razily. He was sitting erect in his saddle, not looking down
at them and sheathing his sword deliberately.

"This Tomassov, well, he had a beard. Of course we all had beards then.
Circumstances, lack of leisure, want of razors, too. No, seriously, we
were a wild-looking lot in those unforgotten days which so many, so very
many of us did not survive. You know our losses were awful, too. Yes, we
looked wild. _Des Russes sauvages_--what!

"So he had a beard--this Tomassov I mean; but he did not look _sauvage_.
He was the youngest of us all. And that meant real youth. At a distance
he passed muster fairly well, what with the grime and the particular
stamp of that campaign on our faces. But directly you were near enough
to have a good look into his eyes, that was where his lack of age
showed, though he was not exactly a boy.

"Those same eyes were blue, something like the blue of autumn skies,
dreamy and gay, too--innocent, believing eyes. A topknot of fair hair
decorated his brow like a gold diadem in what one would call normal
times.

"You may think I am talking of him as if he were the hero of a novel.
Why, that's nothing to what the adjutant discovered about him. He
discovered that he had a 'lover's lips'--whatever that may be. If the
adjutant meant a nice mouth, why, it was nice enough, but of course it
was intended for a sneer. That adjutant of ours was not a very delicate
fellow. 'Look at those lover's lips,' he would exclaim in a loud tone
while Tomassov was talking.

"Tomassov didn't quite like that sort of thing. But to a certain extent
he had laid himself open to banter by the lasting character of his
impressions which were connected with the passion of love and, perhaps,
were not of such a rare kind as he seemed to think them. What made
his comrades tolerant of his rhapsodies was the fact that they were
connected with France, with Paris!

"You of the present generation, you cannot conceive how much prestige
there was then in those names for the whole world. Paris was the centre
of wonder for all human beings gifted with imagination. There we were,
the majority of us young and well connected, but not long out of our
hereditary nests in the provinces; simple servants of God; mere rustics,
if I may say so. So we were only too ready to listen to the tales of
France from our comrade Tomassov. He had been attached to our mission
in Paris the year before the war. High protections very likely--or maybe
sheer luck.