The knees of the fourth horseman, sharp as spurs, were pricking the
ribs of the pale horse. His parchment-like skin betrayed the lines and
hollows of his skeleton. The front of his skull-like face was twisted
with the sardonic laugh of destruction. His cane-like arms were whirling
aloft a gigantic sickle. From his angular shoulders was hanging a
ragged, filthy shroud.
And the furious cavalcade was passing like a hurricane over the immense
assemblage of human beings. The heavens showed above their heads, a
livid, dark-edged cloud from the west. Horrible monsters and deformities
were swarming in spirals above the furious horde, like a repulsive
escort. Poor Humanity, crazed with fear, was fleeing in all directions
on hearing the thundering pace of the Plague, War, Hunger and Death. Men
and women, young and old, were knocking each other down and falling to
the ground overwhelmed by terror, astonishment and desperation. And the
white horse, the red, the black and the pale, were crushing all with
their relentless, iron tread--the athletic man was hearing the crashing
of his broken ribs, the nursing babe was writhing at its mother's
breast, and the aged and feeble were closing their eyes forever with a
childlike sob.
"God is asleep, forgetting the world," continued the Russian. "It will
be a long time before he awakes, and while he sleeps the four feudal
horsemen of the Beast will course through the land as its only lords.
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