Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/165

Rh only afflicting images; my country ravaged with fire and sword, and annihilated for ever; relations and friends sharing my fate, or dragging out in exile their miserable life; not a word from them;—in short, the world beyond the walls did no longer exist for me. Solitude and a dreadful silence filled my mind with a host of dismal ideas, from which no external object turned my attention. We were in the heart of winter; the sun, which did not rise before nine o'clock, was pale and covered with thick clouds; in the bright days there was such intense cold, that many a time I saw crows flying in the air suddenly frozen to death, and falling down. The cries of those birds, which were very numerous in the neighbourhood of the fortress, were insupportable. The intense cold was generally followed by snow, falling in large flakes, sometimes during several consecutive days, and then nothing could appear more monotonous and gloomy. At two o'clock in the afternoon, the waning light of the sun entirely ceased, leaving us in complete darkness; the