swooped down, and for three days and three nights the warm, tempestuous rain fell in torrents. On
Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the land, as though screening the mysteries
of the transformations that were being wrought in nature. Behind the fog there was the flowing of water,
the cracking and floating of ice, the swift rush of turbid, foaming torrents; and on the following Monday, in
the evening, the fog parted, the storm clouds split up into little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared,
and the real spring had come. In the morning the sun arose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin
layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from
the quickened earth. The old grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades; the
buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant, and the sticky birch buds were swollen with sap, and an
exploring bee was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen
above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble land; pewits wailed over the lowlands and
marshes, flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky uttering their spring calls.
The cattle, bald in patches where the new hair had not grown yet, lowed in the pastures; bowlegged
lambs frisked round their bleating dams, who were shedding their fleece; nimble-footed children ran along
the drying paths, covered with the prints of bare feet; there was a merry chatter of peasant women over
their linen at the pond, and the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants were repairing plows and
harrows. The real spring had come.