Anna Karenina - Part 8

"Oh, I wasn't long in the artillery, maybe they'll put me into

the infantry or the cavalry."

"Into the infantry when they need artillery more than anything?"

said Katavasov, fancying from the artilleryman's apparent age

that he must have reached a fairly high grade.

"I wasn't long in the artillery; I'm a cadet retired," he said,

and he began to explain how he had failed in his examination.

All of this together made a disagreeable impression on Katavasov,

and when the volunteers got out at a station for a drink,

Katavasov would have liked to compare his unfavorable impression

in conversation with someone. There was an old man in the

carriage, wearing a military overcoat, who had been listening all

the while to Katavasov's conversation with the volunteers. When

they were left alone, Katavasov addressed him.

"What different positions they come from, all those fellows who

are going off there," Katavasov said vaguely, not wishing to

express his own opinion, and at the same time anxious to find out

the old man's views.

The old man was an officer who had served on two campaigns. He

knew what makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and the

talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had

recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor

soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was

longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a

drunkard and a thief whom no one would employ as a laborer. But

knowing by experience that in the present condition of the public

temper it was dangerous to express an opinion opposed to the

general one, and especially to criticize the volunteers

unfavorably, he too watched Katavasov without committing himself.

"Well, men are wanted there," he said, laughing with his eyes.

And they fell to talking of the last war news, and each concealed

from the other his perplexity as to the engagement expected next

day, since the Turks had been beaten, according to the latest

news, at all points. And so they parted, neither giving

expression to his opinion.

Katavasov went back to his own carriage, and with reluctant

hypocrisy reported to Sergey Ivanovitch his observations of the

volunteers, from which it would appear that they were capital

fellows.

At a big station at a town the volunteers were again greeted with

shouts and singing, again men and women with collecting boxes

appeared, and provincial ladies brought bouquets to the

volunteers and followed them into the refreshment room; but all

this was on a much smaller and feebler scale than in Moscow.