The thunder of the cannonade continued with unabated violence. Ekateríninskaya Street, down which Volódya walked followed by the silent Nikoláyef, was quiet and deserted. In the dark he could distinguish only the broad street with white walls of large houses many of which were in ruins, and the stone pavement along which he was walking. Now and then he met some soldiers and officers. As he was passing by the left side of the Admiralty Building a bright light inside showed him the acacias planted along the sidewalk of the streets, with green stakes to support them, and sickly, dusty leaves. He distinctly heard his own footsteps and those of Nikoláyef, who followed him breathing heavily. He was not thinking of anything: the pretty Sister of Mercy, Mártsof’s foot with the toes moving in the stocking, the darkness, the bombs, and different images of death, floated dimly before his imagination. The whole of his young, impressionable soul was weighed down and crushed by a sense of loneliness, and of the general indifference shown to his fate in these dangerous surroundings. “I shall be killed; I shall suffer, endure torments, and no one will shed a tear!” And all this in place of the hero’s life, full of energy and evoking sympathy, that had figured in his beautiful dreams.