"Yes," said I, blushing like a school-girl, as I could not, for the soul of me, say that a British officer had degraded his epaulettes by the perfidy of which Berkeley had been guilty.
"Ah! unlucky; but such things will happen. Your troops and the French, with the Turkish dogs, are now almost in front of Sebastopol."
"Indeed!" said I, with a joy which I could not conceal.
"You think, no doubt, to take it under our moustaches, or, as you Britons say, under our noses; but you won't," he added with a grave smile. "St. Sergius has ordained it otherwise, and Todleben, the wary old Courlander, is busy fortifying it. His sappers are at work day and night."
"Pho! don't talk of Sebastopol, general," said his aide-de-camp, laughing. "Our feeding there was so bad that I felt inclined to try whether the Allies fared better than we did; but after the Alma, I thought that the less I considered the matter the better."
"Ah, that day at Alma played the deuce with many a family circle in Sebastopol," said Baur, twisting his moustache angrily.
"Yes," added Anitchoff; "many a widow is there now, weeping for the dear defunct with one eye, and ogling his successor with the other."
At this jest a dark frown gathered on the long, stern visage of Baur.
Dinner proceeded briskly. It was served up in a kind of hall, which had arched and painted windows, flanked by the round Genoese towers, whose gilt cupolas formed the chief features of the fortress.
The walls were simply whitewashed, and the furniture was somewhat of the "barrack ordnance" description of our own equipments in quarters at home.