Presently there crossed her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass
sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of horses
with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker's assistant,
who, with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic solemnity by
dragging down the corners of the mouth. She turned away in loathing.
Her mind fled to a scene far away in the land of the Volga when she was a
child, where she had seen buried two men, who had fought for their
insulted honour till both had died of their wounds. She remembered the
white and red sashes and the gay scarfs worn by the women at the burial,
the jackets with great silver buttons worn by the men, and the silver-
mounted pistols and bright steel knives in the garish belts. She saw
again the bodies of the two gladiators, covered with crimson robes,
carried shoulder-high on a soft bed of interlaced branches to the graves
beneath the trees. There, covered with flowers and sprigs and
evergreens, ribbons and favours, the kindly earth hid them, cloaked for
their long sleep, while women wept, and men praised the dead, and went
back to the open road again cheerily, as the dead would have them do.
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