Rostov and the assistant went into the corridor. The hospital stench was so strong in that dark corridor that Rostov held his nose, and was obliged to pause to recover his energy to go on. A door was opened on the right, and there limped out on crutches a thin yellow man with bare feet, and nothing on but his underlinen. Leaning against the doorpost, he gazed with glittering, anxious eyes at the persons approaching. Rostov glanced in at the door and saw that the sick and wounded were lying there on the floor, on straw and on overcoats.
“Can one go in and look？” asked Rostov.
“What is there to look at？” said the assistant. But just because the assistant was obviously disinclined to let him go in, Rostov went into the soldiers’ ward. The stench, to which he had grown used a little in the corridor, was stronger here. Here the stench was different; it was more intense; and one could smell that it was from here that it came. In the long room, brightly lighted by the sun in the big window, lay the sick and wounded in two rows with their heads to the wall, leaving a passage down the middle. The greater number of them were unconscious, and took no notice of the entrance of outsiders. Those who were conscious got up or raised their thin, yellow faces, and all gazed intently at Rostov, with the same expression of hope of help, of reproach, and envy of another man’s health. Rostov went into the middle of the room, glanced in at the open doors of adjoining rooms, and on both sides saw the same thing. He stood still, looking round him speechless. He had never expected to see anything like this. Just before him lay right across the empty space down the middle, on the bare floor, a sick man, probably a Cossack, for his hair was cut round in basin shape. This Cossack lay on his back, his huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was of a purple red, his eyes were quite sunk in his head so that only the whites could be seen, and on his legs and on his hands, which were still red, the veins stood out like cords. He was knocking his head against the floor, and he uttered some word and kept repeating it. Rostov listened to what he was saying, and distinguished the word he kept repeating. That word was “drink—drink—drink！” Rostov looked about for some one who could lay the sick man in his place and give him water.
“Who looks after the patients here？” he asked the assistant. At that moment a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from the adjoining room, and, marching in drill step, drew himself up before him.
“Good day, your honour！” bawled this soldier, rolling his eyes at Rostov, and obviously mistaking him for one in authority.
“Take him away, give him water,” said Rostov, indicating the Cossack.
“Certainly, your honour,” the soldier replied complacently, rolling his eyes more strenuously than ever. and drawing himself up, but not budging to do so.
“No, there’s no doing anything here,” thought Rostov, dropping his eyes; and he wanted to get away, but he was aware of a significant look bent upon him from the right side, and he looked round at it. Almost in the corner there was, sitting on a military overcoat, an old soldier with a stern yellow face, thin as a skeleton’s, and an unshaved grey beard. He was looking persistently at Rostov. The man next the old soldier was whispering something to him, pointing to Rostov. Rostov saw the old man wanted to ask him something. He went closer and saw that the old man had only one leg bent under him, the other had been cut off above the knee. On the other side of the old man, at some distance from him, there lay with head thrown back the motionless figure of a young soldier with a waxen pallor on his snub-nosed and still freckled face, and eyes sunken under the lids. Rostov looked at the snub-nosed soldier and a shiver ran down his back.
“Why, that one seems to be …” he said to the assistant.
“We’ve begged and begged, your honour,” said the old soldier with a quiver in his lower jaw. “He died early in the morning. We’re men, too, not dogs.…”
“I’ll see to it directly; they shall take him, they shall take him away,” said the assistant hurriedly. “Come, your honour.”
“Let us go, let us go,” said Rostov hastily; and dropping his eyes and shrinking together, trying to pass unnoticed through the lines of those reproachful and envious eyes fastened upon him, he went out of the room.
