Semyonov and I, I and my old dead uncle, myself shaking in the road the other night under the rain! What was to be the issue of all of it?
I, on this lovely evening, saw quite clearly the progress of events that had brought me to this point.

One: that drive with Durward on the first day when we had stopped at the trench and heard the frogs.

Two: the evening at O----, when Marie Ivanovna had been angry and we had first heard the cannon.

Three: the day at S---- and Marie kneeling on the cart with her hand on Semyonov's shoulder.

Four: her refusal of me, the bodies in the forest, the Retreat, that night Nikitin (getting well into the thick of it now).