Yesterday one saw enough to stir one profoundly, and enough to make small things seem small indeed!  It was a fine day at last, after weeks of black weather and skies heavy with snow, and although the cold was intense the sun was shining.  I got into one of the horrid little droshkys, in which one sits on very damp cushions, and an “izvoztchik” in a heavy coat takes one to the wrong address always!

The weather has been so thick, the rain and snow so constant, that I had not yet seen Petrograd.  Yesterday, out of the mists appeared golden spires, and beyond the Neva, all sullen and heavy with ice, I saw towers and domes which I hadn’t seen before.  I stamped my feet on the shaky little carriage and begged the izvoztchik to drive a little quicker.  We had to be at the Finnish station at 10 a.m., and my horse, with a long tail that embraced the reins every time that the driver urged speed, seemed incapable of doing more than potter over the frozen roads.  I picked up Mme. Takmakoff, who was taking me to the station, and we went on together.

[Page Heading:  BLIND]

At the station there was a long wooden building and, outside, a platform, all frozen and white, where we waited for the train to come in.  Mme. Sazonoff, a fine well-bred woman, the wife of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was there, and “many others,” as the press notices say.  The train was late.  We went inside the long wooden building to shelter from the bitter cold beside the hot-water pipes, and as we waited we heard that the train was coming in.  It came slowly and carefully alongside the platform with its crunching snow, almost with the creeping movement of a woman who carries something tenderly.  Then it stopped.  Its windows were frozen and dark, so that one could see nothing.  I heard a voice behind me say, “The blind are coming first,” and from the train there came groping one by one young men with their eyes shot out.  They felt for the step of the train, and waited bewildered till someone came to lead them; then, with their sightless eyes looking upwards more than ours do, they moved stumbling along.  Poor fellows, they’ll never see home; but they turned with smiles of delight when the band, in its grey uniforms and fur caps, began to play the National Anthem.

These were the first wounded prisoners from Germany, sent home because they could never fight again—­quite useless men, too sorely hurt to stand once more under raining bullets and hurtling shell-fire—­so back they came, and like dazed creatures they got out of the train, carrying their little bundles, limping, groping, but home.

After the blind came those who had lost limbs—­one-legged men, men still in bandages, men hobbling with sticks or with an arm round a comrade’s neck, and then the stretcher cases.  There was one man carrying his crutches like a cross.  Others lay twisted sideways.  Some never moved their heads from their pillows.  All seemed to me to have about them a splendid dignity which made the long, battered, suffering company into some great pageant.  I have never seen men so lean as they were.  I have never seen men’s cheek-bones seem to cut through the flesh just where the close-cropped hair on their temples ends.  I had never seen such hollow eyes; but they were Russian soldiers, Russian gentlemen, and they were home again!