What the soldier said further could not be heard, but the expression of his face and his bearing showed that his words, spoken with the bitterness of one suffering, were not reassuring.

The officer in the trap, Lieutenant Kozeltsóf, was not an everyday sort of man. He was not one of those who live and act this way or that because others live and act so; he did what he liked, and others followed his example, and felt sure it was right. He had a nature endowed with many minor gifts: he could sing well, played the guitar, talked smartly and wrote very easily (especially official papers, the knack of writing which he had gained when he was adjutant of his battalion); but the most remarkable characteristic of his nature was his ambitious energy, which, though chiefly founded on those same minor talents, was in itself a marked and striking feature. He had ambition of a kind most often found in male circles, especially military, and this had become so much a part of his life that he could imagine no other line than to dominate or to perish. Ambition was at the root even of his inward impulses, and in his private thoughts he liked to put himself first when he compared himself with others.