Anna Karenina

aying good-bye to the princess, Sergey Ivanovitch was joined by
Katavasov; together they got into a carriage full to overflowing, and
the train started.

At Tsaritsino station the train was met by a chorus of young men
singing “Hail to Thee!” Again the volunteers bowed and poked their
heads out, but Sergey Ivanovitch paid no attention to them. He had had
so much to do with the volunteers that the type was familiar to him and
did not interest him. Katavasov, whose scientific work had prevented
his having a chance of observing them hitherto, was very much
interested in them and questioned Sergey Ivanovitch.

Sergey Ivanovitch advised him to go into the second-class and talk to
them himself. At the next station Katavasov acted on this suggestion.

At the first stop he moved into the second-class and made the
acquaintance of the volunteers. They were sitting in a corner of the
carriage, talking loudly and obviously aware that the attention of the
passengers and Katavasov as he got in was concentrated upon them. More
loudly than all talked the tall, hollow-chested young man. He was
unmistakably tipsy, and was relating some story that had occurred at
his school. Facing him sat a middle-aged officer in the Austrian
military jacket of the Guards uniform. He was listening with a smile to
the hollow-chested youth, and occasionally pulling him up. The third,
in an artillery uniform, was sitting on a box beside them. A fourth was
asleep.

Entering into conversation with the youth, Katavasov learned that he
was a wealthy Moscow merchant who had run through a large fortune
before he was two-and-twenty. Katavasov did not like him, because he
was unmanly and effeminate and sickly. He was obviously convinced,
especially now after drinking, that he was performing a heroic action,
and he bragged of it in the most unpleasant way.

The second, the retired officer, made an unpleasant impression too upon
Katavasov. He was, it seemed, a man who had tried everything. He had
been on a railway, had been a land-steward, and had started factories,
and he talked, quite without necessity, of all he had done, and used
learned expressions quite inappropriately.

The third, the artilleryman, on the contrary, struck Katavasov very
favorably. He was a quiet, modest fellow, unmistakably impressed by the
knowledge of the officer and the heroic self-sacrifice of the merchant
and saying nothing about himself. When Katavasov asked him what had
impelled him to go to Servia, he answered modestly:

“Oh, well, everyone’s going. The Servians want help, too. I’m sorry for
them.”

“Yes, you artillerymen especially are scarce there,” said Katavasov.

“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.