He had even the gracefulness which every man has in the
flower of his age, if he allows the unconscious impulses of his
limbs to assert themselves, and does not spoil the freedom of their
play by confusing efforts to improve them. The company did not
disconcert him either, in spite of their epaulettes and orders, and
titles thick as falling snowflakes. An impression received in his
boyhood came back to him, in which he, among strange people in a
foreign land, had been accustomed by his father to consider himself
as an onlooker. In Moscow he had often met aristocratic people, with
as thick epaulettes, and more orders than these, but at the sight of
them he had always thought, "They are only barbarous Russians, and I
am a German, although I have no gold lace on my coat." From that
time he had always in his mind connected the use of uniforms, as
outward signs of bravery, with the conception of an ostentatious and
showy barbarism which a civilized European might afford to laugh at.
He had gone further; he regarded rank and titles as only a kind of
clothing of circumstances, which the State lends to certain persons
for useful purposes, just as the wardrobe-keeper at a theater gives
out costumes to the supers. He was so convinced on this point that
he felt sure it was only the stupid yokel at the back of the gallery
who could look with any admiration on a human being merely because
he struts about the stage in purple and gold tinsel.
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