"Have you a cigarette?" [Footnote: "Avez-vous un papiros?"] he asked me.
"And so I stayed right where I was? Yes. I could not endure it
physically, because, though we were wretched, cold, and ill-fed, I lived
like a common soldier, but still the officers had some sort of
consideration for me. I had still some prestige that they regarded. I
wasn't sent out on guard nor for drill. I could not have stood that. But
morally my sufferings were frightful; and especially because I didn't
see any escape from my position. I wrote my uncle, begged him to get me
transferred to my present regiment, which, at least, sees some service;
and I thought that here Pavel Dmitrievitch, qui est le fils de
l'intendant de mon pere, might be of some use to me. My uncle did this
for me; I was transferred. After that regiment this one seemed to me a
collection of chamberlains. Then Pavel Dmitrievitch was here; he knew
who I was, and I was splendidly received. At my uncle's request--a
Guskof, vous savez; but I forgot that with these men without cultivation
and undeveloped,--they can't appreciate a man, and show him marks of
esteem, unless he has that aureole of wealth, of friends; and I noticed
how, little by little, when they saw that I was poor, their behavior to
me showed more and more indifference until they have come almost to
despise me.
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