The imprint

PEACEFULLY, endlessly, snow was falling on the frozen countryside. Silence always falls with the snow, reflected Boura, who had taken shelter in a shed.His isolation amid the vastness of nature made him feel both sad and solemn. So far as his eye could see, the earth was becoming simplified, unified, amplified, ordered into a succession of great white waves. It was unseared by the confused furrows of life. At first, the only movement in this universal silence, the downward fluttering of the snow flakes, grew slower, rarer, and ceased altogether. Timidly the wayfarer trod on the virgin snow, and felt it was strange he should be the first to mark a line of steps on the white expanse. Some one, however, is passing along the main road, a black, snow-spotted figure, walking in the opposite direction. There will be two lines of footprints now, running parallel, then crossing and bringing to this pure, unsullied place the first troubling mark of man...The imprint (1917). Karel Čapek. Originally two stories (Šlépěj and Elegie) published in the collection of short stories Boží muka.