Towards seven that evening, dusty and tired, we entered the wide fortified gate of Fort N⸺. The sun was already setting, and threw its rosy slanting rays on the picturesque little batteries, and on the gardens with their tall poplars, which surrounded the fortress, on the yellow gleaming cultivated fields, and on the white clouds that, crowding round the snowy peaks, had, as if trying to imitate them, formed a range not less fantastic and beautiful.
On the horizon the new moon appeared, delicate as a little cloud. In the Tartar village that lay at the gates of the fortress, from the roof of a hut, a Tartar was calling the faithful to prayer; and our singers lifted their voices with renewed energy and vigour.
After a rest, and after tidying myself up a bit, I went to an adjutant of my acquaintance, to ask him to let the general know of my intention. On my way from the suburb where I had put up, I noticed in Fort N⸺ something I did not at all expect: a pretty little brougham, which overtook me, in which I caught sight of a fashionable bonnet, and from which I overheard some French words. The sounds of some “Lizzie” or “Kitty” polka, played on a bad ramshackle piano, reached me through the windows of the commander’s house. In a little grocery and wine shop which I passed, some clerks with cigarettes in their fingers sat drinking wine: and I heard one of them say to another, “No, excuse me, as for politics, Mary Gregoryevna is first among our ladies.” A Jew in a worn-out coat, with a bent back and sickly countenance, was dragging along a wheezy barrel-organ, and the whole suburb resounded with the tones of the finale of Lucia . Two women in rustling dresses, with silk kerchiefs on their heads, and carrying bright-coloured parasols, passed by, along the planks that did duty for a pavement. Two girls, one in a pink,