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He was driving somewhere in the steppes, where he had
been stationed long ago, and a peasant was driving him in
a cart with a pair of horses, through snow and sleet. He was
cold, it was early in November, and the snow was falling in
big wet flakes, melting as soon as it touched the earth. And
the peasant drove him smartly, he had a fair, long beard. He
was not an old man, somewhere about fifty, and he had on
a grey peasant’s smock. Not far off was a village, he could
see the black huts, and half the huts were burnt down, there
were only the charred beams sticking up. And as they drove
in, there were peasant women drawn up along the road, a
lot of women, a whole row, all thin and wan, with their faces
a sort of brownish colour, especially one at the edge, a tall,
bony woman, who looked forty, but might have been only
twenty, with a long thin face. And in her arms was a little
baby crying. And her breasts seemed so dried up that there
was not a drop of milk in them. And the child cried and
cried, and held out its little bare arms, with its little fists
blue from cold.
‘Why are they crying? Why are they crying?’ Mitya asked,
as they dashed gaily by.
‘It’s the babe,’ answered the driver, ‘the babe weeping.’
And Mitya was struck by his saying, in his peasant way,
‘the babe,’ and he liked the peasant’s calling it a ‘babe.’ There
seemed more pity in it.
‘But why is it weeping?’ Mitya persisted stupidly, ‘why are
its little arms bare? Why don’t they wrap it up?’
‘The babe’s cold, its little clothes are frozen and don’t