had escaped; and he nursed in his heart a boundless gratitude to the two
people who had saved him from that cruel ordeal. They were wonderful!
For him love and friendship were but two aspects of exalted perfection.
He had found these fine examples of it and he vowed them indeed a sort
of cult. It affected his attitude towards Frenchmen in general, great
patriot as he was. He was naturally indignant at the invasion of his
country, but this indignation had no personal animosity in it. His was
fundamentally a fine nature. He grieved at the appalling amount of human
suffering he saw around him. Yes, he was full of compassion for all
forms of mankind's misery in a manly way.

"Less fine natures than his own did not understand this very well. In
the regiment they had nicknamed him the Humane Tomassov.

"He didn't take offence at it. There is nothing incompatible between
humanity and a warrior's soul. People without compassion are the
civilians, government officials, merchants and such like. As to the
ferocious talk one hears from a lot of decent people in war time--well,
the tongue is an unruly member at best and when there is some excitement
going on there is no curbing its furious activity.

"So I had not been very surprised to see our Tomassov sheathe
deliberately his sword right in the middle of that charge, you may say.
As we rode away after it he was very silent. He was not a chatterer as
a rule, but it was evident that this close view of the Grand Army had
affected him deeply, like some sight not of this earth. I had always
been a pretty tough individual myself--well, even I... and there was
that fellow with a lot of poetry in his nature! You may imagine what he
made of it to himself. We rode side by side without opening our lips. It
was simply beyond words.

"We established our bivouac along the edge of the forest so as to get
some shelter for our horses. However, the boisterous north wind had
dropped as quickly as it had sprung up, and the great winter stillness
lay on the land from the Baltic to the Black Sea. One could almost feel
its cold, lifeless immensity reaching up to the stars.

"Our men had lighted several fires for their officers and had cleared
the snow around them. We had big logs of wood for seats; it was a
very tolerable bivouac upon the whole, even without the exultation of
victory. We were to feel that later, but at present we were oppressed by
our stern and arduous task.

"There were three of