Chapter XV

Before going to find his officers he went to look up his company. The parapets built of gabions, the trenches, the cannon in front of which he passed, even the fragments and the shells themselves over which he stumbled, and which the flashes of the discharges lighted up without pause or relaxation, everything was familiar to him, and had been deeply engraven on his memory three months before, during the fortnight he had lived in the bastion. Notwithstanding the dismal side of these memories, a certain inherent charm of the past came out of them, and he recognized the places and things with an unaffected pleasure, as if the two weeks had been full of only agreeable impressions. His company was placed along the covered way which led to the sixth bastion.

Entering the shelter open on one side, he found so many soldiers there that he could scarcely find room to pass. At one end burned a wretched candle, which a reclining soldier was holding over a book that his comrade was spelling out. Around him, in the twilight of a thick and heavy atmosphere, several heads could be seen turned towards the reader, listening eagerly. Koseltzoff recognized the A B C of this sentence: “P-r-a-y-e-r a-f-t-e-r s-t-u-d-y. I give Thee thanks, my Cre-a-tor.”

“Snuff the candle!” some one shouted. “What a good book!” said the reader, preparing to go on. But at the sound of Koseltzoff’s voice calling the sergeant-major it was silent. The soldiers moved, coughed, and blew their noses, as always happens after an enforced silence. The sergeant-major arose from the middle of the group, buttoning his uniform, stepping over his comrades, and trampling on their feet, which for lack of room they did not know where to stow, approached the officer.

“How do you do, my boy? Is this our company?”

“Health to your Excellency! We congratulate you on your return,” replied the sergeant-major, gayly and good-naturedly. “You are cured, Excellency? God be praised for that! for we missed you a good deal.”

Koseltzoff, it was evident, was beloved by his company. Voices could immediately be heard spreading the news that the old company chief had come back, he who had been wounded--Mikhaïl Semenovitch Koseltzoff. Several soldiers, the drummer among others, came to greet him.

“How do you do, Obanetchouk?” said Koseltzoff. “Are you safe and sound? How do you do, children?” he then added, raising his voice.

The soldiers replied in chorus,

“Health to your Excellency!”

“How goes it, children?”

“Badly, your Excellency. The French have the upper hands. He fires from behind the intrenchments, but he doesn’t show himself outside.”

“Now, then, who knows? perhaps I shall have the chance of seeing him come out of the intrenchments, children. It won’t be the first time we have fought him together.”

“We are ready to do our best, your Excellency,” said several voices at the same time.

“He is very bold, then?”

“Terribly bold,” replied the drummer in a low tone, but so as to be heard, and speaking to another soldier, as if to justify his chief for having made use of the expression, and to persuade his comrade that there was nothing exaggerated nor untrue in it.

Koseltzoff left the soldiers in order to join the officers in the barracks.