“My horse pushed over one of them with his chest.  The poor wretch had a dragoon’s blue cloak, all torn and scorched, hanging from his shoulders and he didn’t even put his hand out to snatch at my bridle and save himself.  He just went down.  Our troopers were pointing and slashing; well, and of course at first I myself...  What would you have!  An enemy’s an enemy.  Yet a sort of sickening awe crept into my heart.  There was no tumult—­only a low deep murmur dwelt over them interspersed with louder cries and groans while that mob kept on pushing and surging past us, sightless and without feeling.  A smell of scorched rags and festering wounds hung in the air.  My horse staggered in the eddies of swaying men.  But it was like cutting down galvanized corpses that didn’t care.  Invaders!  Yes...  God was already dealing with them.

“I touched my horse with the spurs to get clear.  There was a sudden rush and a sort of angry moan when our second squadron got into them on our right.  My horse plunged and somebody got hold of my leg.  As I had no mind to get pulled out of the saddle I gave a back-handed slash without looking.  I heard a cry and my leg was let go suddenly.

“Just then I caught sight of the subaltern of my troop at some little distance from me.  His name was Tomassov.  That multitude of resurrected bodies with glassy eyes was seething round his horse as if blind, growling crazily.  He was sitting erect in his saddle, not looking down at them and sheathing his sword deliberately.

“This Tomassov, well, he had a beard.  Of course we all had beards then.  Circumstances, lack of leisure, want of razors, too.  No, seriously, we were a wild-looking lot in those unforgotten days which so many, so very many of us did not survive.  You know our losses were awful, too.  Yes, we looked wild. Des Russes sauvages—­what!

“So he had a beard—­this Tomassov I mean; but he did not look sauvage.  He was the youngest of us all.  And that meant real youth.  At a distance he passed muster fairly well, what with the grime and the particular stamp of that campaign on our faces.  But directly you were near enough to have a good look into his eyes, that was where his lack of age showed, though he was not exactly a boy.

“Those same eyes were blue, something like the blue of autumn skies, dreamy and gay, too—­innocent, believing eyes.  A topknot of fair hair decorated his brow like a gold diadem in what one would call normal times.

“You may think I am talking of him as if he were the hero of a novel.  Why, that’s nothing to what the adjutant discovered about him.  He discovered that he had a ’lover’s lips’—­whatever that may be.  If the adjutant meant a nice mouth, why, it was nice enough, but of course it was intended for a sneer.  That adjutant of ours was not a very delicate fellow.  ‘Look at those lover’s lips,’ he would exclaim in a loud tone while Tomassov was talking.