Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XV).djvu/325



, I am grown old! Such thoughts would never have come to me once—in those happy days of old, when I too was aflame like the sunset and my heart sang like the nightingale.

There is no hiding it—everything has faded about me, all life has paled. The light that gives life's colours depth and meaning—the light that comes out of the heart of man—is dead within me. No, not dead yet—it feebly smoulders on, giving no light, no warmth.

Once, late in the night in Moscow, I remember I went up to the grating window of an old church, and leaned against the faulty pane. It was dark under the low arched roof—a forgotten lamp shed a dull red light upon the ancient picture; dimly could be discerned the lips only of the sacred face—stern and sorrowful. The sullen darkness gathered about it, ready it seemed to crush under its dead weight the feeble ray of impotent light. Such now in my heart is the light; and such the darkness.