The Raid by Leo Tolstoy

As soon as the bright sun appeared above the hill and lit up the valley along which we were marching, the wavy clouds of mist cleared away and it grew hot. The soldiers, with muskets and sacks on their shoulders, stepped slowly along the dusty road. Now and then Little-Russian words and laughter could be heard in their ranks. Several old soldiers in white blouses (most of them noncommissioned officers) walked together by the roadside smoking their pipes and conversing gravely. Three-horsed heavily-laden wagons moved steadily along, raising thick clouds of dust that hung motionless in the air. The officers rode on in front: some of them caracoled, i.e. they whipped their horse, made it take three or four leaps, and then, turning its head back, stopped abruptly. Others were occupied with the singers, who in spite of the heat and sultriness sang song after song. With the mounted Tartars, about two hundred yards ahead of the infantry, rode a tall handsome lieutenant in Asiatic costume, on a large white horse. He was known in the regiment as a desperate daredevil who would spit the truth out at anybody. He wore a black tunic trimmed with gold braid, leggings to match, soft closely-fitting gold-braided oriental shoes, a yellow coat and a tall sheepskin cap pushed back from his forehead. Fastened to the silver strap that lay across his chest and back, he carried a powder-flask and a pistol behind him. Another pistol and a silver-mounted dagger hung from his girdle, and above these a sword in a red-leather sheath and a musket in a black cover, were swung over his shoulder. By his clothing, by the way he sat his horse, by his general bearing, in fact by his every movement, one could see that he tried to resemble a Tartar. He even talked in a language I did not know, to the Tartars with whom he was riding, but from the bewildered and amused looks with which they glanced at one another, I surmised that they did not understand him either. He was one of our young officers, daredevil braves who shape their lives on the model of Lermontov's and Marlinsky's heroes. These officers see the Caucasus only through the prism of such books as the Heroes of Our Times, and Mullah-Nur,1 and are guided in their actions not by their own inclinations, but by the examples of their models.

The lieutenant, for instance, may perhaps have liked the company of well-bred women and of men of rank: generals, colonels, and aides-de-camp (it is even my conviction that he liked such society very much, for he was exceedingly ambitious), but he considered it his imperative duty to turn his roughest side to all important men, though he was strictly moderate in his rudeness to them; and when any lady came to the fortress, he considered it his duty to walk with his bosom-friends in a red shirt, and with slippers on his bare feet, before her window and to shout and swear at the top of his voice.