Yes, out of a dim, remote distance the road comes towards one, and while nothing save the sky and the light clouds through which the moon is cleaving her way seem halted, the brief glimpses wherein one can discern nothing clearly have in them a pervading touch of mystery.

Ah, troika, troika, swift as a bird, who was it first invented you?
Only among a hardy race of folk can you have come to birth--only in a land which, though poor and rough, lies spread over half the world, and spans versts the counting whereof would leave one with aching eyes.

Nor are you a modishly-fashioned vehicle of the road--a thing of clamps and iron.

Rather, you are a vehicle but shapen and fitted with the axe or chisel of some handy peasant of Yaroslav.
Nor are you driven by a coachman clothed in German livery, but by a man bearded and mittened.

See him as he mounts, and flourishes his whip, and breaks into a long-drawn song! Away like the wind go the horses, and the wheels, with their spokes, become transparent circles, and the road seems to quiver beneath them, and a pedestrian, with a cry of astonishment, halts to watch the vehicle as it flies, flies, flies on its way until it becomes lost on the ultimate horizon--a speck amid a cloud of dust! And you, Russia of mine--are not you also speeding like a troika which nought can overtake?
Is not the road smoking beneath your wheels, and the bridges thundering as you cross them, and everything being left in the rear, and the spectators, struck with the portent, halting to wonder whether you be not a thunderbolt launched from heaven?
What does that awe-inspiring progress of yours foretell?
What is the unknown force which lies within your mysterious steeds?
Surely the winds themselves must abide in their manes, and every vein in their bodies be an ear stretched to catch the celestial message which bids them, with iron-girded breasts, and hooves which barely touch the earth as they gallop, fly forward on a mission of God?
Whither, then, are you speeding, O Russia of mine?
Whither?
Answer me! But no answer comes--only the weird sound of your collar-bells.