XXVI
We happened once to go into the hut of a peasant-woman who had just lost her only, passionately loved son, and to our considerable astonishment we found her perfectly calm, almost cheerful. 'Let her be,' said her husband, to whom probably our astonishment was apparent, 'she is gone numb now.' And Litvinov had in the same way 'gone numb.' The same sort of calm came over him during the first few hours of the journey. Utterly crushed, hopelessly wretched as he was, still he was at rest, at rest after the agonies and sufferings of the last few weeks, after all the blows which had fallen one after another upon his head. They had been the more shattering for him that he was little fitted by nature for such tempests. Now he really hoped for nothing, and tried not to remember, above all not to remember. He was going to Russia ... he had to go somewhere; but he was making no kind of plans regarding his own personality. He did not
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