“The French at Vítebsk, in four days’ march they may be at Smolénsk; perhaps are already there! Tíkhon!” Tíkhon jumped up. “No, no, I don’t want anything!” he shouted.

He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And there rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian camp, and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face, vigorous and alert, entering Potëmkin’s gaily colored tent, and a burning sense of jealousy of “the favorite” agitated him now as strongly as it had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that first meeting with Potëmkin. And he saw before him a plump, rather sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile and her words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that same face on the catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zúbov over her coffin about his right to kiss her hand.

“Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with all the present! Quicker, quicker⁠—and that they should leave me in peace!”