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.