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 manoeuvre, 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.