Passing the church and the barricade, you enter that part of the town where the everyday life is most active. On both sides hang the signboards of shops and restaurants. Tradesmen, women with bonnets or kerchiefs on their heads, dandified officers: all speaks of the firmness, self-confidence, and security of the inhabitants.
If you care to hear the conversation of army and navy officers enter the restaurant on the right. There you are sure to hear talk about last night, about Fanny, about that affair of the 24th, how dear and badly served the cutlets are, and how such and such comrades have been killed.
“Things were confoundedly bad at our place today!” says, in a bass voice, a fair, beardless little naval officer with a green knitted scarf.
“Where’s that?” asks another.
“Oh, in the Fourth Bastion,” answers the young officer, and at the words “Fourth Bastion,” you will certainly look more attentively, and even with some respect, at this fair-complexioned officer. The excessive freedom of his manner, his gesticulations, and his loud voice and laugh, which before had seemed to you impudent, now appear to indicate that peculiarly combative frame of mind noticeable in some young men after they have been in danger; but still you expect him to tell how bad it was in the Fourth Bastion because of the bombs and bullets. Not at all! it was bad because of the mud. “One can scarcely get to the battery,” he continues, pointing to his boots, which are muddy even above the calves. “And I have lost my best gunner,” says another, “hit right in the forehead.” “Who’s that? Mitúhin?” “No … but am I ever to have my veal? You rascal!” he adds, addressing the waiter. “Not Mitúhin but Abrámof—such a fine fellow! He was out in six sallies.”