Meetings and conversations with Nikolay Khrelkov

It was one morning in the first days of September, we had breakfasted at one of the coastal hotels of Montreux, where we had happened to be at night, and after taking a short walk through the park to enjoy the Swiss nature, we set off again. We had a long journey to Paris ahead of us, but at the same time we did not want to miss a happy opportunity - to visit the famous Chillon Castle, which we had passed the night before. We had no time to waste, so we had to choose quickly. And, of course, we chose what could turn out to be unique. So instead of heading for Lausanne, as prudence dictated, we turned in the opposite direction and headed for Chillon. And suddenly we were once again immersed in the Swiss landscape: on the right the calm azure expanse of Leman, on the left the foothills of the Swiss Alps, and in the far southeast the feminine cones of the Danne-du-Midi, slightly gilded by the September sun. I looked at this picture, full of picturesque grandeur, and imperceptibly the visible began to give way to an excitement that the night's sleep had interrupted. As at the first meeting with the snow-capped mountains, I felt myself once again in the spiritual and emotional atmosphere of one of my poets, who had once passed through here and had populated the Alpine landscape with the shadows of his imagination. But instead of the gloomy ghosts of the previous evening, now, under the influence of the morning clarity, I had involuntarily sought in it that which foreshadowed the end of a nightmarish night. And I had found it in these two verses that unexpectedly floated into my mind: