Koseltzoff the elder, who had had the time during the night to win and
lose again all his winnings, including even the gold-pieces sewn in the
seams of his uniform, was sleeping, towards morning, in the barracks of
the fifth bastion, a heavy but deep sleep, when the sinister cry rang
out, repeated by different voices, “The alarm!”
“Wake up, Mikhaïl Semenovitch! It is an assault!” a voice cried in his
ear.
“A school-boy trick,” he replied, opening his eyes without believing the
news; but when he perceived an officer, pale, agitated, running wildly
from one corner to another, he understood all, and the thought that he
might perhaps be taken for a coward refusing to join his company in a
critical moment, gave him such a violent start that he rushed out and
ran straight to find his soldiers. The cannon were dumb, but the
musket-firing was at its height, and the bullets were whistling, not
singly but in swarms, just as the flights of little birds pass over our
heads in autumn. The whole of the place occupied by the battalion the
evening before was filled with smoke, with cries, and with curses. On
his way he met a crowd of soldiers and wounded, and thirty paces farther
on he saw his company brought to a stand against a wall.
“The Swartz redoubt is occupied,” said a young officer. “All is lost!”
“What stuff and nonsense!” he angrily replied, and drawing his small
rusty sword from its scabbard, shouted, “Forward, children! Hurrah!”
His strong and resounding voice stimulated his own courage, and he ran
forward along the traverse. Fifty soldiers dashed after him with a
shout. They came out on an open place, and a hail of bullets met them.
Two struck him simultaneously, but he did not have time to understand
where they had hit him, or whether they had bruised or had wounded him,
for in the smoke before him blue uniforms and red trousers started up,
and cries were heard which were not Russian. A Frenchman sitting on the
rampart was waving his hat and shouting. The conviction that he would be
killed whetted Koseltzoff’s courage. He continued to run forward; some
soldiers passed him, others appeared suddenly from another side and
began to run with him. The distance between them and the blue uniforms,
who regained their intrenchments by running, remained the same, but his
feet stumbled over the dead and the wounded. Arrived at the outer ditch,
everything became confused before his eyes, and he felt a violent pain
in his chest. A half hour later he was lying on a stretcher near the
Nicholas barrack. He knew he was wounded, but he felt no pain. He would
have liked, nevertheless, to drink something cold, and to feel himself
lying more comfortably.
A stout little doctor with black whiskers came up to him and unbuttoned
his overcoat. Koseltzoff looked over his chin at the face of the doctor,
who was examining his wound without causing him the least pain. He,
having covered the wounded man again with his shirt, wiped his fingers
on the lapels of his coat, and turning aside his head, passed to another
in silence. Koseltzoff mechanically followed with his eyes all that was
going on about him, and remembering the fifth bastion, congratulated
himself with great satisfaction. He had valiantly done his duty. It was
the first time since he was in the service that he had performed it in a
way that he had nothing to reproach himself for. The surgeon, who had
just dressed another officer’s wound, pointed him out to a priest, who
had a fine large red beard, and who stood there with a cross.
“Am I going to die?” Koseltzoff asked him, seeing him come near.
The priest made no reply, but recited a prayer and held the cross down
to him. Death had no terror for Koseltzoff. Carrying the cross to his
lips with weakening hands, he wept.
“Are the French driven back?” he asked the priest in a firm voice.
“Victory is ours along the whole line,” answered the latter, hiding the
truth to spare the feelings of the dying man, for the French flag was
already flying on the Malakoff mamelon.
“Thank God!” murmured the wounded man, whose tears ran down his cheeks
unnoticed. The memory of his brother passed through his mind for a
second. “God grant him the same happiness!” he said.