Part 3

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.