The officer on whose head the champagne
choosing lay was forbidden the use of tobacco for six weeks previous
to sampling.
This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that
that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy--the green and
yellow and white liqueurs did not count--was placed at the absolute
disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely--even more
than among the Black Tyrones.
But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
Hussars were--"My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and
"Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the
glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia
when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and
the great mission of civilizing Asia should begin. That was
unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilized after the
methods of the West. There is too much Asia, and she is too old. You
cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in
her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday school, or
learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to
talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he
could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little,
information about his own Sotnia[8] of Cossacks, left apparently to
look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond.
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