When the count was out of hearing, the cavalryman returned to his place, and drawing his chair nearer to the _chinovnik_, and looking him straight in his smiling eyes, said,-- "Well, he's the very one." "What one?" "I tell you that he's that very same hussar duellist,--let me see, the famous Turbin. He knew me. I'll wager he knew me. I assure you, at Lebedyan he and I were on a spree for three weeks, and were never sober once. That was when I lost my remount. There was one little affair at that time,--we were engaged in it together. Ah, he is a gay lad! isn't he, though?" "Indeed he is. What pleasant manners he has! There's no fault to be found with him," replied the handsome young man. "How quickly we became acquainted!... He isn't more than twenty-two, is he?" "He certainly would not seem so, would he?... But he's really more than that. Well, now you want to know who he is, don't you? Who carried off Megunova? He did. He killed Sablin. He kicked Matnyef out of the window. He 'did' Prince Nesterof out of three hundred thousand rubles. He's a regular madcap. You ought to know him,--a gambler, duellist, seducer, but a whole-souled fellow, a genuine hussar. We got talked about a good deal, but if any one really understood what it meant to be a genuine hussar! Those were great times." And the cavalryman began to tell his comrade of a drinking-bout with the count, which had never taken place, nor could have taken place. It could not have taken place, first, because he had never seen the count before, and had retired from the service two years before the count had entered it; and secondly, because this cavalryman had never served in the cavalry, but had served four years as a very insignificant yunker in the Bielevsky regiment; and just as soon as he was promoted to be ensign, he retired. But ten years before he had received an inheritance, and actually went to Lebedyan; and there he spent seven hundred rubles with the cavalry officers, and had had made for him an uhlan's uniform with orange lapels, with the intention of entering the uhlans. His thought of entering the cavalry, and his three weeks spent with the officers at Lebedyan, made the very happiest and most brilliant period of his life; so that he began to transfer his thought into a reality. Then, as he added remembrance to it, he began actually to believe in his military past,--which did not prevent him from being a worthy man through his kindness of heart and uprightness. "Yes, any one who has never served in the cavalry," he went on to say, "will never understand us fellows."