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                  [Illustration: Portrait of Tolstoï]




                              SEBASTOPOL

                                  BY
                           COUNT LEO TOLSTOÏ

                     _TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH_
                                  BY
                            FRANK D. MILLET

                  WITH INTRODUCTION BY W. D. HOWELLS

                             WITH PORTRAIT

                               NEW YORK
                  HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
                                 1887

                Copyright, 1887, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

                        _All rights reserved._




                            _LEO TOLSTOÏ._


When I read in the excellent essay of M. Ernest Dupuy that “Count Leo N.
Tolstoï was born on the 28th of August, 1828, at Yasnaya Polyana, a
village near Inla, in the government of Inla,” I have a sense of lunar
remoteness in him. It is as if these geographical expressions were
descriptive of localities in the ungazetteered regions of the moon; and
yet this far-fetched Russian nobleman is precisely the human being with
whom at this moment I find myself in the greatest intimacy; not because
I know him, but because I know myself through him; because he has
written more faithfully of the life common to all men, the universal
life which is the most personal life, than any other author whom I have
read. This merit the Russian novelists have each in some degree;
Tolstoï has it in pre-eminent degree, and that is why the reading of
“Peace and War,” “Anna Karenina,” “My Religion,” “Childhood, Boyhood,
and Youth,” “Scenes at the Siege of Sebastopol,” “The Cossacks,” “The
Death of Ivan Illitch,” “Katia,” and “Polikouchka,” forms an epoch for
thoughtful people. In these books you seem to come face to face with
human nature for the first time in fiction. All other fiction at times
_seems_ fiction; these alone seem the very truth always.

The facts of Tolstoï’s life, as one gathers them from the essays of M.
Dupuy and of M. Melchoir de Voguë, are briefly that he studied Oriental
languages and the law at the University of Kazan; then entered the army,
served in the Crimean war, resigned at its close; gave himself up to
society and literature in St. Petersburg; and finally left the capital
for his estates, where he has since lived the life of lowly usefulness
which he believes to be the true Christian life. The man whose career
was in camps, in courts, and in salons, now makes shoes for peasants,
and humbly seeks to instruct them and guide them by the little tales he
writes for them in the intervals of his great work of newly translating
the gospels. He married the daughter of a German physician of Moscow,
and his wife and children share his toils and ideals. Not much more is
known of the retirement of this very great man; but I heard that an
American traveller who lately passed a day with him found him steadfast
in the conviction that withdrew him from society--the conviction that
Jesus Christ came into the world to teach men how to live in it, and
that He meant literally what He said when He forbade us luxury, war,
litigation, unchastity, and hypocrisy. His latest book, “Que Faire,” is
a relentlessly searching statement of the facts and reasons which forced
this conviction upon him.

It is a sorrowful comment on our Christianity that this frank acceptance
of Christ’s message seems eccentric and even mad to the world. But it is
the “increasing purpose” which runs through all Tolstoï’s work from
first to last; it is what makes him great above all others who have
written fiction. It does not much matter where you begin with him; you
feel instantly that the man is mighty, and mighty through his
conscience; that he is not trying to surprise or dazzle you with his
art, but that he is trying to make you think clearly and feel rightly
about vital things with which “art” has often dealt with diabolical
indifference or diabolical malevolence.

I do not know how it is with others to whom these books of Tolstoï’s
have come, but for my own part I cannot think of them as literature in
the artistic sense at all. Some people complain to me, when I praise
them, that they are too long, too diffuse, too confused, that the
characters’ names are hard to pronounce, and that the life they portray
is very sad and not amusing. In the presence of these criticisms I can
only say that I find them nothing of the kind, but that each history of
Tolstoï’s is as clear, as orderly, as brief, as something I have lived
through myself; as for the names, they are necessarily Russian. It is
when some one tells me they are “pessimistic” that I really despair. I
have always supposed pessimism to be the doctrine of the prevalence of
evil, and these books perpetually teach me that the good prevails, and
always will prevail whenever men put self aside, and strive simply and
humbly to be good. We are all so besotted with dreams and vanities that
we have come to think that the right will accomplish itself
spectacularly, splendidly; but Tolstoï makes us know that it never can
do so. He teaches such of us as will hear him that the Right is the sum
of each man’s poor little personal effort to do right, and that the
success of this effort means daily, hourly self-renunciation,
self-abasement, the sinking of one’s pride in absolute squalor before
duty. This is not pleasant; the heroic ideal of righteousness is more
picturesque, more attractive; but is this not the truth? Let any one
try, and see! I cannot think of any service which imaginative literature
has done the race so great as that which Tolstoï has done in his
conception of Karenin at that crucial moment when the cruelly outraged
man sees that he cannot be good with dignity. This leaves all tricks of
fancy, all effects of art, immeasurably behind.

In fact, Tolstoï brings us back in his fiction, as in his life, to the
Christ ideal. “Except ye become as little children”--that is what he
says in every part of his work; and this work, so incomparably good
æsthetically, to my thinking, is still greater ethically. You will not
find its lessons put at you, any more than you will those of life. No
little traps are sprung for your surprise; no calcium light is thrown
upon this climax or that; no virtue or vice is posed for you; but if you
have ears to hear or eyes to see, listen and look, and you will have the
sense of inexhaustible significance.

I happened to begin with “The Cossacks”--that epic of nature, and of a
young man’s sorrowful, wandering desire to get into harmony with the
divine scheme of beneficence; then I read “Anna Karenina”--that most
tragical history of loss and ruin to brilliancy and loveliness, out of
which the good can alone save itself; then I came to “Peace and War,”
that great assertion of the sufficiency of common men in all crises, and
the insufficiency of heroes; I found some chapters of the “Scenes at the
Siege of Sebastopol,” and I read them with a yet keener sense of this
truth; “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth” made me acquainted for the first
time in literature with the real heart of the young of our species; “The
Death of Ivan Illitch” expressed the horror and the stress of mortality,
with its final bliss, and made it a part of Nature as I never had
realized it before; “Polikouchka,” slight, broken, almost unconcluded,
was perfect and powerful and infinite in its scope of mercy and
sympathy.

I know very well that I do not speak of these books in measured terms; I
cannot. As yet my sense of obligation to them is so great that I neither
can make nor wish to make a close accounting with their author, and I am
not disposed to exploit them for the reader’s entertainment. As often as
I have tried to do this their æsthetic interest has escaped me. I have
been ashamed to tag them with the tattered old adjectives of praise, and
I have found myself thinking of them on their ethical side. But they
exist increasingly in English and in French, and the best way, the only
way, to get a due sense of them is to read them.

                                                         W. D. HOWELLS.





                              SEBASTOPOL.




_SEBASTOPOL IN DECEMBER, 1854._


Dawn tinges the horizon above Mount Sapouné; the shadows of the night
have left the surface of the sea, which, now dark blue in color, only
awaits the first ray of sunshine to sparkle merrily; a cold wind blows
from the fog-enveloped bay; there is no snow on the ground, the earth is
black, but frost stings the face and cracks underfoot. The quiet of the
morning is disturbed only by the incessant murmuring of the waves, and
is broken at long intervals by the dull roar of cannon. All is silent on
the men-of-war; the hour-glass has just marked the eighth hour. Towards
the north the activity of day replaces little by little the tranquillity
of night. On this side a detachment of soldiers is going to relieve the
guard, and the click of their guns can be heard; a surgeon hurries
towards his hospital; a soldier crawls out of his hut, washes his
sunburned face with icy water, turns towards the east, and repeats a
prayer, making rapid signs of the cross. On that side an enormous, heavy
cart with creaking wheels reaches the cemetery where they are going to
bury the corpses heaped almost to the top of the vehicle. Approach the
harbor and you are disagreeably surprised by a mixture of odors; you
smell coal, manure, moisture, meat. There are thousands of different
objects: wood, flour, gabions, beef, thrown in heaps here and there;
soldiers of different regiments, some provided with guns and with bags,
others with neither guns nor bags, crowd together; they smoke, they
quarrel, and they bear loads upon the steamer stationed near the plank
bridge and ready to sail. Small private boats, filled with all sorts of
people--soldiers, sailors, merchants, and women--are constantly arriving
and departing. “This way for Grafskaya!” and two or three retired
sailors rise in their boats and offer you their services. You choose the
nearest one, stride over the half-decomposed body of a black horse lying
in the mud two steps from the boat, and seat yourself near the helm.
You push off from the shore; all around you the sea sparkles in the
morning sun; in front of you an old sailor in an overcoat of
camel’s-hair cloth and a lad with blond hair are diligently rowing. You
turn your eyes upon the gigantic ships with scratched hulls scattered
over the harbor, upon the shallops,--black dots on the sparkling azure
of the water--upon the pretty houses of the town, to whose light-colored
tones the rising sun gives a rosy tinge, upon the hostile fleet standing
like light-houses in the crystalline distance of the sea, and, at last,
upon the foaming waves, where play the salt drops which the oars dash
into the air. You hear at the same time the regular sound of voices
which comes over the water, and the grand roar of the cannonade at
Sebastopol, which seems to increase in strength as you listen.

At the thought that you, you also, are in Sebastopol, your whole soul is
filled with a sentiment of pride and of valor, and your blood runs
quicker in your veins.

“Straight towards the _Constantine_, your excellency,” says the old
sailor, turning around to the direction you are giving to the helm.

“Look! she has still got all her cannons,” remarks the lad with the
blond hair as the boat glides along the side of the ship.

“She is quite new, she ought to have them. Korniloff lives on board,”
repeats the old man, examining in his turn the man-of-war.

“There! it has burst!” cries the lad, after a long silence, his eyes
fixed upon a small white cloud of drifting smoke suddenly appearing in
the sky above the south bay, and accompanied by the strident noise of a
shell explosion.

“They are firing from the new battery to-day,” adds the sailor, calmly
spitting in his hand. “Come along, Nichka; pull away. Let’s pass the
shallop.”

And the small boat moves rapidly over the undulating surface of the bay,
leaves the heavy shallop behind laden with bags and with soldiers,
unskilful rowers who are pulling awkwardly, and at last lands in the
middle of a great number of boats moored to the shore in the harbor of
Grafskaya. A crowd of soldiers in gray overcoats, sailors in black
jackets, and women in motley gowns comes and goes on the quay. Some
peasants are selling bread; others, seated beside their samovars, offer
to customers warm drink.

Here, on the upper steps of the landing, are strewn about, pell-mell,
rusty shot, shell, canister, cast-iron cannon of different calibres;
there, farther away, in a great open square, are lying enormous joists,
gun-carriages, sleeping soldiers. On one side are wagons, horses,
cannon, artillery caissons, stacks of muskets; farther on, soldiers,
sailors, officers, women, and children are moving about; carts full of
bread, bags, and barrels, a Cossack on horseback, a general in his
droschky, are crossing the square. A barricade looms up in the street to
the right, and in its embrasures are small cannon, beside which a sailor
is sitting quietly smoking his pipe. On the left stands a pretty house,
on the pediment of which are scrawled numerals, and above can be seen
soldiers and blood-stained stretchers. The dismal traces of a camp in
war-time meet the eye everywhere. Your first impression is, doubtless, a
disagreeable one; the strange amalgamation of town life with camp life,
of an elegant city and a dirty bivouac, strikes you like a hideous
incongruity. It seems to you that all, overcome by terror, are acting
vacuously; but if you examine the faces of those men who are moving
about you, you will think differently. Look well at this soldier of the
wagon-train who is leading his bay troitka horses to drink, humming
through his teeth, and you shall find that he does not go astray in this
confused crowd, which in fact does not exist for him, for he is full of
his own business, and will do his duty, whatever it is--will lead his
horses to the watering-place or drag a cannon with as much calm and
assured indifference as if he were at Toula or at Saransk. You notice
the same expression on the face of this officer, with his irreproachable
white gloves, who is passing before you, of that sailor who sits on the
barricade smoking, of the soldiers who wait with their stretchers at the
door of what was lately the Assembly Hall, even upon the face of the
young girl who crosses the street, leaping from stone to stone for fear
of soiling her pink dress. Yes, a great deception awaits you on your
arrival at Sebastopol. In vain you seek to discover upon any face
traces of agitation, fright, indeed even enthusiasm, resignation to
death, resolution; there is nothing of all that. You see the course of
every-day life; see people occupied with their daily toils, so that, in
fact, you blame yourself for your exaggerated exaltation, and doubt not
only the truth of the opinion you have formed from hearsay about the
heroism of the defenders of Sebastopol, but also doubt the accuracy of
the description which has been given you on the north side and the
sinister sounds which fill the air there. Before doubting, however, go
up to a bastion, see the defenders of Sebastopol on the very place of
the defence, or rather enter straight into this house at whose door
stand the stretcher-bearers. You will see there the heroes of the army,
you will see there horrible and heart-rending sights, both sublime and
comic, but wonderful and of a soul-elevating nature. Enter this great
hall, which before the war was the hall of the Assembly. Scarcely have
you opened the door before the odor exhaled from forty or fifty
amputations and severe wounds turns you sick. You must not yield to the
feeling which keeps you on the threshold of the room, it is an unworthy
feeling; go boldly in, and not blush at having come to look at these
martyrs. You may approach and speak with them. The wretches like to see
a pitying face, to relate their sufferings, and to hear words of charity
and sympathy. Passing down the middle between the beds, you look for the
face which is the least rigid, the least contracted by pain, and on
finding it decide to go near and put a question.

“Where are you wounded?” you hesitatingly ask an old, emaciated soldier,
seated on his bed, watching you with a kindly look, and apparently
inviting you to approach. You have, I say, put this question
hesitatingly, because the sight of the sufferer inspires not only a
lively pity, but also a sort of dread of hurting his feelings, joined
with a profound respect.

“On the foot,” replies the soldier; and nevertheless you notice by the
folds of the blanket that his leg has been cut off above the knee.

“God be praised!” he adds, “I shall be discharged.”

“Were you wounded long since?”

“It is the sixth week, your excellency.”

“Where do you feel badly now?”

“Nowhere only in my calf when it is bad weather; nothing but that.”

“How did it happen?”

“On the fifth bastion, your excellency, in the first bombardment. I had
just sighted the cannon, and was going quietly to the other embrasure,
when suddenly something struck my foot. I thought I had fallen into a
hole. I looked--my leg was gone!”

“You didn’t have any pain at first, then?”

“None at all, only just as if I had scalded my leg; that’s all.”

“And afterwards?”

“None afterwards, only when they stretched the skin; that was a little
rough. First of all things, your excellency, we mustn’t think. When we
don’t think we don’t feel. When a man thinks, it is the worse for him.”

Meanwhile, a woman dressed in gray, with a black kerchief tied around
her head, approaches, joins in the conversation, and begins to give a
detailed account of the sailor: how he has suffered, how his life was
despaired of for four weeks, how, when wounded, he made them stop the
stretcher on which he was being carried to the rear in order to watch
the discharge of our battery, and how the grand-dukes had spoken with
him, had given him twenty-five rubles, and how he had replied that, not
being able to serve any more himself, he would like to come back to the
bastion to train the conscripts. The good woman, her eyes sparkling with
enthusiasm, relates this in one breath, looking at you and then at the
sailor, who turns away and pretends not to hear, busy with picking lint
from his pillow.

“It is my wife, your excellency,” says the sailor at last, with an
intonation of voice which seems to say, “You must excuse her; all that
is woman’s foolish prattle, you know.”

You then begin to understand what the defenders of Sebastopol are, and
you are ashamed of yourself in the presence of this man. You would have
liked to express all your admiration for him, all your sympathy, but the
words will not come, or those which do come are worthless, and you can
only bow in silence before this unconscious grandeur, before this
firmness of soul and this exquisite shame of his own merit.

“Ah, well, may God speedily cure you!” you say, and you stop before
another wounded man lying on the floor, who, suffering horrible pain,
seems to be awaiting his death. He is blond, and his pale face is much
swollen. Stretched on his back, his left hand thrown up, his position
indicates acute suffering. His hissing breath escapes with difficulty
from his dry, half-open mouth. The glassy blue pupils of his eyes are
rolled up under the eyelids, and a mutilated arm, wrapped in bandages,
sticks out from under the tumbled blanket. A nauseating, corpse-like
odor rises to your nostrils, and the fever which burns the sufferer’s
limbs seems to penetrate your own body.

“Is he unconscious?” you ask of the woman who kindly accompanies you,
and to whom you are no longer a stranger.

“No; he can still hear, but he is very bad;” and she adds, under her
breath, “I have just made him drink a little tea. He is nothing to me,
only I have pity on him; indeed, he has only been able to swallow a few
mouthfuls.”

“How do you feel?” you ask him.

At the sound of your voice the wounded man’s eyes turn towards you, but
he neither sees nor understands.

“That burns my heart!” he murmurs.

A little farther on an old soldier is changing his clothes. His face and
his body are both of the same brown color, and as thin as a skeleton.
One of his arms has been amputated at the shoulder. He is seated on his
bed, he is out of danger, but from his dull, lifeless look, from his
frightful thinness, from his wrinkled face, you see that this creature
has already passed the greater part of his existence in suffering.

On the opposite bed you see the pale, delicate, pain-shrivelled face of
a woman whose cheeks are flushed with fever.

“It is a sailor’s wife. A shell hit her on the foot while she was
carrying dinner to her husband in the bastion,” says the guide.

“Has it been amputated?”

“Above the knee.”

Now, if your nerves are strong, enter there at the left. It is the
operating-room. There you see surgeons with pale and serious
countenances, their arms blood-splashed to the elbows, beside the bed
of a wounded man, who, stretched on his back with open eyes, is
delirious under the influence of chloroform, and utters broken phrases,
some unimportant, some touching. The surgeons are busy with their
repulsive but beneficent task, amputation. You see the curved and keen
blade penetrate the healthy white flesh. The wounded man suddenly comes
to himself with heart-rending cries, with curses. The assistant surgeon
throws the arm into a corner, while another wounded man on a stretcher
who sees the operation turns and groans, more on account of the mental
torture of expectation than from the physical pain he feels. You will
witness these horrible, heart-rending scenes; you will see war without
the brilliant and accurate alignment of troops, without music, without
the drum-roll, without standards flying in the wind, without galloping
generals--you will see it as it is, in blood, in suffering, and in
death! Leaving this house of pain, you will experience a certain
impression of well-being, you will take long breaths of fresh air, and
will be glad to feel yourself in good health; but at the same time the
contemplation of these misfortunes will have convinced you of your own
insignificance, and you will go up into a bastion without hesitation.
What are the sufferings and the death of an atom like me, you will ask
yourself, in comparison with these innumerable sufferings and deaths?
Besides, in a short time the sight of the pure sky, of the bright sun,
of the pretty city, of the open church, of the soldiers coming and going
in all directions, raises your spirits to their normal state. Habitual
indifference, preoccupation with the present and with its petty
interests, resume the ascendant. Perhaps you will meet on your way the
funeral cortege of an officer--a red coffin followed by a band and by
unfurled standards--and perhaps the roar of the cannonade on the bastion
will strike your ear, but your thoughts of a few moments before will not
come back again. The funeral will only be a pretty picture for you, the
growl of the cannon a grand military accompaniment, and there will be
nothing in common between this picture, these sounds, and the clear,
personal impression of suffering and death called up by the sight of the
operating-room.

Pass the church, the barricade, and you enter the most animated, the
liveliest quarter of the city. On both sides of the street are shop
signs, eating-house signs. Here are merchants, women with men’s hats or
with handkerchiefs on their heads, officers in elegant uniforms.
Everything testifies to the courage, the assurance, the safety of the
inhabitants.

Enter this restaurant on the right. If you want to listen to the
sailors’ and the officers’ talk, you will hear them relate the incidents
of the night before, of the affair of the 24th; hear them grumble at the
high price of the badly cooked cutlets, and mention the comrade recently
killed.

“Devil take me! we are badly off where we are now,” says the bass voice
of a pale, blond, beardless, newly appointed officer, his neck wrapped
in a green knit scarf.

“Where is that?” some one asks.

“In the fourth bastion,” replies the young officer; and at this reply
you attentively look at him, and feel a certain respect for him. His
exaggerated carelessness, his violent gestures, his too loud laughter,
which would shortly before have seemed to you impudent, become in your
eyes the index of a certain kind of combative spirit common to all
young people who are exposed to great danger, and you are sure he is
going to explain that it is on account of the shells and the bullets
that they are so badly off in the fourth bastion. Nothing of the kind!
They are badly off there because the mud is deep.

“Impossible to get up to the battery,” he says, pointing to his boots,
muddied even to the upper-leathers.

“My best gun captain was instantly killed to-day by a ball in his
forehead,” rejoins a comrade.

“Who was it? Mituchine?”

“No, another man.--Look here! are you never going to bring me my chop,
you villain?” says he, speaking to the waiter.--“It was Abrossinoff, as
brave a man as lived. He took part in six sorties.”

At the other end of the table two infantry officers are eating veal
cutlets with green pease washed down by sour Crimean wine, by courtesy
called Bordeaux. One of them, a young man with red collar and two stars
on his coat, is telling to his neighbor with a black collar and no stars
the details of the fight on the Alma. The first is a little the worse
for liquor. His frequently interrupted tale, his uncertain look, which
reflects the lack of confidence which his story inspires in his auditor,
the fine part he gives himself, the too high color of his picture, lead
you to guess that he is wandering away from the absolute truth. But you
haven’t anything to do with these tales, which you will hear for a long
time yet in the farthest corners of Russia; you have one wish alone,
that is, to go straight to the fourth bastion, which you have heard so
many and so varied reports about. You will notice that whoever tells you
he has been there says it with pride and satisfaction; that whoever is
getting ready to go there either shows a little emotion or affects an
exaggerated _sangfroid_. If one man is joking with another, he will
invariably tell him, “Go to the fourth bastion!” If a wounded man on a
stretcher is met, and he is asked where he comes from, he will answer,
almost without fail, “From the fourth bastion!” Two completely different
notions of this terrible earthwork have been circulated; the first by
those who have never put their foot upon it, and for whom it is the
inevitable tomb of its defenders, the second by those who, like the
little blond officer, live there and simply speak of it, saying it is
dry or muddy there, warm or cold.

During the half hour you have been in the restaurant the weather has
changed and the fog which spread over the sea has risen. Thick, gray,
moist clouds hide the sun. The sky is gloomy, and a fine rain mixed with
snow is falling, wetting the roofs, the sidewalks, and the soldiers’
overcoats. After passing one more barricade you go along up the broad
street. There are no more shop-signs; the houses are uninhabitable, the
doors fastened up with boards, the windows broken. On this side the
corner of a wall has been carried away, on that side the roof has been
broken in. The buildings look like old veterans tried by grief and
misery, and stare at you with pride, one might say with disdain even. On
the way you stumble over cannon-balls and into holes, filled with water,
which the shells have made in the rocky ground. You pass detachments of
soldiers and officers. You occasionally meet a woman or a child, but
here the woman does not wear a hat. As for the sailor’s wife, she wears
an old fur cloak, and has soldiers’ boots on her feet. The street now
leads down a gentle declivity, but there are no more houses around you,
nothing but shapeless masses of stones, of boards, of beams, and of
clay. Before you, on a steep hill, stretches a black space, all muddy,
and cut up with ditches. What you are looking at is the fourth bastion.

Passers become rare, no more women are met. The soldiers walk with rapid
step. A few drops of blood stain the path, and you see coming towards
you four soldiers bearing a stretcher, and on the stretcher a face of a
sallow paleness and a bloody coat. If you ask the bearers where he is
wounded, they will reply, with an irritated tone, without looking at
you, that he has been hit on the arm or on the leg. If his head has been
carried away, if he is dead, they will keep a morose silence.

The near whiz of balls and shells gives you a disagreeable impression
while you are climbing the hill, and suddenly you have an entirely
different idea from the one you recently had of the meaning of the
cannon-shots heard in the city. I do not know what placid and sweet
souvenir will suddenly shine out in your memory. Your intimate _ego_
will occupy you so actively that you will no longer think of noticing
your surroundings. You will permit yourself to be overcome by a painful
feeling of irresolution. However, the sight of a soldier who, with
extended arms, is slipping down the hill in the liquid mud, and passes
near you, running and laughing, silences your small inward voice, the
cowardly counsellor which arises in you in the presence of danger. You
straighten up in spite of yourself, you raise your head, and you, in
your turn, scale the slippery slope of the clay hill. You have scarcely
gone a step before musket-balls hum in your ears, and you ask yourself
if it would not be preferable to go under cover of the trench thrown up
parallel with the path. But the trench is full of a yellow, fetid,
liquid mud, so that you are obliged to go on in the path; all the more
since it is the way everybody goes. At the end of two hundred paces you
come out on a place surrounded by gabions, embankments, shelters,
platforms supporting enormous cast-iron cannon, and heaps of
symmetrically piled cannon-balls. These heaps of things give you the
impression of a strange and aimless disorder. Here on the battery
assembles a group of sailors; there in the middle of the enclosure lies
a dismounted cannon, half buried in the sticky mud, through which an
infantryman, musket in hand, is going to the battery, pulling out with
difficulty first one foot and then the other. Everywhere in this liquid
mud you see broken glass, unexploded shells, cannon-balls--every trace
of camp life. You seem to hear the noise of a cannon-ball falling only
two yards away, and from all sides come the sound of balls, which
sometimes hum like bees, sometimes groan and split the air, which
vibrates like a violin-string, the whole dominated by the sinister
rumbling of cannon, which shakes you from head to foot and fills you
with terror.

This is, then, the fourth bastion, this really terrible place, you say
to yourself, feeling a little pride and a great deal of repressed fear.
Not at all! You are the sport of an illusion. This is not yet the fourth
bastion; it is the Jason redoubt, a place which, comparatively, is
neither dangerous nor frightful. In order to reach the fourth bastion
you enter the narrow trench which the infantryman follows, stooping
over. You will perhaps see more stretchers, sailors, soldiers with
spades, wires leading to the mines, earth-shelters equally muddy, into
which only two men can crawl, and where the battalions of the Black Sea
Sharpshooters live, eat, smoke, and put their boots on and off, in the
midst of the débris of cast-iron of every form thrown here and there.
You will perhaps find here four or five sailors playing cards in the
shelter of the parapet, and a naval officer, who, seeing a new face come
up, and a spectator at that, will be really pleased to initiate you into
the details of the arrangements and give you an explanation of them.
This officer, seated on a cannon, is rolling a cigarette with such
coolness, passes so quietly from one embrasure to another, and talks
with you with such natural calmness, that you recover your own
_sangfroid_, in spite of the balls which are whistling here in greater
numbers. You ask him questions, and even listen to his tales. The sailor
will describe to you, if you will only ask him, the bombardment of the
5th, the state of his battery with a single serviceable cannon, his men
reduced to eight, and, moreover, on the morning of the 6th, the battery
fired with every gun. He will tell you also how, on the 5th, a shell
penetrated a bomb-proof and struck down eleven sailors. He will show
you, through the embrasure, the enemy’s trenches and batteries, which
are only thirty or forty fathoms distant. I fear, however, that, leaning
out of the embrasure in order to examine the enemy better, you will see
nothing, or that, if you perceive something, you will be very much
surprised to learn that this white and rocky rampart a few steps away,
and from which are spouting little clouds of smoke, is really the
enemy--“_him_,” as the soldiers and sailors say.

It is very possible that the officer, either through vanity or simply,
without reflection, to amuse himself, will be willing to have them fire
for you. At his order the captain of the gun and the men, fourteen
sailors all told, gayly approach the cannon to load it, some chewing
biscuit, others cramming their short pipes in their pockets, while their
hobnailed shoes clatter on the platform. Notice the faces of these men,
their bearing, their movements, and you will recognize in each of the
wrinkles of their sunburned faces with high cheek-bones, in each muscle,
in the breadth of the shoulders, in the thickness of the feet shod with
colossal boots, in each calm and bold gesture, the principal elements
that make up the strength of Russia--simplicity and obstinacy. You will
also see that danger, misery, and suffering in the war will have
imprinted on these faces the consciousness of their dignity, of high
thoughts, of a sentiment.

Suddenly a deafening noise makes you quake from head to foot. You hear
at the same instant the shot whistling away, while a thick powder-smoke
envelops the platform and the black figures of sailors moving about.
Listen to their conversation, notice their animation, and you will
discover among them a feeling which you would not expect to meet--that
of hatred of the enemy, of vengeance. “It fell straight into the
embrasure; two killed. Look! they are carrying them away,” and they
shout for joy. “But he is getting angry now, he is going to hit back,”
says a voice, and in truth you see at the same instant a flash and
spurting smoke, and the sentinel on the parapet calls, “Cannon!” A ball
whizzes in your ears and buries itself in the ground, digging it up and
casting around a shower of earth and stones. The commander of the
battery gets angry, renews the order to load a second, a third gun. The
enemy replies, and you experience interesting sensations. The sentinel
again calls, “Cannon!” and the same sound, the same blow, and the same
throwing up of earth are repeated. If, on the other hand, he cries,
“Mortar!” you will be struck by a regular, not disagreeable hissing,
which has no connection in your mind with anything terrible. It comes
nearer and with greater rapidity. You see the black ball fall to the
ground, and the bomb-shell burst with a metallic cracking. The pieces
fly in air, whistling and screeching; stones hit each other, and mud
splashes over you. You feel a strange mixture of pleasure and fright at
these different sounds. At the instant the projectile reaches you, you
invariably think it will kill you. But pride keeps you up, and no one
notices the dagger that is digging into your heart. So when it has
passed without grazing you, you live again; for an instant a feeling of
indescribable sweetness possesses you to such a degree that you find a
special charm in danger, in the game of life and death. You would like
to have a ball or a shell fall nearer, very near you. But the sentinel
announces with his strong, full voice, “Mortar!” The hissing, the blow,
the explosion are repeated, but accompanied this time by a human
groan. You go up to the wounded man at the same time with the
stretcher-bearers. He has a strange look, lying in the mud mingled with
his blood. Part of his chest has been carried away. In the first moment
his mud-splashed face expresses only fright and the premature sensation
of pain, a feeling familiar to man in this situation. But when they
bring the stretcher to him, and he unassisted lies down on it on his
uninjured side, an exalted expression, elevated but restrained thoughts,
enliven his features. With brilliant eyes and shut teeth he raises his
head with an effort, and at the moment the stretcher-bearers move he
stops them, and addressing his comrades with trembling voice, says,
“Good-by, brothers!” He would like to say something more, he seems to
be trying to find something touching to say, but he limits himself to
repeating, “Good-by, brothers!” A comrade approaches the wounded man,
puts his cap on his head for him, and turns back to his cannon with a
gesture of perfect indifference. At the sight of your terrified
expression of face the officer, yawning, and rolling between his fingers
a cigarette in yellow paper, says, “So it is every day, up to seven or
eight men.”

You have just seen the defenders of Sebastopol on the very place of the
defence, and, strange to say, you will retrace your steps without paying
the least attention to the bullets and balls which continue to whistle
the whole length of the road as far as the ruins of the theatre. You
walk with calmness, your soul elevated and strengthened, for you bring
away the consoling conviction that never, and in no place, can the
strength of the Russian people be broken; and you have gained this
conviction not from the solidity of the parapets, from the ingeniously
combined intrenchments, from the number of mines, from the cannon
heaped one on the other, and all of which you have not in the least
understood, but from the eyes, the words, the bearing, from what may be
called the spirit of the defenders of Sebastopol.

There is so much simplicity and so little effort in what they do that
you are persuaded that they could, if it were necessary, do a hundred
times more, that they could do everything. You judge that the sentiment
that impels them is not the one you have experienced, mean and vain, but
another and more powerful one, which has made men of them, living
tranquilly in the mud, working and watching among the bullets, with a
hundred chances to one of being killed, contrary to the common lot of
their kind. It is not for a cross, for rank; it is not that they are
threatened into submitting to such terrible conditions of existence.
There must be another, a higher motive power. This motive power is found
in a sentiment which rarely shows itself, which is concealed with
modesty, but which is deeply rooted in every Russian heart--patriotism.
It is now only that the tales that circulated during the first period of
the siege of Sebastopol, when there were neither fortifications, nor
troops, nor material possibility of holding out there, and when,
moreover, no one admitted the thought of surrender--it is now only that
the anecdote of Korniloff, that hero worthy of antique Greece, who said
to his troops, “Children, we will die, but we will not surrender
Sebastopol,” and the reply of our brave soldiers, incapable of using set
speeches, “We will die, hurrah!”--it is now only that these stories have
ceased to be to you beautiful historical legends, since they have become
truth, facts. You will easily picture to yourself, in the place of those
you have just seen, the heroes of this period of trial, who never lost
courage, and who joyfully prepared to die, not for the defence of the
city, but for the defence of the country. Russia will long preserve the
sublime traces of the epoch of Sebastopol, of which the Russian people
were the heroes!

Day closes; the sun, disappearing at the horizon, shines through the
gray clouds which surround it, and lights up with purple rays the
rippling sea with its green reflections, covered with ships and boats,
the white houses of the city, and the population stirring there. On the
boulevard a regimental band is playing an old waltz, which sounds far
over the water, and to which the cannonade of the bastions forms a
strange and striking accompaniment.





_SEBASTOPOL IN MAY, 1855._


Six months had rolled by since the first bomb-shell thrown from the
bastions of Sebastopol ploughed up the soil and cast it upon the enemy’s
works. Since that time millions of bombs, bullets, and balls had never
ceased flying from bastions to trenches, from trenches to bastions, and
the angel of death had constantly hovered over them.

The self-love of thousands of human beings had been sometimes wounded,
sometimes satisfied, sometimes soothed in the embrace of death! What
numbers of red coffins with coarse palls!--and the bastions still
continued to roar. The French in their camp, moved by an involuntary
feeling of anxiety and terror, examined in the soft evening light the
yellow and burrowed earth of the bastions of Sebastopol, where the black
silhouettes of our sailors came and went; they counted the embrasures
bristling with fierce-looking cannon. On the telegraph tower an
under-officer was watching through his field-glass the enemy’s soldiers,
their batteries, their tents, the movements of their troops on the
Mamelon-Vert, and the smoke ascending from the trenches. A crowd
composed of heterogeneous races, moved by quite different desires,
converged from all parts of the world towards this fatal spot. Powder
and blood had not succeeded in solving the question which diplomats
could not settle.


I.

A regimental band was playing in the besieged city of Sebastopol; a
crowd of soldiers and women in Sunday best was promenading in the
avenues. The clear sun of spring had risen upon the English works, had
passed over the fortifications, over the city, and over the Nicholas
barracks, shedding everywhere its just and joyous light; now it was
setting into the blue distance of the sea, which gently rippled,
sparkling with silvery reflections.

An infantry officer of tall stature and with a slight stoop, busy
putting on gloves of doubtful whiteness, though still presentable, came
out of one of the small sailor-houses built on the left side of Marine
Street. He directed his steps towards the boulevard, fixing his eyes in
a distracted manner on the toe of his boots. The expression of his
ill-favored face did not denote a high intellectual capacity, but traits
of good-fellowship, good sense, honesty, and love of order were to be
plainly recognized there. He was not well-built, and seemed to feel some
confusion at the awkwardness of his own motions. He had a well-worn cap
on his head, and on his shoulders a light cloak of a curious purplish
color, under which could be seen his watch-chain, his trousers with
straps, and his clean and well-polished boots. If his features had not
clearly indicated his pure Russian origin he would have been taken for a
German, for an aide-de-camp, or for a regimental baggage-master--he wore
no spurs, to be sure--or for one of those cavalry officers who have been
exchanged in order to take active service. In fact, he was one of the
latter, and while going up to the boulevard he was thinking of a letter
he had just received from an ex-comrade, now a landholder in the
Government of F----; he was thinking of his comrade’s wife, pale,
blue-eyed Natacha, his best friend; he was especially recalling the
following passage:

“When they bring us the _Invalide_,[A] Poupka (that was the name the
retired uhlan gave his wife) rushes into the antechamber, seizes the
paper, and throws herself upon the sofa in the arbor[B] in the parlor,
where we have passed so many pleasant winter evenings in your company
while your regiment was in garrison in our city. You can’t imagine the
enthusiasm with which she reads the story of your heroic exploits!
‘Mikhailoff,’ she often says in speaking of you, ‘is a pearl of a man,
and I shall throw myself on his neck when I see him again! _He is
fighting in the bastions, he is!_ He will get the cross of St. George,
and the newspapers will be full of him.’ Indeed, I am beginning to be
jealous of you. It takes the papers a very long time to get to us, and
although a thousand bits of news fly from mouth to mouth, we can’t
believe all of them. For example: your good friends the _musical girls_
related yesterday how Napoleon, taken prisoner by our cossacks, had been
brought to Petersburg--you understand that I couldn’t believe that! Then
one of the officials of the war office, a fine fellow, and a great
addition to society now our little town is deserted, assured us that our
troops had occupied Eupatoria, _thus preventing the French from
communicating with Balaklava_; that we lost two hundred men in this
business, and they about fifteen thousand. My wife was so much delighted
at this that she celebrated it all night long, and she has a feeling
that you took part in the action and distinguished yourself.”

In spite of these words, in spite of the expressions which I have put in
italics and the general tone of the letter, Captain Mikhaïloff took a
sweet and sad satisfaction in imagining himself with his pale,
provincial lady friend. He recalled their evening conversations on
_sentiment_ in the parlor arbor, and how his brave comrade, the
ex-uhlan, became vexed and disputed over games of cards with kopek
stakes when they succeeded in starting a game in his study, and how his
wife joked him about it. He recalled the friendship these good people
had shown for him; and perhaps there was something more than friendship
on the side of the pale friend! All these pictures in their familiar
frames arose in his imagination with marvellous softness. He saw them in
a rosy atmosphere, and, smiling at them, he handled affectionately the
letter in the bottom of his pocket.

These memories brought the captain involuntarily back to his hopes, to
his dreams. “Imagine,” he thought, as he went along the narrow alley,
“Natacha’s joy and astonishment when she reads in the _Invalide_ that I
have been the first to get possession of a cannon, and have received the
Saint George! I shall be promoted to be captain-major: I was proposed
for it a long time ago. It will then be very easy for me to get to be
chief of an army battalion in the course of a year, for many among us
have been killed, and many others will be during this campaign. Then, in
the next battle, when I have made myself well known, they will intrust a
regiment to me, and I shall become lieutenant-colonel, commander of the
Order of Saint Anne--then colonel--” He was already imagining himself
general, honoring with his presence Natacha, his comrade’s widow--for
his friend would, according to the dream, have to die about this
time--when the sound of the band came distinctly to his ears. A crowd of
promenaders attracted his gaze, and he came to himself on the boulevard
as before, second-captain of infantry.


II.

He first approached the pavilion, by the side of which several musicians
were playing. Other soldiers of the same regiment served as music-stands
by holding before them the open music-books, and a small circle
surrounded them, quartermasters, under-officers, nurses, and children,
engaged in watching rather than in listening. Around the pavilion
marines, aides-de-camp, officers in white gloves were standing, were
sitting, or promenading. Farther off in the broad avenue could be seen a
confused crowd of officers of every branch of the service, women of
every class, some with bonnets on, the majority with kerchiefs on their
heads; others wore neither bonnets nor kerchiefs, but, astonishing to
relate, there were no old women, all were young. Below in fragrant paths
shaded by white acacias were seen isolated groups, seated and walking.

No one expressed any particular joy at the sight of Captain Mikhaïloff,
with the exception, perhaps, of Objogoff and Souslikoff, captains in his
regiment, who shook his hand warmly. But the first of the two had no
gloves; he wore trousers of camel’s-hair cloth, a shabby coat, and his
red face was covered with perspiration; the second spoke with too loud a
voice, and with shocking freedom of speech. It was not very flattering
to walk with these men, especially in the presence of officers in white
gloves. Among the latter was an aide-de-camp, with whom Mikhaïloff
exchanged salutes, and a staff-officer whom he could have saluted as
well, having seen him a couple of times at the quarters of a common
friend.

There was positively no pleasure in promenading with these two comrades,
whom he met five or six times a day, and shook hands with them each
time. He did not come to the band concert for that.

He would have liked to go up to the aide-de-camp with whom he exchanged
salutes, and to chat with those gentlemen, not in order that Captains
Objogoff, Souslikoff, Lieutenant Paschtezky, and others might see him in
conversation with them, but simply because they were agreeable,
well-informed people who could tell him something.

Why is Mikhaïloff afraid? and why can’t he make up his mind to go up to
them? It is because he distrustfully asks himself what he will do if
these gentlemen do not return his salute, if they continue to chat
together, pretending not to see him, and if they go away, leaving him
alone among the _aristocrats_. The word _aristocrat_, taken in the sense
of a particular group, selected with great care, belonging to every
class of society, has lately gained a great popularity among us in
Russia--where it never ought to have taken root. It has entered into all
the social strata where vanity has crept in--and where does not this
pitiable weakness creep in? Everywhere; among the merchants, the
officials, the quartermasters, the officers; at Saratoff, at Mamadisch,
at Vinitzy--everywhere, in a word, where men are. Now, since there are
many men in a besieged city like Sebastopol, there is also a great deal
of vanity; that is to say, _aristocrats_ are there in large numbers,
although death, the great leveller, hovers constantly over the head of
each man, be he aristocrat or not.

To Captain Objogoff, Second-captain Mikhaïloff is an _aristocrat_; to
Second-captain Mikhaïloff, Aide-de-camp Kalouguine is an _aristocrat_,
because he is aide-de-camp, and says thee and thou familiarly to other
aides-de-camp; lastly, to Kalouguine, Count Nordoff is an _aristocrat_,
because he is aide-de-camp of the Emperor.

Vanity, vanity, nothing but vanity! even in the presence of death, and
among men ready to die for an exalted idea. Is not vanity the
characteristic trait, the destructive ill of our age? Why has this
weakness not been recognized hitherto, just as small-pox or cholera has
been recognized? Why in our time are there only three kinds of
men--those who accept vanity as an existing fact, necessary, and
consequently just, and freely submit to it; those who consider it an
evil element, but one impossible to destroy; and those who act under its
influence with unconscious servility? Why have Homer and Shakespeare
spoken of love, of glory, and of suffering, while the literature of our
century is only the interminable history of snobbery and vanity?

Mikhaïloff, not able to make up his mind, twice passed in front of the
little group of _aristocrats_. The third time, making a violent effort,
he approached them. The group was composed of four officers--the
aide-de-camp Kalouguine, whom Mikhaïloff was acquainted with, the
aide-de-camp Prince Galtzine, an _aristocrat_ to Kalouguine himself,
Colonel Neferdoff, one of the _Hundred and Twenty-two_ (a group of
society men who had re-entered the service for this campaign were thus
called), lastly, Captain of Cavalry Praskoukine, who was also among the
Hundred and Twenty-two. Happily for Mikhaïloff, Kalouguine was in
charming spirits; the general had just spoken very confidentially to
him, and Prince Galtzine, fresh from Petersburg, was stopping in his
quarters, so he did not find it compromising to offer his hand to a
second-captain. Praskoukine did not decide to do as much, although he
had often met Mikhaïloff in the bastion, had drunk his wine and his
brandy more than once, and owed him twelve rubles and a half, lost at a
game of preference. Being only slightly acquainted with Prince Galtzine,
he had no wish to call his attention to his intimacy with a simple
second-captain of infantry. He merely saluted slightly.

“Well, captain,” said Kalouguine, “when are we going back to the little
bastion? You remember our meeting on the Schwartz redoubt? It was warm
there, hey?”

“Yes, it was warm there,” replied Mikhaïloff, remembering that night
when, following the trench in order to reach the bastion, he had met
Kalouguine marching with a grand air, bravely clattering his sword. “I
would not have to return there until to-morrow, but we have an officer
sick.” And he was going on to relate how, although it was not his turn
on duty, he thought he ought to offer to replace Nepchissetzky, because
the commander of the eighth company was ill, and only an ensign
remained, but Kalouguine did not give him time to finish.

“I have a notion,” said he, turning towards Prince Galtzine, “that
something will come off in a day or two.”

“But why couldn’t something come off to-day?” timidly asked Mikhaïloff,
looking first at Kalouguine and then at Galtzine.

No one replied. Galtzine made a slight grimace, and looking to one side
over Mikhaïloffs cap, said, after a moment’s silence,

“What a pretty girl!--yonder, with the red kerchief. Do you know her,
captain?”

“It is a sailor’s daughter. She lives close by me,” he replied.

“Let’s look at her closer.”

And Prince Galtzine took Kalouguine by the arm on one side and the
second-captain on the other, sure that by this action he would give the
latter a lively satisfaction. He was not deceived. Mikhaïloff was
superstitious, and to have anything to do with women before going under
fire was in his eyes a great sin. But on that day he was posing for a
libertine. Neither Kalouguine nor Galtzine was deceived by this,
however. The girl with the red kerchief was very much astonished, having
more than once noticed that the captain blushed as he was passing her
window. Praskoukine marched behind and nudged Galtzine, making all
sorts of remarks in French; but the path being too narrow for them to
march four abreast, he was obliged to fall behind, and in the second
file to take Serviaguine’s arm--a naval officer known for his
exceptional bravery, and very anxious to join the group of
_aristocrats_. This brave man gladly linked his honest and muscular hand
into Praskoukine’s arm, whom he knew, nevertheless, to be not quite
honorable. Explaining to Prince Galtzine his intimacy with the sailor,
Praskoukine whispered that he was a well-known, brave man; but Prince
Galtzine, who had been, the evening before, in the fourth bastion, and
had seen a shell burst twenty paces from him, considered himself equal
in courage to this gentleman; also being convinced that most reputations
were exaggerated, paid no attention to Serviaguine.

Mikhaïloff was so happy to promenade in this brilliant company that he
thought no more of the dear letter received from F----, nor of the
dismal forebodings that assailed him each time he went to the bastion.
He remained with them there until they had visibly excluded him from
their conversation, avoiding his eye, as if to make him understand that
he could go on his way alone. At last they left him in the lurch. In
spite of that, the second-captain was so satisfied that he was quite
indifferent to the haughty expression with which the yunker[C] Baron
Pesth straightened up and took off his hat before him. This young man
had become very proud since he had passed his first night in the
bomb-proof of the fifth bastion, an experience which, in his own eyes,
transformed him into a hero.


III.

No sooner had Mikhaïloff crossed his own threshold than entirely
different thoughts came into his mind. He again saw his little room,
where beaten earth took the place of a wooden floor, his warped windows,
in which the broken panes were replaced by paper, his old bed, over
which was nailed to the wall a rug with the design of a figure of an
amazon, his pair of Toula pistols, hanging on the head-board, and on one
side a second untidy bed with an Indian coverlet belonging to the
yunker, who shared his quarters. He saw his valet Nikita, who rose from
the ground where he was crouching, scratching his head bristling with
greasy hair. He saw his old cloak, his second pair of boots, and the
bundle prepared for the night in the bastion, wrapped in a cloth from
which protruded the end of a piece of cheese and the neck of a bottle
filled with brandy. Suddenly he remembered he had to lead his company
into the casemates that very night.

“I shall be killed, I’m sure,” he said to himself; “I feel it. Besides,
I offered to go myself, and one who does that is certain to be killed.
And what is the matter with this sick man, this cursed Nepchissetzky?
Who knows? Perhaps he isn’t sick at all. And, thanks to him, a man will
get killed--he’ll get killed, surely. However, if I am not shot I will
be put on the list for promotion. I noticed the colonel’s satisfaction
when I asked permission to take the place of Nepchissetzky if he was
sick. If I don’t get the rank of major, I shall certainly get the
Vladimir Cross. This is the thirteenth time I go on duty in the bastion.
Oh, oh, unlucky number! I shall be killed, I’m sure; I feel it.
Nevertheless, some one must go. The company cannot go with an ensign;
and if anything should happen, the honor of the regiment, the honor of
the army would be assailed. It is my duty to go--yes, my sacred duty. No
matter, I have a presentiment--”

The captain forgot that he had this presentiment, more or less strong,
every time he went to the bastion, and he did not know that all who go
into action have this feeling, though in very different degrees. His
sense of duty which he had particularly developed calmed him, and he sat
down at his table and wrote a farewell letter to his father. In the
course of ten minutes the letter was finished. He arose with moist eyes,
and began to dress, repeating to himself all the prayers which he knew
by heart. His servant, a dull fellow, three-quarters drunk, helped him
put on his new coat, the old one he was accustomed to wear in the
bastion not being mended.

“Why hasn’t that coat been mended? You can’t do anything but sleep, you
beast!”

“Sleep!” growled Nikita, “when I am running about like a dog all day
long. I tire myself to death, and after that am not allowed to sleep!”

“You are drunk again, I see.”

“I didn’t drink with your money; why do you find fault with me?”

“Silence, fool!” cried the captain, ready to strike him.

He was already nervous and troubled, and Nikita’s rudeness made him lose
patience. Nevertheless, he was very fond of the fellow, he even spoiled
him, and had kept him with him a dozen years.

“Fool! fool!” repeated the servant. “Why do you abuse me, sir--and at
this time? It isn’t right to abuse me.”

Mikhaïloff thought of the place he was going to, and was ashamed of
himself.

“You would make a saint lose patience, Nikita,” he said, with a softer
voice. “Leave that letter addressed to my father lying on the table.
Don’t touch it,” he added, blushing.

“All right,” said Nikita, weakening under the influence of the wine he
had taken, at his own expense, as he said, and blinking his eyes, ready
to weep.

Then when the captain shouted, on leaving the house, “Good-by, Nikita!”
he burst forth in a violent fit of sobbing, and seizing the hand of his
master, kissed it, howling all the while, and saying, over and over
again, “Good-by, master!”

An old sailor’s wife at the door, good woman as she was, could not help
taking part in this affecting scene. Rubbing her eyes with her dirty
sleeve, she mumbled something about masters who, on their side, have to
put up with so much, and went on to relate for the hundredth time to the
drunken Nikita how she, poor creature, was left a widow, how her husband
had been killed during the first bombardment and his house ruined, for
the one she lived in now did not belong to her, etc., etc. After his
master was gone, Nikita lighted his pipe, begged the landlord’s daughter
to fetch him some brandy, quickly wiped his tears, and ended up by
quarrelling with the old woman about a little pail he said she had
broken.

“Perhaps I shall only be wounded,” the captain thought at nightfall,
approaching the bastion at the head of his company. “But where--here or
there?”

He placed his finger first on his stomach and then on his chest.

“If it were only here,” he thought, pointing to the upper part of his
thigh, “and if the ball passed round the bone! But if it is a fracture
it’s all over.”

Mikhaïloff, by following the trenches, reached the casemates safe and
sound. In perfect darkness, assisted by an officer of the sappers, he
put his men to work; then he sat down in a hole in the shelter of the
parapet. They were firing only at intervals; now and again, first on our
side and then on _his_, a flash blazed forth, and the fuse of a shell
traced a curve of fire on the dark, starlit sky. But the projectiles
fell far off, behind or to the right of the quarters in which the
captain hid at the bottom of a pit. He ate a piece of cheese, drank a
few drops of brandy, lighted a cigarette, and having said his prayers,
tried to sleep.


IV.

Prince Galtzine, Lieutenant-colonel Neferdorf, and Praskoukine--whom
nobody had invited, and with whom no one chatted, but who followed them
just the same--left the boulevard to go and drink tea at Kalouguine’s
quarters.

“Finish your story about Vaska Mendel,” said Kalouguine.

Having thrown off his cloak, he was sitting beside the window in a
stuffed easy-chair, and unbuttoned the collar of his well-starched, fine
Dutch linen shirt.

“How did he get married again?”

“It’s worth any amount of money, I tell you! There was a time when there
was nothing else talked about at Petersburg,” replied Prince Galtzine,
laughingly.

He left the piano where he had been sitting, and drew near the window.

“It’s worth any amount of money! I know all the details--”

And gayly and wittily he set about relating the story of an amorous
intrigue, which we will pass over in silence because it offers us little
interest. The striking thing about these gentlemen was, that one of them
seated in the window, another at the piano, and a third on a chair with
his legs doubled up, seemed to be quite different men from what they
were a moment before on the boulevard. No more conceit, no more of this
ridiculous affectation towards the infantry officers. Here between
themselves they showed out what they were--good fellows, gay, and in
high spirits. Their conversation continued upon their comrades and their
acquaintances in Petersburg.

“And Maslovsky?”

“Which one--the uhlan or the horse-guardsman?”

“I know them both. In my time the horse-guardsman was only a boy just
out of school. And the oldest, is he a captain?”

“Oh yes, for a long time.”

“Is he always with his Bohemian girl?”

“No, he left her--”

And the talk went on in this tone.

Prince Galtzine sang in a charming manner a gypsy song, accompanying
himself on the piano. Praskoukine, without being asked, sang second, and
so well too that, to his great delight, they begged him to do it again.

A servant brought in tea, cream, and rusks on a silver tray.

“Give some to the prince,” said Kalouguine.

“Isn’t it strange to think,” said Galtzine, drinking his glass of tea
near the window, “that we are here in a besieged city, that we have a
piano, tea with cream, and all this in lodgings which I would be glad to
live in at Petersburg?”

“If we didn’t even have that,” said the old lieutenant-colonel, always
discontented, “existence would be intolerable. This continual
expectation of something, or this seeing people killed every day without
stopping, and this living in the mud without the least comfort--”

“But our infantry officers,” interrupted Kalouguine, “those who live in
the bastion with the soldiers, and share their soup with them in the
bomb-proof, how do they get on?”

“How do they get on? They don’t change their linen, to be sure, for ten
days at a time, but they are astonishing fellows, true heroes!”

Just at this moment an infantry officer entered the room.

“I--I have received an order--to go to general--to his Excellency, from
General N----” he said, timidly saluting.

Kalouguine rose, and without returning the salute of the new-comer,
without inviting him to be seated, begged him with cruel politeness and
an official smile to wait a while; then he went on talking in French
with Galtzine, without paying the slightest attention to the poor
officer, who stood in the middle of the room, and did not know what to
do with himself.

“I have been sent on an important matter,” he said at last, after a
moment of silence.

“If that is so, be kind enough to follow me.” Kalouguine threw on his
cloak and turned towards the door. An instant later he came back from
the general’s room.

“Well, gentlemen, I believe they are going to make it warm to-night.”

“Ah! what--a sortie?” they all asked together.

“I don’t know, you will see yourselves,” he replied, with an enigmatic
smile.

“My chief is in the bastion, I must go there,” said Praskoukine, putting
on his sword.

No one replied; he ought to know what he had to do. Praskoukine and
Neferdorf went out to go to their posts.

“Good-by, gentlemen, _au revoir_! we will meet again to-night,” cried
Kalouguine through the window, while they set out at a rapid trot,
bending over the pommels of their Cossack saddles. The sound of their
horses’ shoes quickly died away in the dark street.

“Come, tell me, will there really be something going on to-night?” said
Galtzine, leaning on the window-sill near Kalouguine, whence they were
watching the shells rising over the bastions.

“I can tell you, you alone. You have been in the bastions, haven’t you?”

Although Galtzine had only been there once he replied by an affirmative
gesture.

“Well, opposite our lunette there was a trench”--and Kalouguine, who was
not a specialist, but who was satisfied of the value of his military
opinions, began to explain, mixing himself up and making wrong use of
the terms of fortification, the state of our works, the situation of the
enemy, and the plan of the affair which had been prepared.

“There! there! They have begun to fire heavily on our quarters; is that
coming from our side or from _his_--the one that has just burst there?”
And the two officers, leaning on the window, watched the lines of fire
which the shells traced crossing each other in the air, the white
powder-smoke, the flashes which preceded each report and illuminated for
a second the blue-black sky; they listened to the roar of the cannonade,
which increased in violence.

“What a charming panorama!” said Kalouguine, attracting his guest’s
attention to the truly beautiful spectacle. “Do you know that sometimes
one can’t tell a star from a bomb-shell?”

“Yes, it is true; I just took that for a star, but it is coming down.
Look! it bursts! And that large star there yonder--what do they call it?
One would say it was a shell!”

“I am so accustomed to them that when I go back to Russia a starry sky
will seem to me to be sparkling with bomb-shells. One gets so used to
it.”

“Ought I not to go and take part in this sortie?” said Prince Galtzine,
after a pause.

“My dear fellow, what an idea! Don’t think of it. I won’t let you go;
you will have time enough.”

“Seriously--do you think I ought not to?”

At this moment, right in the direction these gentlemen were looking,
could be heard above the roar of artillery the rattle of a terrible
fusillade; a thousand little flames spurted and sparkled along the whole
line.

“Look, it is in full swing,” said Kalouguine. “I can’t calmly listen to
this fusillade; it stirs my soul! They are shouting ‘Hurrah!’” he added,
stretching his ear towards the bastion, from which arose the distant and
prolonged clamor of thousands of voices.

“Who is shouting ‘Hurrah’--_he_ or we?”

“I don’t know; but they are surely fighting at the sword’s point, for
the fusillade has stopped.”

An officer on horseback, followed by a Cossack, galloped up under their
window, stopped, and dismounted.

“Where do you come from?”

“From the bastion, to see the general.”

“Come, what is the matter? Speak!”

“They have attacked--have taken the quarters. The French have pushed
forward their reserves--ours have been attacked--and there were only two
battalions of them,” said the officer, out of breath.

It was the same one who had come in the evening, but this time he went
towards the door with confidence.

“Then we retreated?” asked Galtzine.

“No,” replied the officer, in a surly tone, “a battalion arrived in
time. We repulsed them, but the chief of the regiment is killed, and
many officers besides. They want reinforcements.”

So saying, he went with Kalouguine into the general’s room, whither we
will not follow them.

Five minutes later Kalouguine set out for the bastion on a horse, which
he rode in the Cossack fashion, a kind of riding which seems to give a
particular pleasure to the aides-de-camp. He was the bearer of certain
orders, and had to await the definite result of the affair. As to Prince
Galtzine, he, agitated by the painful emotions which the signs of a
battle in progress usually excite in the idle spectator, hastily went
out into the street to wander aimlessly to and fro.


V.

Soldiers carried the wounded on stretchers, and supported others under
the arms. It was very dark in the streets; here and there shone the
lights in the hospital windows or in the quarters of a wakeful officer.
The uninterrupted sound of the cannonade and the fusillade came from the
bastions, and the same fires still lighted up the black sky. From time
to time could be recognized the gallop of a staff-officer, the groan of
a wounded man, the steps and the voices of the stretcher-bearers, the
exclamations of doting women who stood on the thresholds of their houses
and watched in the direction of the firing.

Among these last we find our acquaintance Nikita, the old sailor’s widow
with whom he had made up, and the little daughter of the latter, a child
of ten years.

“Oh, my God! holy Virgin and Mother!” murmured the old woman, with a
sigh; and she followed with her eyes the shells which flew through
space from one point to another like balls of fire. “What a misfortune!
what a misfortune! The first bombardment was not so hard. Look! one
cursed thing has burst in the outskirts of the town right over our
house!”

“No, it is farther off; they are falling in Aunt Arina’s garden,” said
the child.

“Where is my master! where is he now!” groaned Nikita, still drunk, and
drawling his words. “No tongue can tell how I love my master! If, God
forbid, they commit the sin of killing him, I assure you, good aunt, I
won’t be answerable for what I may do! Really, he is such a good master
that--There is no word to express it, you see. I wouldn’t exchange him
for those who are playing cards inside, true. Pooh!” concluded Nikita,
pointing to the captain’s room, in which the yunker Yvatchesky had
arranged with the ensigns a little festival to celebrate the decoration
he had just received.

“What a lot of shooting-stars there are! what a lot of shooting-stars
there are!” cried the child, breaking the silence which followed
Nikita’s speech. “There! there! another one is falling! What is that
for? Say, mother.”

“They’ll destroy our cabin!” sighed the old woman, without replying.

“To-day,” resumed the sing-song voice of the little prattler--“to-day I
saw in uncle’s room, near the wardrobe, an enormous ball; it had come
through the roof and had fallen right into the room. It is so large that
they can’t lift it.”

“The women who had husbands and money are gone away,” continued the old
woman. “I have only a cabin, and they are destroying that! Look! look
how they are firing, the wretches! Lord, my God!”

“And just as we were coming out of uncle’s house,” the child went on, “a
bomb-shell came straight down; it burst, and threw the earth on all
sides; one little piece almost struck us!”


VI.

Prince Galtzine met in constantly increasing numbers wounded men borne
on stretchers, others dragging themselves along on foot or supporting
each other, and talking noisily.

“When they fell upon us, brothers,” said the bass voice of a tall
soldier who carried two muskets on his shoulder--“when they fell upon
us, shouting ‘Allah! allah!’[D] they pushed one another on. We killed
the first, and others climbed over them. There was nothing to be done;
there were too many of them--too many of them!”

“You come from the bastion?” asked Galtzine, interrupting the orator.

“Yes, your Excellency.”

“Well, what happened there? Tell me.”

“This happened, your Excellency--_his strength_ surrounded us; he
climbed on the ramparts and had the best of it, your Excellency.”

“How? the best of it? But you beat them back?”

“Ah yes, beat them back! But when all _his strength_ came down upon us,
_he_ killed our men, and no help for it!”

The soldier was mistaken, for the trenches were ours; but, strange but
well-authenticated fact, a soldier wounded in a battle always believes
it a lost and a terribly bloody one.

“I was told, nevertheless, that you beat him back,” continued Galtzine,
good-naturedly; “perhaps it was after you came away. Did you leave there
long ago?”

“This very moment, your Excellency. The trenches must belong to him;
_he_ had the upperhand--”

“Why, aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? Abandon the trenches! It is
frightful,” said Galtzine, irritated by the indifference of the man.

“What could be done when _he_ had the _strength_.”

“Ah, your Excellency,” said a soldier borne on a stretcher, “why not
abandon them, when he has killed us all? If we had the _strength_ we
would never have abandoned them! But what was to be done? I had just
stuck one of them when I was hit--Oh, softly, brothers, softly! Oh, for
mercy’s sake!” groaned the wounded man.

“Hold on; far too many are coming back,” said Galtzine, again stopping
the tall soldier with the two muskets. “Why don’t you go back, hey?
Halt!”

The soldier obeyed, and took off his cap with his left hand.

“Where are you going to?” sternly demanded the prince, “and who gave you
permission, good-for--” But coming nearer, he saw that the soldier’s
right arm was covered with blood up to the elbow.

“I am wounded, your Excellency.”

“Wounded! where?”

“Here, by a bullet,” and the soldier showed his arm; “but I don’t know
what hit me a crack there.” He held his head down, and showed on the
back of his neck locks of hair glued together by coagulated blood.

“Whose gun is this?”

“It is a French carbine, your Excellency; I brought it away. I wouldn’t
have come away, but I had to lead that small soldier, who might fall
down;” and he pointed to an infantryman who was walking some paces ahead
of them leaning on his gun and dragging his left leg with difficulty.

Prince Galtzine was cruelly ashamed of his unjust suspicions, and
conscious that he was blushing, turned around. Without questioning or
looking after the wounded any more, he directed his steps towards the
field-hospital. Making his way to the entrance with difficulty through
soldiers, litters, stretcher-bearers who came in with the wounded and
went out with the dead, Galtzine entered as far as the first room, took
one look about him, recoiled involuntarily, and precipitately fled into
the street. What he saw there was far too horrible!


VII.

The great, high, sombre hall, lighted only by four or five candles,
where the surgeons moved about examining the wounded, was literally
crammed with people. Stretcher-bearers continually brought new wounded
and placed them side by side in rows on the ground. The crowd was so
great that the wretches pushed against one another and bathed in their
neighbors’ blood. Pools of stagnant gore stood in the empty places; from
the feverish breath of several hundred men, the perspiration of the
bearers, rose a heavy, thick, fetid atmosphere in which candles burned
dimly in different parts of the hall. A confused murmur of groans,
sighs, death-rattles, was interrupted by piercing cries. Sisters of
Charity, whose calm faces did not express woman’s futile and tearful
compassion, but an active and lively interest, glided here and there in
the midst of bloody coats and shirts, sometimes striding over the
wounded, carrying medicines, water, bandages, lint. Surgeons with their
sleeves turned up, on their knees before the wounded, examined and
probed the wounds by the flare of torches held by their assistants, in
spite of the terrible cries and supplications of the patients. Seated at
a little table beside the door a major wrote the number 532.

“Ivan Bogoïef, private in the third company of the regiment from C----,
_fractura femuris complicata_!” shouted the surgeon, who was dressing a
broken limb at the other end of the hall. “Turn him over.”

“Oh, oh, good fathers!” gasped the soldier, begging them to leave him in
peace.

“_Perforatio capites._ Simon Neferdof, lieutenant-colonel of the
infantry regiment from N----. Have a little patience, colonel. There is
no way of--I shall be obliged to leave you there,” said a third, who was
fumbling with a sort of hook in the head of the unfortunate officer.

“In Heaven’s name, get done quickly!”

“_Perforatio pectoris._ Sebastian Sereda, private--what regiment? But it
is no use, don’t write it down. _Moritur._ Carry him off,” added the
surgeon, leaving the dying man, who with upturned eyes was already
gasping.

Forty or fifty stretcher-bearers awaited their burdens at the door. The
living were sent to the hospital, the dead to the chapel. They waited in
silence, and sometimes a sigh escaped them as they contemplated this
picture.


VIII.

Kalouguine met many wounded on his way to the bastion. Knowing by
experience the bad influence of this spectacle on the spirit of a man
who is going under fire, he not only did not stop them to ask questions,
but he tried not to notice those he met. At the foot of the hill he ran
across a staff-officer coming down from the bastion full speed.

“Zobkine! Zobkine! one moment!”

“What?”

“Where do you come from?”

“From the quarters.”

“Well, what is going on there? Is it hot?”

“Terribly!”

And the officer galloped off. The fusillade seemed to grow less; on the
other hand, the cannonade began again with renewed vigor.

“Hum--a bad business!” thought Kalouguine. He had an indefinite but very
disagreeable feeling; he had even a presentiment, that is to say, a very
common thought--the thought of death.

Kalouguine possessed self-love and nerves of steel. He was, in a word,
what is commonly called a brave man. He did not give way to this first
impression; he raised his courage by recalling the story of one of
Napoleon’s aides-de-camp, who came to his chief with his head bloody,
after having carried an order with all speed.

“Are you wounded?” asked the emperor.

“I crave pardon, sire, I am dead!” replied the aide-de-camp, and falling
from his horse, died on the spot.

This anecdote pleased him. Putting himself in imagination in the place
of the aide-de-camp, he lashed his horse, put on a still more “Cossack”
gait, and rising in his stirrups to cast a look upon the platoon that
followed him on a trot, he reached the place where they had to dismount.
There he found four soldiers sitting on some rocks, smoking their pipes.

“What are you doing there?” he cried.

“We have been carrying a wounded man, your Excellency, and we are
resting,” said one of them, hiding his pipe behind his back and taking
off his cap.

“That’s it--you are resting! Forward! to your post!”

He put himself at their head and proceeded with them along the trench,
meeting wounded men at every step. On the top of the plateau he turned
to the left and found himself, a few steps farther on, completely
isolated. A piece of a shell whistled near him and buried itself in the
trenches; a mortar-bomb rising in the air seemed to fly straight for his
breast. Seized by a sudden terror, he rushed on several steps and threw
himself down. When the bomb had burst some distance off he was very
angry with himself and got up. He looked around to see if any one had
noticed him lying down; no one was near.

Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield
its place to another sentiment. He who had boasted of never bowing his
head, went along the trenches at a rapid pace, and almost on his hands
and feet.

“Ah! it is a bad sign,” thought he, as his foot tripped. “I shall be
killed, sure!”

He breathed with difficulty; he was bathed with sweat, and he was
astonished that he made no effort to overcome his fright. Suddenly, at
the sound of a step which approached, he quickly straightened up, raised
his head, clinked his sabre with a swagger, and lessened his pace. He
met an officer of sappers and a sailor. The former shouted, “Lie down!”
pointing to the luminous point of a bomb-shell, which came nearer,
redoubling its speed and its brightness.

The projectile struck in the side of the trench. At the cry of the
officer, Kalouguine made a slight, involuntary bow, then continued on
his way without a frown.

“There’s a brave fellow!” said the sailor who coolly watched the fall of
the bomb. His practised eye had calculated that the pieces would not
fall into the trench. “He wouldn’t lie down!”

In order to reach the bomb-proof occupied by the commander of the
bastion, Kalouguine had only one more open space to pass when he felt
himself again overcome by a stupid fear. His heart beat as if it would
burst, the blood rushed to his head, and it was only by a violent effort
of self-control that he reached the shelter at a run.

“Why are you so out of breath?” asked the general, after he had
delivered the order he brought.

“I walked very quickly, Excellency.”

“Can I offer you a glass of wine?”

Kalouguine drank a bumper and lit a cigarette. The engagement was
finished, but a violent cannonade continued on both sides. The commander
of the bastion and several officers, among them Praskoukine, were
assembled in the bomb-proof; they were talking over the details of the
affair. The interior, covered with figured paper with a blue ground,
was furnished with a lounge, a bed, a table covered with papers, and
decorated with a clock hanging on the wall and an image, before which
burned a small lamp. Seated in this comfortable room, Kalouguine saw all
the marks of a quiet life; he measured with his eye the great beams of
the ceiling half a yard thick; he heard the noise of the cannonade,
deafened by the bomb-proofs, and he could not understand how he could
have yielded twice to unpardonable attacks of weakness. Angry with
himself, he would have liked to expose himself to danger again to put
his courage to the proof.

A naval officer with a great mustache and a cross of Saint George on his
staff overcoat came at this moment to beg the general to give him some
workmen to repair two sand-bag embrasures in the battery.

“I am very glad to see you, captain,” said Kalouguine to the new-comer;
“the general charged me to ask you if your cannon can fire grape into
the trenches.”

“One single gun,” replied the captain, with a morose air.

“Let’s go and look at them!”

The officer frowned and growled out,

“I have just passed the whole night there, and I have come in to rest a
little; can’t you go there alone? You will find my second in command,
Lieutenant Kartz, who will show you everything.”

The captain had commanded this same battery for full six months, and it
was one of the most dangerous posts. He had not left the bastion,
indeed, since the beginning of the siege, and even before the
construction of the bomb-proof shelters. He had gained among the sailors
a reputation for invincible courage. On this account his refusal was a
lively surprise to Kalouguine.

“That’s what reputations are!” thought the latter. “Then I will go
alone, if you allow me,” he added aloud, in a mocking tone, to which the
officer paid no attention.

Kalouguine forgot that this man counted six whole months of life in the
bastion, while he, altogether, at different times, had not passed more
than fifty hours there. Vanity, desire to shine, to get a reward, to
make a reputation, even the delight in danger, incited him still more,
while the captain had become indifferent to all that. He had also made
a show, had performed courageous deeds, had uselessly risked his life,
had hoped for and had received rewards, had established his reputation
as a brave officer. But to-day these stimulants had lost their power
over him; he looked at things differently. Well understanding that he
had little chance of escaping death after six months in the bastions, he
did not thoughtlessly risk his life, and limited himself to fulfilling
strictly his duty. In fact, the young lieutenant appointed to his
battery only eight days ago, and Kalouguine to whom this lieutenant
showed it in detail, seemed ten times braver than the captain. Rising in
each other’s estimation, these two hung out of the embrasures and
climbed over the ramparts.

His inspection ended, and as he was returning to the bomb-proof,
Kalouguine ran against the general, who was going to the observation
tower, followed by his staff.

“Captain Praskoukine,” ordered the general, “go down, I beg, into the
quarters on the right. You will find there the second battalion from
M---- which is working down there. Order it to stop work, to retire
without noise, and to rejoin its regiment in the reserve force at the
bottom of the hill. You understand? Lead it yourself to the regiment.”

“I’m off,” replied Praskoukine, and he departed on the run.

The cannonade diminished in violence.


IX.

“Are you the second battalion of the regiment from M----?” asked
Praskoukine of a soldier who was carrying sand-bags.

“Yes.”

“Where is the commander?”

Mikhaïloff, supposing that the captain of the company was wanted, came
out of his pit, raised his hand to his cap, and approached Praskoukine,
whom he took for a commanding officer.

“The general orders you--you must--you must retire at once--without any
noise--to the rear; that is, to the reserve force,” said Praskoukine,
stealthily looking in the direction of the enemy’s fire.

Having recognized his comrade, and having gained an idea of the
manœuvre, Mikhaïloff dropped his hand and gave the order to the
soldiers. They took their muskets, put on their coats, and marched off.

He who has never felt it cannot appreciate the joy which a man
experiences at leaving, after three hours of bombardment, a place as
dangerous as the quarters were. During these three hours Mikhaïloff,
who, not without reason, was thinking of death as an inevitable thing,
had the time to get accustomed to the notion that he would surely be
killed, and that he no longer belonged to the living world. In spite of
that, it was by a violent effort that he kept from running when he came
out of the quarters at the head of his company, side by side with
Praskoukine.

“_Au revoir! bon voyage!_” shouted the major who commanded the battalion
left in the quarters. Mikhaïloff had shared his cheese with him, both of
them seated in a pit in shelter of the parapet.

“The same to you; good-luck! It seems to me it is getting quieter.”

But scarcely had he uttered these words than the enemy, who had
doubtless noticed the movement, began to fire his best; our side
replied, and the cannonade began again with violence. The stars were
shining, but with little light, for the night was dark. The shots and
the shell explosions alone lighted for an instant the surrounding
objects. The soldiers marched rapidly and in silence, some hurrying past
the others: only the regular sound of their steps could be heard on the
hardened earth, accompanied by the incessant roar of the cannonade, the
click of bayonets striking one another, the sigh or the prayer of a
soldier: “Lord! Lord!”

Occasionally a wounded man groaned, and a stretcher was called for. In
the company which Mikhaïloff commanded, the artillery fire had disabled
twenty-six men since the day before.

A flash illuminated the distant darkness of the horizon; the sentinel on
the bastion cried, “Can--non!” and a ball, whistling over the company,
buried itself in the ground, which it ploughed up, sending the stones
flying about.

“The devil take them! How slowly they march!” thought Praskoukine, who,
following Mikhaïloff, was looking behind him at every step. “I could
run ahead, since I have delivered the order--Indeed, no! they would say
I was a coward! Whatever happens I will march along with them.”

“Why is he following me?” said Mikhaïloff, on his side. “I always
noticed he brings bad luck. There comes another, straight towards us,
seems to me.”

A few hundred steps farther on they met Kalouguine on his way to the
quarters, bravely rattling his sword. The general had sent him to ask
how the work went on, but at the sight of Mikhaïloff he said to himself
that, instead of exposing himself to this terrible fire, he could just
as well find out by asking the officer who came from there. Mikhaïloff
gave him, in fact, all the details. Kalouguine accompanied him to the
end of the path, and re-entered the trench which led to the bomb-proof.

“What’s the news?” asked the officer, who was supping alone in the
earthwork.

“Nothing. I don’t believe there will be any more fighting.”

“How! no more fighting? On the contrary, the general has just gone up to
the bastion. A new regiment has arrived. Besides--listen!--the
fusillade is beginning again. Don’t go. What’s the use of it?” added the
officer, as Kalouguine made a movement.

“Nevertheless, I ought to go,” said the latter to himself. “However,
haven’t I been exposed to danger long enough to-day? The fusillade is
terrible.”

“It is true,” he continued aloud, “I had better wait here.”

Twenty minutes later the general came back, accompanied by his officers,
among whom was the yunker, Baron Pesth, but Praskoukine was not with
them. Our troops had retaken and reoccupied the quarters. After having
heard the details of the affair, Kalouguine went out of the shelter with
Pesth.


X.

“You have some blood on your overcoat; were you fighting hand-to-hand?”
asked Kalouguine.

“Oh! it is frightful! Imagine--” And Pesth began to relate how he had
led his company after the death of his chief, how he had killed a
Frenchman, and how, without his assistance, the battle would have been
lost. The foundation of the tale, that is, the death of the chief and
the Frenchman killed by Pesth, was true, but the yunker, elaborating the
details, enlarged on them and boasted.

He boasted without premeditation. During the whole affair he had lived
in a fantastic mist, so much so that everything that had happened seemed
to him to have taken place vaguely, God knows where or how, and to
belong to some one besides himself. Naturally enough he tried to invent
incidents to his own advantage. However, this is the way the thing
happened:

The battalion to which he had been detailed to take part in the sortie
remained two hours under the enemy’s fire, then the commander said a few
words, the company chiefs began to move about, the troops left the
shelter of the parapet and were drawn up in columns a hundred paces
farther on. Pesth was ordered to place himself on the flank of the
second company. Neither understanding the situation nor the movement,
the yunker, with restrained breath and a prey to a nervous tremor which
ran down his back, placed himself at the post indicated, and gazed
mechanically before him into the distant darkness, expecting something
terrible. However, the sentiment of fear was not the dominating one in
his case, for the firing had ceased. What appeared to him strange,
uncomfortable, was to find himself in the open field outside the
fortifications.

The commander of the battalion once more pronounced certain words, which
were again repeated in a low voice by the officers, and suddenly the
black wall formed by the first company sank down. The order to lie down
had been given; the second company did the same, and Pesth in lying down
pricked his hand with some sharp thing. The small silhouette of the
captain of the second company alone remained standing, and he brandished
a naked sword without ceasing to talk and to walk back and forth in
front of the soldiers.

“Attention, children! Show yourselves brave men! No firing! get at the
wretches with the bayonet! When I shout ‘hurrah!’ follow me--closely and
all together--we will show them what we can do. We won’t cover
ourselves with shame, will we, children? For the Czar, our father!”

“What’s the name of the company chief?” asked Pesth from a yunker next
to him. “He is a brave one!”

“Yes, he’s always so under fire. He is called Lissinkoffsky.”

Just at this moment a flame spurted out, followed by a deafening report;
splinters and stones flew in the air. Fifty seconds later one of the
stones fell from a great height and crushed the foot of a soldier. A
shell had fallen in the middle of the company, a proof that the French
had noticed the column.

“Ah! you are sending us shells now! Let us get at you and you will taste
the Russian bayonet, curse you!”

The captain shouted so loud that the commander of the battalion ordered
him to be silent.

The first company rose up, after that the second; the soldiers took up
their muskets and the battalion advanced.

Pesth, seized by a foolish terror, could not remember whether they
marched far; he went on like a drunken man. Suddenly thousands of fires
flashed on all sides, with whizzings and crackings. He gave a yell and
ran forward, because they all yelled and ran; then he tripped and fell
over something. It was the company chief, wounded at the head of his
troops, who took the yunker for a Frenchman and seized his leg. Pesth
pulled his feet away and got up. Some one threw himself on him in the
darkness, and he was almost knocked over again. A voice shouted to him,
“Kill him, then! What are you waiting for?”

A hand seized his musket, the point of his bayonet buried itself in
something soft.

“Ah! Dieu!”

These words were spoken in French, with an accent of pain and fright.
The yunker knew he had just killed a Frenchman. A cold sweat moistened
his whole body; he began to tremble, and threw down his musket. But that
lasted only a second; the thought that he was a hero came to his mind.
Picking up his gun, he left the dead man, running and shouting “Hurrah!”
with the rest. Twenty steps farther on he reached the trench where our
troops and the commander of battalion were.

“I have killed one!” said he to the latter.

“You are a brave fellow, baron,” was the reply.


XI.

“Did you know that Praskoukine is dead?” said Pesth to Kalouguine on the
way back.

“It isn’t possible!”

“Why not? I saw him myself.”

“Good-by; I am in a hurry.”

“A lucky day!” thought Kalouguine, as he was entering his quarters. “For
the first time I am lucky. It has been a brilliant affair; I have come
out of it safe and sound; there must be recommendations for decoration.
A sword of honor will be the least they can give me. Faith, I have well
deserved it!”

He made his report to the general, and went to his room. Prince Galtzine
was reading a book at the table, and had been waiting for him a long
time.

It was with an inexpressible joy that Kalouguine found himself at home,
far from danger. Lying on his bed in his nightshirt, he related to
Galtzine the incidents of the fight. These incidents naturally arranged
themselves so as to make it appear how he, Kalouguine, was a brave and
capable officer. He discreetly touched on this because no one could be
ignorant of it, and no one, with the exception of the defunct captain
Praskoukine, had the right to doubt it. The latter, although he felt
very much honored to walk arm-in-arm with the aide-de-camp, had told one
of his friends in his very ear the evening before that Kalouguine--a
very good fellow, however--did not like to walk on the bastions.

We left Praskoukine coming back with Mikhaïloff. He reached a less
exposed place and began to breathe again, when he perceived, on turning
around, the sudden light of a flash. The sentinel shouted, “Mor--tar!”
And one of the soldiers who followed added, “It is coming straight into
the bastion!” Mikhaïloff looked. The luminous point of the bomb-shell
seemed to stop directly over his head, exactly the moment when it was
impossible to tell what direction it was going to take. That was for the
space of a second. Suddenly, redoubling its speed, the projectile came
nearer and nearer. The sparks of the fuse could be seen flying out, the
dismal hissing was plainly audible. It was going to drop right in the
midst of the battalion. “To earth!” shouted a voice. Mikhaïloff and
Praskoukine obeyed. The latter, with shut eyes, heard the shell fall
somewhere on the hard earth very near him. A second, which appeared to
him an hour, passed, and the shell did not burst. Praskoukine was
frightened; then he asked himself what cause he had for fear. Perhaps it
had fallen farther away, and he wrongly imagined that he heard the fuse
hissing near him. Opening his eyes, he was satisfied to see Mikhaïloff
stretched motionless at his feet; but at the same time he perceived, a
yard off, the lighted fuse of the shell spinning around like a top. A
glacial terror, which stifled every thought, every sentiment, took
possession of his soul. He hid his face in his hands.

Another second passed, during which a whole world of thoughts, of hopes,
of sensations, and of souvenirs passed through his mind.

“Whom will it kill? Me or Mikhaïloff, or indeed both of us together? If
it is I, where will it hit me? If in the head, it will be all over; if
on the foot, they will cut it off, then I shall insist that they give me
chloroform, and I may get well. Perhaps Mikhaïloff alone will be killed,
and later I will tell how we were close together, and how I was covered
with his blood. No, no! it is nearer me--it will be I!”

Then he remembered the twelve rubles he owed Mikhaïloff, and another
debt left at Petersburg, which ought to have been paid long ago. A
Bohemian air that he sang the evening before came to his mind. He also
saw in his imagination the lady he was in love with in her lilac trimmed
bonnet; the man who had insulted him five years before, and whom he had
never taken vengeance on. But in the midst of these and many other
souvenirs the present feeling--the expectation of death--did not leave
him. “Perhaps it isn’t going to explode!” he thought, and was on the
point of opening his eyes with desperate boldness. But at this instant a
red fire struck his eyeballs through the closed lids, something hit him
in the middle of the chest with a terrible crash. He ran forward at
random, entangled his feet in his sword, stumbled, and fell on his side.

“God be praised, I am only bruised.”

This was his first thought, and he wanted to feel of his breast, but his
hands seemed as if they were tied. A vice griped his head, soldiers ran
before his eyes, and he mechanically counted them:

“One, two, three soldiers, and, besides, an officer who is losing his
cloak!”

A new light flashed; he wondered what had fired. Was it a mortar or a
cannon? Doubtless a cannon. Another shot, more soldiers--five, six,
seven. They passed in front of him, and suddenly he became terribly
afraid of being crushed by them. He wanted to cry out, to say that he
was bruised, but his lips were dry, his tongue was glued to the roof of
his mouth. He had a burning thirst. He felt that his breast was damp,
and the sensation of this moisture made him think of water.... He would
have liked to drink that which drenched him.

“I must have knocked the skin off in falling,” he said to himself, more
and more frightened at the idea of being crushed by the soldiers who
were running in crowds before him. He tried again to cry out,

“Take me!--”

But instead of that he uttered a groan so terrible that he was
frightened at it himself. Then red sparks danced before his eyes; it
seemed as if the soldiers were piling stones on him. The sparks danced
more rapidly, the stones piled on him stifled him more and more. He
stretched himself out, he ceased to see, to hear, to think, to feel. He
had been killed instantly by a piece of shell striking him full in the
breast.


XII.

Mikhaïloff also threw himself down on seeing the shell. Like
Praskoukine, he thought of a crowd of things during the two seconds
which preceded the explosion. He said his prayers mentally, repeating,

“May Thy will be done! Why, O Lord, am I a soldier? Why did I exchange
into the infantry to make this campaign? Why did I not remain in the
uhlan regiment, in the province of F----, near my friend Natacha? and
now see what is going to happen to me.”

He began to count--“One, two, three, four,” saying to himself that if
the shell exploded on an even number he would live, if at an odd number
he would be killed.

“It is all over, I am killed!” he thought, at the sound of the
explosion, without thinking any more of odd or even. Struck on the head,
he felt a terrible pain.

“Lord, pardon my sins!” he murmured, clasping his hands.

He tried to rise, and fell unconscious, face downward. His first
sensation when he came to himself was of blood running from his nose.
The pain in his head was much lessened.

“My soul is departing. What will there be over _yonder_? My God, receive
my soul in peace! It is nevertheless strange,” he reasoned, “that I am
dying, and I can distinctly hear the footsteps of the soldiers and the
sound of shots!”

“A stretcher this way! The company chief is killed!” cried a voice which
he recognized, that of the drummer Ignatieff.

Some one raised him up by the shoulders; he opened his eyes with an
effort and saw the dark-blue sky over his head, myriads of stars, and
two shells flying through space as if they were racing with each other.
He saw Ignatieff, soldiers loaded down with stretchers and with muskets,
the slope of the intrenchment, and suddenly he understood he was still
in the world.

A stone had slightly wounded him on the head. His first impression was
almost a regret. He felt so well, so quietly prepared to go over
_yonder_, that the return to reality, the sight of the shells, of the
trenches, and of blood, was painful to him. The second impression was an
involuntary joy at feeling himself alive, and the third was the desire
to leave the bastion as quickly as possible. The drummer bandaged his
chief’s head and led him towards the field-hospital, supporting him
under his arm.

“Where am I going, and what for?” thought the captain, coming to himself
a little. “My duty is to remain with my company--all the more,”
whispered a little voice within him, “since it will shortly be out of
range of the enemy’s fire.”

“It’s no use, my friend,” he said to the drummer, taking away his arm.
“I won’t go to the field-hospital; I will stay with my company.”

“You had better let yourself be properly taken care of, your Excellency.
It don’t seem to be anything at first, but it may grow worse. Indeed,
your Excellency--”

Mikhaïloff stopped, undecided what to do. He would have followed
Ignatieff’s advice, perhaps, but he saw what a number of wounded men
crowded the hospital, almost all of them seriously hurt.

“Perhaps the doctor will make fun of my scratch,” he said to himself,
and without listening to the drummer’s arguments he went with a firm
step to join his company.

“Where is officer Praskoukine, who was beside me a short time ago?” he
asked of the sub-lieutenant whom he found at the head of the company.

“I don’t know; I think he was killed,” hesitatingly replied the latter.

“Killed or wounded? Why, don’t you know? He was marching with us. Why
didn’t you bring him off?”

“It wasn’t possible in that furnace.”

“Oh! why did you abandon a living man, Mikhaïl Ivanitch?” said
Mikhaïloff, with a vexed tone. “If he is dead, we must bring off his
body.”

“How can he be alive? Indeed I tell you I went up to him, and I
saw--What would you have? We scarcely had time to bring off our own men.
Ah! the devils, how they are firing shell now!”

Mikhaïloff sat down, and held his head in his hands. The walk had
increased the violence of the pain.

“No,” said he, “we must certainly go and get him. Perhaps he is alive.
It is our duty, Mikhaïl Ivanitch.”

Mikhaïl Ivanitch did not reply.

“He didn’t think of bringing him off at the time, and now I must detail
men for it. Why send them into this hell-fire, which will kill them, for
nothing?” thought Mikhaïloff.

“Children, we must go back to get that officer who is wounded yonder in
the ditch,” he said, without raising his voice, and in a tone which had
no authority, for he guessed how disagreeable the execution of this
order would be to the men.

But since he addressed himself to no one in particular, not one of them
came forward at this call.

“Who knows? he is dead, perhaps, and it isn’t worth while to risk our
men uselessly. It is my fault; I ought to have thought of it. I will go
alone; it is my duty. Mikhaïl Ivanitch,” he added, aloud, “lead on the
company, I will overtake you.”

Gathering up the folds of his cloak with one hand, he touched the image
of St. Mitrophanes with the other. He wore this on his breast as a sign
of special devotion to the blessed one.

The captain retraced his steps, assured himself that Praskoukine was
really dead, and came back holding in his hand the bandage which had
become unwound from his own head. The battalion was already at the foot
of the hill, and almost out of reach of the balls, when Mikhaïloff
rejoined it. A few stray shells still came in their direction.

“I must go to-morrow and be registered in the field-hospital,” said the
captain to himself while the surgeon was dressing his wound.


XIII.

Hundreds of mutilated, freshly bleeding bodies, which two hours before
were full of hopes and of different desires, sublime or humble, lay
with stiffened limbs in the flowery and dew-bathed valley which
separated the bastion from the intrenchment, or on the smooth floor of
the little mortuary chapel of Sebastopol. The dry lips of all of these
men murmured prayers, curses, or groans. They crawled, they turned on
their sides, some were abandoned among the corpses of the blossom-strewn
valley, others lay on stretchers, on cots, and on the damp floor of the
field-hospital. Notwithstanding all this, the heavens shed their morning
light over Mount Saponné as on the preceding days, the sparkling stars
grew pale, a white mist rose from the sombre and plaintively swelling
sea, the east grew purple with the dawn, and long, flame-colored clouds
stretched along the blue horizon. As on the days before, the grand torch
mounted slowly, powerful and proud, promising joy, love, and happiness
to the awakened world.


XIV.

On the following evening the band of the regiment of chasseurs again
played on the boulevard. Around the pavilion officers, yunkers,
soldiers, and young women promenaded with a festal air in the paths of
white flowering acacias.

Kalouguine, Prince Galtzine, and another colonel marched arm-in-arm
along the street, talking of the affair of the day before. The chief
subject of this conversation was, as it always is, not of the affair
itself, but of the part the talkers had taken in it. The expression of
their faces, the sound of their voices, had something serious in it, and
it might have been supposed that the losses profoundly affected them.
But, to tell the truth, since no one among them had lost any one dear to
him, they put on this officially mournful expression for propriety’s
sake. Kalouguine and the colonel, although they were very good fellows,
would have asked nothing better than to be present at a similar
engagement every day, in order to receive each time a sword of honor or
the rank of major-general. When I hear a conqueror who sends to their
destruction millions of men in order to satisfy his personal ambition
called a monster, I always want to laugh. Ask sub-lieutenants Petrouchef
Antonoff, and others, and you will see that each is a little Napoleon, a
monster ready to engage in battle, to kill a hundred men, in order to
obtain one more little star or an increase of pay.

“I ask pardon,” said the colonel, “the affair began on the left flank.
_I was there._”

“Perhaps so,” replied Kalouguine, “for I was almost all the time on the
right flank. I went there twice, first to seek the general, then simply
of my own accord to look on. It was there it was hot!”

“If Kalouguine says so it is a fact,” continued the colonel, turning
towards Galtzine. “Do you know that only to-day V---- told me you were a
brave man? Our losses are truly frightful. In my own regiment four
hundred men disabled! I don’t understand how I came out alive.”

At the other end of the boulevard they saw Mikhaïloff’s bandaged head
arise. He was coming to meet them.

“Are you wounded, captain?” asked Kalouguine.

“Slightly--by a stone,” said Mikhaïloff.

“_Le pavillon est il déjà amené?_” said Prince Galtzine, looking over
the head of the captain, and addressing himself to no one in
particular.

“_Non pas encore_,” said Mikhaïloff, very anxious to show that he knew
French.

“Does the armistice still go on?” asked Galtzine, addressing him
politely in Russian, as if to say to the captain, “I know you speak
French with difficulty, why not simply speak Russian?” Upon this the
aides-de-camp went away from Mikhaïloff, who felt, as on the evening
before, very lonesome. Not wishing to come in contact with some of them,
and not making up his mind to approach others, he limited himself to
saluting certain officers, and sat down near the Kazarsky monument to
smoke a cigarette.

Baron Pesth also made his appearance on the boulevard. He related that
he had taken part in the negotiations of the armistice, that he had
chatted with the French officers, and that one of them had said to him,

“If daylight had come an hour later the ambuscades would have been
retaken.”

To which he had replied,

“Sir, I don’t say they would not have been, so that I shall not
contradict you,” and his answer had filled him with pride.

In reality, although he had been present at the conclusion of the
armistice, and had been very desirous of talking with the French, he
had said nothing remarkable. The yunker simply promenaded for a long
time in front of the lines, asking the nearest Frenchmen,

“What regiment do you belong to?”

They answered him, and that was all. As he advanced a little beyond the
neutral zone, a French sentinel, who did not imagine that the Russian
understood his language, flung a formidable curse at him.

“He is coming to examine our works, this damned--”

Indeed, after that the yunker returned home, composing along the road
the French phrases he had just retailed to his acquaintances.

Captain Zobkine was also seen on the promenade, shouting with a loud
voice; Captain Objogoff, with his torn uniform; the captain of
artillery, who asked no favors of any one; the yunker, in love--in a
word, all the personages of the day before, swayed by the same eternal
moving forces. Praskoukine, Neferdoff, and several others were alone
absent. Nobody thought of them. Nevertheless, their bodies were neither
washed, nor dressed, nor buried in the earth.


XV.

White flags are flying on our fortifications and in the French
intrenchments. In the blossom-covered valley mutilated bodies, clothed
in blue or in gray, with bare feet, lie in heaps, and the men are
carrying them off to place them in carts. The air is poisoned by the
odor of the corpses. Crowds of people pour out of Sebastopol and out of
the French camp to witness this spectacle. The different sides meet each
other on this ground with eager and kindly curiosity.

Listen to the words exchanged between them. On this side, in a small
group of French and Russians, a young officer is examining a
cartridge-box. Although he speaks bad French, he can make himself
understood.

“And why that--that bird?” he asks.

“Because it is the cartridge-box of a regiment of the guard, sir. It is
ornamented with the imperial eagle.”

“And you--you belong to the guard?”

“Pardon, sir, to the sixth regiment of the line.”

“And this--where was this bought?” The officer points to the little
wooden mouth-piece which holds the Frenchman’s cigarette.

“At Balaklava, sir. It is only palm-wood.”

“Pretty,” replies the officer, obliged to make use of the few words he
knew, and which, _nolens volens,_ intruded themselves into the
conversation.

“You will oblige me if you will keep that as a souvenir of this
meeting.”

The Frenchman throws away his cigarette, blows in the mouth-piece, and
politely presents it to the officer with a salute. The latter gives him
his in exchange. All the French and Russian by-standers smile and seem
delighted.

Here comes a shrewd-looking infantryman in a red shirt, his overcoat
thrown over his shoulders. His face is full of good spirits and
curiosity. Accompanied by two comrades, their hands behind their backs,
he approaches and asks a Frenchman for a light. The latter blows into
his pipe, shakes it, and offers a light to the Russian.

“_Tabac bonn!_” says the soldier in the red shirt, and the by-standers
smile.

“Yes, good tobacco--Turkish tobacco!” answers the Frenchman; “and with
you Russian tobacco good?”

“_Rouss bonn!_” repeats the soldier in the red shirt, and this time the
spectators burst out laughing.

“_Français pas bonn, bonn jour, mousiou!_” continues the soldier, making
a show of all he knew in French, laughing, and tapping on the stomach of
the man who was talking with him. The Frenchmen also laugh.

“They are not pretty, these Russian B----,” said a Zouave.

“What are they laughing at?” asks another, with an Italian accent.

“_Le caftan bonn!_” the bold soldier begins again, examining the
embroidered uniform of the Zouave.

“To your places, _sacré nom_!” shouts a French corporal at this instant.

The soldiers sulkily disperse.

Nevertheless, our young cavalry lieutenant is strutting in a group of
the enemy’s officers.

“I knew Count Sasonoff well,” says one of the latter. “He is one of the
true Russian counts, such as we like.”

“I also knew a Sasonoff,” replies the cavalry officer, “but he wasn’t a
count, as far as I know. He is a small, dark man about your age.”

“That’s it, sir--that’s he. Oh, how I would like to see the dear count!
If you see him, give him my regards. Captain Latour,” he adds, bowing.

“What a miserable business we are carrying on! It was hot last night,
wasn’t it?” continues the cavalry officer, anxious to keep up the
conversation, and pointing to the corpses.

“Oh, sir, it is frightful. But what fine fellows your soldiers are! It
is a pleasure to fight with fine fellows like that.”

“It must be confessed that your fellows are up to snuff also,” replies
the Russian horseman, with a salute, satisfied that he has given him a
good answer.

But enough on this subject. Let us watch that ten-year-old boy, with an
old worn cap on his head which doubtless belonged to his father, and
with naked legs and large shoes on his feet, dressed in a pair of cotton
trousers, held up by a single brace. He came out of the fortifications
at the beginning of the truce. He has been walking about ever since on
the low ground, examining with stupid curiosity the French soldiers and
the dead bodies lying on the ground. He is gathering the little blue
field-flowers with which the valley is strewn. He retraces his steps
with a great bouquet, holding his nose so as not to smell the fetid odor
that comes on the wind. Stopping near a heap of corpses, he looks a long
time at a headless, hideous, dead man. After an examination, he goes
near and touches with his foot the arm stretched stiffly in the air. As
he presses harder on it the arm moves and falls into place. The boy
gives a cry, hides his face in the flowers, and enters the
fortifications, running at full speed.

Yes, flags of truce float over the bastions and on the intrenchments;
the brilliantly shining sun is setting into the blue sea, which ripples
and sparkles under the golden rays. Thousands of people assemble, look
at each other, chat, laugh. These people, who are Christians, who
profess to obey the great law of love and devotion, are looking at their
work without throwing themselves down in repentance at the knees of Him
who gave them life, and with life the fear of death, the love of the
good and the beautiful. They do not embrace each other like brothers,
and shed tears of joy and happiness! We must at least take consolation
in the thought that we did not begin the war, that we are only defending
our country, our native land. The white flags are lowered; the engines
of death and of suffering thunder once more; again a flood of innocent
blood is shed, and groans and curses can be heard.

I have said what I have wanted to say for this time at least, but a
painful doubt overwhelms me. It would have been better, perhaps, to have
kept silent, for possibly what I have uttered is among those pernicious
truths obscurely hidden away in every one’s soul, and which, in order to
remain harmless, must not be expressed; just as old wine must not be
disturbed lest the sediment rise and make the liquid turbid. Where,
then, in my tale do we see the evil we must avoid, and the good towards
which we must strive to go? Where is the traitor? Where is the hero? All
are good and all are bad. It is not Kalouguine with his brilliant
courage, his gentlemanly bravado, and his vanity--the chief motive power
of all his actions; it is not Praskoukine, an inoffensive cipher,
although he fell on the battle-field for his faith, his ruler, and his
country; nor timid Mikhaïloff; nor Pesth, that child with no conviction
and no moral sense, who can pass for traitors or for heroes.

No; the hero of my tale, the one I love with all the power of my soul,
the one I have tried to reproduce in all his beauty, just as he has
been, is, and always will be beautiful, is Truth.




_SEBASTOPOL IN AUGUST, 1855._


I.

Towards the end of the month of August there was slowly moving along the
stony Sebastopol road between Douvanka[E] and Baktchisaraï an officer’s
carriage of peculiar form, unknown elsewhere, which held a middle place
in construction between a basket-wagon, a Jewish britchka, and a Russian
cart.

In this carriage a servant, dressed in linen, with a soft and shapeless
officer’s cap on his head, held the reins. Seated behind him, on parcels
and bags covered with a soldier’s overcoat, was an officer in a summer
cloak, small in stature, as well as could be judged from the position he
was in, who was less remarkable for the massive squareness of his
shoulders than for the thickness of his body between his chest and his
back. His neck from the nape to the shoulder was heavy and largely
developed, and the muscles were firmly extended. What is commonly spoken
of as a waist did not exist, nor the stomach either, although he was far
from being fat; and his face, upon which was spread a layer of yellow
and unhealthy sunburn, was noticeable by its thinness. It would have
passed for an attractive one if it had not been for a certain bloating
of the flesh and a skin furrowed by deep wrinkles, which, interweaving,
distorted the features, took away all freshness, and gave a brutal
expression. His small, brown, extraordinarily keen eyes had an almost
impudent look. His very thick mustache, which he was in the habit of
biting, did not extend much in breadth. His cheeks and his chin, which
he had not shaved for two days, were covered with a black and thick
beard. Wounded on the head by a piece of shell on the 10th of May, and
still wearing a bandage, he felt, nevertheless, entirely cured, and left
the hospital at Sympheropol to join his regiment, posted somewhere there
in the direction where shots could be heard; but he had not been able to
find out whether it was at Sebastopol itself or at Severnaïa or at
Inkerman. The cannonade was distinctly heard, and seemed very near when
the hills did not cut off the sound which was brought by the wind.
Occasionally a tremendous explosion shook the air and made you tremble
in spite of yourself. Now and then less violent noises, like a
drum-beat, followed each other at short intervals, intermingled with a
deafening rumble; or perhaps all was confounded in a hubbub of prolonged
rolls, like peals of thunder at the height of a storm when the rain
begins to fall. Every one said, and indeed it could be heard, that the
violence of the bombardment was terrible. The officer urged his servant
to hasten. They met a line of carts driven by Russian peasants, who had
carried provisions to Sebastopol, and who were on their way back,
bringing sick and wounded soldiers in gray overcoats, sailors in black
pilot-coats, volunteers in red fez caps, and bearded militiamen. The
officer’s carriage was forced to stop, and he, grimacing and squinting
his eyes in the impenetrable and motionless cloud of dust raised by the
carts, which flew into the eyes and ears on all sides, examined the
faces as they passed by.

“There is a sick soldier of our company,” said the servant, turning
towards his master and pointing to a wounded man.

Seated sidewise on the front of his cart a Russian peasant, wearing his
whole beard, a felt cap on his head, was tying a knot in an enormous
whip, which he held by the handle under his elbow. He turned his back to
four or five soldiers shaken and tossed about in the vehicle. One of
them, his arm tied up, his overcoat thrown on over his shirt, seated
erect and firm, although somewhat pale and thin, occupied the middle
place. Perceiving the officer, he instinctively raised his hand to his
cap, but remembering his wound, he made believe he wanted to scratch his
head. Another one was lying down beside him on the bottom of the cart.
All that could be seen of him was his two hands clinging to the wooden
bars, and his two raised knees swinging nervelessly like two hempen
dish-rags. A third, with swollen face, his head wrapped with a cloth on
which was placed his soldier’s cap, seated sidewise, his legs hanging
outside and grazing the wheel, was dozing, his hands resting on his
knees.

“Doljikoff!” the traveller shouted at him.

“Present!” replied the latter, opening his eyes and taking off his cap.
His bass voice was so full, so tremendous, that it seemed to come out of
the chest of twenty soldiers together.

“When were you wounded?”

“Health to your Excellency!”[F] he cried with his strong voice, his
glassy and swollen eyes growing animated at the sight of his superior
officer.

“Where is the regiment?”

“At Sebastopol, your Excellency. They are thinking of going away from
there Wednesday.”

“Where to?”

“They don’t know--to Severnaïa, no doubt, your Excellency. At present,”
he continued, dragging his words, “_he_ is firing straight through
everything, especially with shells, even away into the bay. _He_ is
firing in a frightful manner!--” And he added words which could not be
understood; but from his face and from his position it could be guessed
that, with a suffering man’s sense of injury, he was saying something of
a not very consoling nature.

Sub-lieutenant Koseltzoff, who had just asked these questions, was
neither an officer of ordinary stamp nor among the number of those who
live and act in a certain way because others live and act thus. His
nature had been richly endowed with inferior qualities. He sang and
played the guitar in an agreeable manner, he conversed well, and wrote
with facility, especially official correspondence, of which he had got
the trick during his service as battalion aide-de-camp. His energy was
remarkable, but this energy only received its impulse from self-love,
and although grafted on this second-rate capacity, it formed a salient
and characteristic trait of his nature. That kind of self-love which is
most commonly developed among men, especially among military men, was so
filtered through his existence that he did not conceive a possible
choice between “first or nothing.” Self-love was then the motive force
of his most intimate enthusiasms. Even alone in his own presence he was
fond of considering himself superior to those with whom he compared
himself.

“Come! I am not going to be the one to listen to ‘Moscow’s’[G] chatter!”
murmured the sub-lieutenant, whose thoughts had been troubled somewhat
by meeting the train of wounded; and the soldier’s words, the importance
of which was increased and confirmed at each step by the sound of the
cannonade, weighed heavily on his heart.

“They are curious fellows these ‘Moscows’--Come, Nicolaïeff, forward!
you are asleep, I think,” he angrily shouted at his servant, throwing
back the lappels of his coat.

Nicolaïeff shook the reins, made a little encouraging sound with his
lips, and the wagon went off at a trot.

“We will stop only to feed them,” said the officer, “and then on the
road--forward!”


II.

Just as he entered the street of Douvanka, where everything was in
ruins, Sub-lieutenant Koseltzoff was stopped by a wagon-train of
cannon-balls and shells going towards Sebastopol, which was halted in
the middle of the road.

Two infantrymen, seated in the dust on the stones of an overthrown wall,
were eating bread and watermelon.

“Are you going far, fellow-countryman?” said one of them, chewing his
mouthful. He was speaking to a soldier standing near them with a small
knapsack on his shoulder.

“We are going to join our company; we have come from the country,”
replied the soldier, turning his eyes from the watermelon and arranging
his knapsack. “For three weeks we have been guarding the company’s hay,
but now they have summoned everybody, and we don’t know where our
regiment is to-day. They tell us that since last week our fellows have
been at Korabelnaïa. Do you know anything about it, gentlemen?”

“It is in the city, brother, in the city,” replied an old soldier of the
wagon-train, busy cutting with his pocket-knife the white meat of an
unripe melon. “We just came from there. What a terrible business,
brother!”

“What is that, gentlemen?”

“Don’t you hear how he is firing now? No shelter anywhere! It is
frightful how many of our men _he_ has killed!” added the speaker,
making a gesture, and straightening up his cap.

The soldier on his travels pensively shook his head, clacked his tongue,
took his short pipe out of its box, stirred up the half-burned tobacco
with his finger, lighted a bit of tinder from the pipe of a comrade who
was smoking, and lifting his cap, said,

“There is no one but God, gentlemen. We say good-by to you;” and putting
his knapsack in place, went his way.

“Ah! it is better worth while to wait,” said the watermelon eater, with
tone of conviction.

“It is all the same,” murmured the soldier, settling the knapsack on his
back, and worming his way between the wheels of the halted carts.


III.

At the station for horses Koseltzoff found a crowd of people, and the
first figure he perceived was the postmaster in person, very young and
very thin, quarrelling with two officers.

“You will not only wait twenty-four hours but ten times twenty-four
hours. Generals wait too,” he said, with the evident wish to stir them
up in a lively manner. “And I am not going to hitch myself in, you
understand!”

“If this is so, if there are no horses, they can’t be given to any one.
Why, then, are they given to a servant who is carrying baggage?” shouted
one of the two soldiers, holding a glass of tea in his hand.

Although he carefully avoided using personal pronouns, it could easily
be guessed that he would have liked to say thee and thou to his
interlocutor.

“I want you to understand, Mr. Postmaster,” hesitatingly said the other
officer, “that we are not travelling for our pleasure. If we have been
summoned it is because we are necessary. You can be sure I will tell the
general, for it really seems as if you have no respect for the rank of
officer.”

“You spoil my work every time, and you are in my way,” rejoined his
comrade, half vexed. “Why do you talk to him about respect? You have to
speak to him in another manner. Horses!” he suddenly shouted, “horses,
this instant!”

“I wouldn’t ask better than to give them to you, but where can I get
them? I understand very well, my friend,” continued the postmaster,
after a moment of silence, and warming up by degrees as he gesticulated,
“but what do you want me to do? Let me just”--and the officers’ faces at
once had a hopeful expression--“keep soul and body together to the end
of the month, and then I won’t be seen any longer. I would rather go to
the Malakoff than remain here, God knows! Do what you like--but I
haven’t a single wagon in good condition, and for three days the horses
haven’t seen a handful of hay.”

At these words he disappeared. Koseltzoff and the two officers entered
the house.

“So!” said the elder to the younger with a calm tone, which strongly
contrasted with his recent wrath. “We are already three months on the
road. Let’s wait. It is no misfortune; there isn’t any hurry.”

Koseltzoff with difficulty found in the room of the post-house, all
smoky, dirty, and filled with officers and trunks, an empty corner near
the window. He sat down there, and, rolling a cigarette, began to
examine faces and to listen to conversations. The chief group was placed
on the right of the entrance door, around a shaky and greasy table on
which two copper tea-urns, stained here and there with verdigris, were
boiling; lump-sugar was strewn about in several paper wrappings. A young
officer without a mustache, in a new Circassian coat, was pouring water
into a teapot; four others of about his own age were scattered in
different corners of the room. One of them, his head placed on a cloak
which served him as a pillow, was sleeping on a divan; another, standing
near a table, was cutting roast mutton into small mouthfuls for a
one-armed comrade. Two officers, one in an aide-de-camp’s overcoat, the
other in a fine cloth infantry overcoat, and carrying a saddle-bag, were
sitting beside the stove; and it could be readily divined by the way
they looked at the others, by the manner the one with the saddle-bag was
smoking, that they were not officers of the line, and that they were
very glad of it. Their manner did not betray scorn but a certain
satisfaction with themselves, founded partly on their relations with
the generals, and on a feeling of superiority developed to such a point
that they tried to conceal it from others. There was also in the place a
doctor with fleshy lips, and an artilleryman with a German physiognomy,
seated almost on the feet of the sleeper, busily counting money. Four
men-servants, some dozing, some fumbling in the trunks and the packets
heaped up near the door, completed the number of those present, among
whom Koseltzoff found not a face he knew. The young officers pleased
him. He guessed at once from their appearance that they had just come
out of school, and this called to his mind that his young brother was
also coming straight therefrom to serve in one of the Sebastopol
batteries. On the other hand, the officer with the saddle-bag, whom he
believed he had met somewhere, altogether displeased him. He found him
to have an expression of face so antipathetic and so insolent that he
was going to sit down on the large base of the stove, with the intention
of putting him in his proper place if he happened to say anything
disagreeable. In his quality of brave and honorable officer at the
front he did not like the staff-officers, and for such he took these at
the first glance.


IV.

“It is bad luck,” said one of the young fellows, “to be so near the end
and not be able to get there. There will perhaps be a battle to-day,
even, and we will not be in it.”

The sympathetic timidity of a young man who fears to say something out
of place could be guessed from the slightly sharp sound of his voice,
and from the youthful rosiness which spread in patches over his fresh
face.

The one-armed officer looked at him with a smile.

“You will have time enough, believe me,” he said.

The young officer respectfully turning his eyes upon the thin face of
the latter suddenly lighted up by a smile, continued to pour the tea in
silence. And truly the figure, the position of the wounded man, and,
above all, the fluttering sleeve of his uniform, gave him that
appearance of calm indifference which seemed to reply to everything
said and done about him, “All this is very well, but I know it all, and
I could do it if I wanted to.”

“What shall we decide to do?” asked the young officer of his comrade
with the Circassian coat. “Shall we pass the night here, or shall we
push on with our single horse?

“Just think of it, captain,” he continued, when his companion had
declined his suggestion (he spoke to the one-armed man, picking up a
knife he had dropped), “since they told us that horses could not be had
at Sebastopol at any price, we bought one out of the common purse at
Sympheropol.”

“Did they skin you well?”

“I don’t know anything about it, captain. We paid for the whole thing,
horse and wagon, ninety rubles. Is it very dear?” he added, addressing
all who looked at him, Koseltzoff included.

“It isn’t too dear if the horse is young,” said the latter.

“Isn’t it? Nevertheless, we have been assured it was dear. He limps a
little, it is true, but that will go off. They told us he was very
strong.”

“What institution are you from?” Koseltzoff asked him, wishing to get
news of his brother.

“We belonged to the regiment of the nobility. There are six of us who
are going of our own accord to Sebastopol,” replied the loquacious
little officer, “but we don’t exactly know where our battery is. Some
say at Sebastopol, but this gentleman says it is at Odessa.”

“Wouldn’t you have been able to find out at Sympheropol?” asked
Koseltzoff.

“They didn’t know anything there. Imagine it. They insulted one of our
comrades who went to the government office for information! It was very
disagreeable. Wouldn’t you like to have this cigarette, already rolled?”
he continued, offering it to the one-armed officer, who was looking for
his cigar-case.

The young man’s enthusiasm even entered into the little attentions he
showered on him.

“You have also just come from Sebastopol?” he rejoined. “Heavens, how
astonishing! At Petersburg we did nothing but think of you all, you
heroes!” he added, turning to Koseltzoff with good-fellowship and
respect.

“What if you are obliged to go back there?” asked the latter.

“That’s just what we are afraid of; for after having bought the horse
and what we had to get--this coffee-pot, for example, and a few other
trifles--we are left without a penny,” he said, in a lower tone, casting
a look at his companion on the sly, “so that we don’t know how we are
going to get out of it.”

“You haven’t received money on the road, then?” Koseltzoff asked him.

“No,” murmured the young man, “but they promised to give it to us here.”

“Have you the certificate?”

“I know the certificate is the chief thing. One of my uncles, a Senator
at Moscow, could have given it to me, but I was assured I should receive
it here without fail.”

“Doubtless.”

“I believe it also,” replied the young officer, in a tone which proved
that after having repeated the same question in thirty different places,
and having received different replies everywhere, he no longer believed
any one.


V.

“Who ordered beet soup?” shouted the house-keeper at this moment, a
stout, slovenly dressed wench, about forty years old, who was bringing
in a great earthen dish.

There was a general silence, and every eye was turned towards the woman.
One of the officers even winked, exchanging with his comrade a look
which plainly referred to the matron.

“But it was Koseltzoff who ordered it,” rejoined the young officer; “we
must wake him up. Halloo! come and eat,” he added, approaching the
sleeper and shaking him by the shoulder.

A youth of seventeen years, with black, lively, sparkling eyes and red
cheeks, rose with a bound, and having involuntarily pushed against the
doctor, said, “A thousand pardons!” rubbing his eyes and standing in the
middle of the room.

Sub-lieutenant Koseltzoff immediately recognized his younger brother and
went up to him.

“Do you know me?” he asked.

“Oh, oh, what an astonishing thing!” cried the younger, embracing him.

Two kisses were heard, but just as they were about to give each other a
third, as the custom is, they hesitated a moment. It might have been
said that each asked himself why he must kiss three times.

“How glad I am to see you!” said the elder, leading his brother outside.
“Let’s chat a bit.”

“Come, come! I don’t want any soup now. Eat it up, Féderson,” said the
youth to his comrade.

“But you were hungry--”

“No, I don’t want it now.”

Once outside on the piazza, after the first joyous outbursts of the
youth, who went on to ask his brother questions without speaking to him
of that which concerned himself, the latter, profiting by a moment of
silence, asked him why he had not gone into the guard, as they had
expected him to do.

“Because I wanted to go to Sebastopol. If everything comes out all
right, I shall gain more than if I had remained in the guard. In that
branch of the service you have to count ten years to the rank of
colonel, while here Todtleben has gone from lieutenant-colonel to
general in two years. And if I am killed, well, then, what’s to be
done?”

“How you do argue,” said the elder brother, with a smile.

“And then, that I have just told you is of no importance. The chief
reason”--and he stopped, hesitating, smiling in his turn, and blushing
as if he were going to say something very shameful--“the chief reason is
that my conscience bothered me. I felt scruples at living in Petersburg
while men are dying here for their country. I counted also on being with
you,” he added, still more bashfully.

“You are a curious fellow,” said the brother, without looking at him,
hunting for his cigar-case. “I am sorry we can’t stay together.”

“Come, pray tell me the truth about the bastions. Are they horribly
frightful?”

“Yes, at first; then one gets used to it. You will see.”

“Tell me also, please, do you think Sebastopol will be taken? It seems
to me that such a thing cannot happen.”

“God only knows!”

“Oh, if you only knew how annoyed I am! Imagine my misfortune. On the
road I have been robbed of different things, among others my helmet, and
I am in a fearful position. What will I do when I am presented to my
chief?”

Vladimir Koseltzoff, the younger, looked very much like his brother
Michael, at least as much as a half-open columbine can resemble one
which has lost its flower. He had similar blond hair, but thicker, and
curled around the temples; while one long lock strayed down the white
and delicate back of his neck; a sign of happiness, as the old women
say. Rich young blood suddenly tinged his habitually dull complexion at
each impression of his soul; a veil of moisture often swept over his
eyes, which were like his brother’s, but more open and more limpid; a
fine blond down began to show on his cheeks and on his upper lip, which,
purplish red in color, often extended in a timid smile, exposing teeth
of dazzling whiteness. As he stood there in his unbuttoned coat, under
which could be seen a red shirt with Russian collar; slender,
broad-shouldered, a cigarette between his fingers, leaning against the
balustrade of the piazza, his face lighted up by unaffected joy, his
eyes fixed on his brother, he was really the most charming and most
sympathetic youth possible to see, and one looked away from him
reluctantly. Frankly happy to find his brother, whom he considered with
pride and respect as a hero, he was, nevertheless, a little ashamed of
him on account of his own more cultivated education, of his acquaintance
with French, of his association with people in high places, and finding
himself superior to him, he hoped to succeed in civilizing him. His
impressions, his judgments, were formed at Petersburg under the
influence of a woman who, having a weakness for pretty faces, made him
pass his holidays in her house. Moscow had also contributed its part,
for he had danced there at a great ball at the house of his uncle the
Senator.


VI.

After having chatted so long as to prove, what often happens, that,
while loving each other very much, they had few common interests, the
brothers were silent for a moment or two.

“Come, get your traps and we’ll go,” said the elder.

The younger blushed and was confused.

“Straight away to Sebastopol?” he asked, at length.

“Of course. I don’t believe you have many things with you; we will find
a place for them.”

“All right, we’ll go,” replied the younger, as he went into the house
sighing.

Just as he was opening the door of the hall he stopped and held down his
head.

“Go straight to Sebastopol,” he said to himself, “be exposed to
shells--it is terrible! However, isn’t it all the same whether it is
to-day or later? At least with my brother--”

To tell the truth, at the thought that the carriage would carry him as
far as Sebastopol in a single trip, that no new incident would delay him
longer on the road, he began to appreciate the danger he had come to
meet, and the proximity of it profoundly moved him. Having succeeded in
calming himself at last, he rejoined his comrades, and remained such a
long time with them that his brother, out of patience, opened the door
to call him, and saw him standing before the officer, who was scolding
him like a school-boy. At the sight of his brother his countenance fell.

“I’ll come at once,” he shouted, making a gesture with his hand; “wait
for me, I’m coming!”

A moment later he went to find him.

“Just think,” he said, with a deep sigh, “I can’t go off with you.”

“Stuff and nonsense! Why not?”

“I am going to tell you the truth, Micha. We haven’t a penny; on the
other hand, we owe money to that captain. It is horribly shameful!”

The elder brother scowled and kept silent.

“Do you owe much?” he asked at last, without looking at him.

“No, not much; but it worries me awfully. He paid three posts for me. I
used his sugar, and then we played the game of preference, and I owe him
a trifle on that.”

“That’s bad, Volodia! What would you have done if you hadn’t met me?”
said the elder, in a stern tone, never looking at him.

“But you know I count on receiving my travelling expenses at
Sebastopol, and then I shall pay him. That can still be done; and so I
had rather go there with him to-morrow.”

At this moment the elder brother took a purse out of his pocket, from
which his trembling fingers drew two notes of ten rubles each and one of
three.

“Here’s all I have,” said he. “How much do you want?” He exaggerated a
little in saying that it was all his fortune, for he still had four
gold-pieces sewn in the seams of his uniform, but he had promised
himself not to touch them.

It was found, on adding up, that Koseltzoff owed only eight rubles--the
loss on the game and the sugar together. The elder brother gave them to
him, making the remark that one never ought to play when he had not the
wherewithal to pay. The younger said nothing; for his brother’s remark
seemed to throw a doubt on his honesty. Irritated, ashamed of having
done something which could lead to suspicions or reflections on his
character on the part of his brother, of whom he was fond, his sensitive
nature was so violently agitated by it that, feeling it impossible to
stifle the sobs which choked him, he took the note without a word and
carried it to his comrade.


VII.

Nikolaïeff, after refreshing himself at Douvanka with two glasses of
brandy which he bought from a soldier who was selling it on the bridge,
shook the reins, and the carriage jolted over the stony road which, with
spots of shadow at rare intervals, led along Belbek to Sebastopol; while
the brothers, seated side by side, their legs knocking together, kept an
obstinate silence, each thinking about the other.

“Why did he offend me?” thought the younger. “Does he really take me for
a thief? He seems to be still angry. Here we have quarrelled for good,
and yet we two, how happy we could have been at Sebastopol! Two
brothers, intimate friends, and both fighting the enemy--the elder
lacking cultivation a little, but a brave soldier, and the younger as
brave as he, for at the end of a week I shall have proved to all that I
am no longer so young. I sha’n’t blush any more; my face will be manly
and my mustache will have time to grow so far,” he thought, pinching
the down which was visible at the corners of his mouth. “Perhaps we will
get there to-day, even, and will take part in a battle. My brother must
be very headstrong and very brave; he is one of those who talk little
and do better than others. Is he continually pushing me on purpose
towards the side of the carriage? He must see that it annoys me, and he
makes believe he does not notice it. We will surely get there to-day,”
he continued to himself, keeping close to the side of the carriage,
fearing if he stirred that he would show his brother he was not well
seated. “We go straight to the bastion--I with the artillery, my brother
with his company. Suddenly the French throw themselves upon us. I fire
on the spot, I kill a crowd of them, but they run just the same straight
upon me. Impossible to fire--I am lost! but my brother dashes forward,
sword in hand. I seize my musket and we run together; the soldiers
follow us. The French throw themselves on my brother. I run up; I kill
first one, then another, and I save Micha. I am wounded in the arm; I
take my musket in the other hand and run on. My brother is killed at my
side by a bullet; I stop a moment, I look at him sadly, I rise and cry,
‘Forward with me! let us avenge him!’ I add, ‘I loved my brother above
everything; I have lost him. Let us avenge ourselves, kill our enemies,
or all die together!’ All follow me, shouting. But there is the whole
French army, Pélissier at their head. We kill all of them, but I am
wounded once, twice, and the third time mortally. They gather around me.
Gortschakoff comes and asks what I wish for. I reply that I wish for
nothing--I wish for only one thing, to be placed beside my brother and
to die with him. They carry me and lay me down beside his bloody corpse.
I raise myself up and say, ‘Yes, you could not appreciate two men who
sincerely loved their country. They are killed--may God pardon you!’ and
thereupon I die.”

Who could tell to what point these dreams were destined to be realized?

“Have you ever been in a hand-to-hand fight?” he suddenly asked his
brother, entirely forgetting that he did not want to speak to him
again.

“No, never. We have lost two thousand men in our regiment, but always in
the works. I also was wounded there. War is not carried on as you
imagine, Volodia.”

This familiar name softened the younger. He wished to explain himself to
his brother, who did not imagine he had offended him.

“Are you angry with me, Micha?” he asked, after a few moments.

“Why?”

“Because--nothing. I thought there had been between us--”

“Not at all,” rejoined the elder, turning towards him and giving him a
friendly tap on the knee.

“I ask pardon, Micha, if I have offended you,” said the younger, turning
aside to hide the tears which filled his eyes.


VIII.

“Is this really Sebastopol?” asked Volodia, when they had reached the
top of the hill.

Before them appeared the bay with its forest of masts, the sea, with the
hostile fleet in the distance, the white shore batteries, the barracks,
the aqueducts, the docks, the buildings of the city. Clouds of white
and pale lilac-colored smoke continually rose over the yellow hills that
surrounded the city, and came out sharp against the clear blue sky,
lighted by the rosy rays, brilliantly reflected by the waves; while at
the horizon the sun was setting into the sombre sea.

It was without the least thrill of horror that Volodia looked upon this
terrible place he had thought so much about. He experienced, on the
contrary, an æsthetic joy, a feeling of heroic satisfaction at thinking
that in half an hour he would be there himself, and it was with profound
attention that he looked uninterruptedly, up to the very moment they
arrived at Severnaïa, at this picture of such original charm. There was
the baggage of his brother’s regiment, and there also he had to find out
where his own regiment and his battery was.

The officer of the wagon-train lived near to what they called the new
little town, composed of board shanties built by sailors’ families. In a
tent adjoining a shed of considerable size, made of leafy oak branches
which had not yet time to wither, the brothers found the officer
sitting down in a shirt of dirty yellow color before a rather slovenly
table, on which a cup of tea was cooling beside a plate and a decanter
of brandy. A few crumbs of bread and of caviare had fallen here and
there. He was carefully counting a package of notes. But before bringing
him on the stage, we must necessarily examine closer the interior of his
camp, his duties, and his mode of life. The new hut was large, solid,
and conveniently built, provided with turf tables and seats, the same as
they build for the generals; and in order to keep the leaves from
falling, three rugs, in bad taste, although new, but probably very dear,
were stretched on the walls and the ceiling of the building. On the iron
bed placed under the principal rug, which represented the everlasting
amazon, could be seen a red coverlid of shaggy stuff, a soiled torn
pillow, and a cloak of cat-skin. On a table were, helter-skelter, a
mirror in a silver frame, a brush of the same metal in a frightfully
dirty state, a candlestick, a broken horn comb full of greasy hair, a
bottle of liquor ornamented by an enormous red and gold label, a gold
watch with the portrait of Peter the Great, gilt pen-holders, boxes
holding percussion-caps, a crust of bread, old cards thrown about in
disorder, and finally, under the bed, bottles, some empty, others full.
It was the duty of this officer to look out for the wagon-train and the
forage for the horses. One of his friends, occupied with financial work,
shared his dwelling, and was asleep in the tent at this moment, while he
was making out the monthly accounts with Government money. He had an
agreeable and martial appearance. He was distinguished by his great
size, a large mustache, and a fair state of corpulence. But there were
two unpleasant things in him which met the eye at once. First, a
constant perspiration on his face, joined with a puffiness which almost
hid his little gray eyes and gave him the look of a leather bottle full
of porter, and, second, extreme slovenliness, which reached from his
thin gray hair to his great naked feet, shod in ermine-trimmed slippers.

“What a lot of money!--heavens, what a lot of money!” said Koseltzoff
the first, who, on entering, cast a hungry look on the notes. “If you
would lend me half, Vassili Mikhaïlovitch!”

The officer of the wagon-train looked sour at the sight of the visitors,
and gathering up the money, saluted them without rising.

“Oh, if it were mine, but it is money belonging to the Crown, brother!
But whom have you there?”

He looked at Volodia while he piled up the papers and put them in an
open chest beside him.

“It is my brother just out of school. We come to ask where the regiment
is.”

“Sit down, gentlemen,” he said, rising to go into the tent. “Can I offer
you a little porter?”

“I agree to porter, Vassili Mikhaïlovitch.”

Volodia, on whom a profound impression was produced by the grand airs of
the officer, as well as by his carelessness and by the respect his
brother showed him, said to himself timidly, sitting on the edge of the
lounge, “This officer, whom everybody respects, is doubtless a good
fellow, hospitable, and probably very brave.”

“Where is our regiment, then?” asked the elder brother from the officer,
who had disappeared in the tent.

“What do you say?” shouted the latter.

The other repeated his question.

“I saw Seifer to-day,” he replied; “he told me it was in the fifth
bastion.”

“Is it, sure?”

“If I say so it is sure. However, devil take him! he lies cheaply
enough! Say,” he added, “will you have some porter?”

“I would gladly take a drink,” replied Koseltzoff.

“And you, Ossip Ignatievitch,” continued the same voice in the tent,
addressing the sleeping commissary, “will you have a drink? You have
slept enough; it is almost five o’clock.”

“Enough of that old joke. You see well enough that I am not asleep,”
replied a shrill and lazy voice.

“Get up, then, for I am tired of it,” and the officer rejoined his
guests. “Give us some Sympheropol porter!” he shouted to his servant.

The latter, pushing against Volodia proudly, as it appeared to the young
man, pulled out from under the bench a bottle of the porter called for.

The bottle had been empty some time, but the conversation was still
going on, when the flap of the tent was put aside to let pass a small
man in a blue dressing-gown with cord and tassel, and a cap trimmed with
red braid and ornamented with a cockade.

With lowered eyes, and twisting his black mustache, he only replied to
the officer’s salute by an imperceptible movement of the shoulders.

“Give me a glass,” he said, sitting down near the table. “Surely you
have just come from Petersburg, young man?” he said, addressing Volodia
with an amiable air.

“Yes, and I am going to Sebastopol.”

“Of your own accord?”

“Yes.”

“Why in the devil are you going, then? Gentlemen, really I don’t
understand that,” continued the commissary. “It seems to me, if I could,
I would go back to Petersburg on foot. I have had my bellyful of this
cursed existence.”

“But what are you grumbling at?” asked the elder Koseltzoff. “You are
leading a very enviable life here.”

The commissary, surprised, cast a look at him, turned around, and
addressing Volodia, said, “This constant danger, these privations, for
it is impossible to get anything--all that is terrible. I really cannot
understand you, gentlemen. If you only got some advantage out of it! But
is it agreeable, I ask you, to become at your age good-for-nothing for
the rest of your days?”

“Some try to make money, some serve for honor,” replied Koseltzoff the
elder, vexed.

“What is honor when there is nothing to eat?” rejoined the commissary,
with a disdainful smile, turning towards the officer of the wagon-train,
who followed his example. “Wind up the music-box,” he said, pointing to
a box. “We’ll hear ‘Lucia;’ I like that.”

“Is this Vassili Mikhaïlovitch a brave man,” Volodia asked his brother,
when, twilight having fallen, they rolled again along the Sebastopol
road.

“Neither good nor bad, but a terribly miserly fellow. As to the
commissary, I can’t bear to see even his picture. I shall knock him down
some day.”


IX.

When they arrived, at nightfall, at the great bridge over the bay,
Volodia was not exactly in bad humor, but a terrible weight lay on his
heart. Everything he saw, everything he heard, harmonized so little with
the last impressions that had been left in his mind by the great, light
examination-hall with polished floor, the voices of his comrades and the
gayety of their sympathetic bursts of laughter, his new uniform, the
well-beloved Czar, whom he was accustomed to see during seven years, and
who, taking leave of them with tears in his eyes, had called them “his
children”--yes, everything he saw little harmonized with his rich dreams
sparkling from a thousand facets.

“Here we are!” said his brother, getting out of the carriage in front of
the M---- battery. “If they let us cross the bridge we will go straight
to the Nicholas barracks. You will stop there until to-morrow morning.
As for me, I shall go back to my regiment to find out where the battery
is, and to-morrow I will go and hunt you up.”

“Why do that? rather let’s go together,” said Volodia. “I will go to the
bastion with you; won’t that be the same thing? One must get accustomed
to it. If you go there, why can’t I go?”

“You would do better not to go.”

“Let me go--please do. At least I will see what it is--”

“I advise you not to go there; but, nevertheless--”

The cloudless sky was sombre, the stars, and the flashes of the cannon,
and the bombs flying in space, shone in the darkness. The _tête du pont_
and the great white pile of the battery came out sharply in the dark
night. Every instant reports, explosions, shook the air, together or
separately, ever louder, ever more distinct. The mournful murmur of the
waves played an accompaniment to this incessant roll. A fresh breeze
filled with moisture blew from the sea. The brothers approached the
bridge. A soldier awkwardly shouldered arms and shouted,

“Who comes there?”

“A soldier.”

“You can’t pass.”

“Impossible--we must pass!”

“Ask the officer.”

The officer was taking a nap, seated on an anchor. He arose and gave the
order to let them pass.

“You can go in, but you can’t come out. Attention! Where are you getting
to all together?” he shouted to the wagons piled up with gabions, which
were stopping at the entrance to the bridge.

On the first pontoon they met some soldiers talking in a loud voice.

“He has received his outfit; he has received it all.”

“Ah! friends,” said another voice, “when a fellow gets to Severnaïa he
begins to revive. There is quite another air here, by heavens!”

“What nonsense are you talking there?” said the first. “The other day a
cursed bomb-shell carried away the legs of two sailors. Oh! oh!”

The water in several places was dashing into the second pontoon, where
the two brothers stopped to await their carriage. The wind, which had
appeared light on land, blew here with violence and in gusts. The bridge
swayed, and the waves, madly dashing against the beams, broke upon the
anchors and the ropes and flooded the flooring. The sea roared with a
hollow sound, forming a black, uniform, endless line, which separated it
from the starry horizon, now lighted by a silvery glow. In the distance
twinkled the lights of the hostile fleet. On the left rose the dark mass
of a sailing ship, against the sides of which the water dashed
violently; on the right, a steamer coming from Severnaïa, noisily and
swiftly advanced. A bomb-shell burst, and lighted up for a second the
heaps of gabions, revealing two men standing on the deck of the ship, a
third in shirt-sleeves, sitting with swinging legs, busy repairing the
deck, and showing the white foam and the dashing waves with green
reflections made by the steamer in motion.

The same lights continued to furrow the sky over Sebastopol, and the
fear-inspiring sounds came nearer. A wave driven from the sea broke into
foam on the right side of the bridge and wet Volodia’s feet. Two
soldiers, noisily dragging their legs through the water, passed by.
Suddenly something burst with a crash and lighted up before them the
part of the bridge along which was passing a carriage, followed by a
soldier on horseback. The pieces fell whistling into the water, which
spouted up in jets.

“Ah, Mikhaïl Semenovitch!” said the horseman, drawing up before
Koseltzoff the elder, “here you are--well again?”

“Yes, as you see. Where in God’s name are you going?”

“To Severnaïa for cartridges. They send me in place of the aide-de-camp
of the regiment. They are expecting an assault every moment.”

“And Martzeff, where’s he?”

“He lost a leg yesterday in the city; in his room. He was asleep. You
know him, perhaps.”

“The regiment is in the fifth, isn’t it?”

“Yes; it relieved the M----. Stop at the field-hospital, you will find
our fellows there; they will show you the way.”

“Have my quarters in the Morskaïa been kept?”

“Ah, brother, the shells destroyed them long since! You wouldn’t
recognize Sebastopol any longer. There isn’t a soul there; neither
women, nor band, nor eating-house. The last café closed yesterday. It is
now so dismal! Good-by!” and the officer went away on the trot.

A terrible fear suddenly seized Volodia. It seemed to him that a shell
was going to fall on him, and that a piece would surely strike him on
the head. The moist darkness, the sinister sounds, the constant noise of
the wrathful waves, all seemed to urge him to take not another step, and
to tell him that no good awaited him there; that his foot would never
touch the solid earth on the other side of the bay; that he would do
well to turn back, to flee as quickly as possible this terrible place
where death reigns. “Who knows? Perhaps it is too late. My lot is
fixed.” He said this to himself, trembling at the thought, and also on
account of the water which was running into his boots. He sighed deeply,
and kept away from his brother a little.

“My God! shall I really be killed--I? Oh, my God, have mercy on me!” he
murmured, making the sign of the cross.

“Now we will push on, Volodia,” said his companion, when their carriage
had rejoined them. “Did you see the shell?”

Farther on they met more wagons carrying wounded men and gabions. One of
them, filled with furniture, was driven by a woman. On the other side no
one stopped their passage.

Instinctively hugging the wall of the Nicholas battery the two brothers
silently went along it, with ears attentive to the noise of the shells
which exploded over their heads and to the roar of the pieces thrown
down from above; and at last they reached the part of the battery where
the holy image was placed. There they learned that the Fifth Light
Artillery Regiment, which Volodia was to join, was at Korabelnaïa. They
consequently made up their minds in spite of the danger to go and sleep
in the fifth bastion, and to go from there to their battery on the next
day. Passing through the narrow passage, stepping over the soldiers who
were sleeping along the wall, they at last reached the hospital.


X.

Entering the first room, filled with beds on which the wounded were
lying, they were struck by the heavy and nauseating odor which is
peculiar to hospitals. Two Sisters of Charity came to meet them. One of
them, about fifty years old, had a stern face; she held in her hands a
bundle of bandages and lint, and was giving orders to a very young
assistant-surgeon who was following her. The other, a pretty girl of
twenty, had a blond, pale, and delicate face. She appeared particularly
gentle and timid under her little white cap; she followed her companion
with her hands in her apron-pockets, and it could be seen that she was
afraid of stopping behind. Koseltzoff asked them to show him Martzeff,
who had lost a leg the day before.

“Of the P---- regiment?” asked the elder of the two sisters. “Are you a
relative?”

“No, a comrade.”

“Show them the way,” she said in French to the younger sister, and left
them, accompanied by the assistant-surgeon, to go to a wounded man.

“Come, come, what are you looking like that for?” said Koseltzoff to
Volodia, who had stopped with raised eyebrows, and whose eyes, full of
painful sympathy, could not leave the wounded, whom he watched without
ceasing, at the same time following his brother, and repeating, in spite
of himself, “Oh, my God! my God!”

“He has just come in, has he not?” the young sister asked Koseltzoff,
pointing to Volodia.

“Yes, he has just come.”

She looked at him again and burst into tears, despairingly repeating,
“My God! my God! when will it end?”

They entered the officers’ room. Martzeff was there, lying on his back,
his muscular arms bare to the elbow and held under his head. The
expression on his yellow visage was that of a man who shuts his teeth
tightly so as not to cry out with pain. His well leg, with a stocking
on, stuck out from under the coverlid, and the toes worked convulsively.

“Well, how do you feel?” asked the young sister, raising the wounded
man’s hot head and arranging his pillow with her thin fingers, on one of
which Volodia espied a gold ring. “Here are your comrades come to see
you.”

“I am suffering, you know,” he replied, with an irritated air. “Don’t
touch me; it is well as it is,” and the toes in the stocking moved with
a nervous action. “How do you do? What’s your name? Ah, pardon!” when
Koseltzoff had told his name. “Here everything is forgotten.
Nevertheless we lived together,” he added, without expressing the least
joy, and looking at Volodia with a questioning air.

“It is my brother; he has just come from Petersburg.”

“Ah! and I have done with it, I believe. Heavens, how I am suffering! If
that would only stop quicker!”

He pulled his leg in with a convulsive movement. His toes worked with
double restlessness. He covered his face with both hands.

“He must be left in quiet; he is very ill,” the sister whispered to
them. Her eyes were full of tears.

The brothers, who had decided to go to the fifth bastion, changed their
minds on coming out of the hospital, and concluded, without telling each
other the true reason, to separate, in order to not expose themselves to
useless danger.

“Will you find your way, Volodia?” asked the elder. “However, Nikolaïeff
will lead you to Korabelnaïa. Now I am going alone, and to-morrow I will
be with you.”

That was all they said in this last interview.


XI.

The cannon roared with the same violence, but Ekatherinenskaïa Street,
through which Volodia went, accompanied by Nikolaïeff, was empty and
quiet. He could see in the darkness only the white walls standing in the
midst of the great overthrown houses, and the stones of the sidewalk he
was on. Sometimes he met soldiers and officers, and going along the left
side, near the Admiralty, he noticed, by the bright light of a fire
which burned behind a fence, a row of dark-leaved acacias, covered with
dust, recently planted along the sidewalk and held up by green painted
stakes. His steps and those of Nikolaïeff, who was loudly breathing,
resounded alone in the silence. His thoughts were vague. The pretty
Sister of Charity, Martzeff’s leg, with his toes moving convulsively in
his stocking, the darkness, the shells, the different pictures of death,
passed confusedly in his memory. His young and impressionable soul was
irritated and wounded by his isolation, by the complete indifference of
every one to his lot, although he was exposed to danger. “I shall
suffer, I shall be killed, and no one will mourn me,” he said to
himself. Where, then, was the life of the hero full of the energetic
ardor and of the sympathies he had so often dreamed of? The shells
shrieked and burst nearer and nearer, and Nikolaïeff sighed oftener
without speaking. In crossing the bridge which led to Korabelnaïa he saw
something two steps off plunge whistling into the gulf, illuminating for
a second with a purple light the violet-tinted waves, and then bound
off, throwing a shower of water into the air.

“Curse it! the villain is still alive,” murmured Nikolaïeff.

“Yes,” answered Volodia, in spite of himself, and surprised at the sound
of his own voice, so shrill and harsh.

They now met wounded men carried on stretchers, carts filled with
gabions, a regiment, men on horseback. One of the latter, an officer
followed by a Cossack, stopped at the sight of Volodia, examined his
face, then, turning away, hit his horse with his whip and continued on
his way. “Alone, alone! whether I am alive or not, it is the same to
all!” said the youth to himself, ready to burst into tears. Having
passed a great white wall, he entered a street bordered with little,
quite ruined houses, continually lighted up by the flash of the shells.
A drunken woman in rags, followed by a sailor, came out of a small door
and stumbled against him. “I beg pardon, your Excellency,” she murmured.
The poor boy’s heart was more and more oppressed, while the flashes
continually lit up the black horizon and the shells whistled and burst
about him. Suddenly Nikolaïeff sighed, and spoke with a voice which
seemed to Volodia to express a restrained terror.

“It was well worth while to hurry from home to come here! We went on and
went on, and what was the use of hurrying?”

“But, thank the Lord! my brother is cured,” said Volodia, in order by
talking to drive away the horrible feeling which had got possession of
him.

“Finely cured, when he is in a bad way altogether! The well ones would
find themselves much better off in the hospital in times like these. Do
we, perchance, take any pleasure in being here? Now an arm is lost, now
a leg, and then--And yet it is better here in the city than in the
bastion, Lord God! On the way a man has to say all his prayers. Ah,
scoundrel! it just hummed in my ears,” he added, listening to the sound
of a piece of shell which had passed close to him. “Now,” continued
Nikolaïeff, “I was told to lead your Excellency, and I know I must do
what I am ordered to, but our carriage is in the care of a comrade, and
the bundles are undone. I was told to come, and I have come. But if any
one of the things we have brought is lost, it is I, Nikolaïeff, who
answers for it.”

A few steps farther on they came out on an open space.

“Here is your artillery, your Excellency,” he suddenly said. “Ask the
sentinel, he will show you.”

Volodia went forward alone. No longer hearing behind him Nikolaïeff’s
sighs, he felt himself abandoned for good and all. The feeling of this
desertion in the presence of danger, of death, as he believed, oppressed
his heart with the glacial weight of a stone. Halting in the middle of
the place, he looked all about him to see if he was observed, and taking
his head in both hands, he murmured, with a voice broken by terror, “My
God! am I really a despicable poltroon, a coward? I who have lately
dreamed of dying for my country, for my Czar, and that with joy! Yes, I
am an unfortunate and despicable being!” he cried, in profound despair,
and quite undeceived about himself. Having finally overcome his emotion,
he asked the sentinel to show him the house of the commander of the
battery.


XII.

The commander of the battery lived in a little two-story house. It was
entered through a court-yard. In one of the windows, in which a pane was
missing and was replaced by a sheet of paper, shone the feeble light of
a candle. The servant, seated in the door-way, was smoking his pipe.
Having announced Volodia to his master, he showed him into his room.
There, between two windows, beside a broken mirror, was seen a table
loaded with official papers, several chairs, an iron bed with clean
linen and a rug before it. Near the door stood the sergeant-major, a
fine man, with a splendid pair of mustaches, his sword in its belt. On
his coat sparkled a cross and the medal of the Hungary campaign. The
staff-officer, small in stature, with a swollen and bandaged cheek,
walked up and down, dressed in a frock-coat of fine cloth which bore
marks of long wear. He was decidedly corpulent, and appeared about forty
years old. A bald spot was clearly marked on the top of his head; his
thick mustache, hanging straight down, hid his mouth; his brown eyes had
an agreeable expression; his hands were fine, white, a little fat; his
feet, very much turned out, were put down with a certain assurance and a
certain affectation which proved that bashfulness was not the weak side
of the commander.

“I have the honor to present myself. I am attached to the Fifth Light
Battery--Koseltzoff, the second-ensign,” said Volodia, who, entering the
room, recited in one breath this lesson learned by heart.

The commander of the battery replied by a somewhat dry salute, and
without offering him his hand begged him to be seated. Volodia then sat
down timidly near the writing-table, and in his distraction getting hold
of a pair of scissors, began to play with them mechanically. With hands
behind his back and with bowed head, the commander of the battery
continued his promenade in silence, casting his eyes from time to time
on the fingers which continued to juggle with the scissors.

“Yes,” he said, stopping at last in front of the sergeant-major, “from
to-morrow on we must give another measure of oats to the caisson horses;
they are thin. What do you think of it?”

“Why not? It can be done, your High Excellency; oats are now cheaper,”
replied the sergeant-major, his arms stuck to the side of his body and
his fingers stirring--an habitual movement with which he usually
accompanied his conversation.

“Then there is the forage-master, Frantzone, who wrote me a line
yesterday, your High Excellency. He said we must buy axle-trees without
fail; they are cheap. What are your orders?”

“Well, they must be bought; there is money,” answered the commander,
continuing to walk. “Where are your traps?” he suddenly said, pausing
before Volodia.

Poor Volodia, pursued by the thought that he was a coward, saw in each
look, in each word, the scorn he must inspire; and it seemed to him that
his chief had already discovered his sad secret, and that he was jeering
at him. Then he replied in confusion that his things were at Grafskaia,
and that his brother would send them to him the following day.

“Where shall we put up the ensign?” the lieutenant-colonel asked the
sergeant-major, without listening to the young man’s answer.

“The ensign?” repeated the sergeant-major. A rapid glance thrown on
Volodia, and which seemed to say, “What sort of an ensign is that?”
finished the disconcerting of the latter. “Down there, your Excellency,
with the second-captain. Since the captain is in the bastion his bed is
empty!”

“Will that do for you while you are waiting?” asked the commander of the
battery. “You must be tired, I think. To-morrow it can be more
conveniently arranged for you.”

Volodia arose and saluted.

“Will you have some tea?” added his superior officer. “The samovar can
be heated.”

Volodia, who had already reached the door, turned around, saluted again,
and went out.

The lieutenant-colonel’s servant conducted him down-stairs, and showed
him into a bare and dirty room where different broken things were thrown
aside as rubbish, and in which, in a corner, a man in a red shirt, whom
Volodia took for a soldier, was sleeping on an iron bed without sheets
or coverlid, wrapped in his overcoat.

“Peter Nikolaïevitch”--and the servant touched the sleeper’s
shoulder--“get up; the ensign is going to sleep here. It’s Vlang, our
yunker,” he added, turning to Volodia.

“Oh, don’t disturb yourself, I beg,” cried the latter, seeing the
yunker, a tall and robust young man, with a fine face, but one entirely
devoid of intelligence, rise, throw his overcoat over his shoulders, and
drowsily go away, murmuring, “That’s nothing; I will go and sleep in the
yard.”


XIII.

Left alone with his thoughts, Volodia at first felt a return of the
terror caused by the trouble which agitated his soul. Counting upon
sleep to be able to cease thinking of his surroundings and to forget
himself, he blew out his candle and lay down, covering himself all up
with his overcoat, even his head, for he had kept his fear of darkness
since his childhood. But suddenly the idea came to him that a shell
might fall through the roof and kill him. He listened. The commander of
the battery was walking up and down over his head.

“It will begin by killing him first,” he said to himself, “then me. I
shall not die alone!” This reflection calmed him, and he was going to
sleep when this time the thought that Sebastopol might be taken that
very night, that the French might burst in his door, and that he had no
weapon to defend himself, completely waked him up again. He rose and
walked the room. The fear of the real danger had stifled the mysterious
terror of darkness. He hunted and found to hand only a saddle and a
samovar. “I am a coward, a poltroon, a wretch,” he thought again, filled
with disgust and scorn of himself. He lay down and tried to stop
thinking; but then the impressions of the day passed again through his
mind, and the continual sounds which shook the panes of his single
window recalled to him the danger he was in. Visions followed. Now he
saw the wounded covered with blood; now bursting shells, pieces of which
flew into his room; now the pretty Sister of Charity who dressed his
wounds weeping over his agony, or his mother, who, carrying him back to
the provincial town, praying to God for him before a miraculous image,
shed hot tears. Sleep eluded him; but suddenly the thought of an
all-powerful Deity who sees everything and who hears every prayer
flashed upon him distinct and clear in the midst of his reveries. He
fell upon his knees, making the sign of the cross, and clasping his
hands as he had been taught in his childhood. This simple gesture
aroused in him a feeling of infinite, long-forgotten calm.

“If I am to die, it is because I am useless! Then, may Thy will be done,
O Lord! and may it be done quickly. But if the courage and firmness
which I lack are necessary to me, spare me the shame and the dishonor,
which I cannot endure, and teach me what I must do to accomplish Thy
will.”

His weak, childish, and terrified soul was fortified, was calmed at
once, and entered new, broad, and luminous regions. He thought of a
thousand things; he experienced a thousand sensations in the short
duration of this feeling; then he quietly went to sleep, heedless of the
dull roar of the bombardment and of the shaking windows.

Lord, Thou alone hast heard, Thou alone knowest the simple but ardent
and despairing prayers of ignorance, the confused repentance asking for
the cure of the body and the purification of the soul--the prayers which
rise to Thee from these places where death resides; beginning with the
general, who with terror feels a presentiment of approaching death, and
a second after thinks only of wearing a cross of Saint George on his
neck, and ending with the simple soldier prostrate on the bare earth of
the Nicholas battery, supplicating Thee to grant him for his sufferings
the recompense he unconsciously has a glimpse of.


XIV.

The elder Koseltzoff, having met a soldier of his regiment in the
street, was accompanied by him to the fifth bastion.

“Keep close to the wall, Excellency,” the soldier said.

“What for?”

“It is dangerous, Excellency. _He_ is already passing over us,” replied
the soldier, listening to the whistling of the ball, which struck with a
dry sound the other side of the hard road. But Koseltzoff continued on
in the middle of the road without heeding this advice. There were the
same streets, the same but more frequent flashes, the same sounds and
the same groans, the same meeting of wounded men, the same batteries,
parapet, and trenches, just as he had seen them in the spring. But now
their aspect was more dismal, more sombre and more martial, so to speak.
A greater number of houses was riddled, and there were no more lights in
the windows--the hospital was the only exception--no more women in the
street; and the character of the accustomed, careless life formerly
imprinted on everything was effaced, and was replaced by the element of
anxious, weary expectation, and of redoubled and incessant effort.

He came at last to the farthermost intrenchment, and a soldier of the
P---- regiment recognized his former company chief. There was the third
battalion, as could be guessed in the darkness by the constrained murmur
of voices and the clicks of the muskets placed against the wall, which
the flash of the discharges lit up at frequent intervals.

“Where is the commander of the regiment?” asked Koseltzoff.

“In the bomb-proof with the marines, your Excellency,” replied the
obliging soldier. “If you would like to go I will show you the way.”

Passing from one trench to another, he led Koseltzoff to the ditch,
where a sailor was smoking his pipe. Behind him was a door, through the
cracks of which shone a light.

“Can we go in?”

“I will announce you;” and the sailor entered the bomb-proof, where two
voices could be heard.

“If Prussia continues to keep neutral, then Austria--” said one of them.

“What is Austria good for when the slavs--” said the other.--“Ah yes!
ask him to come in,” added this same voice.

Koseltzoff, who had never before put his foot in these bomb-proof
quarters, was struck by their elegance. A polished floor took the place
of boards, a screen hid the entrance door. In a corner was a great icon
representing the holy Virgin, with its gilt frame lighted by a small
pink glass lamp. Two beds were placed along the wall, on one of which a
naval officer was sleeping in his clothes, on the other, near a table on
which two open bottles of wine were standing, sat the new regimental
chief and an aide-de-camp. Koseltzoff, who was not bashful, and who felt
himself in nowise guilty, either towards the State or towards the chief
of the regiment, felt, nevertheless, at the sight of the latter--his
comrade until very recently--a certain apprehension.

“It is strange,” he thought, seeing him rise to listen to him. “He has
commanded the regiment scarcely six weeks, and power is already visible
in his bearing, in his look, in his clothes. Not a long while ago this
same Batretcheff amused himself in our quarters, wore for whole weeks
the same dark calico shirt, and ate his hash and his sour cream without
inviting any one to share it, and now an expression full of hard pride
can be read in his eyes, which say to me, ‘Although I am your comrade,
for I am a regimental chief of the new school, you may be sure I know
perfectly well that you would give half your life to be in my place.’”

“You have been treating yourself to a rather long absence,” said the
colonel, coldly, looking at him.

“I have been ill, colonel, and my wound is not yet altogether healed.”

“If that’s so, what did you come back for?” Koseltzoff’s corpulence
inspired his chief with defiance. “Can you do your duty?”

“Certainly I can.”

“All right. Ensign Zaïtzeff will conduct you to the ninth company, the
one you have already commanded. You will receive the order of the day.
Be so good as to send me the regimental aide-de-camp as you go out,” and
his chief, bowing slightly, gave him to understand by this that the
interview was ended.

On his way out Koseltzoff muttered indistinct words and shrugged his
shoulders several times. It might readily be believed that he felt ill
at ease, or that he was irritated, not exactly against his regimental
chief, but rather against himself and against all his surroundings.


XV.

Before going to find his officers he went to look up his company. The
parapets built of gabions, the trenches, the cannon in front of which he
passed, even the fragments and the shells themselves over which he
stumbled, and which the flashes of the discharges lighted up without
pause or relaxation, everything was familiar to him, and had been deeply
engraven on his memory three months before, during the fortnight he had
lived in the bastion. Notwithstanding the dismal side of these memories,
a certain inherent charm of the past came out of them, and he recognized
the places and things with an unaffected pleasure, as if the two weeks
had been full of only agreeable impressions. His company was placed
along the covered way which led to the sixth bastion.

Entering the shelter open on one side, he found so many soldiers there
that he could scarcely find room to pass. At one end burned a wretched
candle, which a reclining soldier was holding over a book that his
comrade was spelling out. Around him, in the twilight of a thick and
heavy atmosphere, several heads could be seen turned towards the reader,
listening eagerly. Koseltzoff recognized the A B C of this sentence:
“P-r-a-y-e-r a-f-t-e-r s-t-u-d-y. I give Thee thanks, my Cre-a-tor.”

“Snuff the candle!” some one shouted. “What a good book!” said the
reader, preparing to go on. But at the sound of Koseltzoff’s voice
calling the sergeant-major it was silent. The soldiers moved, coughed,
and blew their noses, as always happens after an enforced silence. The
sergeant-major arose from the middle of the group, buttoning his
uniform, stepping over his comrades, and trampling on their feet, which
for lack of room they did not know where to stow, approached the
officer.

“How do you do, my boy? Is this our company?”

“Health to your Excellency! We congratulate you on your return,” replied
the sergeant-major, gayly and good-naturedly. “You are cured,
Excellency? God be praised for that! for we missed you a good deal.”

Koseltzoff, it was evident, was beloved by his company. Voices could
immediately be heard spreading the news that the old company chief had
come back, he who had been wounded--Mikhaïl Semenovitch Koseltzoff.
Several soldiers, the drummer among others, came to greet him.

“How do you do, Obanetchouk?” said Koseltzoff. “Are you safe and sound?
How do you do, children?” he then added, raising his voice.

The soldiers replied in chorus,

“Health to your Excellency!”

“How goes it, children?”

“Badly, your Excellency. The French have the upper hands. He fires from
behind the intrenchments, but he doesn’t show himself outside.”

“Now, then, who knows? perhaps I shall have the chance of seeing him
come out of the intrenchments, children. It won’t be the first time we
have fought him together.”

“We are ready to do our best, your Excellency,” said several voices at
the same time.

“He is very bold, then?”

“Terribly bold,” replied the drummer in a low tone, but so as to be
heard, and speaking to another soldier, as if to justify his chief for
having made use of the expression, and to persuade his comrade that
there was nothing exaggerated nor untrue in it.

Koseltzoff left the soldiers in order to join the officers in the
barracks.


XVI.

The great room of the barracks was filled with people--a crowd of naval,
artillery, and infantry officers. Some were sleeping, others were
talking, seated on a caisson or on the carriage of a siege-gun. The
largest group of the three, seated on their cloaks spread on the ground,
were drinking porter and playing cards.

“Ah! Koseltzoff’s come back! Bravo! And your wound?” said divers voices
from different sides.

Here also he was liked, and they were rejoiced at his return.

After having shaken hands with his acquaintances, Koseltzoff joined the
gay group of card-players. One of them, thin, with a long nose, and a
large mustache which encroached on his cheeks, cut the cards with his
white, slender fingers on one of which was a great seal ring. He seemed
disturbed, and dealt with an affected carelessness. On his right, lying
half raised on his elbow, a gray-haired major staked and paid a
half-ruble every time with exaggerated calmness. On his left, crouching
on his heels, an officer with a red and shining face joked and smiled
with an effort, and when his card was laid down, one of his hands moved
in the empty pocket of his trousers. He played a heavy game, but without
any money--a fact which visibly irritated the dark officer with the
handsome face. Another officer, pale, thin, and bald, with an enormous
nose and a large mouth, walking about the room with a bundle of
bank-notes in his hand, counted down the money on the bank and won every
time.

Koseltzoff drank a small glass of brandy and sat down beside the
players.

“Come, Mikhaïl Semenovitch, come; put up your stake!” said the officer
who was cutting the cards; “I’ll bet you have brought back a lot of
money.”

“Where could I have got it? On the contrary, I spent my last penny in
town!”

“Really! You must have fleeced some one at Sympheropol, I’m sure!”

“What an idea!” replied Koseltzoff, not wanting his words to be
believed, and unbuttoning his uniform, to be more comfortable, he took a
few old cards.

“I have nothing to risk, but, devil take me! who can foresee luck? A
gnat can sometimes accomplish wonders! Let’s go on drinking to keep our
courage up.”

Shortly after he swallowed a second small glass of brandy, a little
porter into the bargain, and lost his last three rubles, while a hundred
and fifty were charged to the account of the little officer with the
sweat-moistened face.

“Have the kindness to send me the money,” said the banker, interrupting
the deal to look at him.

“Allow me to put off sending it until to-morrow,” replied the one
addressed, rising. His hand was nervously moving in his empty pocket.

“Hum!” said the banker, spitefully throwing the last cards of the pack
right and left. “We can’t play in this way,” he rejoined; “I will stop
the game. It can’t be done, Zakhar Ivanovitch. We are playing cash down,
and not for credit.”

“Do you distrust me? That would be strange indeed!”

“From whom have I to get eight rubles?” the major who had just won asked
at this moment. “I have paid out more than twenty, and when I win I get
nothing.”

“How do you think I can pay you when there is no money on the table?”

“That’s nothing to me!” cried the major, rising. “I am playing with you,
and not with this gentleman!”

“As long as I tell you,” said the perspiring officer--“as long as I tell
you I will pay you to-morrow, how do you dare insult me?”

“I’ll say what I like. This is no way of doing!” cried the major,
excited.

“Come, be quiet, Fédor Fédorovitch!” shouted several players at once,
turning around.

Let us drop the curtain on this scene. To-morrow, perhaps to-day, each
of these men will go to meet death gayly, proudly, and will die calmly
and firmly. The only consolation of a life the conditions of which
freeze with horror the coldest imagination, of a life which has nothing
human in it, to which all hope is interdicted, is forgetfulness,
annihilation of the consciousness of the reality. In the soul of every
man lies dormant the noble spark which at the proper time will make a
hero of him; but this spark grows tired of shining always. Nevertheless,
when the fatal moment comes, it will burst into a flame which will
illumine grand deeds.


XVII.

The next day the bombardment continued with the same violence. About
eleven o’clock in the forenoon Volodia Koseltzoff joined the officers of
his battery. He became accustomed to these new faces, asked them
questions, and, in his turn, shared his impressions with them. The
modest but slightly pedantic conversation of the artillery-men pleased
him and inspired his respect. On the other hand, his own sympathetic
appearance, his timid manner, and his simplicity predisposed these
gentlemen in his favor. The oldest officer of the battery, a short,
red-haired captain with a foretop, and with well-smoothed locks on his
temples, brought up in the old traditions of artillery, amiable with
ladies, and posing for a savant, asked him questions about his
acquaintance with this science or that, about the new inventions, joked
in an affectionate way about his youth and his handsome face, and
treated him like a son, all of which charmed Volodia. Sub-lieutenant
Dedenko, a young officer with an accent of Little Russia, with shaggy
hair and a torn overcoat, pleased him also, in spite of his loud voice,
his frequent quarrels, and his brusque movements, for under this rude
exterior Volodia saw a brave and worthy man. Dedenko eagerly offered his
services to Volodia, and tried to prove to him that the cannon at
Sebastopol had not been placed according to rule. On the other hand,
Lieutenant Tchernovitzky, with high-arched eyebrows, who wore a
well-cared-for but worn and mended overcoat, and a gold chain on a satin
waistcoat, did not inspire him with any sympathy, although superior to
the others in politeness. He continually asked Volodia details about the
emperor, the minister of war, related with factitious enthusiasm the
heroic exploits accomplished at Sebastopol, expressed his regrets at the
small number of true patriots, made a show of a great deal of knowledge,
of wit, of exceedingly noble sentiments, but in spite of all that, and
without being able to tell why, all these discourses sounded false in
his ears, and he even noticed that the officers in general avoided
speaking to Tchernovitzky. The yunker, Vlang, whom he had waked up the
evening before, sat modestly in a corner, kept silent, laughed sometimes
at a joke, always ready to recall what had been forgotten, presented to
the officers in turn the small glass of brandy, and rolled cigarettes
for all. Charmed by the simple and polite manners of Volodia, who did
not treat him like a boy, and by his agreeable appearance, his great,
fine eyes never left the face of the new-comer. Urged by a feeling of
great admiration, he divined and forestalled all his wishes, a fact
which the officers immediately noticed, and which furnished the subject
of unsparing jokes.

A little before dinner second-captain Kraut, relieved from duty on the
bastion, joined the little company. A blond, fine-looking fellow, of a
lively turn of mind, proud possessor of a pair of red mustaches, and
side-whiskers of the same color, he spoke the language to perfection,
but too correctly and too elegantly for a pure-blooded Russian. Quite as
irreproachable in duty as in his private life, perfection was his
failing. A perfect comrade, to be counted on beyond proof in all affairs
of interest, he lacked something as a man, just because everything in
him was an accomplishment. In striking contrast with the ideal Germans
of Germany, he was, after the example of the Russian Germans, in the
highest degree practical.

“Here he is! here’s our hero!” shouted the captain at the moment Kraut
came in, gesticulating and clanking his spurs. “What’ll you have,
Frederic Christianovitch--tea or brandy?”

“I am having some tea made, but I won’t refuse brandy while I am
waiting, for my soul’s consolation! Happy to make your acquaintance!
Please get fond of us, and be well-disposed towards us,” he said to
Volodia, who had arisen to salute him. “Second-captain Kraut! The
artificer told me you came last evening.”

“Allow me to thank you for your bed, which I profited by last night.”

“Did you at least sleep comfortably there? Because one of the legs is
gone, and no one can repair it during the siege. You have to keep
wedging it up.”

“So then you got out of it safely?” Dedenko asked him.

“Yes, thank God! but Skvortzoff was hit. We had to repair one of the
carriages; the side of it was smashed to pieces.”

He suddenly arose and walked up and down. It could be seen that he felt
the agreeable sensation of a man who has just come safe and sound out of
great danger.

“Now, Dmitri Gavrilovitch,” he said, tapping the captain’s knee in a
friendly manner, “how are you, brother? What has become of your
presentation for advancement? Has it finally been settled?”

“No; nothing has come of it.”

“And nothing will come of it,” said Dedenko; “I’ve proved it to you
already.”

“Why will nothing come of it?”

“Because your statement is badly made.”

“Ah, what a violent wrangler!” said Kraut, gayly. “A truly obstinate
Little Russian. All right; you will see that they will make you
lieutenant to pay for your mortification.”

“No, they won’t do anything.”

“Vlang,” added Kraut, speaking to the yunker, “fill my pipe and bring it
to me, please.”

Kraut’s presence had waked them all up. Chatting with each one, he gave
the details of the bombardment, and asked questions about what had taken
place during his absence.


XVIII.

“Now, then, are you settled?” Kraut asked of Volodia. “But, pardon me,
what is your name--both your names? It’s our custom in the artillery.
Have you a saddle-horse?”

“No,” answered Volodia, “and I am much troubled about it. I have spoken
to the captain. I shall have neither horse nor money until I get my
forage-money and my travelling expenses. I would like to ask the
commander of the battery to lend me his horse, but I am afraid he will
refuse.”

“You would like to ask this of Apollo Serguéïtch?” said Kraut, looking
at the captain, while he made a sound with his lips which expressed
doubt.

“Well,” said the latter, “if he refuses, there is no great harm done. To
tell the truth, there is seldom need of a horse here. I will undertake
to ask him to-day even.”

“You don’t know him,” said Dedenko. “He would refuse anything else, but
he wouldn’t refuse his horse to this gentleman. Would you like to bet on
it?”

“Oh, I know you are ripe for contradiction, you--”

“I contradict when I know a thing! He isn’t generous usually, but he
will lend his horse, because he has no interest in refusing it.”

“How no interest? When oats cost eight rubles here it is evidently in
his interest. He will have one horse the less to keep.”

“Vladimir Semenovitch!” cried Vlang, coming back with Kraut’s pipe. “Ask
for the spotted one; it is a charming horse.”

“That’s the one you fell into the ditch with, eh, Vlang?” observed the
second-captain.

“But you are mistaken in saying that oats are eight rubles,” maintained
Dedenko, in the mean time, continuing the discussion. “According to the
latest news they are ten-fifty. It is evident that there is no profit
in--”

“You would like to leave him nothing, then? If you were in his place you
would not lend your horse to go into town either. When I am commander of
the battery my horses, brother, will have four full measures to eat
every day! I sha’n’t think of making an income, rest assured!”

“He who lives will see,” replied the second-captain. “You will do the
same when you have a battery, and he also,” pointing to Volodia.

“Why do you suppose, Frederic Christianovitch, that this gentleman would
also like to reserve for himself some small profit? If he has a certain
amount of money, what will he do it for?” Tchernovitzky asked in his
turn.

“No--I--excuse me, captain,” said Volodia, blushing up to his ears.
“That would be dishonest in my eyes.”

“Oh! oh! what milk porridge!” Kraut said to him.

“This is another question, captain, but it seems to me that I couldn’t
take money for myself which doesn’t belong to me.”

“And I will tell you something else,” said the second-captain, in a more
serious tone. “You must learn that, being battery commander, there is
every advantage in managing affairs well. You must know that the
soldier’s food doesn’t concern him. It has always been that way with us
in the artillery. If you don’t succeed in making both ends meet, you
will have nothing left. Let us count up your expenses. You have first
the forage”--and the captain bent one finger; “next the medicine”--he
bent a second one; “then the administration--that makes three; then the
draft-horses, which certainly cost five hundred rubles--that makes four;
then the refitting of the soldiers’ collars; then the charcoal, which is
used in great quantities, and at last the table of your officers;
lastly, as chief of the battery you must live comfortably, and you need
a carriage, a cloak, etc.”

“And the principal thing is this, Vladimir Semenovitch,” said the
captain, who had been silent up to this moment. “Look at a man like me,
for example, who has served twenty years, receiving at first two, then
three hundred rubles pay. Well, then, why shouldn’t the Government
reward him for his years of service by giving him a morsel of bread for
his old days.”

“It can’t be discussed,” rejoined the second-captain; “so don’t be in a
hurry to judge. Serve a little while and you will see.”

Volodia, quite ashamed of the remark which he had thrown out without
stopping to reflect, murmured a few words, and listened in silence how
Dedenko set about defending the opposite thesis. The discussion was
interrupted by the entrance of the colonel’s orderly announcing that
dinner was ready.

“You ought to tell Apollo Serguéïtch to give us wine to-day,” said
Captain Tchernovitzky, buttoning his coat. “Devil take his avarice! He
will be shot, and no one will get any.”

“Tell him yourself.”

“Oh no, you are my elder; the hierarchy before everything!”


XIX.

A table, covered with a stained tablecloth, was placed in the middle of
the room in which Volodia had been received by the colonel the evening
before. The latter gave him his hand, and asked him questions about
Petersburg and about his journey.

“Now, gentlemen, please come up to the brandy. The ensigns don’t drink,”
he added, with a smile.

The commander of the battery did not seem as stern to-day as the day
before; he had rather the air of a kind and hospitable host than that of
a comrade among his officers. In spite of that, all, from the old
captain to Ensign Dedenko, evinced respect for him which betrayed itself
in the timid politeness with which they spoke to him and came up in line
to drink their little glass of brandy.

The dinner consisted of cabbage-soup, served in a great tureen in which
swam lumps of meat with fat attached, laurel leaves, and a good deal of
pepper, Polish _zrasi_ with mustard, _koldouni_ with slightly rancid
butter; no napkins; the spoons were of pewter and of wood, the glasses
were two in number. On the table was a single water decanter with broken
neck. The conversation did not flag. They first spoke of the battle of
Inkerman, in which the battery took a part. Each related his
impressions, his opinions on the causes of the failure, keeping silent
as soon as the battery commander spoke. Then they complained of the lack
of cannon of a certain calibre; they talked of certain other
improvements, which gave Volodia an opportunity of showing his
knowledge. The curious part was that the talk did not even touch upon
the frightful situation of Sebastopol, which seemed to mean that each
one, on his part, thought too much about it to speak of it.

Volodia, very much astonished, and even vexed, that there was no
question of the duties of his service, said to himself that he seemed to
have come to Sebastopol only in order to give the details about the new
cannon and to dine with the battery commander.

During the repast a shell burst very near the house. The floor and the
wall were shaken by it as by an earthquake, and powder-smoke spread over
the window outside.

“You certainly didn’t see that at Petersburg, but here we often have
these surprises. Go, Vlang,” added the commander, “and see where the
shell burst.”

Vlang went to look, and announced that it had burst in the yard. After
that they did not speak of it again.

A little before the end of the dinner one of the military clerks came in
to give to his chief three sealed envelopes. “This one is very urgent. A
Cossack has just brought it from the commander of the artillery,” he
said. The officers watched the practised fingers of their superior with
anxious impatience while he broke the seal of the envelope, which bore
the words “in haste,” and drew a paper from it.

“What can that be?” each one thought. “Can it be the order to leave
Sebastopol for a rest, or the order to bring out the whole battery upon
the bastion?”

“Once more!” cried the commander, angrily, throwing the sheet of paper
on the table.

“What is it, Apollo Serguéïtch?” asked the oldest of the officers.

“They want an officer and men for a mortar battery. I have only four
officers, and my men are not up to the full number,” he growled, “and
now they ask for some of them. However, some one must go, gentlemen,” he
continued, after a moment; “they must be there at seven o’clock. Send me
the sergeant-major. Now, gentlemen, who will go? Decide it among
yourselves.”

“But here is this gentleman who hasn’t yet served,” said Tchernovitzky,
pointing to Volodia.

“Yes; I wouldn’t ask for anything better,” said Volodia, feeling a cold
sweat moisten his neck and his backbone.

“No--why not?” interrupted the captain. “No one ought to refuse; but it
is useless to ask him to go; and since Apollo Serguéïtch leaves us free,
we will draw lots, as we did the other time.”

All consented to this. Kraut carefully cut several little paper squares,
rolled them up, and threw them into a cap. The captain cracked a few
jokes and profited by this occasion to ask the colonel for wine, “to
give us courage,” he added. Dedenko had a depressed air, Volodia smiled,
Tchernovitzky declared that he would be chosen by the lot. As to Kraut,
he was perfectly calm.

They offered Volodia the first chance. He took one of the papers, the
longest, but immediately changed it for another, shorter and smaller,
and unrolling it, read the word “Go.”

“It is I,” he said, with a sigh.

“All right. May God protect you! It will be your baptism of fire,” said
the commander, looking with a pleasant smile at the disturbed face of
the ensign. “But get ready quickly, and in order that it may be
pleasanter, Vlang will go with you in the place of the artificer.


XX.

Vlang, delighted with his mission, ran away to dress, and came back at
once to assist Volodia to make up his bundles, advising him to take his
bed, his fur cloak, an old number of the “Annals of the Country,” a
coffee-pot with an alcohol lamp, and other useless articles. The
captain, in his turn, advised Volodia to read in the “Manual for the
use of Artillery Officers” the passage relating to firing mortars, and
to copy it at once! Volodia set himself to work at it immediately, happy
and surprised to feel that the dread of danger, especially the fear of
passing for a coward, was less strong than on the evening before. His
impressions of the day and his occupation had partly contributed to
diminish the violence of this; and then it is well known that an acute
sensation cannot last long without weakening. In a word, his fear was
being cured. At seven in the evening, at the moment the sun was setting
behind the Nicholas barracks, the sergeant-major came to tell him that
the men were ready, and were waiting for him.

“I have given the list to Vlang, your Excellency; you can ask him for
it,” he said.

“Must I make a little speech to them?” thought Volodia, on his way,
accompanied by the yunker, to join the twenty artillery-men who, swords
by their sides, were waiting for him outside--“or must I simply say to
them, ‘How do you do, children?’ or, indeed, say nothing at all? Why not
say ‘How do you do, children?’ I think I ought to;” and with his full
and sonorous voice he cried boldly, “How do you do, children?” The
soldiers replied cheerfully to his salutation; his young and fresh voice
sounded agreeably in their ears. He put himself at their head, and
although his heart was beating as if he had just run several furlongs,
his walk was light and his face was smiling. When they got near the
Malakoff mamelon, he noticed, while climbing up it, that Vlang, who did
not leave his heels, and who had seemed so courageous down below in
their quarters, stooped and ducked his head as if the bullets and shells
which were whistling without cessation were coming straight towards him.
Several soldiers did the same, and the majority of the faces expressed,
if not fear, at least disquiet. This circumstance reassured him and
revived his courage.

“Here I am, then, I also, on the Malakoff mamelon. I imagined it a
thousand times more terrible, and I am walking, I am advancing, without
saluting the bullets! I am less afraid than the others, and I am not a
coward, then,” he said to himself joyfully, with the enthusiasm of
satisfied self-love.

This feeling was, however, shaken by the spectacle that presented itself
to his eyes. When he reached in the twilight the Korniloff battery, four
sailors, some holding by the legs, others by the arms, the bloody corpse
of a man with bare feet and no coat, were in the act of throwing him
over the parapet. (The second day of the bombardment they threw the dead
into the ditch, because they had no time to carry them off.) Volodia,
stupefied, saw the corpse strike the upper part of the rampart, and
slide from there into the ditch. Fortunately for him, he met at this
very moment the commander of the bastion, who gave him a guide to lead
him to the battery and into the bomb-proof quarters of the men. We will
not relate how often our hero was exposed to danger during that night.
We will say nothing of how he was undeceived when he noticed that
instead of finding them firing here according to the precise rules such
as they practise at Petersburg on the plain of Volkovo, he saw himself
in front of two broken mortars, one with its muzzle bruised by a shell,
the other still upright on the pieces of a destroyed platform. We will
not tell how it was impossible for him to get the soldiers in order to
repair it before daylight, how he found no charge of the calibre
indicated in the “Manual,” nor describe his feelings at seeing two of
his soldiers fall, hit before his eyes, nor how he himself, even,
escaped death twenty times by a hair’s-breadth. Happily for him, the
captain of the mortar, who had been given him for an assistant, a tall
sailor attached to these mortars since the beginning of the siege,
assured him that they could make use of them still, and promised him
while he was walking on the bastion, lantern in hand, as calmly as if he
were in his kitchen-garden, to put them in good condition before
morning.

The bomb-proof reduct into which his guide conducted him was only a
great, long cavern dug in the rocky earth, two fathoms deep, protected
by oaken timbers eighteen inches thick. There he established himself
with his soldiers.

As soon as Vlang noticed the little low door which led into it, he threw
himself in the first with such haste that he nearly fell on the
stone-paved floor, cowered down in a corner, and did not care to come
out of it. The soldiers placed themselves on the ground along the wall.
Some of them lighted their pipes, and Volodia arranged his bed in a
corner, stretched himself on it, lighted a candle in his turn, and
smoked a cigarette. Over their heads could be heard, deadened by the
bomb-proof, the uninterrupted roar of the discharges. A single cannon
close beside them shook their shelter every time it thundered. In the
interior everything was quiet. The soldiers, still intimidated by the
presence of the new officer, only exchanged a word with each other now
and then to ask for a light or a little room. A rat was scratching
somewhere among the stones, and Vlang, who had not yet recovered from
his emotion, occasionally sighed deeply as he looked about him. Volodia,
on his bed in this peaceful corner crammed with people, lighted by a
single candle, gave himself up to the feeling of comfort which he had
often had as a child when, playing hide-and-seek, he slipped into a
wardrobe or under his mother’s skirt, holding his breath, stretching his
ears, being very much afraid of the dark, and feeling at the same time
an unconscious impression of well-being.

In the same way here, without being altogether at his ease, he felt
rather disposed to be cheerful.


XXI.

At the end of ten minutes the soldiers got bold and began to talk. Near
the officer’s bed, in the circle of light, were placed the highest in
rank--the two artificers, one an old gray-haired man, his breast adorned
with a mass of medals and crosses, among which the cross of Saint George
was wanting, however, the other a young man, smoking cigarettes which he
was rolling, and the drummer, who placed himself, as is the custom, at
the orders of the officer, in the background. In the shadow of the
entrance, behind the bombardier and the medalled soldiers seated in
front, the “humbles” kept themselves. They were the first to break
silence. One of them, running in frightened from outside, served as a
theme for their conversation.

“Eh! say there, you didn’t stay long in the street. Young girls are not
playing there, hey?” said a voice.

“On the contrary, they are singing wonderful songs. You don’t hear such
ones in the village,” replied the new-comer, with a laugh, and all out
of breath.

“Vassina doesn’t like the shells; no, he doesn’t like them!” some one
cried from the aristocratic side.

“When it is necessary it is another story,” slowly replied Vassina, whom
everybody listened to when he spoke. “The twenty-fourth, for example,
they fired so that it was a blessing, and there is no harm in that. Why
let us be killed for nothing? Do the chiefs thank us for that?”

These words provoked a general laugh.

“Nevertheless, there is Melnikoff, who is outside all the time,” said
some one.

“It is true. Make him come in,” added the old artificer, “otherwise he
will get killed for nothing.”

“Who is this Melnikoff?” asked Volodia.

“He is, your Excellency, an animal who is afraid of nothing. He is
walking about outside. Please examine him; he looks like a bear.”

“He practises witchcraft,” added Vassina, in his calm voice.

Melnikoff, a very corpulent soldier (a rare thing), with red hair, a
tremendously bulging forehead, and light blue projecting eyes, came in
just at this moment.

“Are you afraid of bomb-shells?” Volodia asked him.

“Why should I be afraid of them?” repeated Melnikoff, scratching his
neck. “No bomb-shell will kill me, I know.”

“Do you like to live here?”

“To be sure I do; it is very entertaining,” and he burst out laughing.

“Then you must be sent out in a sortie. Would you like to? I will speak
to the general,” said Volodia, although he knew no general.

“Why not like to? I should like to very much!” and Melnikoff disappeared
behind his comrades.

“Come, children, let’s play ‘beggar my neighbor!’ Who has cards?” asked
an impatient voice, and the game immediately began in the farthest
corner. The calling of the tricks could be heard, the sound of taps on
the nose and the bursts of laughter. Volodia in the mean time drank tea
prepared by the drummer, offering some to the artificers, joking and
chatting with them, desirous of making himself popular, and very well
satisfied with the respect they showed him. The soldiers having noticed
that the “barine” was a good fellow, became animated, and one of them
announced that the siege was soon going to come to an end, for a sailor
had told him for a certainty that Constantine, the Czar’s brother, was
coming to deliver them with the ‘merican’[H] fleet; that there would
soon be an armistice of two weeks to rest, and that seventy-five kopeks
would have to be paid for every shot that was fired during the truce.

Vassina, whom Volodia had already noticed--the short soldier with fine
great eyes and side-whiskers--related in his turn, in the midst of a
general silence, which was next broken by bursts of laughter, the joy
that had been felt at first on seeing him come back to his village on
his furlough, and how his father had then sent him to work in the fields
every day, while the lieutenant-forester sent to fetch his wife in a
carriage. Volodia was amused by all these tales. He had no longer the
least fear, and the strong odors which filled their reduct did not cause
him any disgust. He felt, on the contrary, very gay, and in a very
agreeable mood.

Several soldiers were snoring already. Vlang was also lying on the
ground, and the old artificer, having spread his overcoat on the earth,
crossed himself with devotion and mumbled the evening prayer, when
Volodia took a fancy to go and see what was going on out of doors.

“Pull in your legs!” the soldiers immediately said to one another as
they saw him get up, and each one drew his legs back to let him pass.

Vlang, who was supposed to be asleep, got up and seized Volodia by the
lapel of his coat. “Come, don’t go! what is the use?” he said, in a
tearful and persuasive voice. “You don’t know what it is. Bullets are
raining out there. We are better off here.”

But Volodia went out without heeding him, and sat down on the very
threshold of their quarters by the side of Melnikoff.

The air was fresh and pure, especially after that he had just been
breathing, and the night was clear and calm. Through the roar of the
cannonade could be heard the creak of the wheels of the carts bringing
gabions, and the voices of those working in the magazine. Over their
heads sparkled the starry sky, striped by the luminous furrows of the
projectiles. On the left was a small opening, two feet and a half high,
leading to a bomb-proof shelter, where could be perceived the feet and
the backs of the sailors who lived there, and who were plainly heard
talking. Opposite rose the mound which covered the magazine, in front of
which figures, bent double, passed and repassed. On the very top of the
eminence, exposed to bullets and shells which did not stop whistling at
that spot, was a tall black figure, with his hands in his pockets,
trampling on the fresh earth which was brought in bags. From time to
time a shell fell and burst two paces from him. The soldiers who were
carrying sacks bent down and separated, while the black silhouette
continued quietly to level the earth with his feet without changing his
position.

“Who is it?” Volodia asked Melnikoff.

“I don’t know; I am going to see.”

“Don’t go; it is no use.”

But Melnikoff rose without listening to him, went up to the black man,
and remained immovable a long time beside him with the same indifference
to danger.

“It is the guardian of the magazine, your Excellency,” he said, on his
return. “A shell made a hole in it, and they are covering it up with
earth.”

When the shells seemed to fly straight upon the bomb-proof quarters
Volodia squeezed himself into the corner, and then came out raising his
eyes to the sky to see if others were coming. Although Vlang, still
lying down, had more than once begged him to come in, Volodia passed
three hours seated on the threshold, finding a certain pleasure in thus
exposing himself, as well as in watching the flight of the projectiles.
Towards the end of the evening he knew perfectly well the number of the
cannon and the direction they fired, and where their shots struck.


XXII.

The next day--the 27th of August--after ten hours of sleep, Volodia came
out of the bomb-proof fresh and well. Vlang followed him, but at the
first hissing of a cannon-ball he bounded back and threw himself through
the narrow opening, knocking his head as he went, to the general laugh
of the soldiers, all of whom, with the exception of Vlang, of the old
artificer, and two or three others who rarely showed themselves in the
trenches, had slipped outside to breathe the fresh morning air. In spite
of the violence of the bombardment, they could not be prevented from
remaining there, some near the entrance, others sheltered by the
parapet. As to Melnikoff, he had been going and coming between the
batteries since daybreak, looking in the air with indifference.

On the very threshold of the quarters were seated three soldiers, two
old and one young one. The latter, a curly-headed Jewish infantryman
attached to the battery, picked up a bullet which rolled at his feet,
and flattening it against a stone with a piece of a shell, he cut out of
it a cross on the model of that of Saint George, while the others
chatted, watching his work with interest, for he succeeded well with
it.

“I say that if we stay here some time yet, when peace comes we shall be
retired.”

“Sure enough. I have only four years more to serve, and I have been here
six months!”

“That doesn’t count for retirement,” said another, at the moment when a
cannon-ball whizzing over the group struck the earth a yard away from
Melnikoff, who was coming towards them in the trench.

“It almost killed Melnikoff!” cried a soldier.

“It won’t kill me,” replied the former.

“Here, take this cross for your bravery,” said the young Jewish soldier,
finishing the cross and giving it to him.

“No, brother, here the months count for years without exception. There
was an order about it,” continued the talker.

“Whatever happens, there will surely be, on the conclusion of peace, a
review by the Emperor at Warsaw, and if we are not retired we shall have
an unlimited furlough.”

Just at this instant a small cannon-ball passing over their heads with a
ricochet, seemed to moan and whistle together and fell on a stone.

“Attention!” said one of the soldiers. “Perhaps between now and night
you will get your definite furlough!”

Everybody began to laugh. Two hours had not passed, evening had not yet
come, before two of them had, in effect, received their “definite
furlough,” and five had been wounded, but the rest continued to joke as
before.

In the morning the two mortars had been put in order, and Volodia
received at ten o’clock the order from the commander of the bastion to
assemble his men and go with them upon the battery. Once at work, there
remained no trace of that terror which the evening before showed itself
so plainly. Vlang alone did not succeed in overcoming it; he hid
himself, and bent down every instant. Vassina had also lost his
coolness, he was excited and _saluted_. As to Volodia, stirred by an
enthusiastic satisfaction, he thought no more of the danger. The joy he
felt at doing his duty well, at being no longer a coward, at feeling
himself, on the contrary, full of courage, the feeling of commanding and
the presence of twenty men, who he knew were watching him with
curiosity, had made a real hero of him. Being even a little vain of his
bravery, he got up on the _banquette_, unbuttoning his coat so as to be
well observed. The commander of the bastion, in going his rounds,
although he had been accustomed during eight months to courage in all
its forms, could not help admiring this fine-looking boy with animated
face and eyes, his unbuttoned coat exposing a red shirt, which confined
a white and delicate neck, clapping his hands, and crying in a voice of
command, “First! second!” and jumping gayly on the rampart to see where
his shell had fallen. At half-past eleven the firing stopped on both
sides, and at noon precisely began the assault on the Malakoff mamelon,
as well as upon the second, third, and fifth bastions.


XXIII.

On this side of the bay, between Inkerman and the fortifications of the
north, two sailors were standing, in the middle of the day, on Telegraph
Height. Near them an officer was looking at Sebastopol through a
field-glass, and another on horseback, accompanied by a Cossack, had
just rejoined him near the great signal-pole.

The sun soared over the gulf, where the water, covered with ships at
anchor, and with sail and row boats in motion, played merrily in its
warm and luminous rays. A light breeze, which scarcely shook the leaves
of the stunted oak bushes that grew beside the signal-station, filled
the sails of the boats, and made the waves ripple softly. On the other
side of the gulf Sebastopol was visible, unchanged, with its unfinished
church, its column, its quay, the boulevard which cut the hill with a
green band, the elegant library building, its little lakes of azure
blue, with their forests of masts, its picturesque aqueducts, and, above
all that, clouds of a bluish tint, formed by powder-smoke, lighted up
from time to time by the red flame of the firing. It was the same proud
and beautiful Sebastopol, with its festal air, surrounded on one side by
the yellow smoke-crowned hills, on the other by the sea, deep blue in
color, and sparkling brilliantly in the sun. At the horizon, where the
smoke of a steamer traced a black line, white, narrow clouds were
rising, precursors of a wind. Along the whole line of the
fortifications, along the heights, especially on the left side, spurted
out suddenly, torn by a visible flash, although it was broad daylight,
plumes of thick white smoke, which, assuming various forms, extended,
rose, and colored the sky with sombre tints. These jets of smoke came
out on all sides--from the hills, from the hostile batteries, from the
city--and flew towards the sky. The noise of the explosions shook the
air with a continuous roar. Towards noon these smoke-puffs became rarer
and rarer, and the vibrations of the air strata became less frequent.

“Do you know that the second bastion is no longer replying?” said the
hussar officer on horseback; “it is entirely demolished. It is
terrible!”

“Yes, and the Malakoff replies twice out of three times,” answered the
one who was looking through the field-glass. “This silence is driving me
mad! They are firing straight on the Korniloff battery, and that is not
replying.”

“You’ll see it will be as I said; towards noon they will cease firing.
It is always that way. Come and take breakfast, they are waiting for us.
There is nothing more to see here.”

“Wait, don’t bother me,” replied, with marked agitation, the one looking
through the field-glass.

“What is it?--what’s the matter?”

“There is a movement in the trenches; they are marching in close
columns.”

“Yes, I see it well,” said one of the sailors; “they are advancing by
columns. We must set the signal.”

“But see, there--see! They are coming out of the trenches!”

They could see, in fact, with the naked eye black spots going down from
the hill into the ravine, and proceeding from the French batteries
towards our bastions. In the foreground, in front of the former, black
spots could be seen very near our lines. Suddenly, from different points
of the bastion at the same time, spurted out the white plumes of the
discharges, and, thanks to the wind, the noise of a lively fusillade
could be heard, like the patter of a heavy rain against the windows. The
black lines advanced, wrapped in a curtain of smoke, and came nearer.
The fusillade increased in violence. The smoke burst out at shorter and
shorter intervals, extended rapidly along the line in a single light,
lilac-colored cloud, unrolling and enlarging itself by turns, furrowed
here and there by flashes or rent by black points. All the noises
mingled together in the tumult of one continued roar.

“It is an assault,” said the officer, pale with emotion, handing his
glass to the sailor.

Cossacks and officers on horseback went along the road, preceding the
commander-in-chief in his carriage, accompanied by his suite. Their
faces expressed the painful emotion of expectation.

“It is impossible that it is taken!” said the officer on horseback.

“God in heaven!--the flag! Look now!” cried the other, choked by
emotion, turning away from the glass. “The French flag is in the
Malakoff mamelon!”

“Impossible!”


XXIV.

Koseltzoff the elder, who had had the time during the night to win and
lose again all his winnings, including even the gold-pieces sewn in the
seams of his uniform, was sleeping, towards morning, in the barracks of
the fifth bastion, a heavy but deep sleep, when the sinister cry rang
out, repeated by different voices, “The alarm!”

“Wake up, Mikhaïl Semenovitch! It is an assault!” a voice cried in his
ear.

“A school-boy trick,” he replied, opening his eyes without believing the
news; but when he perceived an officer, pale, agitated, running wildly
from one corner to another, he understood all, and the thought that he
might perhaps be taken for a coward refusing to join his company in a
critical moment, gave him such a violent start that he rushed out and
ran straight to find his soldiers. The cannon were dumb, but the
musket-firing was at its height, and the bullets were whistling, not
singly but in swarms, just as the flights of little birds pass over our
heads in autumn. The whole of the place occupied by the battalion the
evening before was filled with smoke, with cries, and with curses. On
his way he met a crowd of soldiers and wounded, and thirty paces farther
on he saw his company brought to a stand against a wall.

“The Swartz redoubt is occupied,” said a young officer. “All is lost!”

“What stuff and nonsense!” he angrily replied, and drawing his small
rusty sword from its scabbard, shouted, “Forward, children! Hurrah!”

His strong and resounding voice stimulated his own courage, and he ran
forward along the traverse. Fifty soldiers dashed after him with a
shout. They came out on an open place, and a hail of bullets met them.
Two struck him simultaneously, but he did not have time to understand
where they had hit him, or whether they had bruised or had wounded him,
for in the smoke before him blue uniforms and red trousers started up,
and cries were heard which were not Russian. A Frenchman sitting on the
rampart was waving his hat and shouting. The conviction that he would be
killed whetted Koseltzoff’s courage. He continued to run forward; some
soldiers passed him, others appeared suddenly from another side and
began to run with him. The distance between them and the blue uniforms,
who regained their intrenchments by running, remained the same, but his
feet stumbled over the dead and the wounded. Arrived at the outer ditch,
everything became confused before his eyes, and he felt a violent pain
in his chest. A half hour later he was lying on a stretcher near the
Nicholas barrack. He knew he was wounded, but he felt no pain. He would
have liked, nevertheless, to drink something cold, and to feel himself
lying more comfortably.

A stout little doctor with black whiskers came up to him and unbuttoned
his overcoat. Koseltzoff looked over his chin at the face of the doctor,
who was examining his wound without causing him the least pain. He,
having covered the wounded man again with his shirt, wiped his fingers
on the lapels of his coat, and turning aside his head, passed to another
in silence. Koseltzoff mechanically followed with his eyes all that was
going on about him, and remembering the fifth bastion, congratulated
himself with great satisfaction. He had valiantly done his duty. It was
the first time since he was in the service that he had performed it in a
way that he had nothing to reproach himself for. The surgeon, who had
just dressed another officer’s wound, pointed him out to a priest, who
had a fine large red beard, and who stood there with a cross.

“Am I going to die?” Koseltzoff asked him, seeing him come near.

The priest made no reply, but recited a prayer and held the cross down
to him. Death had no terror for Koseltzoff. Carrying the cross to his
lips with weakening hands, he wept.

“Are the French driven back?” he asked the priest in a firm voice.

“Victory is ours along the whole line,” answered the latter, hiding the
truth to spare the feelings of the dying man, for the French flag was
already flying on the Malakoff mamelon.

“Thank God!” murmured the wounded man, whose tears ran down his cheeks
unnoticed. The memory of his brother passed through his mind for a
second. “God grant him the same happiness!” he said.


XXV.

But such was not Volodia’s lot. While he was listening to a tale that
Vassina was relating, the alarm cry, “The French are coming!” made his
blood rush immediately back to his heart; he felt his cheeks pale and
turn cold, and he remained a second stupefied. Then looking around, he
saw the soldiers button their coats and glide out one after the other,
and he heard one of them, Melnikoff, probably, say, in a joking way,
“Come, children, let’s offer him bread and salt.”

Volodia and Vlang, who did not leave his heels, went out together and
ran to the battery. On one side as well as on the other the artillery
had ceased firing. The despicable and cynical cowardice of the yunker
still more than the coolness of the soldiers had the effect of restoring
his courage.

“Am I like him?” he thought, rushing quickly towards the parapet, near
which the mortars were placed. From there he distinctly saw the French
dash across the space, free from every obstacle, and run straight
towards him. Their bayonets, sparkling in the sun, were moving in the
nearest trenches. A small, square-shouldered Zouave ran ahead of the
others, sabre in hand, leaping over the ditches. “Grape!” shouted
Volodia, throwing himself down from the parapet. But the soldiers had
already thought of it, and the metallic noise of the grape, thrown first
by one mortar and then by the other, thundered over his head. “First!
second!” he ordered, running across between the two mortars, completely
forgetting the danger. Shouts and the musket reports of the battalion
charged with the defence of the battery were heard on one side, and
suddenly on the left arose a desperate clamor, repeated by many voices:
“They are coming in our rear!” and Volodia, turning around, saw a score
of Frenchmen. One of them, a fine man with a black beard, ran towards
him, and halting ten paces from the battery, fired at him point-blank
and went on. Volodia, petrified, could not believe his eyes. In front of
him, on the rampart, were blue uniforms, and two Frenchmen who were
spiking a cannon. With the exception of Melnikoff, killed by a bullet at
his side, and Vlang, who with downcast eyes, and face inflamed by fury,
was brandishing a hand-spike, no one was left.

“Follow me, Vladimir Semenovitch! follow me!” shouted Vlang, in a
despairing tone, defending himself with the lever from the French who
came behind him. The yunker’s menacing look, and the blow which he
struck two of them, made them halt.

“Follow me, Vladimir Semenovitch!--What are you waiting for? Fly!” and
he threw himself into the trench, from which our infantry were firing on
the enemy. He immediately came out of it, however, to see what had
become of his beloved lieutenant. A shapeless thing, clothed in a gray
overcoat, lay, face to earth, on the spot where Volodia stood, and the
whole place was filled by the French, who were firing at our men.


XXVI.

Vlang found his battery again in the second line of defence, and of the
twenty soldiers who recently composed it, only eight were alive.

Towards nine o’clock in the evening Vlang and his men were crossing the
bay in a steamboat in the direction of Severnaïa. The boat was laden
with wounded, with cannon, and with horses. The firing had stopped
everywhere. The stars sparkled in the sky as on the night before, but a
strong wind was blowing and the sea was rough. On the first and second
bastions flames flashed up close to the ground, preceding explosions
which shook the atmosphere and showed stones and black objects of
strange form thrown into the air. Something near the docks was on fire,
and a red flame was reflected in the water. The bridge, covered with
people, was lighted up by fires from the Nicholas battery. A great sheaf
of flames seemed to rise over the water on the distant point of the
Alexander battery, and lighted up the under side of a cloud of smoke
which hovered over it. As on the preceding evening, the lights of the
hostile fleet sparkled afar on the sea, calm and insolent. The masts of
our scuttled vessels, slowly settling into the depths of the water,
contrasted sharply against the red glow of the fires. On the deck of the
steamboat no one spoke. Now and then, in the midst of the regular
chopping of the waves struck by the wheels, and the hissing of escaping
steam, could be heard the snorting of horses, the striking of their
iron-shod hoofs on the planks, the captain speaking a few words of
command, and also the dolorous groaning of the wounded. Vlang, who had
not eaten since the day before, drew a crust of bread from his pocket
and gnawed it, but at the thought of Volodia he broke out sobbing so
violently that the soldiers were surprised at it.

“Look! our Vlang is eating bread and weeping,” said Vassina.

“Strange!” added one of them.

“See! they have burned our barracks!” he continued, sighing. “How many
of our fellows are dead, and dead to no purpose, for the French have got
possession!”

“We have scarcely come out alive. We must thank God for it,” said
Vassina.

“It’s all the same. It is maddening!”

“Why? Do you think they will lead a happy life there? Wait a bit; we
will take them back. We will still lose some of our men, possibly, but
as true as God is holy, if the emperor orders it we will take them back!
Do you think they have been left as they were? Come, come; these were
only naked walls. The intrenchments were blown up. He has planted his
flag on the mamelon, it is true, but he won’t risk himself in the town.
Wait a bit; we won’t be behindhand with you! Only give us time,” he
said, looking in the direction of the French.

“It will be so, that’s sure,” said another, with conviction.

On the whole line of the bastions of Sebastopol, where during whole
months an ardent and energetic life was stirring, where during months
death alone relieved the agony of the heroes, one after the other, who
inspired the enemy’s terror, hatred, and finally admiration--on these
bastions, I say, there was not a single soul, everything there was dead,
fierce, frightful, but not silent, for everything all around was falling
in with a din. On the earth, torn up by a recent explosion, were lying,
here and there, broken beams, crushed bodies of Russians and French,
heavy cast-iron cannon overturned into the ditch by a terrible force,
half buried in the ground and forever dumb, bomb-shells, balls,
splinters of beams, ditches, bomb-proofs, and more corpses, in blue or
in gray overcoats, which seemed to have been shaken by supreme
convulsions, and which were lighted up now every instant by the red fire
of the explosions which resounded in the air.

The enemy well saw that something unusual was going on in formidable
Sebastopol, and the explosions, the silence of death on the bastions,
made them tremble. Under the impression of the calm and firm resistance
of the last day they did not yet dare believe in the disappearance of
their invincible adversary, and they awaited, silent and motionless,
the end of the dismal night.

The army of Sebastopol, like a sea whose liquid mass, agitated and
uneasy, spreads and overflows, moved slowly forward in the dark night,
undulating into the impenetrable gloom, over the bridge on the bay,
proceeding towards Severnaïa, leaving behind them those spots where so
many heroes had fallen, sprinkling them with their blood, those places
defended during eleven months against an enemy twice as strong as
itself, and which it had received the order this very day to abandon
without a fight.

The first impression caused by this order of the day weighed heavily on
the heart of every Russian; next the fear of pursuit was the dominant
feeling with all. The soldiers, accustomed to fight in the places they
were abandoning, felt themselves without defence the moment they left
those behind. Uneasy, they crowded together in masses at the entrance of
the bridge, which was lifted by violent wind gusts. Through the
obstruction of regiments, of militiamen, of wagons, some crowding the
others, the infantry, whose muskets clashed together, and the officers
carrying orders, made a passage for themselves with difficulty. The
inhabitants and the military servants accompanying the baggage begged
and wept to be permitted to cross, while the artillery, in a hurry to go
away, rolled along noisily, coming down towards the bay. Although the
attention was distracted by a thousand details, the feeling of
self-preservation, and the desire to fly as soon as possible from that
fatal spot, filled each one’s soul. It was thus with the mortally
wounded soldier lying among five hundred other unfortunates on the
flag-stones of the Paul quay, begging God for death; with the exhausted
militiaman, who by a last effort forces his way into the compact crowd
to leave a free passage for a superior officer; with the general who is
commanding the passage with a firm voice, and restraining the impatient
soldiers; with the straggling sailor or the battalion on the march,
almost stifled by the moving crowd; with the wounded officer borne by
four soldiers, who, stopped by the crowd, lay down the stretcher near
the Nicholas barracks; with the old artilleryman, who, during sixteen
years, has not left the cannon which, with the assistance of his
comrades and at the command of his chief, incomprehensible for him, he
is about to tumble over into the bay; and, at length, with the sailors
who have just scuttled their ships, and are vigorously rowing away in
their boats.

Arrived at the end of the bridge, each soldier, with very few
exceptions, takes off his cap and crosses himself. But besides this
feeling he has another, more poignant, deeper--a feeling akin to
repentance, to shame, to hatred; for it is with an inexpressible
bitterness of heart that each of them sighs, utters threats against the
enemy, and, as he reaches the north side, throws a last look upon
abandoned Sebastopol.


FINIS.


FOOTNOTES:

[A] The Military Gazette.--TRANS.

[B] A sort of arbor covered with ivy was then used in most fashionable
parlors.--TRANS.

[C] A cadet. The yunker ranks between sergeant and second-lieutenant,
and belongs to the class of commissioned officers. Both the title
and the function are borrowed from the German (_junker_). The
present spelling is adopted to represent more nearly the Russian
pronunciation.--TRANS.

[D] The Russian soldiers accustomed to fight the Turks and to hear
their battle-cries, always tell that the French have the same shout,
“Allah!”--TRANS.

[E] The last station before Sebastopol.--TRANS.

[F] This is the literal translation of the common phrase used
by the soldiers in reply to a greeting from their superior
officers.--TRANS.

[G] In certain regiments the officers nicknamed the soldiers “Moscow,”
half in scorn, half in kindly sport.--TRANS.

[H] American.