To Captain Obzhogoff, Staff-Captain Mikhaïloff was an _aristocrat_. To Staff-Captain Mikhaïloff, Adjutant Kalugin was an _aristocrat_, because he was an adjutant, and was on such a footing with the other adjutants as to call them "thou"! To Adjutant Kalugin, Count Nordoff was an _aristocrat_, because he was an adjutant on the Emperor's staff.
Vanity! vanity! and vanity everywhere, even on the brink of the grave, and among men ready to die for the highest convictions. Vanity! It must be that it is a characteristic trait, and a peculiar malady of our century. Why was nothing ever heard among the men of former days, of this passion, any more than of the small-pox or the cholera? Why did Homer and Shakespeare talk of love, of glory, of suffering, while the literature of our age is nothing but an endless narrative of snobs and vanity?
The staff-captain walked twice in indecision past the group of _his aristocrats_, and the third time he exerted an effort over himself and went up to them. This group consisted of four officers: Adjutant Kalugin, an acquaintance of Mikhaïloff's, Adjutant Prince Galtsin, who was something of an aristocrat even for Kalugin himself, Colonel Neferdoff, one of the so-called _hundred and twenty-two_ men of the world (who had entered the service for this campaign, from the retired list), and Captain of Cavalry Praskukhin, also one of the hundred and twenty-two. Luckily for Mikhaïloff, Kalugin was in a very fine humor (the general had just been talking to him in a very confidential way, and Prince Galtsin, who had just arrived from Petersburg, was stopping with him); he did not consider it beneath his dignity to give his hand to Captain Mikhaïloff, which Praskukhin, however, could not make up his mind to do, though he had met Mikhaïloff very frequently on the bastion, had drunk the latter's wine and vodka, and was even indebted to him twenty rubles and a half at preference. As he did not yet know Prince Galtsin very well, he did not wish to convict himself, in the latter's presence, of an acquaintance with a simple staff-captain of infantry. He bowed slightly to the latter.
"Well, Captain," said Kalugin, "when are we to go to the bastion again? Do you remember how we met each other on the Schvartz redoubt--it was hot there, hey?"