Page 1674 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘What different positions they come from, all those
fellows who are going off there,’ Katavasov said vaguely,
not wishing to express his own opinion, and at the same
time anxious to find out the old man’s views.

The old man was an officer who had served on two
campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and judging by
the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the
swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the
journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he
lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how
one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard
and a thief whom no one would employ as a laborer. But
knowing by experience that in the present condition of
the public temper it was dangerous to express an opinion
opposed to the general one, and especially to criticize the
volunteers unfavorably, he too watched Katavasov without
committing himself.
‘Well, men are wanted there,’ he said, laughing with
his eyes. And they fell to talking of the last war news, and
each concealed from the other his perplexity as to the
engagement expected next day, since the Turks had been
beaten, according to the latest news, at all points. And so
they parted, neither giving expression to his opinion.

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