“You’re a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If it had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. ‘But,’ he says, ‘go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,’ he says, ‘we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as we drag them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,’ he says, ‘are white as paper and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.’ ”

All were silent.

“It must be from their food,” said the sergeant major. “They used to gobble the same food as the gentry.”

No one contradicted him.

“That peasant near Mozháysk where the battle was said the men were all called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days and still didn’t finish carting the dead away. And as for the wolves, he says⁠ ⁠…”

“That was a real battle,” said an old soldier. “It’s the only one worth remembering; but since that⁠ ⁠… it’s only been tormenting folk.”