“He lay on his back, motionless. It seemed to be a corpse. His figure stood out against the white veil of snow as a kind of dark, shapeless mass. Only the convulsive movements of his regular, expressive, pale, exhausted face, suddenly replaced by a strange, striking contrast - a happy, almost blissful smile, proved that the spark of life was still smoldering in him, flaring up quite brightly at times, like a running spark from a dying fire lit not far from it...”