But the 1st Company had hardly marched fifty paces before they heard the General’s angry and impatient voice exclaim—
“What the deuce is this? Halt with the company. Halt, halt! Come here to me, Captain. Tell me, sir, what in the name of goodness that is supposed to represent. Is it a funeral or a torch procession? Say. March in three-time. Listen, sir, we’re not living in the days of Nicholas, when a soldier served for twenty-five years. How many precious days have you wasted in practising this corps de ballet? Answer me.”
Osadchi stood gloomy, still and silent before his angry chief, with his drawn sabre pointing to the ground. The General was silent for an instant, and then resumed his harangue with an expression of sorrow and irony in his voice—
“By this sort of insanity you will soon succeed in extinguishing the last spark of life in your soldiers. Don’t you think so yourself? Oh, you luckless ghosts from Ivan the Cruel’s days! But enough of this. Allow me instead to ask you, Captain, the name of this young lad.”
“Ignati Mikhailovich, your Excellency,” replied Osadchi in the dry, sepulchral, regulation voice.
“Well and good. But what do you know about him? Is he a bachelor, or has he a wife and children? Perhaps he has some trouble at home? Or he is very poor? Answer me.”
“I can’t say, your Excellency? I have a hundred men under my command. It is hard to remember all about them.”
“Hard to remember, did you say?” repeated the General in a sad and serious voice. “Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen. You must certainly know what the Scripture says: ‘Do not destroy the soul,’ and what are you doing? That poor, grey, wretched creature standing there, may, perhaps, some day, in the hour of battle, protect you by his body, carry you on his shoulders out of a hail of bullets, may, with his ragged cloak, protect you against snow and frost, and yet you have nothing to say about him, but ‘I can’t say!’”
In his nervous excitement the General pulled in the reins and shouted over Osadchi’s head, in an angry voice, to the commander of the regiment—
“Colonel, get this company out of my way. I have had enough. Nothing but marionettes and blockheads.”