"Non, pas encore," answered Mikha'ilofiF, who wished to show that he understood and spoke French.
" Is the truce still in force? " said Galtsin, addressing him courteously in Russian, and thereby intimating — so it seemed to the cap-
* This sentence is in French.
tain — It must be difficult for you to speak
French, so why is it not better to talk in your own tongue simply?... And with this the adjutants left him. The staff-captain again felt lonely, as on the preceding evening, and, exchano^ino- salutes with various orentlemen, — some 00»-»
he did not care, and others he did not dare, to join,— he seated himself near Kazarsky's monument, and lighted a cigarette.
Baron Pesth also had come to the boulevard. He had been telling how he had gone over to arrange the truce, and had conversed with the French officers, and he declared that one had said to him, "If daylight had held off another half-hour, these ambushes would have been retaken; " and that he had replied, " Sir, I refrain from saying no, in order not to give you the lie," and how well he had said it, and so on.
But, in reality, although he had had a hand in the truce, he had not dared to say anything very particular there, although he had been very desirous of talking with the French (for it is awfully jolly to talk with Frenchmen). Yunker Baron Pesth had marched up and down the line for a long time, incessantly inquiring of the Frenchmen who were near him: " To what regiment do you belong? " They answered him; and that was the end of it.
When he walked too far along the line, the French sentry, not suspecting that this soldier understood French, cursed him. "He has come to spy out our works, the cursed..." said he; and, in consequence, Yunker Baron Pesth, taking no further interest in the truce, went home, and thought out on the way thither those French phrases, which he had now repeated. Captain Zoboff was also on the boulevard, talking loudly, and Captain Obzhogoff, in a very dishevelled condition, and an artillery captain, who courted no one, and was happy in the love of the yunkers, and all the faces which had been there on the day before, and all still actuated by the same motives. No one was missing except Praskukhin,.Neferdoff, and some others, whom hardly any one remembered or thought of now, though their bodies were not yet washed, laid out, and interred in the earth.
XVI.
White flags had been hung out from our bastion, and from the trenches of the French, and in the blooming valley between them lay disfigured corpses, shoeless, in garments of gray or blue, which laborers were engaged in carrying off and heaping upon carts. The odor of the dead bodies filled the air. Throngs of people had poured out of Sevastopol, and from the French camp, to gaze upon this spectacle, and they pressed one after the other with eager and benevolent curiosity.
Listen to what these people are saying.
Here, in a group of Russians and French who have come together, is a young officer, who speaks French badly, but well enough to make himself understood, examining a cartridgebox of the guards.
" And what is this bird here for } " says he.
" Because it is a cartridge-box belonging to
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
a regiment of the guards, Monsieur, and bears the Imperial eagle."
** And do you belong to the guard? '*
"Pardon, Monsieur, I belong to the sixth regiment of the line."
"And this — bought where?" asks the officer, pointing to a cigar-holder of yellow wood, in which the Frenchman was smoking his cigarette.
"At Balaklava, Monsieur. It is very plain, of palm-wood."
" Pretty! " says the officer, guided in his conversation not so much by his own wishes as by the words which he knows.
" If you will have the kindness to keep it as a souvenir of this meeting, you will confer an obligation on me."
And the polite Frenchman blows out the cigarette, and hand^ the holder over to the officer with a little bow. The officer gives him his, and all the members of the group, Frenchmen as well as Russians, appear very much pleased and smile.
Then a bold infantryman, in a pink shirt, with his cloak thrown over his shoulders, accompanied by two other soldiers, who, with their nj hands behind their backs, were standing behind him, with merry, curious countenances, stepped up to a Frenchman, and requested a light for his pipe. The Frenchman brightened his fire, stirred up his short pipe, and shook out a light for the Russian.
" Tobacco good! " said the soldier in the pink shirt; and the spectators smile.