Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/548

 510 have you found him?" was heard Bolkhóv's voice from a corn-stalk tent, in which a candle was glimmering.

"I have brought him, your Honour!" was Nikoláev's reply in a heavy bass.

In the booth, Bolkhóv sat on a felt mantle, his coat being unbuttoned, and his cap off. Near him a samovár was boiling, and a drum stood with a lunch upon it. A bayonet, with a candle on it, was stuck in the ground. "Well, how do you like this?" he said, proudly, surveying his cosy little home. Indeed, the booth was so comfortable, that at tea I entirely forgot the dampness, the darkness, and Velenchúk's wound. We talked about Moscow and about objects that had no relation whatsoever to the war and to the Caucasus.

After one of those minutes of silence, which frequently interrupt the most animated conversations, Bolkhóv glanced at me with a smile.

"I suppose our morning conversation must have appeared very strange to you?" he said.

"No. Why should it? All I thought was that you were very frank, whereas there are some things which we all know but which one ought not to mention."

"Not at all! If I had a chance of exchanging this life for a most wretched and petty life, provided it were without perils and service, I should not consider for a minute."

"Why do you not go back to Russia?" I said.

"Why?" he repeated. "Oh, I have been thinking of it quite awhile. I cannot return to Russia before receiving the Anna and the Vladímir crosses,—the Anna decoration around my neck and a majorship, as I had expected when I came out here."

"But why should you, when, as you say, you feel unfit for the service here?"

"But I feel myself even more unfit to return to Russia in the condition in which I left it. This is another tradi-