.

"Well, then," replied the soldier, "if you know it, why don't you reckon
with God?"

Napoleonder scowled. "Don't say such things to me!" he cried. "I've
heard that sanctimonious stuff before. It's of no use. You can't fool
me! I don't know any such thing as pity."

"Indeed," said the soldier, "is it so? Have a care, Napoleonder! You are
swaggering too much. You lie when you say a man can live without pity.
To have a soul, and to feel compassion, are one and the same thing. You
have a soul, haven't you?"

"Of course I have," replied Napoleonder; "a man can't live without a
soul."

"There! you see!" said the soldier. "You have a soul, and you believe in
God. How, then, can you say you don't know any such thing as pity? You
do know! And I believe that at this very moment, deep down in your
heart, you are mortally sorry for me; only you don't want to show it.
Why, then, did you kill me?"

Napoleonder suddenly became furious. "May the pip seize your tongue, you
miscreant! I'll show you how much pity I have for you!" And, drawing a
pistol, Napoleonder shot the wounded soldier through the head. Then,
turning to his dead men, he said: "Did you see that?"

"We saw it," they replied; "and as long as it is so, we are your
faithful servants always."

Napoleonder rode on.

At last night comes; and Napoleonder is sitting alone in his golden
tent. His mind is troubled, and he can't understand what it is that
seems to be gnawing at his heart. For years he has been at war, and this
is the first time such a thing has happened. Never before has his soul
been so filled with unrest. And to-morrow morning he must begin another
battle--the last terrible fight with the Tsar Alexander the Blessed, on
the field of Borodino.

"Akh!" he thinks, "I'll show them to-morrow what a leader I am! I'll
lift the soldiers of the Tsar into the air on my lances and trample
their bodies under the feet of my horses. I'll make the Tsar himself a
prisoner, and I'll kill or scatter the whole Russian people."

But a voice seemed to whisper in his ear: "And why? Why?"

"I know that trick," he thought. "It's that same wounded soldier again.
All right. I won't give in to him. 'Why? Why?' As if I knew why!
Perhaps if I knew why I shouldn't make war."

He lay down on his bed; but hardly had he closed his eyes when he saw by
his bedside the wounded soldier--young, fair-faced, blond-haired, with
just the first faint shadow of a mustache. His forehead w