“If we fought before,” he said, “not letting the French pass, as at Schön Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not saying it right, I have drunk a good deal⁠—but that is how I feel, and so do you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!”

“Hurrah!” rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.

And the old cavalry captain, Kírsten, shouted enthusiastically and no less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostóv.

When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kírsten filled others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand to the soldiers’ bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white chest showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the light of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.