Page:The life of Tolstoy.djvu/53

Rh tance between him and the mountains and the sky, when he understood the immensity of the mountains, when he felt their infinite beauty, he was awed, thinking it was a vision—a dream. He shook himself in order to come to his senses. The mountains were still the same.

“‘What is that? What is that?’ he asked the driver.

“‘The mountains!’ Nogai answered indifferently.

“‘I also have been looking at them a long time,’ said John. ‘How beautiful! At home they will not believe it.’

“With the quick driving of the troika on a level road, the mountains seemed to be running along the horizon, their rose-coloured summits shining in the rising sun. At first the mountains simply astonished Olenin; then they delighted him; but afterwards the more and more he gazed on that chain of snow-capped peaks rising not from above other dark mountains, but directly from the steppe, he began, little by little, to understand and to feel their beauty. From that moment all that he saw, all that he thought and felt, began to assume for him a new character, that of the severe majesty of the mountains. All Moscow memories, the shame and regrets, all the vulgar dreams about the