“Perhaps so,” replied Kalouguine, “for I was almost all the time on the right flank. I went there twice, first to seek the general, then simply of my own accord to look on. It was there it was hot!”
“If Kalouguine says so it is a fact,” continued the colonel, turning towards Galtzine. “Do you know that only to-day V—— told me you were a brave man? Our losses are truly frightful. In my own regiment four hundred men disabled! I don’t understand how I came out alive.”
At the other end of the boulevard they saw Mikhaïloff’s bandaged head arise. He was coming to meet them.
“Are you wounded, captain?” asked Kalouguine.
“Slightly—by a stone,” said Mikhaïloff.
“Le pavillon est il déjà amené?” said Prince Galtzine, looking over the head of the captain, and addressing himself to no one in particular.
“Non pas encore,” said Mikhaïloff, very anxious to show that he knew French.
“Does the armistice still go on?” asked Galtzine, addressing him politely in Russian, as if to say to the captain, “I know you speak French with difficulty, why not simply speak Russian?” Upon this the aides-de-camp went away from Mikhaïloff, who felt, as on the evening before, very lonesome. Not wishing to come in contact with some of them, and not making up his mind to approach others, he limited himself to saluting certain officers, and sat down near the Kazarsky monument to smoke a cigarette.
Baron Pesth also made his appearance on the boulevard. He related that he had taken part in the negotiations of the armistice, that he had chatted with the French officers, and that one of them had said to him,
“If daylight had come an hour later the ambuscades would have been retaken.”