At another corner of the table, with plates of cutlets and peas before them, and a bottle of sour Crimean wine called “Bordeaux,” sit two infantry officers. One of them, a young man with a red collar and two little stars on his cloak, is talking to the other, who has a black collar and no stars, about the Alma affair. The former has already been drinking, and by the pauses he makes, by the indecision in his face—expressing his doubt of being believed—and especially by the fact that his own part in the story is too important, and the affair is too dreadful, one sees that he is diverging considerably from the strict truth. But you do not care much for stories of this kind, which will long be current all over Russia; you want to get quickly to the bastions, especially to that Fourth Bastion about which you have been told so many and such different tales. When anyone says, “I am going to the Fourth Bastion,” a slight agitation or a too marked indifference is always noticeable in him; if men are joking they say, “You should be sent to the Fourth Bastion.” When you meet someone carried on a stretcher, and ask, “Where from?” the answer usually is, “From the Fourth Bastion.” Two quite different opinions are current concerning this terrible bastion: that of those who have never been there, and who are convinced it is a certain grave for anyone who goes there, and that of those who, like the fair-complexioned midshipman, live there, and who, when speaking of the Fourth Bastion, will tell you whether it is dry or muddy, and whether it is cold or warm in the dugouts, and so forth.
During the half-hour you spent in the restaurant, the weather has changed. The mist that spread over the sea has gathered into dull, grey, moist clouds which hide the sun, and a kind of dismal sleet showers down and wets the roofs, the pavements, and the soldiers’ overcoats.
Passing another barricade, you go through some doors to the right and up a broad street. Beyond this barricade the houses on both sides of the street are unoccupied: there are no signboards, the doors are boarded up, the windows smashed; here a corner of the walls is knocked down, and