Sevastopol

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Leo Tolstoy

Warsaw 2019

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She joins in your conversation with the sailor, and begins to tell about him, about his sufferings, his desperate condition for the space of four weeks, and how, when he was wounded, he made the litter halt that he might see the volley from our battery, how the grand-duke spoke to him and gave him twenty-five rubles, and how he said to him that he wanted to go back to the bastion to direct the younger men, even if he could not work himself. As she says all this in a breath, the woman glances now at you, now at the sailor, who has turned away as though he did not hear her and plucks some lint from his pillow, and her eyes sparkle with peculiar enthusiasm.

“This is my housewife, Your Excellency!” the sailor says to you, with an expression which seems to say, “You must excuse her. Every one knows it’s a woman’s way–she’s talking nonsense.”

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