Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/525

 Rh words "originates" and "to continue," and when he introduced his remarks with "originates" and "continuing," I knew in advance that I should not understand a word of what followed. The soldiers, on the contrary, so far as I was able to observe, liked to hear his "originates," and suspected that a deep meaning lay behind it, though, like myself, they did not comprehend a word. They referred this lack of comprehension to their own stupidity, and respected Fédor Maksímych the more for it. In short, Maksímych was a sagacious commander.

The second soldier, who was taking off the boots from his red, muscular legs, was Antónov, the same bombardier Antónov, who in the year '37, having been left with two others at a gun, without protection, had kept up a fire against a numerous enemy, and, with two bullets in his hip, had continued to attend to the gun and load it. "He would have been a gun-sergeant long ago, if it were not for his character," the soldiers would say of him. Indeed, his was a strange character: in his sober mood there was not a quieter, prompter, and more peaceful soldier; but when he became intoxicated, he was an entirely different man: he did not respect the authorities, brawled, fought, and was an altogether useless soldier. Not more than a week before he had gone on a spree during Butter-week, and, in spite of all threats, persuasions, and calls to duty, he continued his drunken bouts and brawls until the first Monday in Lent. But during the whole fast, in spite of the order for all men in the division to eat meat, he lived on nothing but hardtack, and in the first week he did not even take the prescribed dram of brandy. However, it was only necessary to see this undersized figure, built as though of iron, with his short, crooked legs and shining, whiskered face, take into his muscular hands the balaláyka, while under the influence of liquor, and, carelessly casting his glances to both sides, strum some "lady's" song, or, to see him,