“I thought that here, in the Caucasus,” he continued, growing more and more animated, “ la vie de camp , the simple, honest men with whom I should be in contact, the war, the dangers—all this would just suit my frame of mind, and I thought I should begin life anew. On me verra au feu —people would like me, would respect me not for my name only; then I should receive a cross, become a noncommissioned officer, and at last be pardoned, and should return, et, vous savez, avec ce prestige du malheur! But quel désenchantement ! You can’t think how I was mistaken! … You know the officer set of our regiment?” He paused for some time, probably expecting me to say that I knew how bad the society of officers here is; but I did not reply to him. I was disgusted that—on account, no doubt, of my knowing French—he should suppose that I ought to despise the officer set, which, on the contrary, I, having lived long in the Caucasus, had fully learnt to appreciate, and which I esteemed a thousand times more than the society Mr. Guskov had left. I wished to tell him so, but his position restrained me.
“In the N⸺ Regiment the officer set is a thousand times worse than here,” he continued—“ J’espère que c’est beaucoup dire —so that you can’t imagine what it is like! Not to mention the cadets and the soldiers—it is just awful! At first I was well received, that’s perfectly true, but afterwards, when they saw I couldn’t help despising them—when in those scarcely noticeable everyday relations, you know, they saw that I was a totally different sort of man, standing on a far higher level than they—they were exasperated with me, and began to retaliate by subjecting me to all kinds of petty indignities. Ce que j’ai eu à souffrir,