The Invaders and Other Stories

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Leo Tolstoy

The Invaders and Other Stories

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“Well, now, I don’t know how to reason this out with you,” said he, filling his pipe, “but we have with us a junker, and he likes to philosophize. You talk with him. He also writes poetry.”

I had only become intimate with the captain in the Caucasus, but I had known him before in Russia. His mother, Marya Ivanovna Khlopova, the owner of a small landed estate, lives about two versts from my home. Before I went to the Caucasus I visited her. The old lady was greatly delighted that I was going to see her Páshenka (thus she called the old gray-haired captain), and, like a living letter, could tell him about her circumstances and give him a little message. Having made me eat my fill of a glorious pie and roast chicken, Marya Ivanovna went to her sleeping-room and came back with a rather large black relic-bag, to which was attached some kind of silken ribbon.

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