"Really, it is strange to think," said Galtsin, taking a glass, and walking to the window, " that we are in a beleaguered city; tea with cream, and such quarters as I should be only too happy to get in Petersburg."
" Yes, if it were not for that," said the old lieutenant-colonel, who was dissatisfied with everything, " this constant waiting for something would be simply unendurable... and to see how men are killed, killed every day, — and there is no end to it, and under such circumstances it would not be comfortable to live in the mud."
" And how about our infantry officers } " said
Kalugin. " They live in the bastions with the soldiers in the casemates and eat beet soup with the soldiers — how about them? "
^' How about them? They don't change their linen for ten days at a time, and they are heroes — wonderful men."
At this moment an officer of infantry entered the room.
** I... I was ordered... may I present myself to the gen... to His Excellency from General N. } " he inquired, bowing with an air of embarrassment.
Kalugin rose, but, without returning the officer's salute, he asked him, with insulting courtesy and strained official smile, whether they'^ would not wait awhile; and, without inviting him to be seated or paying any further attention to him, he turned to Prince Galtsin and began to speak to him in French, so that the unhappy officer, who remained standing in the middle of the room, absolutely did not know what to do with himself.
'' It is on very important business, sir," said the officer, after a momentary pause.
* A polite way of referring to the general in the plural.
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
" Ah! very well, then," said Kalugin, putting on his cloak, and accompanying him to the door.
" Eh bieUy messieurs^ I think there will be hot work to-night," said Kalugin in French, on his return from the general's.
" Hey.? What.? A sortie t " They all began to question him.
"I don't know yet — you will see for yourselves," replied Kalugin, with a mysterious smile.
"And my commander is on the bastion — of course, I shall have to go," said Praskukhin, buckling on his sword.
But no one answered him: he must know for himself whether he had to go or not.
Praskukhin and Neferdoff went off, in order to betake themselves to their posts. *' Farewell, gentlemen! " " Au revoir, gentlemen! We shall meet again to-night! " shouted Kalugin from the window when Praskukhin and Neferdoff trotted down the street, bending over the bows of their Cossack saddles. The trampling of their Cossack horses soon died away in the dusky street.
" No, tell me, is something really going to take place to-night } " said Galtsin, in French, as he leaned with Kalugin on the window-sill, and gazed
at the bombs which were flying over the bastions.
" I can tell you, yon see... you have been on the bastions, of course? " (Galtsin made a sign of assent, although he had been only once to the fourth bastion.) " Well, there was a trench opposite our lunette," and Kalugin, who was not a speciaKst, although he considered his judgment on military affairs particularly accurate, began to explain the position of our troops and of the enemy's works and the plan of the proposed affair, mixing up the technical terms of fortifications a good deal in the process.
" But they are beginning to hammer away at our casemates. Oho! was that ours or his? there, it has burst," they said, as they leaned on the window-sill, gazing at the fiery line of the bomb, which exploded in the air, at the lightning of the discharges, at the dark blue sky, momentarily illuminated, and at the white smoke of the powder, and listened to the sounds of the firing, which grew louder and louder.
" What a charming sight 1 is it not } " said Kalugin, in French, directing the attention of his guest to the really beautiful spectacle. ** Do you know, you cannot distinguish the stars from the bombs at times."
" Yes, I was just thinking that that was a star; but it darted down... there, it has burst now. And that big star yonder, what is it called? It is just exactly like a bomb."
** Do you know, I have grown so used to these bombs that I am convinced that a starlight night in Russia will always seem to me to be all bombs; one gets so accustomed to them."
" But am not I to go on this sortie } " inquired Galtsin, after a momentary silence.