months when the war began.

"His heart, his mind were full of that experience. He was really awed
by it, and he was simple enough to let it appear in his speeches. He
considered himself a sort of privileged person, not because a woman had
looked at him with favour, but simply because, how shall I say it, he
had had the wonderful illumination of his worship for her, as if it were
heaven itself that had done this for him.

"Oh yes, he was very simple. A nice youngster, yet no fool; and with
that, utterly inexperienced, unsuspicious, and unthinking. You will find
one like that here and there in the provinces. He had some poetry in him
too. It could only be natural, something quite his own, not acquired. I
suppose Father Adam had some poetry in him of that natural sort. For the
rest _un Russe sauvage_ as the French sometimes call us, but not of that
kind which, they maintain, eats tallow candle for a delicacy. As to the
woman, the French woman, well, though I have also been in France with
a hundred thousand Russians, I have never seen her. Very likely she was
not in Paris then. And in any case hers were not the doors that would
fly open before simple fellows of my sort, you understand. Gilded salons
were never in my way. I could not tell you how she looked, which is
strange considering that I was, if I may say so, Tomassov's special
confidant.

"He very soon got shy of talking before the others. I suppose the usual
camp-fire comments jarred his fine feelings. But I was left to him
and truly I had to submit. You can't very well expect a youngster in
Tomassov's state to hold his tongue altogether; and I--I suppose you
will hardly believe me--I am by nature a rather silent sort of person.