He had reached the end of the road.
Swidersky turned back and again entered the woods where larches made friends with fir trees and ganged up against the hazel trees, forcing them out to the forest fringes. Two roe deer sprang out not five paces in front of Swidersky and he stared at the undergrowth for a long time: who else was in there? The forest asked the sun to shed light on it for the writer, and the request was granted; but no other beasts were discovered.
Things were freer in the forest. A forest breathes in centuries, not in the measured hours of the working day and the curtailed hours which remain once we are relieved of work. The forest leads anyone who enters it along ways known only to itself, and these are not paths but the veins and arteries of forest life, pulsating with
