It was now that awakened intelligence suddenly, as it were, lighted up my whole past life. Indeed almost every page I read seemed to me as though it were already familiar, as though all these passions, all this life presented to me in such unexpected forms, in such enchanting pictures, was already familiar to me. And how could I help being carried away to the point of forgetting the present, of almost becoming estranged from reality, when in every book I read I found embodied the laws of the same destiny, the same spirit of adventure which dominates the life of man, yet is derived from some chief law of human life which is the condition of safety, preservation and happiness? 

“No, I will fight it … I will … I …” After a hard night, sweet sleep overtook me. Darkness, black as Egypt’s night, descended and in it I was standing alone, armed with something that might have been a sword or might have been a stethoscope. I was moving forward and fighting … somewhere at the back of beyond. But I was not alone. With me was my warrior band: Demyan Lukich, Anna Nikolaevna, Pelagea Ivanovna, all dressed in white overalls, all pressing forward.

And even as the first bullet hit her side, she just felt surprised. Because it was so foolish, so absurd and unbelievable to die at nineteen. 

Don’t be afraid, Queen, the blood has long run down into the earth. And on the spot where it was spilled, grapevines are growing today.

Look around you — the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are foolish and we don’t understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep. 

Great and terrible was the year of Our Lord 1918, of the Revolution the second. Its summer abundant with warmth and sun, its winter with snow, highest in its heaven stood two stars: the shepherds' star, eventide Venus; and Mars - quivering, red.

“...The eagle tried several morsels, then shook his pinions, and said to the raven: - ‘Nay, brother raven, rather than live three hundred years upon dead horses, I once feast upon a live victim, and then let fate do its worst.’ - How do you like this Kalmouk fable?”  “There is a deep meaning in it,” I said. “But to live by rapine and murder is, in my opinion, to live upon carrion.” 

That’s what she is like, the Mistress of the Copper Mountain! A bad man meets her for grief, and a good one finds no happiness either.