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“When they bring us the Invalide,ssss1 Poupka (that was the name the retired uhlan gave his wife) rushes into the antechamber, seizes the paper, and throws herself upon the sofa in the arborssss1 in the parlor, where we have passed so many pleasant winter evenings in your company while your regiment was in garrison in our city. You can’t imagine the enthusiasm with which she reads the story of your heroic exploits! ‘Mikhailoff,’ she often says in speaking of you, ‘is a pearl of a man, and I shall throw myself on his neck when I see him again! He is fighting in the bastions, he is! He will get the cross of St. George, and the newspapers will be full of him.’ Indeed, I am beginning to be jealous of you. It takes the papers a very long time to get to us, and although a thousand bits of news fly from mouth to mouth, we can’t believe all of them. For example: your good friends the musical girls related yesterday how Napoleon, taken prisoner by our cossacks, had been brought to Petersburg—you understand that I couldn’t believe that! Then one of the officials of the war office, a fine fellow, and a great addition to society now our little town is deserted, assured us that our troops had occupied Eupatoria, thus preventing the French from communicating with Balaklava; that we lost two hundred men in this business, and they about fifteen thousand. My wife was so much delighted at this that she celebrated it all night long, and she has a feeling that you took part in the action and distinguished yourself.”