The charm of my lone refuge was in the cedar wood and in the mountains covered with these forests which stretched to every horizon.

The cedar is a splendid, powerful tree with wide-spreading branches, an eternally green tent, attracting to its shelter every living being.

Among the cedars was always effervescent life.

There the squirrels were continually kicking up a row, jumping from tree to tree; the nut-jobbers cried shrilly; a flock of bullfinches with carmine breasts swept through the trees like a flame; or a small army of goldfinches broke in and filled the amphitheatre of trees with their whistling; a hare scooted from one tree trunk to another and behind him stole up the hardly visible shadow of a white ermine, crawling on the snow, and I watched for a long time the black spot which I knew to be the tip of his tail; carefully treading the hard crusted snow approached a noble deer; at last there visited me from the top of the mountain the king of the Siberian forest, the brown bear.

All this distracted me and carried away the black thoughts from my brain, encouraging me to persevere.