“Do you know what those endless lights are like?  They make me think of something long dead, that lived thousands of years ago, something like the camps of the Amalekites or the Philistines.  It is as though some people of the Old Testament had pitched their camp and were waiting for morning to fight with Saul or David.  All that is wanting to complete the illusion is the blare of trumpets and sentries calling to one another in some Ethiopian language.”

And, as though of design, the wind fluttered over the line and brought a sound like the clank of weapons.  A silence followed.  I don’t know what the engineer and the student were thinking of, but it seemed to me already that I actually saw before me something long dead and even heard the sentry talking in an unknown tongue.  My imagination hastened to picture the tents, the strange people, their clothes, their armour.

“Yes,” muttered the student pensively, “once Philistines and Amalekites were living in this world, making wars, playing their part, and now no trace of them remains.  So it will be with us.  Now we are making a railway, are standing here philosophising, but two thousand years will pass—­and of this embankment and of all those men, asleep after their hard work, not one grain of dust will remain.  In reality, it’s awful!”

“You must drop those thoughts . . .” said the engineer gravely and admonishingly.

“Why?”

“Because. . . .  Thoughts like that are for the end of life, not for the beginning of it.  You are too young for them.”

“Why so?” repeated the student.

“All these thoughts of the transitoriness, the insignificance and the aimlessness of life, of the inevitability of death, of the shadows of the grave, and so on, all such lofty thoughts, I tell you, my dear fellow, are good and natural in old age when they come as the product of years of inner travail, and are won by suffering and really are intellectual riches; for a youthful brain on the threshold of real life they are simply a calamity!  A calamity!” Ananyev repeated with a wave of his hand.  “To my mind it is better at your age to have no head on your shoulders at all than to think on these lines.  I am speaking seriously, Baron.  And I have been meaning to speak to you about it for a long time, for I noticed from the very first day of our acquaintance your partiality for these damnable ideas!”

“Good gracious, why are they damnable?” the student asked with a smile, and from his voice and his face I could see that he asked the question from simple politeness, and that the discussion raised by the engineer did not interest him in the least.