"Well, be calm. Only look at our officers. Oh, I'm not talking now of the fops of the Emperor's lifeguards who dance at the Court balls, talk French, and are kept by their parents or by their more or less lawful wives. No, I'm thinking of ourselves--poor officers in the line who, nevertheless, constitute the very 'pick' of the irresistible and glorious Russian Army. What are we? Well, mere fag-ends--_le beau reste_, despised pariahs; at best the sons of poor, poverty-stricken infantry Captains, ruined in body and soul, but for, by far, the most part consisting of collegians, seminarists, etc., who have failed. Look, for instance, at our regiment. What are they who remain for any time in the service? Poor devils burdened with large families, veritable beggars ready for every villainy and cruelty--ah, even for murder--and are not even ashamed of abstracting the poor soldier's scanty pay so that, at any rate, cabbage soup may not be lacking on their table at home. Such an individual is commanded to shoot. Whom? And for what? It is all the same to him. He only knows that at home there are hungry mouths, dirty, scrofulous, rickety children, and with dull countenance he splutters, like another woodpecker, his eternal, unvarying answer, 'My oath.' And if there's a spark of ability or talent in any one, it is extinguished in schnapps. Seventy-five per cent. of our officers are diseased through vice. If any one in the regiment happens to scrape through his entrance examination for the Staff College--which, by the way, hardly happens with us once in five years--he is pursued by hatred. The most servile and fawning individuals, or those who have managed to obtain a little patronage, as a rule, get into the police or gendarmes. Should they have in their veins a few drops of noble blood, they may perhaps get a circuit-judgeship in the country. Let us suppose that a man of education, fine feeling, and heart is forced to remain in the regiment. What do you suppose is his fate? To him the service is an intolerable yoke and a perpetual source of humiliation, suffering, and self-contempt. Every one tries to procure an occupation of another sort which soon entirely engrosses him. One is seized with a mania for collecting; another watches impatiently for the evening so that he may, with great trouble and waste of time, embroider small crosses and other gewgaws for an absolutely unnecessary ornamental mat. A third fills his life by the help of a little metal saw, and produces at last an exquisite, perforated frame for his own portrait. And the thought of all this absurd and worthless work secretly occupies their minds during the insufferable hours of drill. Cards, drinking-bouts, disgusting swagger about the favours women have bestowed on them--all this I might be able to pass over in silence. The most repulsive thing, however, is the cruel eagerness, conspicuous in so many officers, to gain a name as martinets