and nearer, the rain-drops driven by the wind began to spot the platform and Nekhludoff’s coat; and he stepped to the other side of the little platform, and, inhaling the fresh, moist air—­filled with the smell of corn and wet earth that had long been waiting for rain—­he stood looking at the gardens, the woods, the yellow rye fields, the green oatfields, the dark-green strips of potatoes in bloom, that glided past.  Everything looked as if covered over with varnish—­the green turned greener, the yellow yellower, the black blacker.

“More! more!” said Nekhludoff, gladdened by the sight of gardens and fields revived by the beneficent shower.  The shower did not last long.  Part of the cloud had come down in rain, part passed over, and the last fine drops fell straight on to the earth.  The sun reappeared, everything began to glisten, and in the east—­not very high above the horizon—­appeared a bright rainbow, with the violet tint very distinct and broken only at one end.

“Why, what was I thinking about?” Nekhludoff asked himself when all these changes in nature were over, and the train ran into a cutting between two high banks.

“Oh!  I was thinking that all those people (inspector, convoy men—­all those in the service) are for the greater part kind people—­cruel only because they are serving.”  He recalled Maslennikoff’s indifference when he told him about what was being done in the prison, the inspector’s severity, the cruelty of the convoy officer when he refused places on the carts to those who asked for them, and paid no attention to the fact that there was a woman in travail in the train.  All these people were evidently invulnerable and impregnable to the simplest feelings of compassion only because they held offices.  “As officials they were impermeable to the feelings of humanity, as this paved ground is impermeable to the rain.”  Thus thought Nekhludoff as he looked at the railway embankment paved with stones of different colours, down which the water was running in streams instead of soaking into the earth.  “Perhaps it is necessary to pave the banks with stones, but it is sad to look at the ground, which might be yielding corn, grass, bushes, or trees in the same way as the ground visible up there is doing—­deprived of vegetation, and so it is with men,” thought Nekhludoff.  “Perhaps these governors, inspectors, policemen, are needed, but it is terrible to see men deprived of the chief human attribute, that of love and sympathy for one another.  The thing is,” he continued, “that these people consider lawful what is not lawful, and do not consider the eternal, immutable law, written in the hearts of men by God, as law.  That is why I feel so depressed when I am with these people.  I am simply afraid of them, and really they are terrible, more terrible than robbers.  A robber might, after all, feel pity, but they can feel no pity, they are inured against pity as these stones are against vegetation.  That is what makes