Two Hussars, Leo Tolstoy
Two Hussars
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude 1905
EARLY IN THE nineteenth century, when there were as yet no railways or macadamized roads, no gaslight, no stearine candles, no low couches with sprung cushions, no unvarnished furniture, no disillusioned youths with eye glasses, no liberalizing women philosophers, nor any charming dames aux camelias of whom there are so many in our times, in those naive days, when leaving Moscow for Petersburg in a coach or carriage provided with a kitchenful of home-made provisions one traveled for eight days along a soft, dusty or muddy road and believed in chopped cutlets, sledge-bells, and plain rolls; when in the long autumn evenings the tallow candles, around which family groups of twenty or thirty people gathered, had to be snuffed; when ball-rooms were illuminated by candelabra with wax or spermaceti candles, when furniture was arranged symmetrically, when our fathers were still young and proved it not only by the absence of wrinkles and grey hair but by fighting duels for the sake of a woman and rushing from the opposite corner of a room to pick up a bit of handkerchief purposely or accidentally dropped; when our mothers wore short-waisted dresses and enormous sleeves and decided family affairs by drawing lots, when the charming dames aux camelias hid from the light of day-in those naïve days of Masonic lodges, Martinists, and Tugenbudns, the days of Miloradoviches and Davydovs and Pushkins-a meeting of landed proprietors was held in the Government town of K — , and the nobility elections were being concluded.
I
“Well, never mind, the saloon will do,” said a young officer in a fur cloak and hussar’s cap, who had just got out of a post-sledge and was entering the best hotel in the town of K — .
“The assembly, your Excellency, is enormous,” said the boots, who had already managed to learn from the orderly that the hussar’s name was Count Turbin, and therefore addressed him as “your Excellency.”
“The proprietress of Afremovo with her daughters has said she is leaving this evening, so No. 11 will be at your disposal as soon as they go,” continued the boots, stepping softly before the count along the passage and continually looking round.
In the general saloon at a little table under the dingy full-length portrait of the Emperor Alexander the First, several men, probably belonging to the local nobility, sat drinking champagne, while at another side of the room sat some travelers-tradesmen in blue, fur-lined cloaks.
Entering the room and calling in Blucher, a gigantic grey mastiff he had brought with him, the count threw off his cloak, the collar of which was still covered with hoar-frost, called for vodka, sat down at the table in his blue-satin Cossack jacket, and entered into conversation with the gentlemen there.
The handsome open countenance of the newcomer immediately predisposed them in his favour and they offered him a glass of champagne. The count first drank a glass of vodka and then ordered another bottle of champagne to treat his new acquaintances. The sledge-driver came in to ask for a tip.
“Sashka!” shouted the count. “Give him something!”
The driver went out with Sashka but came back again with the money in his hand.
“Look here, y’r ‘xcelence, haven’t I done my very best for y’r honour? Didn’t you promise me half a ruble, and he’s only given me a quarter!”
“Give him a ruble, Sashka.”
Sashka cast down his eyes and looked at the driver’s feet.
“He’s had enough!” he said, in a bass voice. “And besides, I have no more money.”
The count drew from his pocket-book the two five-ruble notes which were all it contained and gave one of them to the driver, who kissed his hand and went off.
“I’ve run it pretty close!” said the count. “These are my last five rubles.”
“Real hussar fashion, Count,” said one of the nobles who from his moustache, voice, and a certain energetic freedom about his legs, was evidently a retired cavalryman. “Are you staying here some time, Count?”
“I must get some money. I shouldn’t have stayed here at all but for that. And there are no rooms to be had, devil take them, in this accursed pub.”
“Permit me, Count,” said the cavalryman. “Will you not join me? My room in No. 7 . . . If you do not mind just for the night. And then you’ll stay a couple of days with us? It happens that the Marechal de la Noblesse is giving a ball tonight. You would make him very happy by going.”
“Yes, Count, do stay,” said another, a handsome young man. “You have surely no reason to hurry away! You know this only comes once in three years-the elections, I mean. You should at least have a look at our young ladies, Count!”
“Sashka, get my clean linen ready. I am going to the bath,” said the count, rising, “and from there perhaps I may look in at the Marshal’s.”
Then, having called the waiter and whispered something to him to which the latter replied with a smile, “That can all be arranged,” he went out.
“So I’ll order my trunk to be taken to your room, old fellow,” shouted the count from the passage.
“Please do, I shall be most happy,” replied the cavalryman, running to the door. “No. 7-don’t forget.”
When the count’s footsteps could no longer be heard the cavalryman returned to his place and sitting close to one of the group-a government official-and looking him straight in the face with smiling eyes, said: “It is the very man, you know!”
“No!”
“I tell you it is! It is the very same duellist hussar-the famous Turbin. He knew me-I bet you anything he knew me. Why, he and I went on the spree for three weeks without a break when I was at Lebedyani for remounts. There was one thing he and I did together. . . . He’s a fine fellow, eh?”
“A splendid fellow. And so pleasant in his manner! Doesn’t show a grain of-what d’you call it?” answered the handsome young man. “How quickly we became intimate. . . . He’s not more than twenty-five, is he?”
“Oh no, that’s what he looks but he is more than that. One has to get to know him, you know. Who abducted Migunova? He. It was he who killed Sablin. It was he who dropped Matnev out of the window by his legs. It was he who won three hundred thousand rubles from Prince Nestorov. He is a regular dare-devil, you know: a gambler, a duellist, a seducer, but a jewel of an hussar-a real jewel. The rumors that are afloat about us are nothing to the reality-if anyone knew what a true hussar is! Ah yes, those were times!”
And the cavalryman told his interlocutor of such a spree with the count in Lebedyani as not only never had, but never even could have, taken place.
It could not have done so, first because he had never seen the count till that day and had left the army two years before the count entered it; and secondly because the cavalryman had never really served in the cavalry at all but had for four years been the humblest of cadets in the Belevski regiment and retired as soon as ever he became ensign.
But ten years ago he had inherited some money and had really been in Lebedyani where he squandered seven hundred rubles with some officers who were there buying remounts. He had even gone so far as to have an uhlan uniform made with orange facings, meaning to enter an uhlan regiment. This desire to enter the cavalry, and the three weeks spent with the remount officers at Lebedyani, remained the brightest and happiest memories of his life, so he transformed the desire first into a reality and then into a reminiscence and came to believe firmly in his past as a cavalry officer-all of which did not prevent his being, as to gentleness and honesty, a most worthy man.
“Yes, those who have never served in the cavalry will never understand us fellows.”
He sat astride a chair and thrusting out his lower jaw began to speak in a bass voice. “You ride at the head of your squadron, not a horse but the devil incarnate prancing about under you, and you just sit in devil-may-care style. The squadron commander rides up to review: ‘Lieutenant,’ he says. ‘We can’t get on without you-please lead the squadron to parade.’ ‘All right,’ you say, and there you are: you turn round, shout to your moustached fellows. . . . . Ah, devil take it, those were times!”
The count returned from the bath-house very red and with wet hair, and went straight to No. 7, where the cavalryman was already sitting in his dressing-gown smoking a pipe and considering with pleasure, and not without some apprehension, the happiness that had befallen him of sharing a room with the celebrated Turbin. “Now suppose,” he thought, “that he suddenly takes me, strips me naked, drives me to the town gates, and sets me in the snow, or . . . tars me, or simply . . . . But no,” he consoled himself, “He wouldn’t do that to a comrade.”
“Sashka, feed Blucher!” shouted the count.
Sashka, who had taken a tumbler of vodka to refresh himself after the journey and was decidedly tipsy, came in.
“What, already! You’ve been drinking, you rascal! . . . Feed Blucher!”
“He won’t starve anyway: see how sleek he is!” answered Sashka, stroking the dog.
“Silence! Be off and feed him!”
“You want the dog to be fed, but when a man drinks a
