either an insult or a service. I offer you my friendship. That
is all I can say."

There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of the
word) in the officer's voice, in the expression of his face and in
his gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the
Frenchman's smile, pressed the hand held out to him.

"Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the Legion
of Honor for the affair on the seventh of September," he introduced
himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his lips under
his mustache. "Will you now be so good as to tell me with whom I have
the honor of conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in the ambulance
with that maniac's bullet in my body?"

Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing,
began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason for
concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him.

"Oh, please!" said he. "I understand your reasons. You are an officer...
a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us. That's not
my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am quite at
your service. You belong to the gentry?" he concluded with a shade of
inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. "Your baptismal name, if you
please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you say.... That's all I
want to know."

When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and vodka
brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a Russian cellar
and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share his dinner, and
himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a healthy and hungry man,
munching his food rapidly with his strong teeth, continually smacking
his lips, and repeating--"Excellent! Delicious!" His face grew red and
was covered with perspiration. Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner
with pleasure. Morel, the orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan
and placed a bottle of claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass,
taken from the kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known
to the French and had been given a special name. They called it limonade
de cochon (pig's lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de
cochon he had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they
had taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and
applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up
to its neck in a