文档介绍：The Cossacks
Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich
Published: 1863
Type(s): Novels
Source:
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About Tolstoy:
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, commonly referred to in English as
Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian novelist, writer, essayist, philosopher, Chris-
tian anarchist, pacifist, educational reformer, moral thinker, and an influ-
ential member of the Tolstoy family. As a fiction writer Tolstoy is widely
regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists, particularly noted for his
masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina; in their scope, breadth
and realistic depiction of Russian life, the two books stand at the peak of
realistic fiction. As a moral philosopher he was notable for his ideas on
nonviolent resistance through his work The Kingdom of God is Within
You, which in turn influenced such twentieth-century figures as Mohan-
das K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Source: Wikipedia
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Chapter 1
All is quiet in Moscow. The squeak of wheels is seldom heard in the
snow-covered street. There are no lights left in the windows and the
street lamps have been extinguished. Only the sound of bells, borne over
the city from the church towers, suggests the approach of morning. The
streets are deserted. At rare intervals a night-cabman's sledge kneads up
the snow and sand in the street as the driver makes his way to another
corner where he falls asleep while waiting for a fare. An old woman
passes by on her way to church, where a few wax candles burn with a
red light reflected on the gilt mountings of the icons. Workmen are
already getting up after the long winter night and going to their
work—but for the gentlefolk it is still evening.
From a window in Chevalier's Restaurant a light—illegal at that
hour—is still to be seen through a chink in the shutter. At the entrance a
carriage, a sledge, and a cabman's sledge, stand close together with their
backs to the curbstone. A three-horse sledge from the post-station is
there also. A yard-porter muffle