Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/329

 XLII.

After returning home, he lay for two hours motionless on his bed; then he went to the captain, and asked for leave to visit the staff. He did not bid any one farewell, but sent his rent to the ensign through Vanyúsha, and got ready to journey to the fortress where the regiment was stationed. Only Uncle Eróshka saw him off. They drank together a glass, and then another, and then again. Just as upon his departure from Moscow, the stage three-span stood at the door. But Olénin did not cast his accounts with himself, as then, and did not say to himself that all he had been thinking and doing here was not that. He did not promise himself a new life. He loved Maryánka more than ever, and he knew that he could never be loved by her. "Well, good-bye, my father!" said Uncle Eróshka. "If you ever take part in a campaign, be wiser, and listen to the advice of an old man. If you are out on an incursion, or wherever else it may be, —I am an old wolf, and have seen everything,— and there is some firing, don't go into a crowd where there are many people together. For it is the habit of you people, whenever you get scared, to jam together in a throng, thinking that it is merrier where there are a lot of you; but it is worse: the enemy always aims into a crowd. I always used to keep away from people, and to walk by myself, and so I have never been wounded. And I have seen a great deal in my lifetime." "But you have a bullet in your back!" said Vanyúsha, who was cleaning up the room.