I remembered reading these strange verses:
"All clad in steel, through the unpeopled land,
Silent and gloomy as the grave,
Rides the Czar of the Huns, Attilla.
Behind him comes a black mass of warriors, crying,
'Where, then, is Rome; where is Rome the mighty?'"
That Rome was a city, I knew; but who on earth were the Huns? I simply had to find that out. Choosing a propitious moment, I asked my master. "The Huns?" he cried in amazement. "The devil knows who they are. Some trash, I expect."
And shaking his head disapprovingly, he said:
"That head of yours is full of nonsense. That is very bad, Pyeshkov."
Bad or good, I wanted to know.
I had an idea that the regimental chaplain, Soloviev, ought to know who the Huns were, and when I caught him in the yard, I asked him. The pale, sickly, always disagreeable man, with red eyes, no eyebrows, and a yellow beard, pushing his black staff into the earth, said to me:
"And what is that to do with you, eh?"
Lieutenant Nesterov answered my question by a ferocious:
"What-a-t?"