We were very much absorbed in our thoughts and had been traveling for a long time when I suddenly felt suffocated by smoke which was filling the carriage. I looked round and saw that the surgeon major had lighted his pipe and, with his eyes half closed, was sending up puffs of smoke to the ceiling. My throat was smarting with it, and I was choking with indignation, so that I was seized with a fit of coughing, which I exaggerated in order to attract the attention of the impolite man. The baron, however, slapped him on the knee and endeavored to make him comprehend that smoke annoyed me. He answered by an insult which I did not understand, shrugged his shoulders, and continued to smoke. Exasperated by this, I lowered the window on my side. The intense cold made itself felt in the carriage, but I preferred that to the nauseous smoke of the pipe. Suddenly the surgeon major got up, putting his hand to his ear. I then saw that his ear was filled with cotton wool. He swore like an ox-driver and, pushing past everyone, and stepping on my loot and on Soubise’s, he shut the window violently, cursing and swearing all the time—quite uselessly, for I did not understand him. He went back to his seat, continued his pipe, and sent out enormous clouds of smoke in the most insolent way. The baron and the two young Germans who had been the first in the carriage appeared to ask him something, and then to remonstrate with him, but he evidently told them to mind their own business and began to abuse them. Very much calmer myself on seeing the increasing anger of the disagreeable man, and very much amused by his earache, I again opened the window. He got up again, furious, showed me his ear and his swollen cheek, and I comprehended the word periostitis in the explanation he gave me on shutting the window again. I then made him understand that I had a weak chest and that the smoke made me cough. The baron acted as my interpreter and explained this to him. But it was easy to see that he did not care a bit about that, and he once more took up his favorite attitude and his pipe. I left him in peace for five minutes, during which time he was able to imagine himself triumphant until, with a sudden jerk of my elbow, I broke the pane of glass. Stupefaction was then depicted on the major’s face, and he became livid. He got straight up, but the two young men rose at the same time, while the baron burst out laughing in the most brutal manner. The surgeon moved a step in our direction, but he found a rampart before him; another officer had joined the two young men, and he was a strong, hardy-looking fellow, just cut out for an obstacle. I do not know what he said to the surgeon major, but it was something clear and decisive. The latter, not knowing how to expend his anger, turned on the baron, who was still laughing, and abused him so violently that the latter calmed down suddenly, and answered in such a way that I quite understood the two men were calling each other out.