Kalouguine rose, and without returning the salute of the new-comer, without inviting him to be seated, begged him with cruel politeness and an official smile to wait a while; then he went on talking in French with Galtzine, without paying the slightest attention to the poor officer, who stood in the middle of the room, and did not know what to do with himself. “I have been sent on an important matter,” he said at last, after a moment of silence. “If that is so, be kind enough to follow me.” Kalouguine threw on his cloak and turned towards the door. An instant later he came back from the general’s room. “Well, gentlemen, I believe they are going to make it warm to-night.” “Ah! what--a sortie?” they all asked together. “I don’t know, you will see yourselves,” he replied, with an enigmatic smile. “My chief is in the bastion, I must go there,” said Praskoukine, putting on his sword. No one replied; he ought to know what he had to do. Praskoukine and Neferdorf went out to go to their posts. “Good-by, gentlemen, _au revoir_! we will meet again to-night,” cried Kalouguine through the window, while they set out at a rapid trot, bending over the pommels of their Cossack saddles. The sound of their horses’ shoes quickly died away in the dark street. “Come, tell me, will there really be something going on to-night?” said Galtzine, leaning on the window-sill near Kalouguine, whence they were watching the shells rising over the bastions. “I can tell you, you alone. You have been in the bastions, haven’t you?” Although Galtzine had only been there once he replied by an affirmative gesture. “Well, opposite our lunette there was a trench”--and Kalouguine, who was not a specialist, but who was satisfied of the value of his military opinions, began to explain, mixing himself up and making wrong use of the terms of fortification, the state of our works, the situation of the enemy, and the plan of the affair which had been prepared. “There! there! They have begun to fire heavily on our quarters; is that coming from our side or from _his_--the one that has just burst there?” And the two officers, leaning on the window, watched the lines of fire which the shells traced crossing each other in the air, the white powder-smoke, the flashes which preceded each report and illuminated for a second the blue-black sky; they listened to the roar of the cannonade, which increased in violence. “What a charming panorama!” said Kalouguine, attracting his guest’s attention to the truly beautiful spectacle. “Do you know that sometimes one can’t tell a star from a bomb-shell?” “Yes, it is true; I just took that for a star, but it is coming down. Look! it bursts! And that large star there yonder--what do they call it? One would say it was a shell!” “I am so accustomed to them that when I go back to Russia a starry sky will seem to me to be sparkling with bomb-shells. One gets so used to it.”