“It has all been according to the regulation,” he said, smiling naively as he looked at the examining magistrate with his watery eyes, evidently wishing to suggest by that smile that now everything was satisfactory, that everything had turned out well. He helped the examining magistrate into the sledge, tucked the covering round him, and said: “I hope you will be comfortable.”

The sledge moved off. Lyzhin looked round for the last time to say good-by to Loshadin, but the latter was no longer by the sledge, but was
standing at the entrance, holding his stick at his side and eagerly talking to the cook. Again they drove through the village, again the same endless forest, the same broad clearing, the fields, the telegraph-poles flashing by, which were slowly being covered with soft snow.

Now there was no blizzard, everything was still as death, but the doctor and the examining magistrate, chilled and silent, looked dejectedly at the road, and it seemed to them that this waste of snow was endless and that they would never in their lives get out of this forest. And both thought of life in the village. It is true that there were people there devoured by ambition, who lived without noticing the forest, the sky, the beauty and the marvels of nature; such people remembered the forest and the fields only when the crops promised to be bad or when the timber was being felled, when the “jay” trees were attacked by moths, or when wolves attacked the cattle; to them,
nature was an enemy with which the peasants are continually fighting for their crops, their meadows, their cattle. But, side by side with this utilitarian view of life there was another which unconsciously accepted nature as something mighty, mysterious, and hostile, to dread which was an unseen force not subject to man, and there was no escaping it. It is as unreasonable and senseless to be reconciled to the devouring power of this force as to hope to vanquish it in striving to adapt life to one’s desires.

On returning, they learned that the snowstorm had so delayed the arrival of officials and witnesses that the inquest over the insurance agent, Lesnitsky’s body could only commence in the evening. As the procedural formalities unfolded, both the examining magistrate and the doctor couldn’t help feeling numb to the core, realizing how detached and mechanical their official duties seemed compared to the genuine, wrenching complexities of human life they had briefly touched beyond the confines of their roles.

The story of Lesnitsky’s suicide and the constable’s toilsome existence continued to resonate as an enduring reminder of the profound shared connections and the inexplicable, often overlooked tapestry of life binding them all.