On reaching the Hungarian city, General Korniloff found it, as
he expected, full of troops. Reinforcements were coming in to be
dispatched to the various fronts, while other men were on their way
home on periods of furlough. Amid all these soldiers nobody took
any notice of the disguised Russian in his simple Austrian uniform.
Needless to say, he carefully avoided attracting attention to himself,
always keeping where the crowds were thickest.
Feeling hungry, he went into a small eating-house frequented by
working-class people and ordered beer, bread, and sausage. Most of the
customers in the place spoke Hungarian, but two sitting at a table
near him were talking in German, and he overheard what they said. One
of them was a woman, who, to judge by her appearance, was engaged in
munition-making.
"_Ach, du Guter!_" she exclaimed to her companion. "That Russian
general they captured in the Carpathians last year--Korniloff--has
escaped, and they are offering a reward for his capture."
The fugitive felt for a moment as if all eyes were bent upon him, but
as a matter of fact nobody took any notice of him.
"Ugh!" growled the man addressed. "Why couldn't they keep him when they
had him? How much are they offering?"
"Fifty thousand kronen."
"_Fui tausend!_ Fifty thousand kronen for a _verdammten Russen_! And in
these times, when the war costs so much!"
"_Ja, mein lieber_, but he's a general, you see," explained the woman.
"I wish I could find him. It would be better than making munitions."
So there was a price of fifty thousand kronen on his head, reflected
Korniloff, as he left the restaurant. He felt strangely elated at
the thought that he was calmly passing among the enemy unknown and
unsuspected with such a reward offered for his capture. He bought a
newspaper to obtain confirmation of the woman's announcement, and there
he found the notice in large type, with a curiously inaccurate portrait
of himself.
The darkness was now falling, and he walked on until he found himself
in the Franz Josefplatz. A large number of soldiers were camping in
the square, lying upon the benches or on the ground, and evidently
preparing to spend the night there. Artillery-wagons were lined up all
round. A man he passed--an Austrian artillery man--looked up at him
and smiled. He was fixing his haversack against the trunk of a tree to
serve as a sort of pillow.
"As good here as anywhere else," said the man in German.
"To be sure," Korniloff replied. "Better than the trenches, anyway. Why
is the regiment bivouacking here?"
"No room elsewhere, comrade," said the soldier. "Wounded and soldiers
everywhere--all the barracks full; everything full. Well, it's a nice
night. Have a smoke?"
He offered a cigar, which the disguised general accepted, sitting down
beside his new-found friend.
"Where have you come from, and where are you going?" asked the Austrian.
"Rejoining my regiment after convalescence," replied Korniloff.
They sat and exchanged confidence for some time, the Austrian asking
numerous questions which Korniloff parried as well as he could. The
gunner confessed that he was heartily sick of the war, as were all
his comrades. He heard nothing but complaints from his home, where
conditions were getting harder and food was becoming scarcer.
"It's the same with you, eh, comrade?" he said. "I don't suppose you
come from a part of the world that's any better off?"
The Austrian was a simple soul, and he told Korniloff many things that
interested him. Finally, after he had babbled in this way for some
time, both men fell asleep side by side.