“Well, what’s your excellency?

 “Well, what’s your excellency? Your excellency! Your excellency! But what that means, your excellency, nobody knows.”

“Your excellency, that’s Dolohov, the degraded officer,” the captain said softly.

“Well, is he degraded to be a field-marshal, or a common soldier? If he’s a soldier, then he must be dressed like all the rest, according to regulation.”

“Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself on the march.”

“Gave him leave? There, you’re always like that, you young men,” said the general, softening a little. “Gave him leave? If one says a word to you, you go and …” The general paused. “One says a word to you, and you go and…Eh?” he said with renewed irritation. “Be so good as to clothe your men decently.…”

And the general, looking round at the adjutant, walked with his quivering strut towards the regiment. It was obvious that he was pleased with his own display of anger, and that, walking through the regiment, he was trying to find a pretext for wrath. Falling foul of one officer for an unpolished ensign, of another for the unevenness of the rank, he approached the third company.

“How are you standing? Where is your leg? Where is your leg?” the general shouted with a note of anguish in his voice, stopping five men off Dolohov, who was wearing his blue overcoat. Dolohov slowly straightened his bent leg, and looked with his clear, insolent eyes straight in the general’s face.