“My dear fellow,” I retorted, somewhat hotly, “that Turkey has behaved brutally towards its own subjects is a well-known fact. That she has treated the representatives of all the great powers of Europe with extreme insolence is another well-known fact, but it is yet to be proved that the efforts of diplomacy were exhausted, and even if they were, it remained for Europe, not for Russia, to constitute herself the champion of the oppressed.”
“Jeff, my boy,” returned Nicholas, with a smile, “I’m too sleepy to discuss that subject just now, further than to say that I don’t agree with you.”
He did indeed look sleepy, and as we had been riding many hours I forbore to trouble him further.
By daybreak that morning we drew near to the town of Giurgevo, on the Roumanian—or, I may say, the Russian—side of the Danube, and soon afterwards entered it.
Considerable excitement was visible among its inhabitants, who, even at that early hour, were moving hurriedly about the streets. Having parted from our escort, Nicholas and I refreshed ourselves at the Hôtel de l’Europe, and then went to an hospital, where my companion wished to visit a wounded friend—“one,” he said, “who had lately taken part in a dashing though unsuccessful expedition.”
This visit to Giurgevo was my first introduction to some of the actual miseries of war. The hospital was a clean, well-ventilated building. Rows of low beds were ranged neatly and methodically along the whitewashed walls. These were tenanted by young men in every stage of suffering and exhaustion. With bandaged heads or limbs they sat or reclined or lay, some but slightly wounded and still ruddy with the hue of health on their young cheeks; some cut and marred in visage and limbs, with pale cheeks and blue lips, that told of the life-blood almost drained. Others were lying flat on their backs, with the soft brown moustache or curly brown hair contrasting terribly with the grey hue of approaching death.
In one of the beds we found the friend of Nicholas.
He was quite a youth, not badly wounded, and received us with enthusiasm.
“My dear Nicholas,” he said, in reply to a word of condolence about the failure of the expedition, “you misunderstand the whole matter. Doubtless it did not succeed, but that was no fault of ours, and it was a glorious attempt. Come, I will relate it. Does your friend speak Russian?”
“He at all events understands it,” said I.