Of the regiment which he joined, in the end only a tenth part remained. He was among those who were not even wounded.
Yet how many bullets had swept over his head!
How he looked for those whistling heralds of death, how he waited for the approach of those whirring missiles to whom the transportation of a man to another world in a moment is nothing! They knew him well already and did not annoy him.
These buzzing bees of the battlefield, like the real bees, whir past the ear of him who walks undaunted among them, and sting him who fears them.
Once a bullet pierced his helmet.
How often I heard him say:
"Why not an inch lower?"
Finally, in one battle a piece of an exploded shell maimed his arm, and when he fell from his horse, disabled by a sword-cut, a Cossack pierced him through with his lance.
Yet even that did not kill him.
For weeks he lay unconscious in the public hospital, under a tent, until I came to fetch him home. Fanny nursed him. He recovered.