"The second case was quite a pitiful one.
The woman was just like the other, except that she was young and pretty.
Her behaviour was most reprehensible.
Light as we made of domestic affairs like that, we were shocked.
But her husband didn't mind.
He knew and saw everything but did nothing to stop it.
His friends gave him hints,, but he waved them away.
'Cut it out.
It's no business of mine.
All I want is for Lena to be happy.'
Such a fool!
"In the end she got herself seriously involved with Lieutenant Vishnyakov, a subaltern from their company.
And the three of them lived in two-husband wedlock, as if it were the most lawful kind of matrimony.
Then our regiment was ordered to the front.
Our ladies saw us off, and so did she, but, really, it was sickening: she didn't so much as glance at her husband, at least to keep up appearances if for no other reason. Instead she hung on her lieutenant like ivy on a rotten wall, and wouldn't leave him for a second.
By way of farewell, when we were settled in the train and the train started, the hussy shouted after her husband,
'See that you take good care of Volodya!
If anything happens to him I'll leave the house and never come back.
And I'll take the children with me.'
"Perhaps you imagine the captain was a ninny? A jelly-fish? A sissy?
Not at all.
He was a brave soldier.
At Zeloniye Gori he led his company against a Turkish redoubt six times, and of his two hundred men only fourteen were left.
He was wounded twice, but refused to go to the medical station.
That's what he was like.
The soldiers worshipped him.
"But she had told him what to do.
His Lena had!
"And so, like a nurse or a mother, he took care of that coward and idler Vishnyakov, that lazy drone.
At night in camp, in rain and mud, he'd wrap him in his own greatcoat.
He would supervise a sapper's job for him, while he lounged in a dug-out or played faro.
At night he'd inspect the outposts for Vishnyakov.
And that was at a time, mark you, when the Turks used to cut down our pickets as easily as a Yaroslavl countrywoman cuts down her cabbages.
It's a sin to say so, but, upon my honour, everybody was happy to leam that Vishnyakov had died of typhus in hospital."
"How about women, Grandad? Have you never met loving women?"
"Of course I have, Vera.
I'll say more: I'm sure that almost every woman in love is capable of sublime heroism.
Don't you see, from the moment she kisses, embraces, gives herself, she is a mother.
Love to her, if she does love, is the whole meaning of life — the whole universe!
But it is no fault of hers that love has assumed such vulgar form s and degenerated into a sort of everyday convenience, a little diversion.
The ones to blame are the men, who are surfeited at twenty, who have a chicken's body and a rabbit's heart, and are incapable of strong desires, heroic deeds, the tenderness and worship of love.
They say real love did exist at one time.
If not, then isn't it what the best minds and souls of the world — poets, novelists, musicians, artists — have dreamt of and longed for?
The other day I read the story of Manon Lescaut and Cavalier des Grieux.
It brought tears to my eyes — it really did.
Tell me in all honesty, doesn't every woman dream, deep in her heart, of such a love — a single-minded, all-forgiving love ready to bear anything, modest and self-sacrificing?"
"Of course she does, Grandad."
"And since it isn't there women take their revenge.
In another thirty years or so from now — I shan't live to see it, Vera dear, but you may; remember what I'm telling you — some thirty years from now women will wield unprecedented power in the world.
They will dress like Indian idols.