rushed together, and, without waiting for their keepers, deserted their pasturage and ran towards the barn. The bull dug up the ground with his hoof and ploughed it with his horns, frightening all the herd with his ill-omened bellowing; the cow kept raising her large eyes to the sky, opening her mouth in wonder, and lowing deeply. But the boar lagged behind, fretting and gnashing his teeth, and stole sheaves of grain and seized them for his stores.
The birds hid in the woods, in the thatched roofs, in the depths of the grass; the ravens, surrounding the ponds in flocks, walked to and fro with measured steps; they turned their black eyes on the black clouds, and, protruding their tongues from their broad, dry throats and spreading out their wings, they awaited their bath. Yet even they, foreseeing too fierce a storm, already were making for the wood, like a rising cloud. The last of the birds, the swallow, made bold by its fleetness of wing, pierced the cloud like an arrow, and finally dropped from it like a bullet.
Just at that moment the gentry had finished their terrible combat with the Muscovites, and one and all were seeking shelter in the houses and stables, deserting the battlefield, where soon the elements joined in combat.
To the west, the earth, still gilded by the sun, shone with a gloomy, yellowish-red tint; already the cloud, spreading out its shadows like a net, was catching the remnants of the light and flying after the sun as if it wished to seize upon it before it set. Blasts of wind whistled sharply below; they rushed by, one after another, bringing drops of rain, large, clear, and rounded as hailstones.
Suddenly the winds grappled, split asunder, struggled,
