The Bolsheviks may have slaughtered the Romanovs but they never did manage to get rid of the mice in the Kremlin. Don’t tell me there’s not a lesson in that. The small get by, and the willows which so artfully bend are the last to break. But even more so, the tiny grasses survive and flourish. The willow eventually attracts the attention of a woodsman, but the grass bends beneath his feet and springs back as he passes on.
And yet the mice all envied the Czar, and even as a bullet-riddled slab of meat he never wished himself a mouse.
