The cannon roared with the same violence, but Ekatherinenskaïa Street,
through which Volodia went, accompanied by Nikolaïeff, was empty and
quiet. He could see in the darkness only the white walls standing in the
midst of the great overthrown houses, and the stones of the sidewalk he
was on. Sometimes he met soldiers and officers, and going along the left
side, near the Admiralty, he noticed, by the bright light of a fire
which burned behind a fence, a row of dark-leaved acacias, covered with
dust, recently planted along the sidewalk and held up by green painted
stakes. His steps and those of Nikolaïeff, who was loudly breathing,
resounded alone in the silence. His thoughts were vague. The pretty
Sister of Charity, Martzeff’s leg, with his toes moving convulsively in
his stocking, the darkness, the shells, the different pictures of death,
passed confusedly in his memory. His young and impressionable soul was
irritated and wounded by his isolation, by the complete indifference of
every one to his lot, although he was exposed to danger. “I shall
suffer, I shall be killed, and no one will mourn me,” he said to
himself. Where, then, was the life of the hero full of the energetic
ardor and of the sympathies he had so often dreamed of? The shells
shrieked and burst nearer and nearer, and Nikolaïeff sighed oftener
without speaking. In crossing the bridge which led to Korabelnaïa he saw
something two steps off plunge whistling into the gulf, illuminating for
a second with a purple light the violet-tinted waves, and then bound
off, throwing a shower of water into the air.
“Curse it! the villain is still alive,” murmured Nikolaïeff.
“Yes,” answered Volodia, in spite of himself, and surprised at the sound
of his own voice, so shrill and harsh.
They now met wounded men carried on stretchers, carts filled with
gabions, a regiment, men on horseback. One of the latter, an officer
followed by a Cossack, stopped at the sight of Volodia, examined his
face, then, turning away, hit his horse with his whip and continued on
his way. “Alone, alone! whether I am alive or not, it is the same to
all!” said the youth to himself, ready to burst into tears. Having
passed a great white wall, he entered a street bordered with little,
quite ruined houses, continually lighted up by the flash of the shells.
A drunken woman in rags, followed by a sailor, came out of a small door
and stumbled against him. “I beg pardon, your Excellency,” she murmured.
The poor boy’s heart was more and more oppressed, while the flashes
continually lit up the black horizon and the shells whistled and burst
about him. Suddenly Nikolaïeff sighed, and spoke with a voice which
seemed to Volodia to express a restrained terror.
“It was well worth while to hurry from home to come here! We went on and
went on, and what was the use of hurrying?”
“But, thank the Lord! my brother is cured,” said Volodia, in order by
talking to drive away the horrible feeling which had got possession of
him.
“Finely cured, when he is in a bad way altogether! The well ones would
find themselves much better off in the hospital in times like these. Do
we, perchance, take any pleasure in being here? Now an arm is lost, now
a leg, and then--And yet it is better here in the city than in the
bastion, Lord God! On the way a man has to say all his prayers. Ah,
scoundrel! it just hummed in my ears,” he added, listening to the sound
of a piece of shell which had passed close to him. “Now,” continued
Nikolaïeff, “I was told to lead your Excellency, and I know I must do
what I am ordered to, but our carriage is in the care of a comrade, and
the bundles are undone. I was told to come, and I have come. But if any
one of the things we have brought is lost, it is I, Nikolaïeff, who
answers for it.”
A few steps farther on they came out on an open space.
“Here is your artillery, your Excellency,” he suddenly said. “Ask the
sentinel, he will show you.”
Volodia went forward alone. No longer hearing behind him Nikolaïeff’s
sighs, he felt himself abandoned for good and all. The feeling of this
desertion in the presence of danger, of death, as he believed, oppressed
his heart with the glacial weight of a stone. Halting in the middle of
the place, he looked all about him to see if he was observed, and taking
his head in both hands, he murmured, with a voice broken by terror, “My
God! am I really a despicable poltroon, a coward? I who have lately
dreamed of dying for my country, for my Czar, and that with joy! Yes, I
am an unfortunate and despicable being!” he cried, in profound despair,
and quite undeceived about himself. Having finally overcome his emotion,
he asked the sentinel to show him the house of the commander of the
battery.