Chapter IV

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.