Part Eight: Chapter 3

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Saying good-bye to the princess, Sergey Ivanovitch was joined byKatavasov; together they got into a carriage full to overflowing,and the train started.

　　At Tsaritsino station the train was met by a chorus of young mensinging "Hail to Thee!" Again the volunteers bowed and pokedtheir heads out, but Sergey Ivanovitch paid no attention to them.He had had so much to do with the volunteers that the type wasfamiliar to him and did not interest him. Katavasov, whosescientific work had prevented his having a chance of observingthem hitherto, was very much interested in them and questionedSergey Ivanovitch.

　　Sergey Ivanovitch advised him to go into the second-class andtalk to them himself. At the next station Katavasov acted onthis suggestion.

　　At the first stop he moved into the second-class and made theacquaintance of the volunteers. They were sitting in a corner ofthe carriage, talking loudly and obviously aware that theattention of the passengers and Katavasov as he got in wasconcentrated upon them. More loudly than all talked the tall,hollow-chested young man. He was unmistakably tipsy, and wasrelating some story that had occurred at his school. Facing himsat a middle-aged officer in the Austrian military jacket of theGuards uniform. He was listening with a smile to the hollow-chested youth, and occasionally pulling him up. The third, in anartillery uniform, was sitting on a box beside them. A fourthwas asleep.

　　Entering into conversation with the youth, Katavasov learned thathe was a wealthy Moscow merchant who had run through a largefortune before he was two-and-twenty. Katavasov did not likehim, because he was unmanly and effeminate and sickly. He wasobviously convinced, especially now after drinking, that he wasperforming a heroic action, and he bragged of it in the mostunpleasant way.

　　The second, the retired officer, made an unpleasant impressiontoo upon Katavasov. He was, it seemed, a man who had triedeverything. He had been on a railway, had been a land-steward,and had started factories, and he talked, quite withoutnecessity, of all he had done, and used learned expressions quiteinappropriately.

　　The third, the artilleryman, on the contrary, struck Katavasovvery favorably. He was a quiet, modest fellow, unmistakablyimpressed by the knowledge of the officer and the heroicself-sacrifice of the merchant and saying nothing about himself.When Katavasov asked him what had impelled him to go to Servia,he answered modestly:

　　"Oh, well, everyone's going. The Servians want help, too. I'msorry for them."

　　"Yes, you artillerymen especially are scarce there," saidKatavasov.

　　"Oh, I wasn't long in the artillery, maybe they'll put me intothe infantry or the cavalry."

　　"Into the infantry when they need artillery more than anything?"said Katavasov, fancying from the artilleryman's apparent agethat he must have reached a fairly high grade.

　　"I wasn't long in the artillery; I'm a cadet retired," he said,and he began to explain how he had failed in his examination.

　　All of this together made a disagreeable impression on Katavasov,and when the volunteers got out at a station for a drink,Katavasov would have liked to compare his unfavorable impressionin conversation with someone. There was an old man in thecarriage, wearing a military overcoat, who had been listening allthe while to Katavasov's conversation with the volunteers. Whenthey were left alone, Katavasov addressed him.

　　"What different positions they come from, all those fellows whoare going off there," Katavasov said vaguely, not wishing toexpress his own opinion, and at the same time anxious to find outthe old man's views.

　　The old man was an officer who had served on two campaigns. Heknew what makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and thetalk of those persons, by the swagger with which they hadrecourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poorsoldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he waslonging to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, adrunkard and a thief whom no one would employ as a laborer. Butknowing by experience that in the present condition of the publictemper it was dangerous to express an opinion opposed to thegeneral one, and especially to criticize the volunteersunfavorably, he too watched Katavasov without committing himself.

　　"Well, men are wanted there," he said, laughing with his eyes.And they fell to talking of the last war news, and each concealedfrom the other his perplexity as to the engagement expected nextday, since the Turks had been beaten, according to the latestnews, at all points. And so they parted, neither givingexpression to his opinion.

　　Katavasov went back to his own carriage, and with reluctanthypocrisy reported to Sergey Ivanovitch his observations of thevolunteers, from which it would appear that they were capitalfellows.

　　At a big station at a town the volunteers were again greeted withshouts and singing, again men and women with collecting boxesappeared, and provincial ladies brought bouquets to thevolunteers and followed them into the refreshment room; but allthis was on a much smaller and feebler scale than in Moscow.