the children, with wide staring eyes, with deathly pale faces. Quietly and silently the fierce and cruel struggle goes on. All around the people swarm like flies. A man in a uniform has only to appear, or even a gentleman in civil attire, and the fugitives swarm about him. "Your high nobility! Show us your official mercy!" Where have I heard this melancholy, hopeless tone, these very words of humiliation? * * * * * "What is it you want?" "Give us a certificate!" Food is only given out to those who have certificates--according to the number of souls in the family. Such certificates ought to have been obtained from the village authorities at the point from which they started. "They did not give us them! We had not time to get them." --"Lost!" --"We shall die of hunger." --"Your high nobility!" They come for everything, they come to make complaints. "Your high nobility! Permit me to explain. The _starosta_ advised me to wait for the Germans and not go away. I did not agree. He got angry and refused to give me a certificate. Decide for yourself! Show God's mercy, and give me one now." VII--STORY OF THE WANDERING MULTITUDES--AND THEIR PRAYERS Down below, under the cliff, is an immense marshy meadow, and there, what a wild, what a strange picture.... At that point I thought of the late V. V. Verestchagin. Only he with his gray tones could have painted the gray horror of this life, only he could have painted the dreadful picture in all its horror. For several acres the whole meadow was covered with abandoned and broken carts. The iron parts had been unloosed and taken away, wheels lay separately, tilts separately. How many were there there? Tens of thousands. The whole plain was gray with carts, with wheels, with shafts and single shafts. Having sold their horses for cash, the fugitives abandoned their carts here, only taking with them the iron parts they could unfasten.