“You can see it now,” he answered.
I looked on all sides, expecting to see high bastions, a wall, and a ditch. I saw nothing but a little village surrounded by a wooden palisade. On one side stood some hay-stacks half covered with snow; on the other a wind-mill, leaning to one side; the wings of the mill, made of the heavy bark of the linden tree, hung idle.
“Where is the fortress?” I asked, astonished.
“There it is,” said the coachman, pointing to the village which we had just entered. I saw near the gate an old iron cannon. The streets were narrow and winding, and nearly all the huts were thatched with straw. I ordered the coachman to drive to the Commandant’s, and almost immediately my kibitka stopped before a wooden house built on an eminence near the church, which was also of wood. From the front door I entered the waiting-room. An old pensioner, seated on a table, was sewing a blue piece on the elbow of a green uniform. I told him to announce me.
“Enter, my good sir,” said he, “our people are at home.”
I entered a very neat room, furnished in the fashion of other days. On one side stood a cabinet containing the silver. Against the wall hung the diploma of an officer, with colored engravings arranged around its frame; notably, the “Choice of the Betrothed,” the “Taking of Kurstrin,” and the “Burial of the Cat by the Mice.” Near the window sat an old woman in a mantilla, her head wrapped in a handkerchief. She was winding a skein of thread held on the separated hands of a little old man, blind of one eye, who was dressed like an officer.
“What do you desire, my dear sir?” said the woman to me, without interrupting her occupation. I told her that I had come to enter the service, and that, according to rule, I hastened to present myself to the captain. In saying this, I turned to the one-eyed old man, whom I took for the commandant. The good lady interrupted the speech which I had prepared in advance:
“Ivan Mironoff is not at home; he is gone to visit Father Garasim; but it is all the same; I am his wife. Deign to love us and have us in favor! Take a seat, my dear sir.” She ordered a servant to send her the Corporal. The little old man gazed at me curiously, with his only eye.
“May I dare to ask,” said he, “in what regiment you have deigned to serve?”
I satisfied him on that point.