Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

of the Zouave’s coat; and everybody laughs again.

“Ne sors pas de ta ligne, à vos places, sacré nom!”63 cries a French Corporal, and the soldiers separate with evident unwillingness.

And here, amidst a group of French officers, is one of our young cavalry officers gushing. They are talking about some Count Sazónof, “que j’ai beaucoup connu, Monsieur,” says a French officer with only one epaulet⁠—“c’est un de ces vrais comtes russes, comme nous les aimons.”64

“Il y a un Sazónof, que j’ai connu,” says the cavalry officer, “mais il n’est pas comte, à moins, que je sache, un petit brun de votre âge à peu près.”65

“C’est ça, Monsieur, c’est lui. Oh! que je voudrais le voir, ce cher comte. Si vous le voyez, je vous prie bien de lui faire mes compliments⁠—Capitaine Latour,”66 he said, bowing.

“N’est-ce pas terrible la triste besogne, que nous faisons? Ça chauffait cette nuit, n’est-ce pas?”67 said the cavalry officer, wishing to maintain the conversation and pointing to the corpses.

“Oh, Monsieur, c’est affreux! Mais quels gaillards vos soldats, quels gaillards! C’est un plaisir, que de se battre avec des gaillards comme eux.”68

“Il fait avouer que les vôtres ne se mouchent pas du pied non plus,”69 said the cavalry officer, bowing, and imagining himself to be very agreeable.

But enough.

Let us rather look at this ten-year-old boy in the old cap (probably his father’s), with shoes on his stocking-less feet, and nankeen trousers held by one brace. At the very commencement of the truce he came over the entrenchments, and ever since he has been walking about the valley, looking with dull curiosity at the French and at the corpses that lie on the ground, and gathering the blue flowers with which the valley is strewn. Returning home with a large bunch of flowers he holds his nose to escape the smell which is borne towards him by the wind, and stopping near a heap of corpses collected together, he gazes long at a terrible, headless body which lies nearest to him. After standing there some time, he draws nearer and touches with his foot the stiff, outstretched arm of the corpse. The arm trembles a little. He touches it again more boldly; it moves, and falls back again to its old position. The boy gives a sudden scream, hides his face in his flowers, and runs towards the fortifications as fast as his legs can carry him.

Yes, white flags are on the bastions and on the parallels; the flowery valley is covered with dead bodies; the beautiful sun is sinking towards the blue sea; and the undulating blue sea glitters in the golden rays of the sun. Thousands of people crowd together, look at, speak to, and smile at one another. And these people⁠—Christians confessing the one great law of love and self-sacrifice⁠—looking at what they have done, do not at once fall repentant on their knees before Him who has given them life and laid in the soul of each a fear of death and a love of good and of beauty, and do not embrace like brothers with tears of joy and happiness.

The white flags are lowered, again the engines of death and suffering are sounding, again innocent blood flows, and the air is filled with moans and curses.

There, I have said what I wished to say this time. But a painful hesitation seizes me. Perhaps I ought to have left it unsaid. Perhaps what I have said belongs to that class of evil truths which, unconsciously hidden within the soul of each one, should not be uttered for fear of becoming injurious, as the dregs in the bottle must not be shaken for fear of spoiling the wine.

Where in this tale is the evil shown that should be avoided? Where is the good that should be imitated? Who is the villain, who the hero of the story? All are good, and all are bad.

Not Kaloúgin, with his brilliant courage⁠—bravoure de gentilhomme⁠—and the vanity which influences all his actions; not Praskoúhin, the empty, harmless fellow (though he fell in battle for faith, throne, and fatherland); not Miháylof, with his shyness; nor Pesth, a child without firm principles or convictions⁠—can be either the villain or the hero of a tale.

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful⁠—is Truth.

In August 1855 I

Towards the end of August, between Douvánka70 and Bahtchisaráy, through the hot, thick dust of the rocky and hilly highway, an officer’s trap was slowly toiling towards Sevastopol (that peculiar kind of trap you never meet anywhere else, something between a Jewish brítchka, a Russian cart, and a basket).

In the front of the trap, pulling at the reins, squatted an orderly in a nankeen coat and wearing a cap that had once belonged to an officer but was now quite limp: behind, on bundles and bales covered with a soldier’s cloak, sat an infantry officer in a summer cloak. The officer, as far as one could judge while he was sitting, was not tall, but was very broad and massive, not so much across the shoulders as from back to chest. His neck and the back of his head were much developed and very solid. He had not what we call a waist, nor was he at all stouter round the stomach: on the contrary, he was rather lean, especially in the face, which was burnt to an unwholesome yellow. He would have been good-looking had it not been for a certain puffiness, and for the broad, soft wrinkles, not due to age, which blurred the outlines of his features, making