ching. Trying not to
make a noise, I went to my room on tiptoe and sat down on my bed. No, I
was too happy; I could not sleep. Besides, it was too hot in the rooms.
Without taking off my uniform, I went quietly into the hall, put on my
overcoat, opened the front door and stepped out into the street.

"It was after four when I had left the ball; going home and stopping
there a while had occupied two hours, so by the time I went out it
was dawn. It was regular carnival weather--foggy, and the road full
of water-soaked snow just melting, and water dripping from the eaves.
Varinka's family lived on the edge of town near a large field, one end
of which was a parade ground: at the other end was a boarding-school for
young ladies. I passed through our empty little street and came to the
main thoroughfare, where I met pedestrians and sledges laden with
wood, the runners grating the road. The horses swung with regular paces
beneath their shining yokes, their backs covered with straw mats
and their heads wet with rain; while the drivers, in enormous boots,
splashed through the mud beside the sledges. All this, the very
horses themselves, seemed to me stimulating and fascinating, full of
suggestion.

"When I approached the field near their house, I saw at one end of it,
in the direction of the parade ground, something very huge and black,
and I heard sounds of fife and drum proceeding from it. My heart had
been full of song, and I had heard in imagination the tune of the
mazurka, but this was very harsh music. It was not pleasant.

"'What can that be?' I thought, and went towards the sound by a slippery
path through the centre of the field. Walking about a hundred paces,
I began to distinguish many black objects through the mist. They were
evidently soldiers. 'It is probably a drill,' I thought.

"So I went along in that direction in company with a blacksmith, who
wore a dirty coat and an apron, and was carrying something. He walked
ahead of me as we approached the place. The soldiers in black uniforms
stood in two rows, facing each other motionless, their guns at rest.
Behind them stood the fifes and drums, incessantly repeating the same
unpleasant tune.

"'What are they doing?' I asked the blacksmith, who halted at my side.

"'A Tartar is being beaten through the ranks for his attempt to desert,'
said the blacksmith in an angry tone, as he looked intently at the far
end of the line.

"I looked in the same direction, and