He would have liked to go up to the aide-de-camp with whom he exchanged salutes, and to chat with those gentlemen, not in order that Captains Objogoff, Souslikoff, Lieutenant Paschtezky, and others might see him in conversation with them, but simply because they were agreeable, well-informed people who could tell him something. Why is Mikhaïloff afraid? and why can’t he make up his mind to go up to them? It is because he distrustfully asks himself what he will do if these gentlemen do not return his salute, if they continue to chat together, pretending not to see him, and if they go away, leaving him alone among the _aristocrats_. The word _aristocrat_, taken in the sense of a particular group, selected with great care, belonging to every class of society, has lately gained a great popularity among us in Russia--where it never ought to have taken root. It has entered into all the social strata where vanity has crept in--and where does not this pitiable weakness creep in? Everywhere; among the merchants, the officials, the quartermasters, the officers; at Saratoff, at Mamadisch, at Vinitzy--everywhere, in a word, where men are. Now, since there are many men in a besieged city like Sebastopol, there is also a great deal of vanity; that is to say, _aristocrats_ are there in large numbers, although death, the great leveller, hovers constantly over the head of each man, be he aristocrat or not. To Captain Objogoff, Second-captain Mikhaïloff is an _aristocrat_; to Second-captain Mikhaïloff, Aide-de-camp Kalouguine is an _aristocrat_, because he is aide-de-camp, and says thee and thou familiarly to other aides-de-camp; lastly, to Kalouguine, Count Nordoff is an _aristocrat_, because he is aide-de-camp of the Emperor. Vanity, vanity, nothing but vanity! even in the presence of death, and among men ready to die for an exalted idea. Is not vanity the characteristic trait, the destructive ill of our age? Why has this weakness not been recognized hitherto, just as small-pox or cholera has been recognized? Why in our time are there only three kinds of men--those who accept vanity as an existing fact, necessary, and consequently just, and freely submit to it; those who consider it an evil element, but one impossible to destroy; and those who act under its influence with unconscious servility? Why have Homer and Shakespeare spoken of love, of glory, and of suffering, while the literature of our century is only the interminable history of snobbery and vanity?