Never had he been so near his object.
He felt that he was about to attain it!
Towards two in the morning a double row of lights glittered
on the dark horizon in which were confounded the two banks
of the Angara. On the right hand were the lights of Irkutsk;
on the left, the fires of the Tartar camp.
Michael Strogoff was not more than half a verst from the town.
"At last!" he murmured.
But suddenly Nadia uttered a cry.
At the cry Michael stood up on the ice, which was wavering.
His hand was extended up the Angara. His face, on which a bluish
light cast a peculiar hue, became almost fearful to look at,
and then, as if his eyes had been opened to the bright blaze
spreading across the river, "Ah!" he exclaimed, "then Heaven
itself is against us!"
CHAPTER XII IRKUTSK
IRKUTSK, the capital of Eastern Siberia, is a populous town,
containing, in ordinary times, thirty thousand inhabitants.
On the right side of the Angara rises a hill, on which are built
numerous churches, a lofty cathedral, and dwellings disposed
in picturesque disorder.
Seen at a distance, from the top of the mountain which rises
at about twenty versts off along the Siberian highroad,
this town, with its cupolas, its bell-towers, its steeples
slender as minarets, its domes like pot-bellied Chinese jars,
presents something of an oriental aspect. But this similarity
vanishes as the traveler enters.
The town, half Byzantine, half Chinese, becomes European as soon
as he sees its macadamized roads, bordered with pavements,
traversed by canals, planted with gigantic birches, its houses
of brick and wood, some of which have several stories,
the numerous equipages which drive along, not only tarantasses
but broughams and coaches; lastly, its numerous inhabitants far
advanced in civilization, to whom the latest Paris fashions
are not unknown.
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