thing had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled--if any
remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be taken
from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead of taking
anything from them, often gave them the last of their rations.

The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but had
lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the hospitals,
death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or the swelling
that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and hardly able
to drag their legs went to the front rather than to the hospitals.
When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just showing out of the
ground that looked like asparagus, which, for some reason, they called
"Mashka's sweet root." It was very bitter, but they wandered about the
fields seeking it and dug it out with their sabers and ate it, though
they were ordered not to do so, as it was a noxious plant. That spring a
new disease broke out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs,
and face, which the doctors attributed to eating this root. But in spite
of all this, the soldiers of Denisov's squadron fed chiefly on "Mashka's
sweet root," because it was the second week that the last of the
biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a pound a man and the
last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.

The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the thatched
roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with tufts of
felty winter hair.

Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living just
as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms, the
hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed their
horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the thatched roofs in
place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the caldrons from which
they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food and their hunger. As
usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires, steamed themselves before
them naked; smoked, picked out and baked sprouting rotten potatoes, told
and listened to stories of Potemkin's and Suvorov's campaigns, or to
legends of Alesha the Sly, or the priest's laborer Mikolka.

The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless,
half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes and,
in general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied themselves as
be