Sub-lieutenant Koseltzoff, who had just asked these questions, was neither an officer of ordinary stamp nor among the number of those who live and act in a certain way because others live and act thus. His nature had been richly endowed with inferior qualities. He sang and played the guitar in an agreeable manner, he conversed well, and wrote with facility, especially official correspondence, of which he had got the trick during his service as battalion aide-de-camp. His energy was remarkable, but this energy only received its impulse from self-love, and although grafted on this second-rate capacity, it formed a salient and characteristic trait of his nature. That kind of self-love which is most commonly developed among men, especially among military men, was so filtered through his existence that he did not conceive a possible choice between “first or nothing.” Self-love was then the motive force of his most intimate enthusiasms. Even alone in his own presence he was fond of considering himself superior to those with whom he compared himself. “Come! I am not going to be the one to listen to ‘Moscow’s’[G] chatter!” murmured the sub-lieutenant, whose thoughts had been troubled somewhat by meeting the train of wounded; and the soldier’s words, the importance of which was increased and confirmed at each step by the sound of the cannonade, weighed heavily on his heart. “They are curious fellows these ‘Moscows’--Come, Nicolaïeff, forward! you are asleep, I think,” he angrily shouted at his servant, throwing back the lappels of his coat. Nicolaïeff shook the reins, made a little encouraging sound with his lips, and the wagon went off at a trot. “We will stop only to feed them,” said the officer, “and then on the road--forward!” II. Just as he entered the street of Douvanka, where everything was in ruins, Sub-lieutenant Koseltzoff was stopped by a wagon-train of cannon-balls and shells going towards Sebastopol, which was halted in the middle of the road. Two infantrymen, seated in the dust on the stones of an overthrown wall, were eating bread and watermelon. “Are you going far, fellow-countryman?” said one of them, chewing his mouthful. He was speaking to a soldier standing near them with a small knapsack on his shoulder. “We are going to join our company; we have come from the country,” replied the soldier, turning his eyes from the watermelon and arranging his knapsack. “For three weeks we have been guarding the company’s hay, but now they have summoned everybody, and we don’t know where our regiment is to-day. They tell us that since last week our fellows have been at Korabelnaïa. Do you know anything about it, gentlemen?” “It is in the city, brother, in the city,” replied an old soldier of the wagon-train, busy cutting with his pocket-knife the white meat of an unripe melon. “We just came from there. What a terrible business, brother!” “What is that, gentlemen?”