At the other end of the table two infantry officers are eating veal cutlets with green pease washed down by sour Crimean wine, by courtesy called Bordeaux. One of them, a young man with red collar and two stars on his coat, is telling to his neighbor with a black collar and no stars the details of the fight on the Alma. The first is a little the worse for liquor. His frequently interrupted tale, his uncertain look, which reflects the lack of confidence which his story inspires in his auditor, the fine part he gives himself, the too high color of his picture, lead you to guess that he is wandering away from the absolute truth. But you haven’t anything to do with these tales, which you will hear for a long time yet in the farthest corners of Russia; you have one wish alone, that is, to go straight to the fourth bastion, which you have heard so many and so varied reports about. You will notice that whoever tells you he has been there says it with pride and satisfaction; that whoever is getting ready to go there either shows a little emotion or affects an exaggerated _sangfroid_. If one man is joking with another, he will invariably tell him, “Go to the fourth bastion!” If a wounded man on a stretcher is met, and he is asked where he comes from, he will answer, almost without fail, “From the fourth bastion!” Two completely different notions of this terrible earthwork have been circulated; the first by those who have never put their foot upon it, and for whom it is the inevitable tomb of its defenders, the second by those who, like the little blond officer, live there and simply speak of it, saying it is dry or muddy there, warm or cold.