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“And if there’s nothing left but to die?” he thought. “Well, if it must be! I will do it no worse than others.”
With that peculiarly youthful feeling of fearing beaten tracks, of wanting to avoid imitation, to express one’s feelings in some new way of one’s own, so as to escape the forms often conventionally used by one’s elders, Nikolay wanted to do something striking on meeting his friend.
“To-morrow, maybe, all will be over for me, all these memories will be no more, all these memories will have no more meaning for me. To-morrow, perhaps—for certain, indeed—to-morrow, I have a presentiment, I shall have for the first time to show all I can do.”
Above him there was nothing but the sky—the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with grey clouds creeping quietly over it. “How quietly, peacefully, and triumphantly, and not like us running, shouting, and fighting, not like the Frenchman and artilleryman dragging the mop from one another with frightened and frantic faces, how differently are those clouds creeping over that lofty, limitless sky.
Looking at him, Napoleon said with a smile: “He has come very young to meddle with us.” “Youth is no hindrance to valour,” said Suhtelen in a breaking voice.
Vera’s observation was true, as were all her observations; but like most of her observations it made every one uncomfortable
But he was at that stage of youth when there seems so much to do, that one has not time to pay attention to love, and a young man dreads being bound, and prizes his liberty, which he wants for so much else.
“One dies and it’s all over. One dies and finds it all out or ceases asking.”
