Before dinner the Lieutenant-Captain was relieved from the bastion and joined them. Lieutenant-Captain Kraut was a fair-haired, handsome, and vivacious officer, with big, sandy moustaches and whiskers. He spoke Russian splendidly, but too accurately and elegantly for a Russian. In the service and in his life he was like his speech: he served admirably, was a first-rate comrade, most reliable in money matters; but simply as a man, just because everything was so satisfactory about him, something seemed lacking. Like all Russo-Germans, in strange contradistinction to the idealist German-Germans, he was praktisch in the extreme.

“Here he comes⁠—our hero!” said the Captain, as Kraut came into the room swinging his arms and jingling his spurs. “What will you take, Friedrich Christiánitch, tea or vodka?”