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+% SiSU 0.72
+
+@title: War and Peace
+
+@creator:
+ :author: Tolstoy, Leo
+ :translator: Maude, Aylmer; Maude, Louise Shanks
+
+@classify:
+ :type: Book
+ :topic_register: SiSU:markup sample:book;book:novel:historical romance|war novel;Russian:original text;original text language:Russian
+ :pg: 2600
+
+% @rights:
+
+@date:
+ :published: 1869
+ :created: 1865
+ :issued: 1865
+ :available: 1865
+ :modified: 1869
+ :added_to_site: 2004-04-12
+
+% @date.translated:
+
+% @language:
+%  :document: English
+%  :original: Russian
+
+@vocabulary: none
+
+@make:
+ :headings: none; BOOK|FIRST|SECOND; none; CHAPTER;
+ :breaks: new=:C; break=1
+
+@links: { Wikipedia entry }http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_peace
+{ War and Peace @ SiSU }http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/war.and.peace.leo.tolstoy
+
+% SiSU: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu
+% SiSU markup for 0.16 and later
+% SiSU markup: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/sample
+% Output: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy
+
+:A~ @title @creator
+
+BOOK ONE: 1805
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
+Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
+if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by
+that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have
+nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
+my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see
+I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."
+
+It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna
+Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya
+Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man
+of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
+reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as
+she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in
+St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.
+
+All her invitations without exception, written in French, and
+delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:
+
+"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
+prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
+terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-
+Annette Scherer."
+
+"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the
+least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing
+an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had
+stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke
+in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
+thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a
+man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went
+up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,
+scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the
+sofa.
+
+"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's
+mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the
+politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even
+irony could be discerned.
+
+"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
+like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are
+staying the whole evening, I hope?"
+
+"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I
+must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is
+coming for me to take me there."
+
+"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
+festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."
+
+"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would
+have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by
+force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.
+
+"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
+dispatch? You know everything."
+
+"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,
+listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that
+Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to
+burn ours."
+
+Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a
+stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty
+years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an
+enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she
+did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to
+disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile
+which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played
+round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual
+consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor
+could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.
+
+In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna
+burst out:
+
+"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand
+things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.
+She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious
+sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is
+the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
+perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble
+that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
+crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than
+ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must
+avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely
+on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot
+understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has
+refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some
+secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.
+The English have not understood and cannot understand the
+self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only
+desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And
+what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has
+always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe
+is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg
+says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a
+trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored
+monarch. He will save Europe!"
+
+She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.
+
+"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been
+sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the
+King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you
+give me a cup of tea?"
+
+"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
+expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,
+who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of
+the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good
+ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He
+has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"
+
+"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"
+he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred
+to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive
+of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke
+to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts
+is a poor creature."
+
+Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others
+were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it
+for the baron.
+
+Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she
+nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or
+was pleased with.
+
+"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
+sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.
+
+As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
+expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
+sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
+patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron
+Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.
+
+The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the
+womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna
+Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of
+a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,
+so she said:
+
+"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
+out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
+beautiful."
+
+The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.
+
+"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
+to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that
+political and social topics were ended and the time had come for
+intimate conversation- "I often think how unfairly sometimes the
+joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid
+children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like
+him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her
+eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate
+them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."
+
+And she smiled her ecstatic smile.
+
+"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I
+lack the bump of paternity."
+
+"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I
+am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her
+face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her
+Majesty's and you were pitied...."
+
+The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
+awaiting a reply. He frowned.
+
+"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all
+a father could for their education, and they have both turned out
+fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active
+one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling
+in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles
+round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse
+and unpleasant.
+
+"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
+father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna
+Pavlovna, looking up pensively.
+
+"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
+children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
+is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"
+
+He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
+gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.
+
+"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"
+she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and
+though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little
+person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of
+yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."
+
+Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory
+and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a
+movement of the head that he was considering this information.
+
+"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
+current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
+rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in
+five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what
+we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"
+
+"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He
+is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army
+under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is
+very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very
+unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise
+Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here
+tonight."
+
+"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
+Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange
+that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-
+slafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She
+is rich and of good family and that's all I want."
+
+And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised
+the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and
+fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.
+
+"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,
+young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can
+be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
+apprenticeship as old maid."
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
+Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
+and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
+Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her
+father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
+her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
+Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,~^ was
+also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being
+pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small
+receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,
+whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.
+
+^~ The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.
+
+To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my
+aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or
+her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who
+had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to
+arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna
+Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.
+
+Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom
+not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of
+them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful
+and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of
+them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health
+of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each
+visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left
+the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious
+duty and did not return to her the whole evening.
+
+The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
+gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
+delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her
+teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming
+when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always
+the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness
+of her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special
+and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of
+this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life
+and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull
+dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company
+and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were
+becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,
+and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her
+white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that
+day.
+
+The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
+swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her
+dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was
+doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought
+my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all
+present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick
+on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to
+be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."
+And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,
+dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.
+
+"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
+else," replied Anna Pavlovna.
+
+"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
+French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
+to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
+added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
+turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.
+
+"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince
+Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.
+
+One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
+close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
+at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
+young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
+grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
+had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
+only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this
+was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with
+the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.
+But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and
+fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the
+place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was
+certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety
+could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
+and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else
+in that drawing room.
+
+"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
+invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
+aunt as she conducted him to her.
+
+Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look
+round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to
+the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate
+acquaintance.
+
+Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
+aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.
+Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know
+the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."
+
+"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
+interesting but hardly feasible."
+
+"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
+get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
+committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady
+before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak
+to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big
+feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the
+abbe's plan chimerical.
+
+"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.
+
+And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,
+she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,
+ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to
+flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands
+to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or
+there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and
+hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna
+Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a
+too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the
+conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid
+these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an
+anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to
+listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to
+another group whose center was the abbe.
+
+Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
+Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
+the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like
+a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of
+missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the
+self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he
+was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he
+came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he
+stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young
+people are fond of doing.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
+steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
+beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
+was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
+had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed
+round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the
+beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little
+Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump
+for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna
+Pavlovna.
+
+The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and
+polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out
+of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
+which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up
+as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a
+specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen
+it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served
+up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly
+choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing
+the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc
+d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were
+particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.
+
+"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,
+with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in
+the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."
+
+The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness
+to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone
+to listen to his tale.
+
+"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
+the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to
+another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a
+third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
+and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
+on a hot dish.
+
+The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.
+
+"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the
+beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
+another group.
+
+The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with
+which she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly
+beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed
+with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and
+sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,
+not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously
+allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and
+shapely shoulders, back, and bosom- which in the fashion of those days
+were very much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a
+ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so
+lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on
+the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too
+victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish
+its effect.
+
+"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted
+his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something
+extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also
+with her unchanging smile.
+
+"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,
+smilingly inclining his head.
+
+The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and
+considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the
+story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful
+round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her
+still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond
+necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and
+whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at
+once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's
+face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.
+
+The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.
+
+"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
+of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."
+
+There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
+merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in
+her seat.
+
+"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
+took up her work.
+
+Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle
+and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.
+
+Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary
+resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that
+in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features
+were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by
+a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation,
+and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the
+contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of
+sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes,
+nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace,
+and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.
+
+"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside
+the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
+instrument he could not begin to speak.
+
+"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging
+his shoulders.
+
+"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
+which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
+had uttered them.
+
+He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be
+sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was
+dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of
+cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.
+
+The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then
+current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to
+Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
+Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in
+his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits
+to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter
+spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by
+death.
+
+The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
+where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies
+looked agitated.
+
+"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the
+little princess.
+
+"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle
+into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of
+the story prevented her from going on with it.
+
+The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
+prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
+watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he
+was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to
+the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe
+about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by
+the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet
+theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,
+which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.
+
+"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
+the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one
+powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place
+herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its
+object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would
+save the world!"
+
+"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.
+
+At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at
+Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The
+Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively
+affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing
+with women.
+
+"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
+society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have
+had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think
+of the climate," said he.
+
+Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
+conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
+larger circle.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Just them another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
+Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome
+young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.
+Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,
+measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little
+wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing
+room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look
+at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so
+tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.
+He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome
+face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned
+the whole company.
+
+"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.
+
+"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
+last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been
+pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."
+
+"And Lise, your wife?"
+
+"She will go to the country."
+
+"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"
+
+"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
+coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has
+been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"
+
+Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who
+from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with
+glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he
+looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance
+with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming
+face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.
+
+"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to
+Pierre.
+
+"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper
+with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
+vicomte who was continuing his story.
+
+"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
+hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished
+to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his
+daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.
+
+"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the
+Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
+his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me
+of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to
+leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.
+
+His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
+holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
+radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
+almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.
+
+"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.
+
+"Very," said Pierre.
+
+In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna
+Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a
+whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
+Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
+women."
+
+Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew
+his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who
+had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook
+Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had
+assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed
+only anxiety and fear.
+
+"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him
+into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me
+what news I may take back to my poor boy."
+
+Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
+the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
+ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might
+not go away.
+
+"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
+would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.
+
+"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered
+Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I
+should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.
+That would be the best way."
+
+The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
+best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
+society had lost her former influential connections. She had now
+come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her
+only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had
+obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat
+listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened
+her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a
+moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more
+tightly.
+
+"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
+anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
+father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to
+do this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"
+she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked
+Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always
+were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.
+
+"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her
+beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
+stood waiting by the door.
+
+Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be
+economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having
+once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,
+he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using
+his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her
+second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded
+him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the
+first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners
+that she was one of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made
+up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and
+are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour
+after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved
+him.
+
+"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
+weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
+but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's
+memory, I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the
+Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"
+
+"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your
+kindness!" He turned to go.
+
+"Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."
+she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich
+Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
+rest, and then..."
+
+Prince Vasili smiled.
+
+"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered
+since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
+all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
+adjutants."
+
+"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."
+
+"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
+"we shall be late."
+
+"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"
+
+"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"
+
+"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."
+
+"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
+with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
+naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.
+
+Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit
+employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone
+her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She
+returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again
+pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her
+task was accomplished.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
+Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa
+and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
+Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions
+of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is
+as if the whole world had gone crazy."
+
+Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a
+sarcastic smile.
+
+"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'~^ They say he was very
+fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in
+Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"
+
+^~ God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!
+
+"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
+over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
+endure this man who is a menace to everything."
+
+"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite
+but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
+XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he
+became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward
+of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they
+are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."
+
+And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.
+
+Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
+through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
+little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
+coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much
+gravity as if she had asked him to do it.
+
+"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said
+he.
+
+The princess listened, smiling.
+
+"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
+vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
+he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others
+but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone
+too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French
+society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed,
+and then..."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
+make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
+who had him under observation, interrupted:
+
+"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which
+always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,
+"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to
+choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from
+the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the
+arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
+royalist emigrant.
+
+"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
+rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
+will be difficult to return to the old regime."
+
+"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
+the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
+Bonaparte's side."
+
+"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte
+without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to
+know the real state of French public opinion.
+
+"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
+smile.
+
+It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
+remarks at him, though without looking at him.
+
+"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"
+Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
+Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I
+do not know how far he was justified in saying so."
+
+"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the
+duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
+people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
+after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and
+one hero less on earth."
+
+Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their
+appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the
+conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say
+something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.
+
+"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was
+a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed
+greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
+responsibility of that deed."
+
+"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.
+
+"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
+greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing
+her work nearer to her.
+
+"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.
+
+"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping
+his knee with the palm of his hand.
+
+The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
+his audience over his spectacles and continued.
+
+"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
+from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon
+alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general
+good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."
+
+"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.
+
+But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.
+
+"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
+because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
+preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom
+of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain
+power."
+
+"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
+commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
+called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.
+
+"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he
+might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a
+great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur
+Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his
+extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.
+
+"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
+But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.
+
+"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.
+
+"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."
+
+"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected
+an ironical voice.
+
+"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
+important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation
+from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas
+Napoleon has retained in full force."
+
+"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
+last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
+were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who
+does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached
+liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?
+On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."
+
+Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
+vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment
+of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
+horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
+not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
+impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the
+vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.
+
+"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the
+fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is
+innocent and untried?"
+
+"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
+18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
+all like the conduct of a great man!"
+
+"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
+little princess, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.
+
+Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.
+His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
+his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
+another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed
+to ask forgiveness.
+
+The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly
+that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested.
+All were silent.
+
+"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince
+Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
+between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
+So it seems to me."
+
+"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
+this reinforcement.
+
+"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man
+was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa
+where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are
+other acts which it is difficult to justify."
+
+Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness
+of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time
+to go.
+
+Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to
+attend, and asking them all to be seated began:
+
+"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to
+it. Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
+lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
+as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
+Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
+attention to his story.
+
+"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She
+must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was
+her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."
+
+Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
+difficulty.
+
+"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a
+livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
+calls.'"
+
+Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long
+before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the
+narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna
+Pavlovna, did however smile.
+
+"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat
+and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no
+longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world
+knew...."
+
+And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had
+told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna
+and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so
+agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the
+anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about
+the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,
+and when and where.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests
+began to take their leave.
+
+Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with
+huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, to enter a
+drawing room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say
+something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he
+was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his
+own, the general's three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the
+plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All his
+absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in it
+was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest expression.
+Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian mildness that
+expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: "I hope to
+see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my
+dear Monsieur Pierre."
+
+When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again
+everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, "Opinions
+are opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am."
+And everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.
+
+Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders
+to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened
+indifferently to his wife's chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also
+come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty,
+pregnant princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.
+
+"Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold," said the little
+princess, taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. "It is settled," she added in
+a low voice.
+
+Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match
+she contemplated between Anatole and the little princess'
+sister-in-law.
+
+"I rely on you, my dear," said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low tone.
+"Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au
+revoir!"- and she left the hall.
+
+Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his
+face close to her, began to whisper something.
+
+Two footmen, the princess' and his own, stood holding a shawl and
+a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to
+the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of
+understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as
+usual spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.
+
+"I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador's," said Prince
+Hippolyte "-so dull-. It has been a delightful evening, has it not?
+Delightful!"
+
+"They say the ball will be very good," replied the princess, drawing
+up her downy little lip. "All the pretty women in society will be
+there."
+
+"Not all, for you will not be there; not all," said Prince Hippolyte
+smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he
+even pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either
+from awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after
+the shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long
+time, as though embracing her.
+
+Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at
+her husband. Prince Andrew's eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did
+he seem.
+
+"Are you ready?" he asked his wife, looking past her.
+
+Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest
+fashion reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out
+into the porch following the princess, whom a footman was helping into
+the carriage.
+
+"Princesse, au revoir," cried he, stumbling with his tongue as
+well as with his feet.
+
+The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the
+dark carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince
+Hippolyte, under pretense of helping, was in everyone's way.
+
+"Allow me, sir," said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold,
+disagreeable tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.
+
+"I am expecting you, Pierre," said the same voice, but gently and
+affectionately.
+
+The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte
+laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte
+whom he had promised to take home.
+
+"Well, mon cher," said the vicomte, having seated himself beside
+Hippolyte in the carriage, "your little princess is very nice, very
+nice indeed, quite French," and he kissed the tips of his fingers.
+Hippolyte burst out laughing.
+
+"Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,"
+continued the vicomte. "I pity the poor husband, that little officer
+who gives himself the airs of a monarch."
+
+Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, "And you
+were saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One
+has to know how to deal with them."
+
+Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew's study like
+one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa,
+took from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was
+Caesar's Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it
+in the middle.
+
+"What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite ill now,"
+said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white
+hands.
+
+Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his
+eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.
+
+"That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the thing in
+the right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but- I
+do not know how to express it... not by a balance of political
+power...."
+
+It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such
+abstract conversation.
+
+"One can't everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you
+at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a
+diplomatist?" asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.
+
+Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.
+
+"Really, I don't yet know. I don't like either the one or the
+other."
+
+"But you must decide on something! Your father expects it."
+
+Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe as tutor,
+and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow
+his father dismissed the abbe and said to the young man, "Now go to
+Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to
+anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money.
+Write to me all about it, and I will help you in everything." Pierre
+had already been choosing a career for three months, and had not
+decided on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was
+speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead.
+
+"But he must be a Freemason," said he, referring to the abbe whom he
+had met that evening.
+
+"That is all nonsense." Prince Andrew again interrupted him, "let us
+talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?"
+
+"No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to
+tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for
+freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the
+army; but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in
+the world is not right."
+
+Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish
+words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to
+such nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any
+other answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naive question.
+
+"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no
+wars," he said.
+
+"And that would be splendid," said Pierre.
+
+Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
+
+"Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about..."
+
+"Well, why are you going to the war?" asked Pierre.
+
+"What for? I don't know. I must. Besides that I am going..." He
+paused. "I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit
+me!"
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the next room. Prince
+Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it
+had had in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room. Pierre removed his feet
+from the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a
+house dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose
+and politely placed a chair for her.
+
+"How is it," she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly
+and fussily in the easy chair, "how is it Annette never got married?
+How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for
+saying so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative
+fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!"
+
+"And I am still arguing with your husband. I can't understand why he
+wants to go to the war," replied Pierre, addressing the princess
+with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their
+intercourse with young women.
+
+The princess started. Evidently Pierre's words touched her to the
+quick.
+
+"Ah, that is just what I tell him!" said she. "I don't understand
+it; I don't in the least understand why men can't live without wars.
+How is it that we women don't want anything of the kind, don't need
+it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is
+Uncle's aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well
+known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the
+Apraksins' I heard a lady asking, 'Is that the famous Prince
+Andrew?' I did indeed." She laughed. "He is so well received
+everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You
+know the Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were
+speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?"
+
+Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the
+conversation, gave no reply.
+
+"When are you starting?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it spoken of,"
+said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had
+spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly
+ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member.
+"Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must
+be broken off... and then you know, Andre..." (she looked
+significantly at her husband) "I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she whispered,
+and a shudder ran down her back.
+
+Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone
+besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a
+tone of frigid politeness.
+
+"What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don't understand," said he.
+
+"There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a
+whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up
+alone in the country."
+
+"With my father and sister, remember," said Prince Andrew gently.
+
+"Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to
+be afraid."
+
+Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a
+joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if
+she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though
+the gist of the matter lay in that.
+
+"I still can't understand what you are afraid of," said Prince
+Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
+
+The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.
+
+"No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have..."
+
+"Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier," said Prince Andrew.
+"You had better go."
+
+The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip
+quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about
+the room.
+
+Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now at him
+and now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.
+
+"Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?" exclaimed the little
+princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a
+tearful grimace. "I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you
+have changed so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the
+war and have no pity for me. Why is it?"
+
+"Lise!" was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an
+entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself
+regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:
+
+"You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you
+behave like that six months ago?"
+
+"Lise, I beg you to desist," said Prince Andrew still more
+emphatically.
+
+Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened
+to all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to
+bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.
+
+"Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because... I assure you
+I myself have experienced... and so... because... No, excuse me! An
+outsider is out of place here... No, don't distress yourself...
+Good-by!"
+
+Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
+
+"No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of
+the pleasure of spending the evening with you."
+
+"No, he thinks only of himself," muttered the princess without
+restraining her angry tears.
+
+"Lise!" said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch
+which indicates that patience is exhausted.
+
+Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess' pretty
+face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful
+eyes glanced askance at her husband's face, and her own assumed the
+timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags
+its drooping tail.
+
+"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she muttered, and lifting her dress with one
+hand she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.
+
+"Good night, Lise," said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand
+as he would have done to a stranger.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre
+continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his
+forehead with his small hand.
+
+"Let us go and have supper," he said with a sigh, going to the door.
+
+They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining
+room. Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and
+glass bore that imprint of newness found in the households of the
+newly married. Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his
+elbows on the table and, with a look of nervous agitation such as
+Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talk- as one who
+has long had something on his mind and suddenly determines to speak
+out.
+
+"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry
+till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable
+of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and
+have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and
+irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing- or
+all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be
+wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise.
+If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you
+will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed
+except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with
+a court lackey and an idiot!... But what's the good?..." and he
+waved his arm.
+
+Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different
+and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at
+his friend in amazement.
+
+"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of
+those rare women with whom a man's honor is safe; but, O God, what
+would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one
+to whom I mention this, because I like you."
+
+As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkonski
+who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna's easy chairs and with half-closed
+eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his
+thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in
+which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with
+brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at
+ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of
+almost morbid irritation.
+
+"You don't understand why I say this," he continued, "but it is
+the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career," said
+he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), "but Bonaparte when he
+worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had
+nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself
+up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And
+all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and
+torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and
+triviality- these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I
+am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know
+nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic
+wit," continued Prince Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen
+to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and
+those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and
+women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial
+in everything- that's what women are when you see them in their true
+colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were
+something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don't
+marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!" concluded Prince Andrew.
+
+"It seems funny to me," said Pierre, "that you, you should
+consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have
+everything before you, everything. And you..."
+
+He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he
+thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.
+
+"How can he talk like that?" thought Pierre. He considered his
+friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the
+highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which
+might be best described as strength of will. Pierre was always
+astonished at Prince Andrew's calm manner of treating everybody, his
+extraordinary memory, his extensive reading (he had read everything,
+knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above all
+at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often struck
+by Andrew's lack of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he
+himself was particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a
+defect but as a sign of strength.
+
+Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life,
+praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary
+to wheels that they may run smoothly.
+
+"My part is played out," said Prince Andrew. "What's the use of
+talking about me? Let us talk about you," he added after a silence,
+smiling at his reassuring thoughts.
+
+That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre's face.
+
+"But what is there to say about me?" said Pierre, his face
+relaxing into a careless, merry smile. "What am I? An illegitimate
+son!" He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a
+great effort to say this. "Without a name and without means... And
+it really..." But he did not say what "it really" was. "For the
+present I am free and am all right. Only I haven't the least idea what
+I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously."
+
+Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance- friendly and
+affectionate as it was- expressed a sense of his own superiority.
+
+"I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among
+our whole set. Yes, you're all right! Choose what you will; it's all
+the same. You'll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up
+visiting those Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so
+badly- all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!"
+
+"What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered Pierre, shrugging
+his shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow; women!"
+
+"I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew. "Women who are comme
+il faut, that's a different matter; but the Kuragins' set of women,
+'women and wine' I don't understand!"
+
+Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin's and sharing the
+dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to
+reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew's sister.
+
+"Do you know?" said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy
+thought, "seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading
+such a life I can't decide or think properly about anything. One's
+head aches, and one spends all one's money. He asked me for tonight,
+but I won't go."
+
+"You give me your word of honor not to go?"
+
+"On my honor!"
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+It was past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a
+cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending
+to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more
+he felt the impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was
+light enough to see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed
+more like morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre
+remembered that Anatole Kuragin was expecting the usual set for
+cards that evening, after which there was generally a drinking bout,
+finishing with visits of a kind Pierre was very fond of.
+
+"I should like to go to Kuragin's," thought he.
+
+But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go
+there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so
+passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so
+accustomed to that he decided to go. The thought immediately
+occurred to him that his promise to Prince Andrew was of no account,
+because before he gave it he had already promised Prince Anatole to
+come to his gathering; "besides," thought he, "all such 'words of
+honor' are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if
+one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so
+extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all
+the same!" Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort,
+nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to Kuragin's.
+
+Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards' barracks, in which
+Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the
+stairs, and went in at the open door. There was no one in the
+anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there
+was a smell of alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the
+distance.
+
+Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet
+dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in
+which were the remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw
+him, was drinking on the sly what was left in the glasses. From the
+third room came sounds of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices,
+the growling of a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or nine
+young men were crowding anxiously round an open window. Three others
+were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by the chain and
+trying to set him at the others.
+
+"I bet a hundred on Stevens!" shouted one.
+
+"Mind, no holding on!" cried another.
+
+"I bet on Dolokhov!" cried a third. "Kuragin, you part our hands."
+
+"There, leave Bruin alone; here's a bet on."
+
+"At one draught, or he loses!" shouted a fourth.
+
+"Jacob, bring a bottle!" shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow
+who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine
+linen shirt unfastened in front. "Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here
+is Petya! Good man!" cried he, addressing Pierre.
+
+Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes,
+particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober
+ring, cried from the window: "Come here; part the bets!" This was
+Dolokhov, an officer of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler
+and duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about
+him merrily.
+
+"I don't understand. What's it all about?"
+
+"Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here," said Anatole,
+taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.
+
+"First of all you must drink!"
+
+Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows
+at the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and
+listening to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre's glass
+while explaining that Dolokhov was betting with Stevens, an English
+naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the
+outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.
+
+"Go on, you must drink it all," said Anatole, giving Pierre the last
+glass, "or I won't let you go!"
+
+"No, I won't," said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to
+the window.
+
+Dolokhov was holding the Englishman's hand and clearly and
+distinctly repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself
+particularly to Anatole and Pierre.
+
+Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue
+eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore
+no mustache, so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face,
+was clearly seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely
+curved. The middle of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed
+firmly on the firm lower one, and something like two distinct smiles
+played continually round the two corners of the mouth; this,
+together with the resolute, insolent intelligence of his eyes,
+produced an effect which made it impossible not to notice his face.
+Dolokhov was a man of small means and no connections. Yet, though
+Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dolokhov lived with him and
+had placed himself on such a footing that all who knew them, including
+Anatole himself, respected him more than they did Anatole. Dolokhov
+could play all games and nearly always won. However much he drank,
+he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kuragin and Dolokhov were at
+that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces of Petersburg.
+
+The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented
+anyone from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two
+footmen, who were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions
+and shouts of the gentlemen around.
+
+Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted
+to smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame,
+but could not move it. He smashed a pane.
+
+"You have a try, Hercules," said he, turning to Pierre.
+
+Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame
+out with a crash.
+
+"Take it right out, or they'll think I'm holding on," said Dolokhov.
+
+"Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?" said Anatole.
+
+"First-rate," said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with a bottle of
+rum in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of
+the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.
+
+Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the
+window sill. "Listen!" cried he, standing there and addressing those
+in the room. All were silent.
+
+"I bet fifty imperials"- he spoke French that the Englishman might
+understand him, but he did, not speak it very well- "I bet fifty
+imperials... or do you wish to make it a hundred?" added he,
+addressing the Englishman.
+
+"No, fifty," replied the latter.
+
+"All right. Fifty imperials... that I will drink a whole bottle of
+rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on
+this spot" (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the
+window) "and without holding on to anything. Is that right?"
+
+"Quite right," said the Englishman.
+
+Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the
+buttons of his coat and looking down at him- the Englishman was short-
+began repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.
+
+"Wait!" cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill
+to attract attention. "Wait a bit, Kuragin. Listen! If anyone else
+does the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?"
+
+The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to
+accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and
+though he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on
+translating Dolokhov's words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar
+of the Life Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the
+window sill, leaned over, and looked down.
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he muttered, looking down from the window at the
+stones of the pavement.
+
+"Shut up!" cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad
+jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.
+
+Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it
+easily, Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and
+lowered his legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he
+adjusted himself on his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the
+right and then to the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought
+two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it was
+already quite light. Dolokhov's back in his white shirt, and his curly
+head, were lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the
+Englishman in front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older
+than the others present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and
+angry look and wanted to seize hold of Dolokhov's shirt.
+
+"I say, this is folly! He'll be killed," said this more sensible
+man.
+
+Anatole stopped him.
+
+"Don't touch him! You'll startle him and then he'll be killed.
+Eh?... What then?... Eh?"
+
+Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands,
+arranged himself on his seat.
+
+"If anyone comes meddling again," said he, emitting the words
+separately through his thin compressed lips, "I will throw him down
+there. Now then!"
+
+Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the
+bottle and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised
+his free hand to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped
+to pick up some broken glass remained in that position without
+taking his eyes from the window and from Dolokhov's back. Anatole
+stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways,
+pursing up his lips. The man who had wished to stop the affair ran
+to a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa with his face to
+the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a faint smile forgot to fade
+though his features now expressed horror and fear. All were still.
+Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dolokhov still sat in the same
+position, only his head was thrown further back till his curly hair
+touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the bottle was lifted
+higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The bottle was
+emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting
+yet further back. "Why is it so long?" thought Pierre. It seemed to
+him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly Dolokhov made
+a backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously;
+this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the
+sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm wavered
+still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the
+window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered
+his eyes and thought he would never never them again. Suddenly he
+was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on
+the window sill, with a pale but radiant face.
+
+"It's empty."
+
+He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly.
+Dolokhov jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.
+
+"Well done!... Fine fellow!... There's a bet for you!... Devil
+take you!" came from different sides.
+
+The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the
+money. Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon
+the window sill.
+
+"Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I'll do the same thing!" he
+suddenly cried. "Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a
+bottle. I'll do it.... Bring a bottle!"
+
+"Let him do it, let him do it," said Dolokhov, smiling.
+
+"What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why,
+you go giddy even on a staircase," exclaimed several voices.
+
+"I'll drink it! Let's have a bottle of rum!" shouted Pierre, banging
+the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb
+out of the window.
+
+They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone
+who touched him was sent flying.
+
+"No, you'll never manage him that way," said Anatole. "Wait a bit
+and I'll get round him.... Listen! I'll take your bet tomorrow, but
+now we are all going to -'s."
+
+"Come on then," cried Pierre. "Come on!... And we'll take Bruin with
+us."
+
+And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the
+ground, and began dancing round the room with it.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess
+Drubetskaya who had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Boris on
+the evening of Anna Pavlovna's soiree. The matter was mentioned to the
+Emperor, an exception made, and Boris transferred into the regiment of
+Semenov Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no
+appointment to Kutuzov's staff despite all Anna Mikhaylovna's
+endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna Pavlovna's reception Anna
+Mikhaylovna returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich
+relations, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed when in the town and
+where and where her darling Bory, who had only just entered a regiment
+of the line and was being at once transferred to the Guards as a
+cornet, had been educated from childhood and lived for years at a
+time. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August,
+and her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join
+them on the march to Radzivilov.
+
+It was St. Natalia's day and the name day of two of the Rostovs- the
+mother and the youngest daughter- both named Nataly. Ever since the
+morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going
+continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostova's big house
+on the Povarskaya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself
+and her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing-room with the
+visitors who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one
+another in relays.
+
+The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental
+type of face, evidently worn out with childbearing- she had had
+twelve. A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness,
+gave her a distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna
+Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya, who as a member of the household was also
+seated in the drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the
+visitors. The young people were in one of the inner rooms, not
+considering it necessary to take part in receiving the visitors. The
+count met the guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.
+
+"I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher," or "ma chere"- he
+called everyone without exception and without the slightest
+variation in his tone, "my dear," whether they were above or below him
+in rank- "I thank you for myself and for our two dear ones whose
+name day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be
+offended, ma chere! On behalf of the whole family I beg you to come,
+mon cher!" These words he repeated to everyone without exception or
+variation, and with the same expression on his full, cheerful,
+clean-shaven face, the same firm pressure of the hand and the same
+quick, repeated bows. As soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned
+to one of those who were still in the drawing room, drew a chair
+toward him or her, and jauntily spreading out his legs and putting his
+hands on his knees with the air of a man who enjoys life and knows how
+to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity, offered surmises about the
+weather, or touched on questions of health, sometimes in Russian and
+sometimes in very bad but self-confident French; then again, like a
+man weary but unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see
+some visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald
+patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the
+anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and pantry into the
+large marble dining hall, where tables were being set out for eighty
+people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing in silver and
+china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he would
+call Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family and the manager of all
+his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table
+would say: "Well, Dmitri, you'll see that things are all as they
+should be? That's right! The great thing is the serving, that's it."
+And with a complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room.
+
+"Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!" announced the countess'
+gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The
+countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with
+her husband's portrait on it.
+
+"I'm quite worn out by these callers. However, I'll see her and no
+more. She is so affected. Ask her in," she said to the footman in a
+sad voice, as if saying: "Very well, finish me off."
+
+A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling
+daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.
+
+"Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child...
+at the Razumovski's ball... and Countess Apraksina... I was so
+delighted..." came the sounds of animated feminine voices,
+interrupting one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and
+the scraping of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which
+last out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of
+dresses and say, "I am so delighted... Mamma's health... and
+Countess Apraksina... and then, again rustling, pass into the
+anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation
+was on the chief topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and
+celebrated beau of Catherine's day, Count Bezukhov, and about his
+illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna
+Pavlovna's reception.
+
+"I am so sorry for the poor count," said the visitor. "He is in such
+bad health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill
+him!"
+
+"What is that?" asked the countess as if she did not know what the
+visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of
+Count Bezukhov's distress some fifteen times.
+
+"That's what comes of a modern education," exclaimed the visitor.
+"It seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do as
+he liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible
+things that he has been expelled by the police."
+
+"You don't say so!" replied the countess.
+
+"He chose his friends badly," interposed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Prince
+Vasili's son, he, and a certain Dolokhov have, it is said, been up
+to heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it.
+Dolokhov has been degraded to the ranks and Bezukhov's son sent back
+to Moscow. Anatole Kuragin's father managed somehow to get his son's
+affair hushed up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg."
+
+"But what have they been up to?" asked the countess.
+
+"They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the
+visitor. "He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a worthy
+woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear
+somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some
+actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men
+do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear
+into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the
+policeman on his back!"
+
+"What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted
+the count, dying with laughter.
+
+"Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?"
+
+Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.
+
+"It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the
+visitor. "And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov's son who
+amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so
+well educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has
+done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in
+spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite
+declined: I have my daughters to consider."
+
+"Why do you say this young man is so rich?" asked the countess,
+turning away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of
+inattention. "His children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also
+is illegitimate."
+
+The visitor made a gesture with her hand.
+
+"I should think he has a score of them."
+
+Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the conversation,
+evidently wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went
+on in society.
+
+"The fact of the matter is," said she significantly, and also in a
+half whisper, "everyone knows Count Cyril's reputation.... He has lost
+count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite."
+
+"How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!" remarked the
+countess. "I have never seen a handsomer man."
+
+"He is very much altered now," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "Well, as I
+was saying, Prince Vasili is the next heir through his wife, but the
+count is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to
+the Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death- and he is
+so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from
+Petersburg- no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune,
+Pierre or Prince Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of
+rubles! I know it all very well for Prince Vasili told me himself.
+Besides, Cyril Vladimirovich is my mother's second cousin. He's also
+my Bory's godfather," she added, as if she attached no importance at
+all to the fact.
+
+"Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on
+some inspection business," remarked the visitor.
+
+"Yes, but between ourselves," said the princess, that is a
+pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladimirovich,
+hearing how ill he is."
+
+"But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke," said the count;
+and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to
+the young ladies. "I can just imagine what a funny figure that
+policeman cut!"
+
+And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly
+form again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who
+always eats well and, in particular, drinks well. "So do come and dine
+with us!" he said.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably,
+but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they
+now rose and took their leave. The visitor's daughter was already
+smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when
+suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls
+running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a
+girl of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin
+frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was
+evident that she had not intended her flight to bring her so far.
+Behind her in the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat
+collar, an officer of the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a plump
+rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.
+
+The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his
+arms wide and threw them round the little girl who had run in.
+
+"Ah, here she is!" he exclaimed laughing. "My pet, whose name day it
+is. My dear pet!"
+
+"Ma chere, there is a time for everything," said the countess with
+feigned severity. "You spoil her, Ilya," she added, turning to her
+husband.
+
+"How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your
+name day," said the visitor. "What a charming child," she added,
+addressing the mother.
+
+This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life-
+with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook
+her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little
+legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers- was just at
+that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child
+is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her
+flushed face in the lace of her mother's mantilla- not paying the
+least attention to her severe remark- and began to laugh. She laughed,
+and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she
+produced from the folds of her frock.
+
+"Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha
+managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned
+against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter
+that even the prim visitor could not help joining in.
+
+"Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you," said the
+mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and
+turning to the visitor she added: "She is my youngest girl."
+
+Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother's mantilla,
+glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.
+
+The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it
+necessary to take some part in it.
+
+"Tell me, my dear," said she to Natasha, "is Mimi a relation of
+yours? A daughter, I suppose?"
+
+Natasha did not like the visitor's tone of condescension to childish
+things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.
+
+Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer, Anna
+Mikhaylovna's son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count's eldest
+son; Sonya, the count's fifteen-year-old niece, and little Petya,
+his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were
+obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the
+excitement and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the
+back rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the
+conversation had been more amusing than the drawing-room talk of
+society scandals, the weather, and Countess Apraksina. Now and then
+they glanced at one another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.
+
+The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from
+childhood, were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though
+not alike. Boris was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had
+regular, delicate features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and
+an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper
+lip, and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas
+blushed when he entered the drawing room. He evidently tried to find
+something to say, but failed. Boris on the contrary at once found
+his footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had know that
+doll Mimi when she was still quite a young lady, before her nose was
+broken; how she had aged during the five years he had known her, and
+how her head had cracked right across the skull. Having said this he
+glanced at Natasha. She turned away from him and glanced at her
+younger brother, who was screwing up his eyes and shaking with
+suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she
+jumped up and rushed from the room as fast as her nimble little feet
+would carry her. Boris did not laugh.
+
+"You were meaning to go out, weren't you, Mamma? Do you want the
+carriage?" he asked his mother with a smile.
+
+"Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready," she answered,
+returning his smile.
+
+Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha. The plump
+boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been
+disturbed.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting
+the young lady visitor and the countess' eldest daughter (who was four
+years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up
+person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender
+little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by
+long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a
+tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her
+slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her
+movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and
+by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a
+pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful
+little cat. She evidently considered it proper to show an interest
+in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her
+eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who was going to
+join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile
+could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was clear
+that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more energy
+and again play with her cousin as soon as they too could, like Natasha
+and Boris, escape from the drawing room.
+
+"Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the visitor and
+pointing to Nicholas, "his friend Boris has become an officer, and
+so for friendship's sake he is leaving the university and me, his
+old father, and entering the military service, my dear. And there
+was a place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department!
+Isn't that friendship?" remarked the count in an inquiring tone.
+
+"But they say that war has been declared," replied the visitor.
+
+"They've been saying so a long while," said the count, "and
+they'll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My
+dear, there's friendship for you," he repeated. "He's joining the
+hussars."
+
+The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
+
+"It's not at all from friendship," declared Nicholas, flaring up and
+turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It is not from
+friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation."
+
+He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were
+both regarding him with a smile of approbation.
+
+"Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us
+today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him.
+It can't be helped!" said the count, shrugging his shoulders and
+speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.
+
+"I have already told you, Papa," said his son, "that if you don't
+wish to let me go, I'll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except
+in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.- I don't
+know how to hide what I feel." As he spoke he kept glancing with the
+flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady
+visitor.
+
+The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any
+moment to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.
+
+"All right, all right!" said the old count. "He always flares up!
+This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he
+rose from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it,"
+he added, not noticing his visitor's sarcastic smile.
+
+The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to
+young Rostov.
+
+"What a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday. It was so
+dull without you," said she, giving him a tender smile.
+
+The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish
+smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation
+without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the
+heart of Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of
+his talk he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry
+glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the
+artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All
+Nicholas' animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the
+conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room to find
+Sonya.
+
+"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their
+sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went
+out. "Cousinage- dangereux voisinage;"~^ she added.
+
+^~ Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
+
+"Yes," said the countess when the brightness these young people
+had brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question
+no one had put but which was always in her mind, "and how much
+suffering, how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might
+rejoice in them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than
+the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age,
+so dangerous both for girls and boys."
+
+"It all depends on the bringing up," remarked the visitor.
+
+"Yes, you're quite right," continued the countess. "Till now I
+have always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full
+confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who
+imagine that their children have no secrets from them. "I know I shall
+always be my daughters' first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with
+his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can't help it), he
+will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men."
+
+"Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters," chimed in the
+count, who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by
+deciding that everything was splendid. "Just fancy: wants to be an
+hussar. What's one to do, my dear?"
+
+"What a charming creature your younger girl is," said the visitor;
+"a little volcano!"
+
+"Yes, a regular volcano," said the count. "Takes after me! And
+what a voice she has; though she's my daughter, I tell the truth
+when I say she'll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an
+Italian to give her lessons."
+
+"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to
+train it at that age."
+
+"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our
+mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen."
+
+"And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!" said the
+countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris' and went on, evidently
+concerned with a thought that always occupied her: "Now you see if I
+were to be severe with her and to forbid it... goodness knows what
+they might be up to on the sly" (she meant that they would be
+kissing), "but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come
+running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything.
+Perhaps I spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her
+elder sister I was stricter."
+
+"Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked the handsome
+elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.
+
+But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally
+do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore
+unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid,
+quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what
+she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone-
+the visitors and countess alike- turned to look at her as if wondering
+why she had said it, and they all felt awkward.
+
+"People are always too clever with their eldest children and try
+to make something exceptional of them," said the visitor.
+
+"What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too
+clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what of that? She's turned
+out splendidly all the same," he added, winking at Vera.
+
+The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to
+dinner.
+
+"What manners! I thought they would never go," said the countess,
+when she had seen her guests out.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the
+conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation
+in the drawing room, waiting for Boris to come out. She was already
+growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not
+coming at once, when she heard the young man's discreet steps
+approaching neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly
+among the flower tubs and hid there.
+
+Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a
+little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror
+examined his handsome face. Natasha, very still, peered out from her
+ambush, waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while
+before the glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natasha
+was about to call him but changed her mind. "Let him look for me,"
+thought she. Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears,
+and muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked
+her first impulse to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place,
+watching- as under an invisible cap- to see what went on in the world.
+She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sonya, muttering
+to herself, kept looking round toward the drawing-room door. It opened
+and Nicholas came in.
+
+"Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?" said he,
+running up to her.
+
+"It's nothing, nothing; leave me alone!" sobbed Sonya.
+
+"Ah, I know what it is."
+
+"Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!"
+
+"So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like
+that, for a mere fancy?" said Nicholas taking her hand.
+
+Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not
+stirring and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with
+sparkling eyes. "What will happen now?" thought she.
+
+"Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are
+everything!" said Nicholas. "And I will prove it to you."
+
+"I don't like you to talk like that."
+
+"Well, then, I won't; only forgive me, Sonya!" He drew her to him
+and kissed her.
+
+"Oh, how nice," thought Natasha; and when Sonya and Nicholas had
+gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Boris to her.
+
+"Boris, come here," said she with a sly and significant look. "I
+have something to tell you. Here, here!" and she led him into the
+conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.
+
+Boris followed her, smiling.
+
+"What is the something?" asked he.
+
+She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had
+thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
+
+"Kiss the doll," said she.
+
+Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not
+reply.
+
+"Don't you want to? Well, then, come here," said she, and went
+further in among the plants and threw down the doll. "Closer, closer!"
+she whispered.
+
+She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity
+and fear appeared on her flushed face.
+
+"And me? Would you like to kiss me?" she whispered almost inaudibly,
+glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying
+from excitement.
+
+Boris blushed.
+
+"How funny you are!" he said, bending down to her and blushing still
+more, but he waited and did nothing.
+
+Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him
+so that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and,
+tossing back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.
+
+Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of
+the tubs and stood, hanging her head.
+
+"Natasha," he said, "you know that I love you, but..."
+
+"You are in love with me?" Natasha broke in.
+
+"Yes, I am, but please don't let us do like that.... In another four
+years... then I will ask for your hand."
+
+Natasha considered.
+
+"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen," she counted on her slender
+little fingers. "All right! Then it's settled?"
+
+A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
+
+"Settled!" replied Boris.
+
+"Forever?" said the little girl. "Till death itself?"
+
+She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the
+adjoining sitting room.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she
+gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to
+invite to dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished
+to have a tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood,
+Princess Anna Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she
+returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but
+pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
+
+"With you I will be quite frank," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "There
+are not many left of us old friends! That's why I so value your
+friendship."
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The countess pressed her
+friend's hand.
+
+"Vera," she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a
+favorite, "how is it you have so little tact? Don't you see you are
+not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or..."
+
+The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all
+hurt.
+
+"If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone," she replied
+as she rose to go to her own room.
+
+But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples
+sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully.
+Sonya was sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses
+for her, the first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were at
+the other window and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and
+Natasha looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces.
+
+It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love;
+but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera.
+
+"How often have I asked you not to take my things?" she said. "You
+have a room of your own," and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.
+
+"In a minute, in a minute," he said, dipping his pen.
+
+"You always manage to do things at the wrong time," continued
+Vera. "You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt
+ashamed of you."
+
+Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no
+one replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered
+in the room with the inkstand in her hand.
+
+"And at your age what secrets can there be between Natasha and
+Boris, or between you two? It's all nonsense!"
+
+"Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?" said Natasha in defense,
+speaking very gently.
+
+She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to
+everyone.
+
+"Very silly," said Vera. "I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!"
+
+"All have secrets of their own," answered Natasha, getting warmer.
+"We don't interfere with you and Berg."
+
+"I should think not," said Vera, "because there can never be
+anything wrong in my behavior. But I'll just tell Mamma how you are
+behaving with Boris."
+
+"Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me," remarked Boris. "I have
+nothing to complain of."
+
+"Don't, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really
+tiresome," said Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly.
+(She used the word "diplomat," which was just then much in vogue among
+the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) "Why does she
+bother me?" And she added, turning to Vera, "You'll never understand
+it, because you've never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a
+Madame de Genlis and nothing more" (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by
+Nicholas, was considered very stinging), "and your greatest pleasure
+is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you
+please," she finished quickly.
+
+"I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..."
+
+"Well, now you've done what you wanted," put in Nicholas- "said
+unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let's go to the
+nursery."
+
+All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.
+
+"The unpleasant things were said to me," remarked Vera, "I said none
+to anyone."
+
+"Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!" shouted laughing voices
+through the door.
+
+The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant
+effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been
+said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and
+scarf. Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still
+colder and calmer.
+
+In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.
+
+"Ah, my dear," said the countess, "my life is not all roses
+either. Don't I know that at the rate we are living our means won't
+last long? It's all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the
+country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows
+what besides! But don't let's talk about me; tell me how you managed
+everything. I often wonder at you, Annette- how at your age you can
+rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those
+ministers and great people, and know how to deal with them all! It's
+quite astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn't possibly
+do it."
+
+"Ah, my love," answered Anna Mikhaylovna, "God grant you never
+know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you
+love to distraction! One learns many things then," she added with a
+certain pride. "That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of
+those big people I write a note: 'Princess So-and-So desires an
+interview with So and-So,' and then I take a cab and go myself two,
+three, or four times- till I get what I want. I don't mind what they
+think of me."
+
+"Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?" asked the countess.
+"You see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my
+Nicholas is going as a cadet. There's no one to interest himself for
+him. To whom did you apply?"
+
+"To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to
+everything, and put the matter before the Emperor," said Princess Anna
+Mikhaylovna enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she
+had endured to gain her end.
+
+"Has Prince Vasili aged much?" asked the countess. "I have not
+seen him since we acted together at the Rumyantsovs' theatricals. I
+expect he has forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days," said
+the countess, with a smile.
+
+"He is just the same as ever," replied Anna Mikhaylovna,
+"overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned his head
+at all. He said to me, 'I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear
+Princess. I am at your command.' Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very
+kind relation. But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do
+anything for his happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way
+that my position is now a terrible one," continued Anna Mikhaylovna,
+sadly, dropping her voice. "My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and
+makes no progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a
+penny and don't know how to equip Boris." She took out her
+handkerchief and began to cry. "I need five hundred rubles, and have
+only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a state.... My only hope
+now is in Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If he will not assist
+his godson- you know he is Bory's godfather- and allow him something
+for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been thrown away.... I
+shall not be able to equip him."
+
+The countess' eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.
+
+"I often think, though, perhaps it's a sin," said the princess,
+"that here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov so rich, all
+alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It's a
+burden to him, and Bory's life is only just beginning...."
+
+"Surely he will leave something to Boris," said the countess.
+
+"Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish.
+Still, I will take Boris and go to see him at once, and I shall
+speak to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it's
+really all the same to me when my son's fate is at stake." The
+princess rose. "It's now two o'clock and you dine at four. There
+will just be time."
+
+And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the
+most of time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone to call her son, and
+went into the anteroom with him.
+
+"Good-by, my dear," said she to the countess who saw her to the
+door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, "Wish me
+good luck."
+
+"Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my dear?" said the
+count coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added:
+"If he is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the
+house, you know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite
+him, my dear. We will see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He
+says Count Orlov never gave such a dinner as ours will be!"
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+"My dear Boris," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to her son as
+Countess Rostova's carriage in which they were seated drove over the
+straw covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril
+Vladimirovich Bezukhov's house. "My dear Boris," said the mother,
+drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and
+tenderly on her son's arm, "be affectionate and attentive to him.
+Count Cyril Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your future
+depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you
+so well know how to be."
+
+"If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of
+it..." answered her son coldly. "But I have promised and will do it
+for your sake."
+
+Although the hall porter saw someone's carriage standing at the
+entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to
+be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the
+rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady's old
+cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses,
+and, hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency
+was worse today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.
+
+"We may as well go back," said the son in French.
+
+"My dear!" exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand
+on his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.
+
+Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without
+taking off his cloak.
+
+"My friend," said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones, addressing the
+hall porter, I know Count Cyril Vladimirovich is very ill... that's
+why I have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him, my
+friend... I only need see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying
+here, is he not? Please announce me."
+
+The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and
+turned away.
+
+"Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich," he called to
+a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat,
+who ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.
+
+The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a
+large Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes
+briskly ascended the carpeted stairs.
+
+"My dear," she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a
+touch, "you promised me!"
+
+The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.
+
+They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to
+the apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.
+
+Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall,
+were about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as
+they entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and
+Prince Vasili came out- wearing a velvet coat with a single star on
+his breast, as was his custom when at home- taking leave of a
+good-looking, dark-haired man. This was the celebrated Petersburg
+doctor, Lorrain.
+
+"Then it is certain?" said the prince.
+
+"Prince, humanum est errare,~^ but..." replied the doctor, swallowing
+his r's, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.
+
+^~ To err is human.
+
+"Very well, very well..."
+
+Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the
+doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of
+inquiry. The son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow
+suddenly clouded his mother's face, and he smiled slightly.
+
+"Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our
+dear invalid?" said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive
+look fixed on her.
+
+Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly and
+perplexed. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili without acknowledging
+the bow turned to Anna Mikhaylovna, answering her query by a
+movement of the head and lips indicating very little hope for the
+patient.
+
+"Is it possible?" exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Oh, how awful! It
+is terrible to think.... This is my son," she added, indicating Boris.
+"He wanted to thank you himself."
+
+Boris bowed again politely.
+
+"Believe me, Prince, a mother's heart will never forget what you
+have done for us."
+
+"I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna
+Mikhaylovna," said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace frill, and in
+tone and manner, here in Moscow to Anna Mikhaylovna whom he had placed
+under an obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than
+he had done in Petersburg at Anna Scherer's reception.
+
+"Try to serve well and show yourself worthy," added he, addressing
+Boris with severity. "I am glad.... Are you here on leave?" he went on
+in his usual tone of indifference.
+
+"I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency,"
+replied Boris, betraying neither annoyance at the prince's brusque
+manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so
+quietly and respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance.
+
+"Are you living with your mother?"
+
+"I am living at Countess Rostova's," replied Boris, again adding,
+"your excellency."
+
+"That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly Shinshina," said
+Anna Mikhaylovna.
+
+"I know, I know," answered Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice. "I
+never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that
+unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler
+too, I am told."
+
+"But a very kind man, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a pathetic
+smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostov deserved this censure,
+but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. "What do the
+doctors say?" asked the princess after a pause, her worn face again
+expressing deep sorrow.
+
+"They give little hope," replied the prince.
+
+"And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me
+and Boris. He is his godson," she added, her tone suggesting that this
+fact ought to give Prince Vasili much satisfaction.
+
+Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikhaylovna saw
+that he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezukhov's
+fortune, and hastened to reassure him.
+
+"If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle,"
+said she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern,
+"I know his character: noble, upright... but you see he has no one
+with him except the young princesses.... They are still young...." She
+bent her head and continued in a whisper: "Has he performed his
+final duty, Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can
+make things no worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if
+he is so ill. We women, Prince," and she smiled tenderly, "always know
+how to say these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it
+may be for me. I am used to suffering."
+
+Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he
+had done at Anna Pavlovna's, that it would be difficult to get rid
+of Anna Mikhaylovna.
+
+"Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna
+Mikhaylovna?" said he. "Let us wait until evening. The doctors are
+expecting a crisis."
+
+"But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the
+welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a
+Christian..."
+
+A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses,
+the count's niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of
+her body was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince
+Vasili turned to her.
+
+"Well, how is he?"
+
+"Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise..." said the
+princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a stranger.
+
+"Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a happy
+smile, ambling lightly up to the count's niece. "I have come, and am
+at your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have
+gone through," and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.
+
+The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room
+at Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position
+she had conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasili
+to take a seat beside her.
+
+"Boris," she said to her son with a smile, "I shall go in to see the
+count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile
+and don't forget to give him the Rostovs' invitation. They ask him
+to dinner. I suppose he won't go?" she continued, turning to the
+prince.
+
+"On the contrary," replied the prince, who had plainly become
+depressed, "I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young
+man.... Here he is, and the count has not once asked for him."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris down one flight
+of stairs and up another, to Pierre's rooms.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in
+Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and
+sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true.
+Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now
+been for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his
+father's house. Though he expected that the story of his escapade
+would be already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father-
+who were never favorably disposed toward him- would have used it to
+turn the count against him, he nevertheless on the day of his
+arrival went to his father's part of the house. Entering the drawing
+room, where the princesses spent most of their time, he greeted the
+ladies, two of whom were sitting at embroidery frames while a third
+read aloud. It was the eldest who was reading- the one who had met
+Anna Mikhaylovna. The two younger ones were embroidering: both were
+rosy and pretty and they differed only in that one had a little mole
+on her lip which made her much prettier. Pierre was received as if
+he were a corpse or a leper. The eldest princess paused in her reading
+and silently stared at him with frightened eyes; the second assumed
+precisely the same expression; while the youngest, the one with the
+mole, who was of a cheerful and lively disposition, bent over her
+frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene she
+foresaw. She drew her wool down through the canvas and, scarcely
+able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying to make out the
+pattern.
+
+"How do you do, cousin?" said Pierre. "You don't recognize me?"
+
+"I recognize you only too well, too well."
+
+"How is the count? Can I see him?" asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual,
+but unabashed.
+
+"The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently
+you have done your best to increase his mental sufferings."
+
+"Can I see the count?" Pierre again asked.
+
+"Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see
+him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle's beef tea is ready- it is
+almost time," she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were
+busy, and busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he,
+Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance.
+
+Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed
+and said: "Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can
+see him."
+
+And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of
+the sister with the mole.
+
+Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the count's house.
+He sent for Pierre and said to him: "My dear fellow, if you are
+going to behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very
+badly; that is all I have to say to you. The count is very, very
+ill, and you must not see him at all."
+
+Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole
+time in his rooms upstairs.
+
+When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his
+room, stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at
+the wall, as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and
+glaring savagely over his spectacles, and then again resuming his
+walk, muttering indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and
+gesticulating.
+
+"England is done for," said he, scowling and pointing his finger
+at someone unseen. "Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the
+rights of man, is sentenced to..." But before Pierre- who at that
+moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just
+effected the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured
+London- could pronounce Pitt's sentence, he saw a well-built and
+handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left
+Moscow when Boris was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten
+him, but in his usual impulsive and hearty way he took Boris by the
+hand with a friendly smile.
+
+"Do you remember me?" asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile.
+"I have come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not
+well."
+
+"Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him,"
+answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.
+
+Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it
+necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least
+embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.
+
+"Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today," said he, after a
+considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.
+
+"Ah, Count Rostov!" exclaimed Pierre joyfully. "Then you are his
+son, Ilya? Only fancy, I didn't know you at first. Do you remember how
+we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It's such an
+age..."
+
+"You are mistaken," said Boris deliberately, with a bold and
+slightly sarcastic smile. "I am Boris, son of Princess Anna
+Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya. Rostov, the father, is Ilya, and his son is
+Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot."
+
+Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.
+
+"Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I've mixed everything up. One
+has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Boris? Of course. Well,
+now we know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne
+expedition? The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon
+gets across the Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible.
+If only Villeneuve doesn't make a mess of things!
+
+Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read
+the papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve's name.
+
+"We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal
+than with politics," said he in his quiet ironical tone. "I know
+nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy
+with gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and
+your father."
+
+Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his
+companion's sake that the latter might say something he would
+afterwards regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly,
+looking straight into Pierre's eyes.
+
+"Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip," Boris went on.
+"Everybody is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune,
+though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will..."
+
+"Yes, it is all very horrid," interrupted Pierre, "very horrid."
+
+Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say
+something disconcerting to himself.
+
+"And it must seem to you," said Boris flushing slightly, but not
+changing his tone or attitude, "it must seem to you that everyone is
+trying to get something out of the rich man?"
+
+"So it does," thought Pierre.
+
+"But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are
+quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are
+very poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that
+your father is rich, I don't regard myself as a relation of his, and
+neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him."
+
+For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he
+jumped up from the sofa, seized Boris under the elbow in his quick,
+clumsy way, and, blushing far more than Boris, began to speak with a
+feeling of mingled shame and vexation.
+
+"Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I
+know very well..."
+
+But Boris again interrupted him.
+
+"I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You
+must excuse me," said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being
+put at ease by him, "but I hope I have not offended you. I always make
+it a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you
+come to dinner at the Rostovs'?"
+
+And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and
+extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it,
+became quite pleasant again.
+
+"No, but I say," said Pierre, calming down, "you are a wonderful
+fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you
+don't know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we
+were children. You might think that I... I understand, quite
+understand. I could not have done it myself, I should not have had the
+courage, but it's splendid. I am very glad to have made your
+acquaintance. It's queer," he added after a pause, "that you should
+have suspected me!" He began to laugh. "Well, what of it! I hope we'll
+get better acquainted," and he pressed Boris' hand. "Do you know, I
+have not once been in to see the count. He has not sent for me.... I
+am sorry for him as a man, but what can one do?"
+
+"And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?" asked
+Boris with a smile.
+
+Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and being of the
+same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of
+the Boulogne expedition.
+
+A footman came in to summon Boris- the princess was going. Pierre,
+in order to make Boris' better acquaintance, promised to come to
+dinner, and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his
+spectacles into Boris' eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing
+up and down the room for a long time, no longer piercing an
+imaginary foe with his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance
+of that pleasant, intelligent, and resolute young man.
+
+As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a
+lonely life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man
+and made up his mind that they would be friends.
+
+Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her
+eyes and her face was tearful.
+
+"It is dreadful, dreadful!" she was saying, "but cost me what it may
+I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be
+left like this. Every moment is precious. I can't think why his nieces
+put it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare
+him!... Adieu, Prince! May God support you..."
+
+"Adieu, ma bonne," answered Prince Vasili turning away from her.
+
+"Oh, he is in a dreadful state," said the mother to her son when
+they were in the carriage. "He hardly recognizes anybody."
+
+"I don't understand, Mamma- what is his attitude to Pierre?" asked
+the son.
+
+"The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends on it."
+
+"But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?"
+
+"Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!"
+
+"Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma..."
+
+"Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!" exclaimed the mother.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count
+Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess Rostova sat for a long time all
+alone applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.
+
+"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she said crossly to the maid
+who kept her waiting some minutes. "Don't you wish to serve me? Then
+I'll find you another place."
+
+The countess was upset by her friend's sorrow and humiliating
+poverty, and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with
+her always found expression in calling her maid "my dear" and speaking
+to her with exaggerated politeness.
+
+"I am very sorry, ma'am," answered the maid.
+
+"Ask the count to come to me."
+
+The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look
+as usual.
+
+"Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere we are to
+have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Taras
+were not ill-spent. He is worth it!"
+
+He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands
+ruffling his gray hair.
+
+"What are your commands, little countess?"
+
+"You see, my dear... What's that mess?" she said, pointing to his
+waistcoat. "It's, the saute, most likely," she added with a smile.
+"Well, you see, Count, I want some money."
+
+Her face became sad.
+
+"Oh, little countess!"... and the count began bustling to get out
+his pocketbook.
+
+"I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles," and taking
+out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband's waistcoat.
+
+"Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who's there?" he called out
+in a tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call
+will rush to obey the summons. "Send Dmitri to me!"
+
+Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the
+count's house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the
+room.
+
+"This is what I want, my dear fellow," said the count to the
+deferential young man who had entered. "Bring me..." he reflected a
+moment, "yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don't
+bring me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean
+ones for the countess."
+
+"Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please," said the countess, sighing
+deeply.
+
+"When would you like them, your excellency?" asked Dmitri. "Allow me
+to inform you... But, don't be uneasy," he added, noticing that the
+count was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always
+a sign of approaching anger. "I was forgetting... Do you wish it
+brought at once?"
+
+"Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess."
+
+"What a treasure that Dmitri is," added the count with a smile
+when the young man had departed. "There is never any 'impossible' with
+him. That's a thing I hate! Everything is possible."
+
+"Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world,"
+said the countess. "But I am in great need of this sum."
+
+"You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift," said the
+count, and having kissed his wife's hand he went back to his study.
+
+When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count Bezukhov's the money,
+all in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the
+countess' little table, and Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something
+was agitating her.
+
+"Well, my dear?" asked the countess.
+
+"Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is
+so ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word..."
+
+"Annette, for heaven's sake don't refuse me," the countess began,
+with a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified,
+elderly face, and she took the money from under the handkerchief.
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be
+ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.
+
+"This is for Boris from me, for his outfit."
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess
+wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were
+kindhearted, and because they- friends from childhood- had to think
+about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....
+But those tears were pleasant to them both.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests,
+was already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen
+into his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes.
+From time to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were
+expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le
+terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but
+for common sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was
+known to the Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and
+Petersburg, and both cities wondered at her, laughed privately at
+her rudenesses, and told good stories about her, while none the less
+all without exception respected and feared her.
+
+In the count's room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of
+war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the
+recruiting. None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew
+it had appeared. The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were
+smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his
+head first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers
+with evident pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two
+neighbors, whom he egged on against each other.
+
+One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and
+wrinkled face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a
+most fashionable young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as
+if quite at home and, having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his
+mouth, was inhaling the smoke spasmodically and screwing up his
+eyes. This was an old bachelor, Shinshin, a cousin of the countess', a
+man with "a sharp tongue" as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to
+be condescending to his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer
+of the Guards, irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held
+his pipe in the middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled
+the smoke, letting it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This
+was Lieutenant Berg, an officer in the Semenov regiment with whom
+Boris was to travel to join the army, and about whom Natasha had,
+teased her elder sister Vera, speaking of Berg as her "intended."
+The count sat between them and listened attentively. His favorite
+occupation when not playing boston, a card game he was very fond of,
+was that of listener, especially when he succeeded in setting two
+loquacious talkers at one another.
+
+"Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse Karlovich,"
+said Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary
+Russian expressions with the choicest French phrases- which was a
+peculiarity of his speech. "Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur
+l'etat;~^ you want to make something out of your company?"
+
+^~ You expect to make an income out of the government.
+
+"No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry
+the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own
+position now, Peter Nikolaevich..."
+
+Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His
+conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain
+calm and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no
+direct bearing on himself. He could remain silent for hours without
+being at all put out of countenance himself or making others
+uncomfortable, but as soon as the conversation concerned himself he
+would begin to talk circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.
+
+"Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in the cavalry I
+should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even
+with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and
+thirty," said he, looking at Shinshin and the count with a joyful,
+pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must
+always be the chief desire of everyone else.
+
+"Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into the Guards I
+shall be in a more prominent position," continued Berg, "and vacancies
+occur much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what
+can be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a
+little aside and to send something to my father," he went on, emitting
+a smoke ring.
+
+"La balance y est...~^ A German knows how to skin a flint, as the
+proverb says," remarked Shinshin, moving his pipe to the other side of
+his mouth and winking at the count.
+
+^~ So that squares matters.
+
+The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that
+Shinshin was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or
+indifference, continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards
+he had already gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps;
+how in wartime the company commander might get killed and he, as
+senior in the company, might easily succeed to the post; how popular
+he was with everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied his father was
+with him. Berg evidently enjoyed narrating all this, and did not
+seem to suspect that others, too, might have their own interests.
+But all he said was so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his
+youthful egotism was so obvious, that he disarmed his hearers.
+
+"Well, my boy, you'll get along wherever you go- foot or horse- that
+I'll warrant," said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and taking
+his feet off the sofa.
+
+Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went into the
+drawing room.
+
+It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled
+guests, expecting the summons to zakuska,~^ avoid engaging in any
+long conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in
+order to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The
+host and hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at
+one another, and the visitors try to guess from these glances who,
+or what, they are waiting for- some important relation who has not yet
+arrived, or a dish that is not yet ready.
+
+^~ Hors d'oeuvres.
+
+Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in
+the middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come
+across, blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make
+him talk, but he went on naively looking around through his spectacles
+as if in search of somebody and answered all her questions in
+monosyllables. He was in the way and was the only one who did not
+notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing of the affair with the
+bear, looked with curiosity at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering
+how such a clumsy, modest fellow could have played such a prank on a
+policeman.
+
+"You have only lately arrived?" the countess asked him.
+
+"Oui, madame," replied he, looking around him.
+
+"You have not yet seen my husband?"
+
+"Non, madame." He smiled quite inappropriately.
+
+"You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it's very
+interesting."
+
+"Very interesting."
+
+The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhaylovna. The latter
+understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and
+sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he
+answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other
+guests were all conversing with one another. "The Razumovskis... It
+was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apraksina..." was
+heard on all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.
+
+"Marya Dmitrievna?" came her voice from there.
+
+"Herself," came the answer in a rough voice, and Marya Dmitrievna
+entered the room.
+
+All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very
+oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,
+holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood
+surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if
+rolling them up. Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.
+
+"Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to
+her children," she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned
+all others. "Well, you old sinner," she went on, turning to the
+count who was kissing her hand, "you're feeling dull in Moscow, I
+daresay? Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old
+man? Just see how these nestlings are growing up," and she pointed
+to the girls. "You must look for husbands for them whether you like it
+or not...."
+
+Well," said she, "how's my Cossack?" (Marya Dmitrievna always called
+Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the child's arm as she came up
+fearless and gay to kiss her hand. "I know she's a scamp of a girl,
+but I like her."
+
+She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge
+reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with
+the pleasure of her saint's-day fete, turned away at once and
+addressed herself to Pierre.
+
+"Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit," said she, assuming a soft high
+tone of voice. "Come here, my friend..." and she ominously tucked up
+her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a
+childlike way through his spectacles.
+
+"Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell
+your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it's my
+evident duty." She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to
+follow, for this was dearly only a prelude.
+
+"A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed
+and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame,
+sir, for shame! It would be better if you went to the war."
+
+She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly
+keep from laughing.
+
+"Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?" said Marya
+Dmitrievna.
+
+The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the countess followed
+on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them
+because Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna
+Mikhaylovna with Shinshin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling
+Julie Karagina went in with Nicholas. After them other couples
+followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of all the children,
+tutors, and governesses followed singly. The footmen began moving
+about, chairs scraped, the band struck up in the gallery, and the
+guests settled down in their places. Then the strains of the count's
+household band were replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the
+voices of visitors, and the soft steps of the footmen. At one end of
+the table sat the countess with Marya Dmitrievna on her right and Anna
+Mikhaylovna on her left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At
+the other end sat the count, with the hussar colonel on his left and
+Shinshin and the other male visitors on his right. Midway down the
+long table on one side sat the grownup young people: Vera beside Berg,
+and Pierre beside Boris; and on the other side, the children,
+tutors, and governesses. From behind the crystal decanters and fruit
+vases the count kept glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its
+light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his neighbors' glasses, not
+neglecting his own. The countess in turn, without omitting her
+duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the
+pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their
+redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the ladies'
+end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the men's end
+the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the colonel
+of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so much
+that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg with
+tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but a
+heavenly feeling. Boris was telling his new friend Pierre who the
+guests were and exchanging glances with Natasha, who was sitting
+opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a
+great deal. Of the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and
+went on to the game without omitting a single dish or one of the
+wines. These latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in
+a napkin, from behind the next man's shoulders and whispered: "Dry
+Madeira"... "Hungarian"... or "Rhine wine" as the case might be. Of
+the four crystal glasses engraved with the count's monogram that stood
+before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank with
+enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other guests.
+Natasha, who sat opposite, was looking at Boris as girls of thirteen
+look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for the
+first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that funny
+lively little girl's look made him inclined to laugh without knowing
+why.
+
+Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie Karagina,
+to whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sonya
+wore a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now
+she turned pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what
+Nicholas and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept
+looking round uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might
+be put upon the children. The German tutor was trying to remember
+all the dishes, wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full
+description of the dinner to his people in Germany; and he felt
+greatly offended when the butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin
+passed him by. He frowned, trying to appear as if he did not want
+any of that wine, but was mortified because no one would understand
+that it was not to quench his thirst or from greediness that he wanted
+it, but simply from a conscientious desire for knowledge.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more
+animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war had
+already appeared in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself
+seen, had that day been forwarded by courier to the commander in
+chief.
+
+"And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?" remarked
+Shinshin. "He has stopped Austria's cackle and I fear it will be our
+turn next."
+
+The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted
+to the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshin's
+remark.
+
+"It is for the reasson, my goot sir," said he, speaking with a
+German accent, "for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He
+declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze
+danger vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as
+vell as ze sanctity of its alliances..." he spoke this last word
+with particular emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.
+
+Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he
+repeated from the opening words of the manifesto:
+
+... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor's sole and
+absolute aim- to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations- has
+now decided him to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a
+new condition for the attainment of that purpose.
+
+"Zat, my dear sir, is vy..." he concluded, drinking a tumbler of
+wine with dignity and looking to the count for approval.
+
+"Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:~^ 'Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but
+turn spindles at home!'?" said Shinshin, puckering his brows and
+smiling. "Cela nous convient a merveille.~^ Suvorov now- he knew
+what he was about; yet they beat him a plate couture,~^ and where
+are we to find Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un peu,"~^ said he,
+continually changing from French to Russian.
+
+^~ Do you know the proverb?
+
+^~ That suits us down to the ground.
+
+^~ Hollow.
+
+^~ I just ask you that.
+
+"Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!" said the
+colonel, thumping the table; "and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen
+all vill pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible"...
+he dwelt particularly on the word possible... "as po-o-ossible," he
+ended, again turning to the count. "Zat is how ve old hussars look
+at it, and zere's an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a
+young hussar, how do you judge of it?" he added, addressing
+Nicholas, who when he heard that the war was being discussed had
+turned from his partner with eyes and ears intent on the colonel.
+
+"I am quite of your opinion," replied Nicholas, flaming up,
+turning his plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as
+much decision and desperation as though he were at that moment
+facing some great danger. "I am convinced that we Russians must die or
+conquer," he concluded, conscious- as were others- after the words
+were uttered that his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for
+the occasion and were therefore awkward.
+
+"What you said just now was splendid!" said his partner Julie.
+
+Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them
+and down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.
+
+Pierre listened to the colonel's speech and nodded approvingly.
+
+"That's fine," said he.
+
+"The young man's a real hussar!" shouted the colonel, again thumping
+the table.
+
+"What are you making such a noise about over there?" Marya
+Dmitrievna's deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the
+table. "What are you thumping the table for?" she demanded of the
+hussar, "and why are you exciting yourself? Do you think the French
+are here?"
+
+"I am speaking ze truce," replied the hussar with a smile.
+
+"It's all about the war," the count shouted down the table. "You
+know my son's going, Marya Dmitrievna? My son is going."
+
+"I have four sons in the army but still I don't fret. It is all in
+God's hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a
+battle," replied Marya Dmitrievna's deep voice, which easily carried
+the whole length of the table.
+
+"That's true!"
+
+Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies' at the one end
+and the men's at the other.
+
+"You won't ask," Natasha's little brother was saying; "I know you
+won't ask!"
+
+"I will," replied Natasha.
+
+Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She
+half rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to
+what was coming, and turning to her mother:
+
+"Mamma!" rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice,
+audible the whole length of the table.
+
+"What is it?" asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her
+daughter's face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her
+sternly with a threatening and forbidding movement of her head.
+
+The conversation was hushed.
+
+"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" and Natasha's voice
+sounded still more firm and resolute.
+
+The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya Dmitrievna shook
+her fat finger.
+
+"Cossack!" she said threateningly.
+
+Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at
+the elders.
+
+"You had better take care!" said the countess.
+
+"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" Natasha again cried
+boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken
+in good part.
+
+Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.
+
+"You see! I have asked," whispered Natasha to her little brother and
+to Pierre, glancing at him again.
+
+"Ice pudding, but you won't get any," said Marya Dmitrievna.
+
+Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even
+Marya Dmitrievna.
+
+"Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don't like ice
+cream."
+
+"Carrot ices."
+
+"No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?" she almost screamed;
+"I want to know!"
+
+Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the
+guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Marya Dmitrievna's answer
+but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who
+had dared to treat Marya Dmitrievna in this fashion.
+
+Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there would be
+pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band
+again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests,
+leaving their seats, went up to "congratulate" the countess, and
+reached across the table to clink glasses with the count, with the
+children, and with one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs
+scraped, and in the same order in which they had entered but with
+redder faces, the guests returned to the drawing room and to the
+count's study.
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the
+count's visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms,
+some in the sitting room, some in the library.
+
+The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty
+from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at
+everything. The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered
+round the clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played
+first. After she had played a little air with variations on the
+harp, she joined the other young ladies in begging Natasha and
+Nicholas, who were noted for their musical talent, to sing
+something. Natasha, who was treated as though she were grown up, was
+evidently very proud of this but at the same time felt shy.
+
+"What shall we sing?" she said.
+
+"'The Brook,'" suggested Nicholas.
+
+"Well, then,let's be quick. Boris, come here," said Natasha. "But
+where is Sonya?"
+
+She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room
+ran to look for her.
+
+Running into Sonya's room and not finding her there, Natasha ran
+to the nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded that
+she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage
+was the place of mourning for the younger female generation in the
+Rostov household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on
+Nurse's dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy
+pink dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and
+sobbing so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook.
+Natasha's face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint's
+day, suddenly changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed
+down her broad neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.
+
+"Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!" And
+Natasha's large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she
+began to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sonya was
+crying. Sonya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and
+hid her face still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the
+blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort
+Sonya sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.
+
+"Nicholas is going away in a week's time, his... papers... have
+come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry," and she
+showed a paper she held in her hand- with the verses Nicholas had
+written, "still, I should not cry, but you can't... no one can
+understand... what a soul he has!"
+
+And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.
+
+"It's all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and
+Boris also," she went on, gaining a little strength; "he is nice...
+there are no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin...
+one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it
+can't be done. And besides, if she tells Mamma" (Sonya looked upon the
+countess as her mother and called her so) "that I am spoiling
+Nicholas' career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God
+is my witness," and she made the sign of the cross, "I love her so
+much, and all of you, only Vera... And what for? What have I done to
+her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice
+everything, only I have nothing...."
+
+Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in
+the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that
+she understood all the gravity of her friend's trouble.
+
+"Sonya," she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true
+reason of her friend's sorrow, "I'm sure Vera has said something to
+you since dinner? Hasn't she?"
+
+"Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some
+others, and she found them on my table and said she'd show them to
+Mamma, and that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him
+to marry me, but that he'll marry Julie. You see how he's been with
+her all day... Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..."
+
+And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha
+lifted her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began
+comforting her.
+
+"Sonya, don't believe her, darling! Don't believe her! Do you
+remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting
+room after supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don't
+quite remember how, but don't you remember that it could all be
+arranged and how nice it all was? There's Uncle Shinshin's brother has
+married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know.
+And Boris says it is quite possible. You know I have told him all
+about it. And he is so clever and so good!" said Natasha. "Don't you
+cry, Sonya, dear love, darling Sonya!" and she kissed her and laughed.
+"Vera's spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right and she
+won't say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself, and he
+doesn't care at all for Julie."
+
+Natasha kissed her on the hair.
+
+Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it
+seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin
+playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.
+
+"Do you think so?... Really? Truly?" she said, quickly smoothing her
+frock and hair.
+
+"Really, truly!" answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock that
+had strayed from under her friend's plaits.
+
+Both laughed.
+
+"Well, let's go and sing 'The Brook.'"
+
+"Come along!"
+
+"Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!" said
+Natasha, stopping suddenly. "I feel so happy!"
+
+And she set off at a run along the passage.
+
+Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the
+verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran
+after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face
+and light, joyous steps. At the visitors' request the young people
+sang the quartette, "The Brook," with which everyone was delighted.
+Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:
+
+_1 At nighttime in the moon's fair glow<br>
+How sweet, as fancies wander free,<br>
+To feel that in this world there's one<br>
+Who still is thinking but of thee!
+
+_1 That while her fingers touch the harp<br>
+Wafting sweet music music the lea,<br>
+It is for thee thus swells her heart,<br>
+Sighing its message out to thee...
+
+_1 A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,<br>
+But oh! till then I cannot live!...
+
+He had not finished the last verse before the young people began
+to get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and
+the coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.
+
+Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had engaged
+him, as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political
+conversation in which several others joined but which bored Pierre.
+When the music began Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre
+said, laughing and blushing:
+
+"Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers."
+
+"I am afraid of mixing the figures," Pierre replied; "but if you
+will be my teacher..." And lowering his big arm he offered it to the
+slender little girl.
+
+While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning
+up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly
+happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She
+was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a
+grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had
+given her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of a society woman
+(heaven knows when and where she had learned it) she talked with her
+partner, fanning herself and smiling over the fan.
+
+"Dear, dear! Just look at her!" exclaimed the countess as she
+crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.
+
+Natasha blushed and laughed.
+
+"Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be
+surprised at?"
+
+In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of chairs
+being pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Marya
+Dmitrievna had been playing cards with the majority of the more
+distinguished and older visitors. They now, stretching themselves
+after sitting so long, and replacing their purses and pocketbooks,
+entered the ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count,
+both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony
+somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Marya Dmitrievna. He
+drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and
+as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended, he clapped
+his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing
+the first violin:
+
+"Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?"
+
+This was the count's favorite dance, which he had danced in his
+youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the
+anglaise.)
+
+"Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite
+forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her
+curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her
+laughter.
+
+And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure
+at the jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout
+partner, Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened
+his shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot,
+and, by a smile that broadened his round face more and more,
+prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the
+provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling
+those of a merry peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways of
+the ballroom were suddenly filled by the domestic serfs- the men on
+one side and the women on the other- who with beaming faces had come
+to see their master making merry.
+
+"Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!" loudly remarked
+the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.
+
+The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did
+not want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her
+powerful arms hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the
+countess), and only her stern but handsome face really joined in the
+dance. What was expressed by the whole of the count's plump figure, in
+Marya Dmitrievna found expression only in her more and more beaming
+face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting more and more
+into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness
+of his adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered about on
+his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna produced no less impression by slight
+exertions- the least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms
+when turning, or stamp her foot- which everyone appreciated in view of
+her size and habitual severity. The dance grew livelier and
+livelier. The other couples could not attract a moment's attention
+to their own evolutions and did not even try to do so. All were
+watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha kept pulling everyone
+by sleeve or dress, urging them to "look at Papa!" though as it was
+they never took their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the
+dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to the
+musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more
+lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying round Marya
+Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his
+partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft
+foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a
+wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and laughter led
+by Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping
+their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.
+
+"That's how we used to dance in our time, ma chere," said the count.
+
+"That was a Daniel Cooper!" exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna, tucking up
+her sleeves and puffing heavily.
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+While in the Rostovs' ballroom the sixth anglaise was being
+danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while
+tired footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had
+a sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a
+mute confession, communion was administered to the dying man,
+preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house there
+was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside
+the house, beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid
+whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important
+order for an expensive funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who
+had been assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after the
+count's health, came himself that evening to bid a last farewell to
+the celebrated grandee of Catherine's court, Count Bezukhov.
+
+The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up
+respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an
+hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging
+their bows and trying to escape as quickly as from the glances fixed
+on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince
+Vasili, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days,
+escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times
+in low tones.
+
+When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all
+alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the
+other, leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his
+hand. After sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him
+with frightened eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the
+long corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of the
+eldest princess.
+
+Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous
+whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying
+man's room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or
+expectancy at his door, which creaked slightly when opened.
+
+"The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be o'erpassed,"
+said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was
+listening naively to his words.
+
+"I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?" asked the
+lady, adding the priest's clerical title, as if she had no opinion
+of her own on the subject.
+
+"Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament, "replied the priest, passing
+his hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his
+bald head.
+
+"Who was that? The Military Governor himself?" was being asked at
+the other side of the room. "How young-looking he is!"
+
+"Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes
+anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction."
+
+"I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times."
+
+The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes
+red from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a
+graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a
+table.
+
+"Beautiful," said the doctor in answer to a remark about the
+weather. "The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow
+one feels as if one were in the country."
+
+"Yes, indeed," replied the princess with a sigh. "So he may have
+something to drink?"
+
+Lorrain considered.
+
+"Has he taken his medicine?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The doctor glanced at his watch.
+
+"Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar,"
+and he indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.
+
+"Dere has neffer been a gase," a German doctor was saying to an
+aide-de-camp, "dat one liffs after de sird stroke."
+
+"And what a well-preserved man he was!" remarked the aide-de-camp.
+"And who will inherit his wealth?" he added in a whisper.
+
+"It von't go begging," replied the German with a smile.
+
+Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second
+princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to
+Lorrain's instructions. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.
+
+"Do you think he can last till morning?" asked the German,
+addressing Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.
+
+Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger
+before his nose.
+
+"Tonight, not later," said he in a low voice, and he moved away with
+a decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to
+understand and state the patient's condition.
+
+Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the princess' room.
+
+In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning
+before the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt
+pastilles. The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture,
+whatnots, cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white
+feather bed was just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to
+bark.
+
+"Ah, is it you, cousin?"
+
+She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely
+smooth that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and
+covered with varnish.
+
+"Has anything happened?" she asked. "I am so terrified."
+
+"No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about
+business, Catiche,"~^ muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on
+the chair she had just vacated. "You have made the place warm, I
+must say," he remarked. "Well, sit down: let's have a talk."
+
+^~ Catherine.
+
+"I thought perhaps something had happened," she said with her
+unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the
+prince, she prepared to listen.
+
+"I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can't."
+
+"Well, my dear?" said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and bending
+it downwards as was his habit.
+
+It was plain that this "well?" referred to much that they both
+understood without naming.
+
+The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for
+her legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no sign of emotion
+in her prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up
+at the icons with a sigh. This might have been taken as an
+expression of sorrow and devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting
+before long. Prince Vasili understood it as an expression of
+weariness.
+
+"And I?" he said; "do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn
+out as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a
+very serious talk."
+
+Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously,
+now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant
+expression which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His
+eyes too seemed strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly
+and at the next glanced round in alarm.
+
+The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony
+hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili's eyes evidently resolved
+not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till morning.
+
+"Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna,"
+continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not
+without an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of
+everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love
+you all, like children of my own, as you know."
+
+The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the
+same dull expression.
+
+"And then of course my family has also to be considered," Prince
+Vasili went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at
+her. "You know, Catiche, that we- you three sisters, Mamontov, and
+my wife- are the count's only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it
+is for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for me;
+but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for
+anything. Do you know I have sent for Pierre? The count," pointing
+to his portrait, "definitely demanded that he should be called."
+
+Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but could not
+make out whether she was considering what he had just said or
+whether she was simply looking at him.
+
+"There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin," she
+replied, "and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow
+his noble soul peacefully to leave this..."
+
+"Yes, yes, of course," interrupted Prince Vasili impatiently,
+rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little
+table that he had pushed away. "But... in short, the fact is... you
+know yourself that last winter the count made a will by which he
+left all his property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre."
+
+"He has made wills enough!" quietly remarked the princess. "But he
+cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate."
+
+"But, my dear," said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching the little
+table and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: "what if
+a letter has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for
+Pierre's legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of
+the count's services, his request would be granted?..."
+
+The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about
+the subject under discussion than those they are talking with.
+
+"I can tell you more," continued Prince Vasili, seizing her hand,
+"that letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew
+of it. The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not,
+then as soon as all is over," and Prince Vasili sighed to intimate
+what he meant by the words all is over, "and the count's papers are
+opened, the will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and
+the petition will certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything
+as the legitimate son."
+
+"And our share?" asked the princess smiling ironically, as if
+anything might happen, only not that.
+
+"But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be
+the legal heir to everything and you won't get anything. You must
+know, my dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether
+they have been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been
+overlooked, you ought to know where they are, and must find them,
+because..."
+
+"What next?" the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and
+not changing the expression of her eyes. "I am a woman, and you
+think we are all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot
+inherit... un batard!"~^ she added, as if supposing that this
+translation of the word would effectively prove to Prince Vasili the
+invalidity of his contention.
+
+^~ A bastard.
+
+"Well, really, Catiche! Can't you understand! You are so
+intelligent, how is it you don't see that if the count has written a
+letter to the Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate,
+it follows that Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count
+Bezukhov, and will then inherit everything under the will? And if
+the will and letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing
+but the consolation of having been dutiful et tout ce qui s'ensuit!~^
+That's certain."
+
+^~ And all that follows therefrom.
+
+"I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and
+you, mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool," said the
+princess with the expression women assume when they suppose they are
+saying something witty and stinging.
+
+"My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna," began Prince Vasili
+impatiently, "I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about
+your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I
+tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and
+the will in Pierre's favor are among the count's papers, then, my dear
+girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don't believe me,
+then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmitri Onufrich"
+(the family solicitor) "and he says the same."
+
+At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess' ideas;
+her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her
+voice when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she
+herself evidently did not expect.
+
+"That would be a fine thing!" said she. "I never wanted anything and
+I don't now."
+
+She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.
+
+"And this is gratitude- this is recognition for those who have
+sacrificed everything for his sake!" she cried. "It's splendid!
+Fine! I don't want anything, Prince."
+
+"Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters..."
+replied Prince Vasili.
+
+But the princess did not listen to him.
+
+"Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could
+expect nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and
+ingratitude- the blackest ingratitude- in this house..."
+
+"Do you or do you not know where that will is?" insisted Prince
+Vasili, his cheeks twitching more than ever.
+
+"Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and
+sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has
+been intriguing!"
+
+The princees wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand.
+She had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole
+human race. She gave her companion an angry glance.
+
+"There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it
+was all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was
+afterwards forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to
+ease his last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and
+not to let him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who..."
+
+"Who sacrificed everything for him," chimed in the princess, who
+would again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, "though
+he never could appreciate it. No, mon cousin," she added with a
+sigh, "I shall always remember that in this world one must expect no
+reward, that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this
+world one has to be cunning and cruel."
+
+"Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart."
+
+"No, I have a wicked heart."
+
+"I know your heart," repeated the prince. "I value your friendship
+and wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don't upset yourself,
+and let us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or
+be it but an hour.... Tell me all you know about the will, and above
+all where it is. You must know. We will take it at once and show it to
+the count. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it.
+You understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his
+wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came simply to help
+him and you."
+
+"Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing- I know!" cried
+the princess.
+
+"That's not the point, my dear."
+
+"It's that protege of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskaya, that
+Anna Mikhaylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the
+infamous, vile woman!"
+
+"Do not let us lose any time..."
+
+"Ah, don't talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here
+and told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us,
+especially about Sophie- I can't repeat them- that it made the count
+quite ill and he would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was
+then he wrote this vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was
+invalid."
+
+"We've got to it at last- why did you not tell me about it sooner?"
+
+"It's in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow,"
+said the princess, ignoring his question. "Now I know! Yes; if I
+have a sin, a great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!" almost
+shrieked the princess, now quite changed. "And what does she come
+worming herself in here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind.
+The time will come!"
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+While these conversations were going on in the reception room and
+the princess' room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent
+for) and Anna Mikhaylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him)
+was driving into the court of Count Bezukhov's house. As the wheels
+rolled softly over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna,
+having turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that he
+was asleep in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre
+followed Anna Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only then began
+to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited him.
+He noticed that they had not come to the front entrance but to the
+back door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps two
+men, who looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and
+hid in the shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed
+several other men of the same kind hiding in the shadow of the house
+on both sides. But neither Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the
+coachman, who could not help seeing these people, took any notice of
+them. "It seems to be all right," Pierre concluded, and followed
+Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly ascended the narrow dimly lit stone
+staircase, calling to Pierre, who was lagging behind, to follow.
+Though he did not see why it was necessary for him to go to the
+count at all, still less why he had to go by the back stairs, yet
+judging by Anna Mikhaylovna's air of assurance and haste, Pierre
+concluded that it was all absolutely necessary. Halfway up the
+stairs they were almost knocked over by some men who, carrying
+pails, came running downstairs, their boots clattering. These men
+pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass
+and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there.
+
+"Is this the way to the princesses' apartments?" asked Anna
+Mikhaylovna of one of them.
+
+"Yes," replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were
+now permissible; "the door to the left, ma'am."
+
+"Perhaps the count did not ask for me," said Pierre when he
+reached the landing. "I'd better go to my own room."
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come up.
+
+"Ah, my friend!" she said, touching his arm as she had done her
+son's when speaking to him that afternoon, "believe me I suffer no
+less than you do, but be a man!"
+
+"But really, hadn't I better go away?" he asked, looking kindly at
+her over his spectacles.
+
+"Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done
+you. Think that he is your father... perhaps in the agony of death."
+She sighed. "I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust
+yourself to me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests."
+
+Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this
+had to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikhaylovna who
+was already opening a door.
+
+This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the
+princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been
+in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of
+these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past
+with a decanter on a tray as "my dear" and "my sweet," asked about the
+princess' health and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The
+first door on the left led into the princesses' apartments. The maid
+with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything
+in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna
+Mikhaylovna in passing instinctively glanced into the room, where
+Prince Vasili and the eldest princess were sitting close together
+talking. Seeing them pass, Prince Vasili drew back with obvious
+impatience, while the princess jumped up and with a gesture of
+desperation slammed the door with all her might.
+
+This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear
+depicted on Prince Vasili's face so out of keeping with his dignity
+that Pierre stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his
+guide. Anna Mikhaylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly
+and sighed, as if to say that this was no more than she had expected.
+
+"Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests," said she in
+reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.
+
+Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what
+"watching over his interests" meant, but he decided that all these
+things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly lit
+room adjoining the count's reception room. It was one of those
+sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front
+approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and
+water had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a
+censer and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them.
+They went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian
+windows opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and full
+length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people were still
+sitting here in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one
+another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn
+Anna Mikhaylovna as she entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre
+who, hanging his head, meekly followed her.
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna's face expressed a consciousness that the
+decisive moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg
+lady she now, keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even
+more boldly than that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her
+the person the dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured.
+Casting a rapid glance at all those in the room and noticing the
+count's confessor there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble,
+not exactly bowing yet seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and
+respectfully received the blessing first of one and then of another
+priest.
+
+"God be thanked that you are in time," said she to one of the
+priests; "all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man
+is the count's son," she added more softly. "What a terrible moment!"
+
+Having said this she went up to the doctor.
+
+"Dear doctor," said she, "this young man is the count's son. Is
+there any hope?"
+
+The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his
+shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the same movement raised her
+shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved
+away from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful
+and tenderly sad voice, she said:
+
+"Trust in His mercy!" and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit
+and wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone
+was watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind
+it.
+
+Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly,
+moved toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikhaylovna
+had disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned
+to him with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed
+that they whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him
+with a kind of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had
+never before received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had
+been talking to the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an
+aide-de-camp picked up and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the
+doctors became respectfully silent as he passed by, and moved to
+make way for him. At first Pierre wished to take another seat so as
+not to trouble the lady, and also to pick up the glove himself and
+to pass round the doctors who were not even in his way; but all at
+once he felt that this would not do, and that tonight he was a
+person obliged to perform some sort of awful rite which everyone
+expected of him, and that he was therefore bound to accept their
+services. He took the glove in silence from the aide-de-camp, and
+sat down in the lady's chair, placing his huge hands symmetrically
+on his knees in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue, and
+decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in
+order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on
+his own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the
+will of those who were guiding him.
+
+Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with head erect
+majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three
+stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the
+morning; his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and
+noticed Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never
+used to do), and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain
+whether it was firmly fixed on.
+
+"Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is
+well!" and he turned to go.
+
+But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: "How is..." and hesitated,
+not knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man "the
+count," yet ashamed to call him "father."
+
+"He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my
+friend..."
+
+Pierre's mind was in such a confused state that the word "stroke"
+suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasili
+in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of
+illness. Prince Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went
+through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his
+whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him,
+and the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the
+door. Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about,
+and at last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale but
+resolute in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly
+on the arm said:
+
+"The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be
+administered. Come."
+
+Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed
+that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all
+followed him in, as if there were now no further need for permission
+to enter that room.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its
+walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the
+columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side
+and on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly
+illuminated with red light like a Russian church during evening
+service. Under the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in
+that chair on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed,
+Pierre saw- covered to the waist by a bright green quilt- the
+familiar, majestic figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that
+gray mane of hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a
+lion, and the deep characteristically noble wrinkles of his
+handsome, ruddy face. He lay just under the icons; his large thick
+hands outside the quilt. Into the right hand, which was lying palm
+downwards, a wax taper had been thrust between forefinger and thumb,
+and an old servant, bending over from behind the chair, held it in
+position. By the chair stood the priests, their long hair falling over
+their magnificent glittering vestments, with lighted tapers in their
+hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the service. A little behind
+them stood the two younger princesses holding handkerchiefs to their
+eyes, and just in front of them their eldest sister, Catiche, with a
+vicious and determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though
+declaring to all that she could not answer for herself should she
+glance round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a meek, sorrowful, and
+all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door near the
+strange lady. Prince Vasili in front of the door, near the invalid
+chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on the
+carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose, and
+was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward each
+time he touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety and
+resignation to the will of God. "If you do not understand these
+sentiments," he seemed to be saying, "so much the worse for you!"
+
+Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants;
+the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently
+crossing themselves, and the reading of the church service, the
+subdued chanting of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and
+the shuffling of feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna
+Mikhaylovna, with an air of importance that showed that she felt she
+quite knew what she was about, went across the room to where Pierre
+was standing and gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by
+observing those around him, began crossing himself with the hand
+that held the taper.
+
+Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the
+mole, watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and
+remained with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing
+Pierre she again began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look
+at him without laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be
+out of temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In
+the midst of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased,
+they whispered to one another, and the old servant who was holding the
+count's hand got up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna
+stepped forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to
+Lorrain from behind her back. The French doctor held no taper; he
+was leaning against one of the columns in a respectful attitude
+implying that he, a foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith,
+understood the full importance of the rite now being performed and
+even approved of it. He now approached the sick man with the noiseless
+step of one in full vigor of life, with his delicate white fingers
+raised from the green quilt the hand that was free, and turning
+sideways felt the pulse and reflected a moment. The sick man was given
+something to drink, there was a stir around him, then the people
+resumed their places and the service continued. During this interval
+Pierre noticed that Prince Vasili left the chair on which he had
+been leaning, and- with air which intimated that he knew what he was
+about and if others did not understand him it was so much the worse
+for them- did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him, joined
+the eldest princess, and moved with her to the side of the room
+where stood the high bedstead with its silken hangings. On leaving the
+bed both Prince Vasili and the princess passed out by a back door, but
+returned to their places one after the other before the service was
+concluded. Pierre paid no more attention to this occurrence than to
+the rest of what went on, having made up his mind once for all that
+what he saw happening around him that evening was in some way
+essential.
+
+The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest
+was heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received
+the sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as
+before. Around him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and
+whispers, among which Anna Mikhaylovna's was the most distinct.
+
+Pierre heard her say:
+
+"Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be
+impossible..."
+
+The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and
+servants that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face
+with its gray mane- which, though he saw other faces as well, he had
+not lost sight of for a single moment during the whole service. He
+judged by the cautious movements of those who crowded round the
+invalid chair that they had lifted the dying man and were moving him.
+
+"Catch hold of my arm or you'll drop him!" he heard one of the
+servants say in a frightened whisper. "Catch hold from underneath.
+Here!" exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the
+bearers and the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the
+weight they were carrying were too much for them.
+
+As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna, passed the young
+man he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the
+dying man's high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders,
+raised by those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his
+gray, curly, leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow
+and cheekbones, its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic
+expression, was not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the
+same as Pierre remembered it three months before, when the count had
+sent him to Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly
+with the uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze
+fixed itself upon nothing.
+
+After a few minutes' bustle beside the high bedstead, those who
+had carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikhaylovna touched
+Pierre's hand and said, "Come." Pierre went with her to the bed on
+which the sick man had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the
+ceremony just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the
+pillows. His hands were symmetrically placed on the green silk
+quilt, the palms downward. When Pierre came up the count was gazing
+straight at him, but with a look the significance of which could not
+be understood by mortal man. Either this look meant nothing but that
+as long as one has eyes they must look somewhere, or it meant too
+much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing what to do, and glanced
+inquiringly at his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna made a hurried sign with
+her eyes, glancing at the sick man's hand and moving her lips as if to
+send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck so as not to
+touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his lips to the
+large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a single muscle of
+the count's face stirred. Once more Pierre looked questioningly at
+Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he was to do next. Anna Mikhaylovna
+with her eyes indicated a chair that stood beside the bed. Pierre
+obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were doing right. Anna
+Mikhaylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naively
+symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that
+his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing his utmost to
+look as small as possible. He looked at the count, who still gazed
+at the spot where Pierre's face had been before he sat down. Anna
+Mikhaylovna indicated by her attitude her consciousness of the
+pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting between the
+father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre
+seemed an hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count's
+face began to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth
+was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre realize how near death
+his father was), and from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct,
+hoarse sound. Anna Mikhaylovna looked attentively at the sick man's
+eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre,
+then to some drink, then named Prince Vasili in an inquiring
+whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the sick
+man showed impatience. He made an effort to look at the servant who
+stood constantly at the head of the bed.
+
+"Wants to turn on the other side," whispered the servant, and got up
+to turn the count's heavy body toward the wall.
+
+Pierre rose to help him.
+
+While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back
+helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward.
+Whether he noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded
+that lifeless arm, or whether some other thought flitted across his
+dying brain, at any rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre's
+terror-stricken face, and again at the arm, and on his face a
+feeble, piteous smile appeared, quite out of keeping with his
+features, that seemed to deride his own helplessness. At sight of this
+smile Pierre felt an unexpected quivering in his breast and a tickling
+in his nose, and tears dimmed his eyes. The sick man was turned on
+to his side with his face to the wall. He sighed.
+
+"He is dozing," said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that one of the
+princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. "Let us go."
+
+Pierre went out.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasili
+and the eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of
+Catherine the Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre
+and his companion they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the
+princess hide something as she whispered:
+
+"I can't bear the sight of that woman."
+
+"Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room," said
+Prince Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. "Go and take something, my poor
+Anna Mikhaylovna, or you will not hold out."
+
+To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic
+squeeze below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikhaylovna into the
+small drawing room.
+
+"There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup
+of this delicious Russian tea," Lorrain was saying with an air of
+restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese
+handleless cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid
+in the small circular room. Around the table all who were at Count
+Bezukhov's house that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre
+well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors
+and little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not
+know how to dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the
+ladies who, as they passed through in their ball dresses with diamonds
+and pearls on their bare shoulders, looked at themselves in the
+brilliantly lighted mirrors which repeated their reflections several
+times. Now this same room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one
+small table tea things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the
+middle of the night a motley throng of people sat there, not
+merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and betraying by every word
+and movement that they none of them forgot what was happening and what
+was about to happen in the bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though
+he would very much have liked to. He looked inquiringly at his
+monitress and saw that she was again going on tiptoe to the
+reception room where they had left Prince Vasili and the eldest
+princess. Pierre concluded that this also was essential, and after a
+short interval followed her. Anna Mikhaylovna was standing beside
+the princess, and they were both speaking in excited whispers.
+
+"Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not
+necessary," said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the
+same state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.
+
+"But, my dear princess," answered Anna Mikhaylovna blandly but
+impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other
+from passing, "won't this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment
+when he needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul
+is already prepared..."
+
+Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar
+attitude, with one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which
+were so flabby that they looked heavier below, were twitching
+violently; but he wore the air of a man little concerned in what the
+two ladies were saying.
+
+"Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases.
+You know how fond the count is of her."
+
+"I don't even know what is in this paper," said the younger of the
+two ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and pointing to an inlaid
+portfolio she held in her hand. "All I know is that his real will is
+in his writing table, and this is a paper he has forgotten...."
+
+She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter sprang so as to
+bar her path.
+
+"I know, my dear, kind princess," said Anna Mikhaylovna, seizing the
+portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily.
+"Dear princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je
+vous en conjure..."
+
+The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the
+portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if the
+princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna
+Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost
+none of its honeyed firmness and softness.
+
+"Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place
+in a family consultation; is it not so, Prince?"
+
+"Why don't you speak, cousin?" suddenly shrieked the princess so
+loud that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled.
+"Why do you remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to
+interfere, making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man's room?
+Intriguer!" she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the
+portfolio.
+
+But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold
+on the portfolio, and changed her grip.
+
+Prince Vasili rose. "Oh!" said he with reproach and surprise,
+"this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you."
+
+The princess let go.
+
+"And you too!"
+
+But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him.
+
+"Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will
+go and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?"
+
+"But, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna, "after such a solemn
+sacrament, allow him a moment's peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your
+opinion," said she, turning to the young man who, having come quite
+close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of the
+princess which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of
+Prince Vasili.
+
+"Remember that you will answer for the consequences," said Prince
+Vasili severely. "You don't know what you are doing."
+
+"Vile woman!" shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna
+Mikhaylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.
+
+Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.
+
+At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so
+long and which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and
+banged against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed
+out wringing her hands.
+
+"What are you doing!" she cried vehemently. "He is dying and you
+leave me alone with him!"
+
+Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna, stooping,
+quickly caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom.
+The eldest princess and Prince Vasili, recovering themselves, followed
+her. A few minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard
+face, again biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression
+showed an irrepressible hatred.
+
+"Yes, now you may be glad!" said she; "this is what you have been
+waiting for." And bursting into tears she hid her face in her
+handkerchief and rushed from the room.
+
+Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre
+was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand.
+Pierre noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as
+if in an ague.
+
+"Ah, my friend!" said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there
+was in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in
+it before. "How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I
+am near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all!
+Death is awful..." and he burst into tears.
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow,
+quiet steps.
+
+"Pierre!" she said.
+
+Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his
+forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:
+
+"He is no more...."
+
+Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.
+
+"Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as
+tears."
+
+She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one
+could see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned
+he was fast asleep with his head on his arm.
+
+In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:
+
+"Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you.
+But God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in
+command of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I
+know you well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but
+it imposes duties on you, and you must be a man."
+
+Pierre was silent.
+
+"Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not
+been there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle
+promised me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But
+he had no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your
+father's wish?"
+
+Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in
+silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna
+Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs' and went to bed. On waking in the
+morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details
+of Count Bezukhov's death. She said the count had died as she would
+herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but
+edifying. As to the last meeting between father and son, it was so
+touching that she could not think of it without tears, and did not
+know which had behaved better during those awful moments- the father
+who so remembered everything and everybody at last and last and had
+spoken such pathetic words to the son, or Pierre, whom it had been
+pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief, though he tried hard to
+hide it in order not to sadden his dying father. "It is painful, but
+it does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such men as the old count
+and his worthy son," said she. Of the behavior of the eldest
+princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in whispers
+and as a great secret.
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski's estate, the
+arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but
+this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the
+old prince's household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich
+(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor
+Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously
+with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle
+Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
+capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that
+anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from
+Moscow to Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He
+used to say that there are only two sources of human vice- idleness
+and superstition, and only two virtues- activity and intelligence.
+He himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these
+two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry
+till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time
+was occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs,
+solving problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe,
+working in the garden, or superintending the building that was
+always going on at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition
+facilitating activity, regularity in his household was carried to
+the highest point of exactitude. He always came to table under
+precisely the same conditions, and not only at the same hour but at
+the same minute. With those about him, from his daughter to his serfs,
+the prince was sharp and invariably exacting, so that without being
+a hardhearted man he inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted
+men would have aroused. Although he was in retirement and had now no
+influence in political affairs, every high official appointed to the
+province in which the prince's estate lay considered it his duty to
+visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber ante chamber just as the
+architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared
+punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber
+experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when the
+enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather
+small old man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray
+eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his
+shrewd, youthfully glittering eyes.
+
+On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive,
+Princess Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed
+for the morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and
+repeating a silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and
+every morning prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.
+
+An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose
+quietly and said in a whisper: "Please walk in."
+
+Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess
+timidly opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused
+at the entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after
+glancing round continued his work.
+
+The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The
+large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted
+bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while
+standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with
+tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around- all
+indicated continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of
+the small foot shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and
+the firm pressure of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince
+still possessed the tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age.
+After a few more turns of the lathe he removed his foot from the
+pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to
+the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter. He never
+gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly
+cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly and attentively,
+said severely:
+
+"Quite well? All right then, sit down." He took the exercise book
+containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a
+chair with his foot.
+
+"For tomorrow!" said he, quickly finding the page and making a
+scratch from one paragraph to another with his hard nail.
+
+The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.
+
+"Wait a bit, here's a letter for you," said the old man suddenly,
+taking a letter addressed in a woman's hand from a bag hanging above
+the table, onto which he threw it.
+
+At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the
+princess' face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it.
+
+"From Heloise?" asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his
+still sound, yellowish teeth.
+
+"Yes, it's from Julie," replied the princess with a timid glance and
+a timid smile.
+
+"I'll let two more letters pass, but the third I'll read," said
+the prince sternly; "I'm afraid you write much nonsense. I'll read the
+third!"
+
+"Read this if you like, Father," said the princess, blushing still
+more and holding out the letter.
+
+"The third, I said the third!" cried the prince abruptly, pushing
+the letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward
+him the exercise book containing geometrical figures.
+
+"Well, madam," he began, stooping over the book close to his
+daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat,
+so that she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of
+old age and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now, madam, these
+triangles are equal; please note that the angle ABC..."
+
+The princess looked in a scared way at her father's eyes
+glittering close to her; the red patches on her face came and went,
+and it was plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened
+that her fear would prevent her understanding any of her father's
+further explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was
+the teacher's fault or the pupil's, this same thing happened every
+day: the princess' eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear
+anything, but was only conscious of her stern father's withered face
+close to her, of his breath and the smell of him, and could think only
+of how to get away quickly to her own room to make out the problem
+in peace. The old man was beside himself: moved the chair on which
+he was sitting noisily backward and forward, made efforts to control
+himself and not become vehement, but almost always did become
+vehement, scolded, and sometimes flung the exercise book away.
+
+The princess gave a wrong answer.
+
+"Well now, isn't she a fool!" shouted the prince, pushing the book
+aside and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up
+and down, lightly touched his daughter's hair and sat down again.
+
+He drew up his chair. and continued to explain.
+
+"This won't do, Princess; it won't do," said he, when Princess Mary,
+having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day's
+lesson, was about to leave: "Mathematics are most important, madam!
+I don't want to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and
+you'll like it," and he patted her cheek. "It will drive all the
+nonsense out of your head."
+
+She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an
+uncut book from the high desk.
+
+"Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Heloise has
+sent you. Religious! I don't interfere with anyone's belief... I
+have looked at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go."
+
+He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.
+
+Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared
+expression that rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly
+face yet plainer. She sat down at her writing table, on which stood
+miniature portraits and which was littered with books and papers.
+The princess was as untidy as her father was tidy. She put down the
+geometry book and eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from
+her most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie Karagina
+who had been at the Rostovs' name-day party.
+
+Julie wrote in French:
+
+Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is
+separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my
+happiness are wrapped up in you, and that in spite of the distance
+separating us our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart
+rebels against fate and in spite of the pleasures and distractions
+around me I cannot overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in
+my heart ever since we parted. Why are we not together as we were last
+summer, in your big study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa?
+Why cannot I now, as three months ago, draw fresh moral strength
+from your look, so gentle, calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so
+well and seem to see before me as I write?
+
+Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the
+mirror which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful
+figure and thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular
+hopelessness at her reflection in the glass. "She flatters me,"
+thought the princess, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie
+did not flatter her friend, the princess' eyes- large, deep and
+luminous (it seemed as if at times there radiated from them shafts
+of warm light)- were so beautiful that very often in spite of the
+plainness of her face they gave her an attraction more powerful than
+that of beauty. But the princess never saw the beautiful expression of
+her own eyes- the look they had when she was not thinking of
+herself. As with everyone, her face assumed a forced unnatural
+expression as soon as she looked in a glass. She went on reading:
+
+All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is
+already abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on
+their march to the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg
+and it is thought intends to expose his precious person to the chances
+of war. God grant that the Corsican monster who is destroying the
+peace of Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the
+Almighty, in His goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing
+of my brothers, this war has deprived me of one of the associations
+nearest my heart. I mean young Nicholas Rostov, who with his
+enthusiasm could not bear to remain inactive and has left the
+university to join the army. I will confess to you, dear Mary, that in
+spite of his extreme youth his departure for the army was a great
+grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you last summer, is so
+noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which one seldom finds
+nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly, he is so frank
+and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that my relations with
+him, transient as they were, have been one of the sweetest comforts to
+my poor heart, which has already suffered so much. Someday I will tell
+you about our parting and all that was said then. That is still too
+fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know these poignant
+joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are generally
+the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too young ever
+to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship, this poetic
+and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of this!
+The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of old
+Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses
+have received very little, Prince Vasili nothing, and it is Monsieur
+Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been
+recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezukhov and
+possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince
+Vasili played a very despicable part in this affair and that he
+returned to Petersburg quite crestfallen.
+
+I confess I understand very little about all these matters of
+wills and inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom
+we all used to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count
+Bezukhov and the owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I
+am much amused to watch the change in the tone and manners of the
+mammas burdened by marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies
+themselves, toward him, though, between you and me, he always seemed
+to me a poor sort of fellow. As for the past two years people have
+amused themselves by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don't
+even know), the matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as
+the future Countess Bezukhova. But you will understand that I have
+no desire for the post. A propos of marriages: do you know that a
+while ago that universal auntie Anna Mikhaylovna told me, under the
+seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for you. It is neither
+more nor less than with Prince Vasili's son Anatole, whom they wish to
+reform by marrying him to someone rich and distinguee, and it is on
+you that his relations' choice has fallen. I don't know what you
+will think of it, but I consider it my duty to let you know of it.
+He is said to be very handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is
+all I have been able to find out about him.
+
+But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper,
+and Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apraksins'. Read the
+mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here.
+Though there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to
+grasp, it is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul.
+Adieu! Give my respects to monsieur your father and my compliments
+to Mademoiselle Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.
+
+JULIE
+
+P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife.
+
+The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her
+luminous eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then
+she suddenly rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She
+took a sheet of paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is
+the reply she wrote, also in French:
+
+Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great
+delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which
+you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual
+effect on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I say,
+if I dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me?
+Ah, if we had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why
+do you suppose that I should look severely on your affection for
+that young man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I
+understand such feelings in others, and if never having felt them I
+cannot approve of them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me
+that Christian love, love of one's neighbor, love of one's enemy, is
+worthier, sweeter, and better than the feelings which the beautiful
+eyes of a young man can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl
+like yourself.
+
+The news of Count Bezukhov's death reached us before your letter and
+my father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last
+representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own
+turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as
+late as possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!
+
+I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He
+always seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the
+quality I value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part
+played by Prince Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear
+friend, our divine Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to
+go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
+Kingdom of God, are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still
+more sorry for Pierre. So young, and burdened with such riches- to
+what temptations he will be exposed! If I were asked what I desire
+most on earth, it would be to be poorer than the poorest beggar. A
+thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume you have sent me and
+which has such success in Moscow. Yet since you tell me that among
+some good things it contains others which our weak human understanding
+cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend time in reading
+what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit. I never
+could understand the fondness some people have for confusing their
+minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their doubts
+and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration
+quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the
+Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they
+contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the
+terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this
+flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let
+us rather confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which
+our divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to
+conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less
+we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God,
+who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we
+seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner
+will He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.
+
+My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me
+that he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince
+Vasili. In regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you,
+dear sweet friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution
+to which we must conform. However painful it may be to me, should
+the Almighty lay the duties of wife and wife and mother upon me I
+shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can, without
+disquieting myself by examining my feelings toward him whom He may
+give me for husband.
+
+I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy
+arrival at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief
+one, however, for he will leave, us again to take part in this unhappy
+war into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only
+where you are- at the heart of affairs and of the world- is the talk
+all of war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature- which
+townsfolk consider characteristic of the country- rumors of war are
+heard and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and
+countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day
+before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I
+witnessed a heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts
+enrolled from our people and starting to join the army. You should
+have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who
+were going and should have heard the sobs. It seems as though
+mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached
+love and forgiveness of injuries- and that men attribute the
+greatest merit to skill in killing one another.
+
+Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most
+Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!
+
+MARY
+
+"Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already
+dispatched mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling
+Mademoiselle Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and
+with guttural r's. She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous,
+mournful, and gloomy world a quite different atmosphere, careless,
+lighthearted, and self-satisfied.
+
+"Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her voice and
+evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with
+exaggerated grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael
+Ivanovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared."
+
+"Ah, dear friend," replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to
+warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge
+him and would not have others do so."
+
+The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five
+minutes late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the
+sitting room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o'clock,
+as the day was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played
+the clavichord.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the
+snoring of the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side
+of the house through the closed doors came the sound of difficult
+passages- twenty times repeated- of a sonata by Dussek.
+
+Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to
+the porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little
+wife to alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old
+Tikhon, wearing a wig, put his head out of the door of the
+antechamber, reported in a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and
+hastily closed the door. Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival
+nor any other unusual event must be allowed to disturb the appointed
+order of the day. Prince Andrew apparently knew this as well as
+Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to ascertain whether his father's
+habits had changed since he was at home last, and, having assured
+himself that they had not, he turned to his wife.
+
+"He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary's room,"
+he said.
+
+The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes
+and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak
+just as merrily and prettily as ever.
+
+"Why, this is a palace!" she said to her husband, looking around
+with the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball.
+"Let's come, quick, quick!" And with a glance round, she smiled at
+Tikhon, at her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.
+
+"Is that Mary practicing? Let's go quietly and take her by
+surprise."
+
+Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.
+
+"You've grown older, Tikhon," he said in passing to the old man, who
+kissed his hand.
+
+Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord
+came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
+rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.
+
+"Ah! what joy for the princess!" exclaimed she: "At last! I must let
+her know."
+
+"No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne," said the
+little princess, kissing her. "I know you already through my
+sister-in-law's friendship for you. She was not expecting us?"
+
+They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the
+sound of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped
+and made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.
+
+The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the
+middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary's heavy tread and the
+sound of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who
+had only met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in each
+other's arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they
+happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her
+hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready
+to cry or to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and
+frowned, as lovers of music do when they hear a false note. The two
+women let go of one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late,
+seized each other's hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and
+again began kissing each other on the face, and then to Prince
+Andrew's surprise both began to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle
+Bourienne also began to cry. Prince Andrew evidently felt ill at ease,
+but to the two women it seemed quite natural that they should cry, and
+apparently it never entered their heads that it could have been
+otherwise at this meeting.
+
+"Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!" they suddenly exclaimed, and then
+laughed. "I dreamed last night..."- "You were not expecting us?..."-
+"Ah! Mary, you have got thinner?..." "And you have grown stouter!..."
+
+"I knew the princess at once," put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.
+
+"And I had no idea!..." exclaimed Princess Mary. "Ah, Andrew, I
+did not see you."
+
+Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another,
+and he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess
+Mary had turned toward her brother, and through her tears the
+loving, warm, gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful
+at that moment, rested on Prince Andrew's face.
+
+The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip
+continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary
+and drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of
+glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they
+had had on the Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in
+her condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had
+left all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would
+have to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that
+Kitty Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor
+for Mary, a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess
+Mary was still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful
+eyes were full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was
+following a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law's words.
+In the midst of a description of the last Petersburg fete she
+addressed her brother:
+
+"So you are really going to the war, Andrew?" she said sighing.
+
+Lise sighed too.
+
+"Yes, and even tomorrow," replied her brother.
+
+"He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had
+promotion..."
+
+Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of
+thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her
+figure.
+
+"Is it certain?" she said.
+
+The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said:
+"Yes, quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful..."
+
+Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law's
+and unexpectedly again began to cry.
+
+"She needs rest," said Prince Andrew with a frown. "Don't you, Lise?
+Take her to your room and I'll go to Father. How is he? Just the
+same?"
+
+"Yes, just the same. Though I don't know what your opinion will be,"
+answered the princess joyfully.
+
+"And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the
+lathe?" asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which
+showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he
+was aware of his weaknesses.
+
+"The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and
+my geometry lessons," said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her
+lessons in geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.
+
+When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the
+old prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the young prince to his
+father. The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor
+of his son's arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments
+while he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in
+old-fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and
+when Prince Andrew entered his father's dressing room (not with the
+contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the
+animated face with which he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting
+on a large leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle,
+entrusting his head to Tikhon.
+
+"Ah! here's the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?" said the old
+man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tikhon was
+holding fast to plait, would allow.
+
+"You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like
+this he'll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?" And he
+held out his cheek.
+
+The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He
+used to say that a nap "after dinner was silver- before dinner,
+golden.") He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his
+thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father
+on the spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his father's
+favorite topic- making fun of the military men of the day, and more
+particularly of Bonaparte.
+
+"Yes, Father, I have come come to you and brought my wife who is
+pregnant," said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his
+father's face with an eager and respectful look. "How is your health?"
+
+"Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy
+from morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well."
+
+"Thank God," said his son smiling.
+
+"God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on," he continued,
+returning to his hobby; "tell me how the Germans have taught you to
+fight Bonaparte by this new science you call 'strategy.'"
+
+Prince Andrew smiled.
+
+"Give me time to collect my wits, Father," said he, with a smile
+that showed that his father's foibles did not prevent his son from
+loving and honoring him. "Why, I have not yet had time to settle
+down!"
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense!" cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to
+see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand.
+"The house for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there
+and show her over, and they'll talk nineteen to the dozen. That's
+their woman's way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About
+Mikhelson's army I understand- Tolstoy's too... a simultaneous
+expedition.... But what's the southern army to do? Prussia is
+neutral... I know that. What about Austria?" said he, rising from
+his chair and pacing up and down the room followed by Tikhon, who
+ran after him, handing him different articles of clothing. "What of
+Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?"
+
+Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began- at first
+reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from
+habit changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on-
+to explain the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained
+how an army, ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as
+to bring her out of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part
+of that army was to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two
+hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand
+Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty
+
+thousand Russians and as many English were to land at Naples, and
+how a total force of five hundred thousand men was to attack the
+French from different sides. The old prince did not evince the least
+interest during this explanation, but as if he were not listening to
+it continued to dress while walking about, and three times
+unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: "The white
+one, the white one!"
+
+This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he
+wanted. Another time he interrupted, saying:
+
+"And will she soon be confined?" and shaking his head
+reproachfully said: "That's bad! Go on, go on."
+
+The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his
+description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old
+age: "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra."~^
+
+^~ "Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he'll return."
+
+His son only smiled.
+
+"I don't say it's a plan I approve of," said the son; "I am only
+telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now,
+not worse than this one."
+
+"Well, you've told me nothing new," and the old man repeated,
+meditatively and rapidly:
+
+"Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room."
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the
+dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle
+Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who
+by a strange caprice of his employer's was admitted to table though
+the position of that insignificant individual was such as could
+certainly not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who
+generally kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely
+admitted even important government officials to his table, had
+unexpectedly selected Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a corner
+to blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory
+that all men are equals, and had more than once impressed on his
+daughter that Michael Ivanovich was "not a whit worse than you or
+I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael
+Ivanovich more often than to anyone else.
+
+In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was
+exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen- one
+behind each chair- stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head
+butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making
+signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the
+door by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at
+a large gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of
+the Princes Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a
+badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist
+belonging to the estate) of a ruling prince, in a crown- an alleged
+descendant of Rurik and ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew,
+looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a
+man laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the original
+as to be amusing.
+
+"How thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who had
+come up to him.
+
+Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not
+understand what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired
+her with reverence and was beyond question.
+
+"Everyone has his Achilles' heel," continued Prince Andrew.
+"Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!"
+
+Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother's
+criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were
+heard coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily
+as was his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of
+his manners with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the
+great clock struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from
+the drawing room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes
+from under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and
+rested on the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar
+enters, the sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired
+in all around him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly
+on the back of her neck.
+
+"I'm glad, glad, to see you," he said, looking attentively into
+her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. "Sit
+down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!"
+
+He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman
+moved the chair for her.
+
+"Ho, ho!" said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded
+figure. "You've been in a hurry. That's bad!"
+
+He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips
+only and not with his eyes.
+
+"You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible," he
+said.
+
+The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She
+was silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father,
+and she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual
+acquaintances, and she became still more animated and chattered away
+giving him greetings from various people and retailing the town
+gossip.
+
+"Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has
+cried her eyes out," she said, growing more and more lively.
+
+As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more
+sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had
+formed a definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael
+Ivanovich.
+
+"Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time of
+it. Prince Andrew" (he always spoke thus of his son) "has been telling
+me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I
+never thought much of him."
+
+Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when "you and I" had said such
+things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as a
+peg on which to hang the prince's favorite topic, he looked
+inquiringly at the young prince, wondering what would follow.
+
+"He is a great tactician!" said the prince to his son, pointing to
+the architect.
+
+And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and
+the generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced
+not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know
+the A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an
+insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no
+longer any Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also
+convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no
+real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day
+were playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily
+bore with his father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and
+listened to him with evident pleasure.
+
+"The past always seems good," said he, "but did not Suvorov
+himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not
+know how to escape?"
+
+"Who told you that? Who?" cried the prince. "Suvorov!" And he jerked
+away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught. "Suvorov!... Consider,
+Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would
+have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the
+Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled
+the devil himself! When you get there you'll find out what those
+Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn't manage them so what
+chance has Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy," he continued, "you and
+your generals won't get on against Buonaparte; you'll have to call
+in the French, so that birds of a feather may fight together. The
+German, Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the
+Frenchman, Moreau," he said, alluding to the invitation made that year
+to Moreau to enter the Russian service.... "Wonderful!... Were the
+Potemkins, Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans? No, lad, either you fellows
+have all lost your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help you,
+but we'll see what will happen. Buonaparte has become a great
+commander among them! Hm!..."
+
+"I don't at all say that all the plans are good," said Prince
+Andrew, "I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You may
+laugh as much as you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great
+generall"
+
+"Michael Ivanovich!" cried the old prince to the architect who, busy
+with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you
+Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says same thing."
+
+"To be sure, your excellency." replied the architect.
+
+The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.
+
+"Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got
+splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only
+idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began
+everybody has beaten the Germans. They beat no one- except one
+another. He made his reputation fighting them."
+
+And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to
+him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His son
+made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were
+presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion.
+He listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how
+this old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could
+know and discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European
+military and political events.
+
+"You think I'm an old man and don't understand the present state
+of affairs?" concluded his father. "But it troubles me. I don't
+sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours
+shown his skill?" he concluded.
+
+"That would take too long to tell," answered the son.
+
+"Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here's
+another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours," he
+exclaimed in excellent French.
+
+"You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!"
+
+"Dieu sait quand reviendra"... hummed the prince out of tune and,
+with a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.
+
+The little princess during the whole discussion and the rest of
+the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at her
+father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When they left the table she
+took her sister-in-law's arm and drew her into another room.
+
+"What a clever man your father is," said she; "perhaps that is why I
+am afraid of him."
+
+"Oh, he is so kind!" answered Princess Mary.
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not
+altering his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little
+princess was in her sister-in-law's room. Prince Andrew in a traveling
+coat without epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms
+assigned to him. After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing
+the trunks put in, he ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those
+things he always kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a
+large canteen fitted with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a
+saber- a present from his father who had brought it from the siege
+of Ochakov. All these traveling effects of Prince Andrew's were in
+very good order: new, clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with
+tapes.
+
+When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men
+capable of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At
+such moments one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince
+Andrew's face looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind
+him he paced briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking
+straight before him and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear
+going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his wife?- perhaps both,
+but evidently he did not wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing
+footsteps in the passage he hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped
+at a table as if tying the cover of the small box, and assumed his
+usual tranquil and impenetrable expression. It was the heavy tread
+of Princess Mary that he heard.
+
+"I hear you have given orders to harness," she cried, panting (she
+had apparently been running), "and I did so wish to have another
+talk with you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You
+are not angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha,"
+she added, as if to explain such a question.
+
+She smiled as she uttered his pet name, "Andrusha." It was obviously
+strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be
+Andrusha- the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in
+childhood.
+
+"And where is Lise?" he asked, answering her question only by a
+smile.
+
+"She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room.
+Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have," said she, sitting
+down on the sofa, facing her brother. "She is quite a child: such a
+dear, merry child. I have grown so fond of her."
+
+Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical
+and contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.
+
+"One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from
+them, Andrew? Don't forget that she has grown up and been educated
+in society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter
+into everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.~^
+Think it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to,
+to be parted from her husband and be left alone the country, in her
+condition! It's very hard."
+
+^~ To understand all is to forgive all.
+
+Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at
+those we think we thoroughly understand.
+
+"You live in the country and don't think the life terrible," he
+replied.
+
+"I... that's different. Why speak of me? I don't want any other
+life, and can't, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young
+society woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her
+life, all alone- for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what
+poor resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best
+society. There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne...."
+
+"I don't like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all," said Prince
+Andrew.
+
+"No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she's much to be
+pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don't need her,
+and she's even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am
+even more so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She
+and Michael Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle
+and kind, because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne
+says: 'We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as
+for the good we have done them.' Father took her when she was homeless
+after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father
+likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads
+splendidly."
+
+"To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father's character sometimes
+makes things trying for you, doesn't it?" Prince Andrew asked
+suddenly.
+
+Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question.
+
+"For me? For me?... Trying for me!..." said she.
+
+"He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he's getting
+very trying," said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their
+father in order to puzzle or test his sister.
+
+"You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a kind of
+intellectual pride," said the princess, following the train of her own
+thoughts rather than the trend of the conversation- "and that's a
+great sin. How can one judge Father? But even if one might, what
+feeling except veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I
+am so contented and happy with him. I only wish you were all as
+happy as I am."
+
+Her brother shook his head incredulously.
+
+"The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth,
+Andrew... is Father's way of treating religious subjects. I don't
+understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what
+is as clear as day, and can go so far astray. That is the only thing
+that makes me unhappy. But even in this I can see lately a shade of
+improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was
+a monk he received and had a long talk with."
+
+"Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your
+powder," said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.
+
+"Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear me.
+Andrew..." she said timidly after a moment's silence, "I have a
+great favor to ask of you."
+
+"What is it, dear?"
+
+"No- promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble
+and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise,
+Andrusha!..." said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet
+taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were
+the subject of her request and must not be shown before the request
+was granted.
+
+She looked timidly at her brother.
+
+"Even if it were a great deal of trouble..." answered Prince Andrew,
+as if guessing what it was about.
+
+"Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as
+you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father's father, our
+grandfather, wore it in all his wars." (She still did not take out
+what she was holding in her reticule.) "So you promise?"
+
+"Of course. What is it?"
+
+"Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will
+never take it off. Do you promise?"
+
+"If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won't break my neck...
+To please you..." said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing the
+pained expression his joke had brought to his sister's face, he
+repented and added: "I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad."
+
+"Against your will He will save and have mercy on you and bring
+you to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace," said she in a
+voice trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before
+her brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour
+in a gold setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.
+
+She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew.
+
+"Please, Andrew, for my sake!..."
+
+Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes
+lit up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her
+brother would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew
+understood, crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of
+tenderness, for he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.
+
+"Thank you, my dear." She kissed him on the forehead and sat down
+again on the sofa. They were silent for a while.
+
+"As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you
+always used to be. Don't judge Lise harshly," she began. "She is so
+sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one."
+
+"I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Masha, or
+blamed her. Why do you say all this to me?"
+
+Red patches appeared on Princess Mary's face and she was silent as
+if she felt guilty.
+
+"I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to.
+And I am sorry for that," he went on.
+
+The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried
+to say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the
+little princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her
+forebodings about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had
+complained of her fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After
+crying she had fallen asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister.
+
+"Know this, Masha: I can't reproach, have not reproached, and
+never shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach
+myself with anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in
+whatever circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the
+truth... if you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No!
+But why this is so I don't know..."
+
+As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed
+her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and
+unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over
+her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.
+
+"Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or- go and wake and I'll come
+in a moment. Petrushka!" he called to his valet: "Come here, take
+these away. Put this on the seat and this to the right."
+
+Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said:
+"Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him
+to give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have
+been answered."
+
+"Well, may be!" said Prince Andrew. "Go, Masha; I'll come
+immediately."
+
+On the way to his sister's room, in the passage which connected
+one wing with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne
+smiling sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic
+and artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.
+
+"Oh! I thought you were in your room," she said, for some reason
+blushing and dropping her eyes.
+
+Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger
+suddenly came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at
+her forehead and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt
+that the Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he
+reached his sister's room his wife was already awake and her merry
+voice, hurrying one word after another, came through the open door.
+She was speaking as usual in French, and as if after long
+self-restraint she wished to make up for lost time.
+
+"No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false curls and her
+mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old
+age.... Ha, ha, ha! Mary!"
+
+This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same laugh
+Prince Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of
+others some five times. He entered the room softly. The little
+princess, plump and rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work
+in her hands, talking incessantly, repeating Petersburg
+reminiscences and even phrases. Prince Andrew came up, stroked her
+hair, and asked if she felt rested after their journey. She answered
+him and continued her chatter.
+
+The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn
+night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole.
+Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense
+house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The
+domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to
+the young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in
+the reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
+Princess Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been
+called to his father's study as the latter wished to say good-by to
+him alone. All were waiting for them to come out.
+
+When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age
+spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but
+his son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round.
+
+"Going?" And he went on writing.
+
+"I've come to say good-by."
+
+"Kiss me here," and he touched his cheek: "Thanks, thanks!"
+
+"What do you thank me for?"
+
+"For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman's apron
+strings. The Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!" And he went
+on writing, so that his quill spluttered and squeaked. "If you have
+anything to say, say it. These two things can be done together," he
+added.
+
+"About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your
+hands..."
+
+"Why talk nonsense? Say what you want."
+
+"When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an accoucheur....
+Let him be here...."
+
+The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed
+his stern eyes on his son.
+
+"I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work," said
+Prince Andrew, evidently confused. "I know that out of a million cases
+only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been
+telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened."
+
+"Hm... Hm..." muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what
+he was writing. "I'll do it."
+
+He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to
+laugh.
+
+"It's a bad business, eh?"
+
+"What is bad, Father?"
+
+"The wife!" said the old prince, briefly and significantly.
+
+"I don't understand!" said Prince Andrew.
+
+"No, it can't be helped, lad," said the prince. "They're all like
+that; one can't unmarry. Don't be afraid; I won't tell anyone, but you
+know it yourself."
+
+He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it,
+looked straight into his son's face with keen eyes which seemed to see
+through him, and again laughed his frigid laugh.
+
+The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him.
+The old man continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and
+throwing down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed
+rapidity.
+
+"What's to be done? She's pretty! I will do everything. Make your
+mind easy," said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter.
+
+Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his
+father understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his
+son.
+
+"Listen!" said he; "don't worry about your wife: what can be done
+shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilarionovich.~^ I
+have written that he should make use of you in proper places and not
+keep you long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember
+and like him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all
+right- serve him. Nicholas Bolkonski's son need not serve under anyone
+if he is in disfavor. Now come here."
+
+^~ Kutuzov.
+
+He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his
+son was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised
+the lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled
+with his bold, tall, close handwriting.
+
+"I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs;
+hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond
+and a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of
+Suvorov's wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for you
+to read when I am gone. You will find them useful."
+
+Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long
+time yet. He felt that he must not say it.
+
+"I will do it all, Father," he said.
+
+"Well, now, good-by!" He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced
+him. "Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt
+me, your old father..." he paused unexpectedly, and then in a
+querulous voice suddenly shrieked: "but if I hear that you have not
+behaved like a son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!"
+
+"You need not have said that to me, Father," said the son with a
+smile.
+
+The old man was silent.
+
+"I also wanted to ask you," continued Prince Andrew, "if I'm
+killed and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you-
+as I said yesterday... let him grow up with you.... Please."
+
+"Not let the wife have him?" said the old man, and laughed.
+
+They stood silent, facing one another. The old man's sharp eyes were
+fixed straight on his son's. Something twitched in the lower part of
+the old prince's face.
+
+"We've said good-by. Go!" he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry
+voice, opening his door.
+
+"What is it? What?" asked both princesses when they saw for a moment
+at the door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white
+dressing gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.
+
+Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.
+
+"Well!" he said, turning to his wife.
+
+And this "Well!" sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying,:
+"Now go through your performance."
+
+"Andrew, already!" said the little princess, turning pale and
+looking with dismay at her husband.
+
+He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.
+
+He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her
+face, and carefully placed her in an easy chair.
+
+"Adieu, Mary," said he gently to his sister, taking her by the
+hand and kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.
+
+The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne
+chafing her temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law,
+still looked with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through
+which Prince Andrew had gone and made the sign of the cross in his
+direction. From the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent
+sound of the old man angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince
+Andrew gone when the study door opened quickly and the stern figure of
+the old man in the white dressing gown looked out.
+
+"Gone? That's all right!" said he; and looking angrily at the
+unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed
+the door.
+
+BOOK TWO: 1805
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and
+towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly
+arriving from Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and
+burdening the inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the
+headquarters of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.
+
+On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just
+reached Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be
+inspected by the commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance
+of the locality and surroundings- fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled
+roofs, and hills in the distance- and despite the fact that the
+inhabitants (who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not
+Russians, the regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment
+preparing for an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.
+
+On the evening of the last day's march an order had been received
+that the commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march.
+Though the words of the order were not clear to the regimental
+commander, and the question arose whether the troops were to be in
+marching order or not, it was decided at a consultation between the
+battalion commanders to present the regiment in parade order, on the
+principle that it is always better to "bow too low than not bow low
+enough." So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending
+and cleaning all night long without closing their eyes, while the
+adjutants and company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by
+morning the regiment- instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it
+had been on its last march the day before- presented a well-ordered
+array of two thousand men each of whom knew his place and his duty,
+had every button and every strap in place, and shone with cleanliness.
+And not only externally was all in order, but had it pleased the
+commander in chief to look under the uniforms he would have found on
+every man a clean shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number of
+articles, "awl, soap, and all," as the soldiers say. There was only
+one circumstance concerning which no one could be at ease. It was
+the state of the soldiers' boots. More than half the men's boots
+were in holes. But this defect was not due to any fault of the
+regimental commander, for in spite of repeated demands boots had not
+been issued by the Austrian commissariat, and the regiment had marched
+some seven hundred miles.
+
+The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and
+thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider
+from chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new
+uniform showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold
+epaulettes which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive
+shoulders. He had the air of a man happily performing one of the
+most solemn duties of his life. He walked about in front of the line
+and at every step pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was
+plain that the commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and
+that his whole mind was engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to
+indicate that, besides military matters, social interests and the fair
+sex occupied no small part of his thoughts.
+
+"Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?" he said, addressing one of the
+battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain
+that they both felt happy). "We had our hands full last night.
+However, I think the regiment is not a bad one, eh?"
+
+The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.
+
+"It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin Meadow."
+
+"What?" asked the commander.
+
+At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had
+been posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an
+aide-decamp followed by a Cossack.
+
+The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been
+clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief
+wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on
+the march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation
+whatever.
+
+A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutuzov the
+day before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army
+of the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering
+this junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of
+his view, to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the
+troops arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the
+regiment; so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the
+commander in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know
+these circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that
+the men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and
+that the commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On
+hearing this the regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged
+his shoulders, and spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.
+
+"A fine mess we've made of it!" he remarked.
+
+"There now! Didn't I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if it was
+said 'on the march' it meant in greatcoats?" said he reproachfully
+to the battalion commander. "Oh, my God!" he added, stepping
+resolutely forward. "Company commanders!" he shouted in a voice
+accustomed to command. "Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?"
+he asked the aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently
+relating to the personage he was referring to.
+
+"In an hour's time, I should say."
+
+"Shall we have time to change clothes?"
+
+"I don't know, General...."
+
+The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered
+the soldiers to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders
+ran off to their companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the
+greatcoats were not in very good condition), and instantly the squares
+that had up to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and
+stretch and hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were running to and
+fro, throwing up their knapsacks with a jerk of their shoulders and
+pulling the straps over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and
+drawing the sleeves on with upraised arms.
+
+In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had
+become gray instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his
+jerky steps to the front of the regiment and examined it from a
+distance.
+
+"Whatever is this? This!" he shouted and stood still. "Commander
+of the third company!"
+
+"Commander of the third company wanted by the general!...
+commander to the general... third company to the commander." The words
+passed along the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing
+officer.
+
+When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination
+in a cry of: "The general to the third company," the missing officer
+appeared from behind his company and, though he was a middle-aged
+man and not in the habit of running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on
+his toes toward the general. The captain's face showed the
+uneasiness of a schoolboy who is told to repeat a lesson he has not
+learned. Spots appeared on his nose, the redness of which was
+evidently due to intemperance, and his mouth twitched nervously. The
+general looked the captain up and down as he came up panting,
+slackening his pace as he approached.
+
+"You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?"
+shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and
+pointing at a soldier in the ranks of the third company in a greatcoat
+of bluish cloth, which contrasted with the others. "What have you been
+after? The commander in chief is expected and you leave your place?
+Eh? I'll teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade....
+Eh...?"
+
+The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior,
+pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this
+pressure lay his only hope of salvation.
+
+"Well, why don't you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as
+a Hungarian?" said the commander with an austere gibe.
+
+"Your excellency..."
+
+"Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your
+excellency?... nobody knows."
+
+"Your excellency, it's the officer Dolokhov, who has been reduced to
+the ranks," said the captain softly.
+
+"Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier?
+If a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the
+others."
+
+"Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march."
+
+"Gave him leave? Leave? That's just like you young men," said the
+regimental commander cooling down a little. "Leave indeed.... One says
+a word to you and you... What?" he added with renewed irritation, "I
+beg you to dress your men decently."
+
+And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his
+jerky steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display
+of anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further
+excuse for wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished
+badge, at another because his line was not straight, he reached the
+third company.
+
+"H-o-o-w are you standing? Where's your leg? Your leg?" shouted
+the commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there
+were still five men between him and Dolokhov with his bluish-gray
+uniform.
+
+Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with
+his clear, insolent eyes in the general's face.
+
+"Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his
+coat... the ras..." he did not finish.
+
+"General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure..."
+Dolokhov hurriedly interrupted.
+
+"No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!"
+
+"Not bound to endure insults," Dolokhov concluded in loud, ringing
+tones.
+
+The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became
+silent, angrily pulling down his tight scarf.
+
+"I request you to have the goodness to change your coat," he said as
+he turned away.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"He's coming!" shouted the signaler at that moment.
+
+The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the
+stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle,
+righted himself, drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute
+countenance, opening his mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment
+fluttered like a bird preening its plumage and became motionless.
+
+"Att-ention!" shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking
+voice which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment,
+and welcome for the approaching chief.
+
+Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a
+high, light blue Viennese caleche, slightly creaking on its springs
+and drawn by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the caleche galloped
+the suite and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian
+general, in a white uniform that looked strange among the Russian
+black ones. The caleche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov
+and the Austrian general were talking in low voices and Kutuzov smiled
+slightly as treading heavily he stepped down from the carriage just as
+if those two thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the
+regimental commander did not exist.
+
+The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as
+with a jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence
+the feeble voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment
+roared, "Health to your ex... len... len... lency!" and again all
+became silent. At first Kutuzov stood still while the regiment
+moved; then he and the general in white, accompanied by the suite,
+walked between the ranks.
+
+From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief
+and devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and
+from the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals,
+bending forward and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and
+from the way he darted forward at every word or gesture of the
+commander in chief, it was evident that he performed his duty as a
+subordinate with even greater zeal than his duty as a commander.
+Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its commander the
+regiment, in comparison with others that had reached Braunau at the
+same time, was in splendid condition. There were only 217 sick and
+stragglers. Everything was in good order except the boots.
+
+Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few
+friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war,
+sometimes also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several
+times shook his head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian
+general with an expression which seemed to say that he was not blaming
+anyone, but could not help noticing what a bad state of things it was.
+The regimental commander ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to
+miss a single word of the commander in chief's regarding the regiment.
+Behind Kutuzov, at a distance that allowed every softly spoken word to
+be heard, followed some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen
+talked among themselves and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the
+commander in chief walked a handsome adjutant. This was Prince
+Bolkonski. Beside him was his comrade Nesvitski, a tall staff officer,
+extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes.
+Nesvitski could hardly keep from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar
+officer who walked beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and
+without a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes,
+watched the regimental commander's back and mimicked his every
+movement. Each time the commander started and bent forward, the hussar
+started and bent forward in exactly the same manner. Nesvitski laughed
+and nudged the others to make them look at the wag.
+
+Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which
+were starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the
+third company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected
+this, involuntarily came closer to him.
+
+"Ah, Timokhin!" said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had
+been reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.
+
+One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself
+more than Timokhin had done when he was reprimanded by the
+regimental commander, but now that the commander in chief addressed
+him he drew himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not
+have sustained it had the commander in chief continued to look at him,
+and so Kutuzov, who evidently understood his case and wished him
+nothing but good, quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile
+flitting over his scarred and puffy face.
+
+"Another Ismail comrade," said he. "A brave officer! Are you
+satisfied with him?" he asked the regimental commander.
+
+And the latter- unconscious that he was being reflected in the
+hussar officer as in a looking glass- started, moved forward, and
+answered: "Highly satisfied, your excellency!"
+
+"We all have our weaknesses," said Kutuzov smiling and walking
+away from him. "He used to have a predilection for Bacchus."
+
+The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this
+and did not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of
+the red-nosed captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his
+expression and pose with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help
+laughing. Kutuzov turned round. The officer evidently had complete
+control of his face, and while Kutuzov was turning managed to make a
+grimace and then assume a most serious, deferential, and innocent
+expression.
+
+The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered, apparently
+trying to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from
+among the suite and said in French:
+
+"You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, reduced to the
+ranks in this regiment."
+
+"Where is Dolokhov?" asked Kutuzov.
+
+Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier's gray greatcoat,
+did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired
+soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks,
+went up to the commander in chief, and presented arms.
+
+"Have you a complaint to make?" Kutuzov asked with a slight frown.
+
+"This is Dolokhov," said Prince Andrew.
+
+"Ah!" said Kutuzov. "I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your
+duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan't forget you if you
+deserve well."
+
+The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as
+boldly as they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by
+their expression to tear open the veil of convention that separates
+a commander in chief so widely from a private.
+
+"One thing I ask of your excellency," Dolokhov said in his firm,
+ringing, deliberate voice. "I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault
+and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!"
+
+Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had
+turned from Captain Timokhin again flitted over his face. He turned
+away with a grimace as if to say that everything Dolokhov had said
+to him and everything he could say had long been known to him, that he
+was weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away
+and went to the carriage.
+
+The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their
+appointed quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and
+clothes and to rest after their hard marches.
+
+"You won't bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?" said the
+regimental commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its
+
+quarters and riding up to Captain Timokhin who was walking in front.
+(The regimental commander's face now that the inspection was happily
+over beamed with irrepressible delight.) "It's in the Emperor's
+service... it can't be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on
+parade... I am the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very
+pleased!" And he held out his hand to the captain.
+
+"Don't mention it, General, as if I'd be so bold!" replied the
+captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where
+two front teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end
+of a gun at Ismail.
+
+"And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won't forget him- he may be quite
+easy. And tell me, please- I've been meaning to ask- how is to ask-
+how is he behaving himself, and in general..."
+
+"As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your
+excellency; but his character..." said Timokhin.
+
+"And what about his character?" asked the regimental commander.
+
+"It's different on different days," answered the captain. "One day
+he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he's a
+wild beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew."
+
+"Oh, well, well!" remarked the regimental commander. "Still, one
+must have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important
+connections... Well, then, you just..."
+
+"I will, your excellency," said Timokhin, showing by his smile
+that he understood his commander's wish.
+
+"Well, of course, of course!"
+
+The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the ranks and,
+reining in his horse, said to him:
+
+"After the next affair... epaulettes."
+
+Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the
+mocking smile on his lips change.
+
+"Well, that's all right," continued the regimental commander. "A cup
+of vodka for the men from me," he added so that the soldiers could
+hear. "I thank you all! God be praised!" and he rode past that company
+and overtook the next one.
+
+"Well, he's really a good fellow, one can serve under him," said
+Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.
+
+"In a word, a hearty one..." said the subaltern, laughing (the
+regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).
+
+The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected
+the soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers' voices could
+be heard on every side.
+
+"And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?"
+
+"And so he is! Quite blind!"
+
+"No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands...
+he noticed everything..."
+
+"When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..."
+
+"And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were
+smeared with chalk- as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as
+they do the guns."
+
+"I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You
+were near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau."
+
+"Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn't
+know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are
+putting them down. When they've been put down, the war with Buonaparte
+will begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you're a fool.
+You'd better listen more carefully!"
+
+"What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is
+turning into the village already... they will have their buckwheat
+cooked before we reach our quarters."
+
+"Give me a biscuit, you devil!"
+
+"And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That's just it, friend!
+Ah, well, never mind, here you are."
+
+"They might call a halt here or we'll have to do another four
+miles without eating."
+
+"Wasn't it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still
+and are drawn along."
+
+"And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all
+seemed to be Poles- all under the Russian crown- but here they're
+all regular Germans."
+
+"Singers to the front " came the captain's order.
+
+And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A
+drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and
+flourishing his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers' song, commencing
+with the words: "Morning dawned, the sun was rising," and
+concluding: "On then, brothers, on to glory, led by Father
+Kamenski." This song had been composed in the Turkish campaign and now
+being sung in Austria, the only change being that the words "Father
+Kamenski" were replaced by "Father Kutuzov."
+
+Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms
+as if flinging something to the ground, the drummer- a lean,
+handsome soldier of forty- looked sternly at the singers and screwed
+up his eyes. Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on
+him, he raised both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but
+precious object above his head and, holding it there for some seconds,
+suddenly flung it down and began:
+
+"Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!"
+
+"Oh, my bower new...!" chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet
+player, in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the
+front and, walking backwards before the company, jerked his
+shoulders and flourished his castanets as if threatening someone.
+The soldiers, swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously,
+marched with long steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the
+creaking of springs, and the tramp of horses' hoofs were heard.
+Kutuzov and his suite were returning to the town. The commander in
+chief made a sign that the men should continue to march at ease, and
+he and all his suite showed pleasure at the sound of the singing and
+the sight of the dancing soldier and the gay and smartly marching men.
+In the second file from the right flank, beside which the carriage
+passed the company, a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted
+notice. It was Dolokhov marching with particular grace and boldness in
+time to the song and looking at those driving past as if he pitied all
+who were not at that moment marching with the company. The hussar
+cornet of Kutuzov's suite who had mimicked the regimental commander,
+fell back from the carriage and rode up to Dolokhov.
+
+Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to
+the wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had met Dolokhov abroad as a
+private and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutuzov
+had spoken to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the
+cordiality of an old friend.
+
+"My dear fellow, how are you?" said he through the singing, making
+his horse keep pace with the company.
+
+"How am I?" Dolokhov answered coldly. "I am as you see."
+
+The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy
+gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the intentional coldness of
+Dolokhov's reply.
+
+"And how do you get on with the officers?" inquired Zherkov.
+
+"All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto
+the staff?"
+
+"I was attached; I'm on duty."
+
+Both were silent.
+
+"She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve," went the
+song, arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness.
+Their conversation would probably have been different but for the
+effect of that song.
+
+"Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?" asked Dolokhov.
+
+"The devil only knows! They say so."
+
+"I'm glad," answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the song
+demanded.
+
+"I say, come round some evening and we'll have a game of faro!" said
+Zherkov.
+
+"Why, have you too much money?"
+
+"Do come."
+
+"I can't. I've sworn not to. I won't drink and won't play till I get
+reinstated."
+
+"Well, that's only till the first engagement."
+
+"We shall see."
+
+They were again silent.
+
+"Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the
+staff..."
+
+Dolokhov smiled. "Don't trouble. If I want anything, I won't beg-
+I'll take it!"
+
+"Well, never mind; I only..."
+
+"And I only..."
+
+"Good-by."
+
+"Good health..."
+
+_1 "It's a long, long way.<br>
+To my native land..."
+
+Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly
+from foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down,
+galloped past the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping
+time to the song.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Austrian general into
+his private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers
+relating to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the
+letters that had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in
+command of the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the
+room with the required papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian member of
+the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the table on which a plan was spread
+out.
+
+"Ah!..." said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this
+exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with
+the conversation in French.
+
+"All I can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of
+expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each
+deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened
+with pleasure to his own voice. "All I can say, General, is that if
+the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the
+Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago. I should long
+ago have joined the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me
+personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme command
+of the army into the hands of a better informed and more skillful
+general- of whom Austria has so many- and to lay down all this heavy
+responsibility. But circumstances are sometimes too strong for us,
+General."
+
+And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, "You are quite at
+liberty not to believe me and I don't even care whether you do or not,
+but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole
+point."
+
+The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to
+reply in the same tone.
+
+"On the contrary," he said, in a querulous and angry tone that
+contrasted with his flattering words, "on the contrary, your
+excellency's participation in the common action is highly valued by
+His Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the
+splendid Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have
+been accustomed to win in their battles," he concluded his evidently
+prearranged sentence.
+
+Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.
+
+"But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with
+which His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine
+that the Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a
+leader as General Mack, have by now already gained a decisive
+victory and no longer need our aid," said Kutuzov.
+
+The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an
+Austrian defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the
+unfavorable rumors that were afloat, and so Kutuzov's suggestion of an
+Austrian victory sounded much like irony. But Kutuzov went on
+blandly smiling with the same expression, which seemed to say that
+he had a right to suppose so. And, in fact, the last letter he had
+received from Mack's army informed him of a victory and stated
+strategically the position of the army was very favorable.
+
+"Give me that letter," said Kutuzov turning to Prince Andrew.
+"Please have a look at it"- and Kutuzov with an ironical smile about
+the corners of his mouth read to the Austrian general the following
+passage, in German, from the Archduke Ferdinand's letter:
+
+We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men
+with which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech.
+Also, as we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage
+of commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not
+cross the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line
+of communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his
+intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful
+ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the
+Imperial Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in
+conjunction with it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the
+fate he deserves.
+
+Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at
+the member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.
+
+"But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect
+the worst," said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have
+done with jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round
+at the aide-de-camp.
+
+"Excuse me, General," interrupted Kutuzov, also turning to Prince
+Andrew. "Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlovski all the reports
+from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and here is
+one from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these," he
+said, handing him several papers, "make a neat memorandum in French
+out of all this, showing all the news we have had of the movements
+of the Austrian army, and then give it to his excellency."
+
+Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from
+the first not only what had been said but also what Kutuzov would have
+liked to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both,
+stepped softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.
+
+Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia,
+he had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his
+face, in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of
+his former affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man
+who has time to think of the impression he makes on others, but is
+occupied with agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed
+more satisfaction with himself and those around him, his smile and
+glance were brighter and more attractive.
+
+Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very
+kindly, promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the
+other adjutants, and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more
+serious commissions. From Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade,
+Prince Andrew's father.
+
+Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his
+industry, firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to
+have such a subordinate by me.
+
+On Kutuzov's staff, among his fellow officers and in the army
+generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two
+quite opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be
+different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great
+things of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with
+them Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority,
+disliked him and considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But
+among these people Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that
+they respected and even feared him.
+
+Coming out of Kutuzov's room into the waiting room with the papers
+in his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp
+on duty, Kozlovski, who was sitting at the window with a book.
+
+"Well, Prince?" asked Kozlovski.
+
+"I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not
+advancing."
+
+"And why is it?"
+
+Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Any news from Mack?"
+
+"No."
+
+"If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come."
+
+"Probably," said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.
+
+But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the
+order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head,
+who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door.
+Prince Andrew stopped short.
+
+"Commander in Chief Kutuzov?" said the newly arrived general
+speaking quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and
+advancing straight toward the inner door.
+
+"The commander in chief is engaged," said Kozlovski, going hurriedly
+up to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door. "Whom
+shall I announce?"
+
+The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlovski, who was
+rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.
+
+"The commander in chief is engaged," repeated Kozlovski calmly.
+
+The general's face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He
+took out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out
+the leaf, gave it to Kozlovski, stepped quickly to the window, and
+threw himself into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if
+asking, "Why do they look at me?" Then he lifted his head, stretched
+his neck as if he intended to say something, but immediately, with
+affected indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer
+sound which immediately broke off. The door of the private room opened
+and Kutuzov appeared in the doorway. The general with the bandaged
+head bent forward as though running away from some danger, and, making
+long, quick strides with his thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.
+
+"Vous voyez le malheureux Mack," he uttered in a broken voice.
+
+Kutuzov's face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly
+immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a
+wave and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head
+respectfully, closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before
+him, and closed the door himself behind him.
+
+The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been
+beaten and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be
+correct. Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various
+directions with orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had
+hitherto been inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.
+
+Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief
+interest lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack
+and heard the details of his disaster he understood that half the
+campaign was lost, understood all the difficulties of the Russian
+army's position, and vividly imagined what awaited it and the part
+he would have to play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the
+thought of the humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week's
+time he might, perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian
+encounter with the French since Suvorov met them. He feared that
+Bonaparte's genius might outweigh all the courage of the Russian
+troops, and at the same time could not admit the idea of his hero
+being disgraced.
+
+Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward
+his room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the
+corridor he met Nesvitski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag
+Zherkov; they were as usual laughing.
+
+"Why are you so glum?" asked Nesvitski noticing Prince Andrew's pale
+face and glittering eyes.
+
+"There's nothing to be gay about," answered Bolkonski.
+
+Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov, there came toward
+them from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian
+general who on Kutuzov's staff in charge of the provisioning of the
+Russian army, and the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived
+the previous evening. There was room enough in the wide corridor for
+the generals to pass the three officers quite easily, but Zherkov,
+pushing Nesvitski aside with his arm, said in a breathless voice,
+
+"They're coming!... they're coming!... Stand aside, make way, please
+make way!"
+
+The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid
+embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkov there suddenly
+appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.
+
+"Your excellency," said he in German, stepping forward and
+addressing the Austrian general, "I have the honor to congratulate
+you."
+
+He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with
+the other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.
+
+The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing
+the seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment's
+attention. He screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening.
+
+"I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived,
+quite well, only a little bruised just here," he added, pointing
+with a beaming smile to his head.
+
+The general frowned, turned away, and went on.
+
+"Gott, wie naiv!"~^ said he angrily, after he had gone a few steps.
+
+^~ "Good God, what simplicity!"
+
+Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but
+Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and
+turned to Zherkov. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of
+Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the
+Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkov's untimely jest.
+
+"If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself," he said
+sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, "I can't prevent
+your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in
+my presence, I will teach you to behave yourself."
+
+Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst that they
+gazed at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes.
+
+"What's the matter? I only congratulated them," said Zherkov.
+
+"I am not jesting with you; please be silent!" cried Bolkonski,
+and taking Nesvitski's arm he left Zherkov, who did not know what to
+say.
+
+"Come, what's the matter, old fellow?" said Nesvitski trying to
+soothe him.
+
+"What's the matter?" exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in his
+excitement. "Don't you understand that either we are officers
+serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and
+grieving at the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely
+lackeys who care nothing for their master's business. Quarante mille
+hommes massacres et l'armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la
+le mot pour rire,"~^ he said, as if strengthening his views by this
+French sentence. "C' est bien pour un garcon de rein comme cet
+individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour
+vous.~^ Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself in this way," he
+added in Russian- but pronouncing the word with a French accent-
+having noticed that Zherkov could still hear him.
+
+^~ "Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies destroyed,
+and you find that a cause for jesting!"
+
+^~ "It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow of whom
+you have made a friend, but not for you, not for you."
+
+He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he
+turned and went out of the corridor.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The
+squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served as a cadet was quartered in
+the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were
+assigned to cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known
+throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov. Cadet
+Rostov, ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had
+lived with the squadron commander.
+
+On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the
+news of Mack's defeat, the camp life of the officers of this
+squadron was proceeding as usual. Denisov, who had been losing at
+cards all night, had not yet come home when Rostov rode back early
+in the morning from a foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet
+uniform, with a jerk to his horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg
+over the saddle with a supple youthful movement, stood for a moment in
+the stirrup as if loathe to part from his horse, and at last sprang
+down and called to his orderly.
+
+"Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!" said he to the hussar who rushed up
+headlong to the horse. "Walk him up and down, my dear fellow," he
+continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted
+young people show to everyone when they are happy.
+
+"Yes, your excellency," answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his
+head.
+
+"Mind, walk him up and down well!"
+
+Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarenko had
+already thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse's
+head. It was evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that
+it paid to serve him. Rostov patted the horse's neck and then his
+flank, and lingered for a moment.
+
+"Splendid! What a horse he will be!" he thought with a smile, and
+holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the
+porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork
+in hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his
+face immediately brightened on seeing Rostov. "Schon gut Morgen! Schon
+gut Morgen!"~^ he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased to
+greet the young man.
+
+^~ "A very good morning! A very good morning!"
+
+"Schon fleissig?"~^ said Rostov with the same gay brotherly smile
+which did not leave his eager face. "Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen!
+Kaiser Alexander hoch!"~^ said he, quoting words often repeated by
+the German landlord.
+
+^~ "Busy already?"
+
+^~ "Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians! Hurrah
+for Emperor Alexander!"
+
+The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and
+waving it above his head cried:
+
+"Und die ganze Welt hoch!"~^
+
+^~ "And hurrah for the whole world!"
+
+Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German and ctied
+laughing, "Und vivat die ganze Welt!" Though neither the German
+cleaning his cowshed nor Rostov back with his platoon from foraging
+for hay had any reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with
+joyful delight and brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of
+their mutual affection, and parted smiling, the German returning to
+his cowshed and Rostov going to the cottage he occupied with Denisov.
+
+"What about your master?" he asked Lavrushka, Denisov's orderly,
+whom all the regiment knew for a rogue.
+
+"Hasn't been in since the evening. Must have been losing,"
+answered Lavrushka. "I know by now, if he wins he comes back early
+to brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it means he's
+lost and will come back in a rage. Will you have coffee?"
+
+"Yes, bring some."
+
+Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. "He's coming!"
+said he. "Now for trouble!" Rostov looked out of the window and saw
+Denisov coming home. Denisov was a small man with a red face,
+sparkling black eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore
+an unfastened cloak, wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a
+crumpled shako on the back of his head. He came up to the porch
+gloomily, hanging his head.
+
+"Lavwuska!" he shouted loudly and angrily, "take it off, blockhead!"
+
+"Well, I am taking it off," replied Lavrushka's voice.
+
+"Ah, you're up already," said Denisov, entering the room.
+
+"Long ago," answered Rostov, "I have already been for the hay, and
+have seen Fraulein Mathilde."
+
+"Weally! And I've been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a
+damned fool!" cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r's. "Such ill
+luck! Such ill luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on.
+Hullo there! Tea!"
+
+Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong
+teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his
+thick tangled black hair.
+
+"And what devil made me go to that wat?" (an officer nicknamed
+"the rat") he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both
+hands. "Just fancy, he didn't let me win a single cahd, not one cahd."
+
+He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in
+his fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while
+he continued to shout.
+
+"He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles
+it; gives the singles and snatches the doubles!"
+
+He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it
+away. Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked
+cheerfully with his glittering, black eyes at Rostov.
+
+"If at least we had some women here; but there's nothing foh one
+to do but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who's
+there?" he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy
+boots and the clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a
+respectful cough.
+
+"The squadron quartermaster!" said Lavrushka.
+
+Denisov's face puckered still more.
+
+"Wetched!" he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in
+it. "Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove
+the purse undah the pillow," he said, and went out to the
+quartermaster.
+
+Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new
+coins in separate piles, began counting them.
+
+"Ah! Telyanin! How d'ye do? They plucked me last night," came
+Denisov's voice from the next room.
+
+"Where? At Bykov's, at the rat's... I knew it," replied a piping
+voice, and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the same
+squadron, entered the room.
+
+Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little
+hand which was offered him. Telyanin for some reason had been
+transferred from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very
+well in the regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested him
+and was unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to
+the man.
+
+"Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?" he asked. (Rook
+was a young horse Telyanin had sold to Rostov.)
+
+The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in
+the face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.
+
+"I saw you riding this morning..." he added.
+
+"Oh, he's all right, a good horse," answered Rostov, though the
+horse for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half
+that sum. "He's begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg," he
+added.
+
+"The hoof's cracked! That's nothing. I'll teach you what to do and
+show you what kind of rivet to use."
+
+"Yes, please do," said Rostov.
+
+"I'll show you, I'll show you! It's not a secret. And it's a horse
+you'll thank me for."
+
+"Then I'll have it brought round," said Rostov wishing to avoid
+Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.
+
+In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on the
+threshold facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing
+Rostov, Denisov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder
+with his thumb to the room where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned
+and gave a shudder of disgust.
+
+"Ugh! I don't like that fellow"' he said, regardless of the
+quartermaster's presence.
+
+Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: "Nor do I, but
+what's one to do?" and, having given his order, he returned to
+Telyanin.
+
+Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostov had
+left him, rubbing his small white hands.
+
+"Well there certainly are disgusting people," thought Rostov as he
+entered.
+
+"Have you told them to bring the horse?" asked Telyanin, getting
+up and looking carelessly about him.
+
+"I have."
+
+"Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov about
+yesterday's order. Have you got it, Denisov?"
+
+"Not yet. But where are you off to?"
+
+"I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse," said Telyanin.
+
+They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant
+explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.
+
+When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on
+the table. Denisov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a
+sheet of paper. He looked gloomily in Rostov's face and said: "I am
+witing to her."
+
+He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and,
+evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to
+write, told Rostov the contents of his letter.
+
+"You see, my fwiend," he said, "we sleep when we don't love. We
+are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God,
+one is pua' as on the first day of cweation... Who's that now? Send
+him to the devil, I'm busy!" he shouted to Lavrushka, who went up to
+him not in the least abashed.
+
+"Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It's the
+quartermaster for the money."
+
+Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.
+
+"Wetched business," he muttered to himself. "How much is left in the
+puhse?" he asked, turning to Rostov.
+
+"Seven new and three old imperials."
+
+"Oh, it's wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you
+sca'cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh," he shouted to Lavrushka.
+
+"Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know," said
+Rostov, blushing.
+
+"Don't like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don't," growled
+Denisov.
+
+"But if you won't accept money from me like a comrade, you will
+offend me. Really I have some," Rostov repeated.
+
+"No, I tell you."
+
+And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.
+
+"Where have you put it, Wostov?"
+
+"Under the lower pillow."
+
+"It's not there."
+
+Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.
+
+"That's a miwacle."
+
+"Wait, haven't you dropped it?" said Rostov, picking up the
+pillows one at a time and shaking them.
+
+He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.
+
+"Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you
+kept it under your head like a treasure," said Rostov. "I put it
+just here. Where is it?" he asked, turning to Lavrushka.
+
+"I haven't been in the room. It must be where you put it."
+
+"But it isn't?..."
+
+"You're always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget
+it. Feel in your pockets."
+
+"No, if I hadn't thought of it being a treasure," said Rostov,
+"but I remember putting it there."
+
+Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and
+under the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of
+the room. Denisov silently watched Lavrushka's movements, and when the
+latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found
+Denisov glanced at Rostov.
+
+"Wostov, you've not been playing schoolboy twicks..."
+
+Rostov felt Denisov's gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and
+instantly dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested
+somewhere below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not
+draw breath.
+
+"And there hasn't been anyone in the room except the lieutenant
+and yourselves. It must be here somewhere," said Lavrushka.
+
+"Now then, you devil's puppet, look alive and hunt for it!"
+shouted Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man
+with a threatening gesture. "If the purse isn't found I'll flog you,
+I'll flog you all."
+
+Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his coat, buckled
+on his saber, and put on his cap.
+
+"I must have that purse, I tell you," shouted Denisov, shaking his
+orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.
+
+"Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it," said Rostov,
+going toward the door without raising his eyes. Denisov paused,
+thought a moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostov hinted
+at, seized his arm.
+
+"Nonsense!" he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood
+out like cords. "You are mad, I tell you. I won't allow it. The
+purse is here! I'll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be found."
+
+"I know who has taken it," repeated Rostov in an unsteady voice, and
+went to the door.
+
+"And I tell you, don't you dahe to do it!" shouted Denisov,
+rushing at the cadet to restrain him.
+
+But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though
+Denisov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his
+face.
+
+"Do you understand what you're saying?" he said in a trembling
+voice. "There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it
+is not so, then..."
+
+He could not finish, and ran out of the room.
+
+"Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody," were the last words
+Rostov heard.
+
+Rostov went to Telyanin's quarters.
+
+"The master is not in, he's gone to headquarters," said Telyanin's
+orderly. "Has something happened?" he added, surprised at the
+cadet's troubled face.
+
+"No, nothing."
+
+"You've only just missed him," said the orderly.
+
+The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and
+Rostov, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was
+an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to
+it and saw Telyanin's horse at the porch.
+
+In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish
+of sausages and a bottle of wine.
+
+"Ah, you've come here too, young man!" he said, smiling and
+raising his eyebrows.
+
+"Yes," said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the word;
+and he sat down at the nearest table.
+
+Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in
+the room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of
+knives and the munching of the lieutenant.
+
+When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a
+double purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white,
+turned-up fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his
+eyebrows gave it to the waiter.
+
+"Please be quick," he said.
+
+The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Telyanin.
+
+"Allow me to look at your purse," he said in a low, almost
+inaudible, voice.
+
+With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin handed him
+the purse.
+
+"Yes, it's a nice purse. Yes, yes," he said, growing suddenly
+pale, and added, "Look at it, young man."
+
+Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in
+it, and looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was looking about in his
+usual way and suddenly seemed to grow very merry.
+
+"If we get to Vienna I'll get rid of it there but in these
+wretched little towns there's nowhere to spend it," said he. "Well,
+let me have it, young man, I'm going."
+
+Rostov did not speak.
+
+"And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite
+decently here," continued Telyanin. "Now then, let me have it."
+
+He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostov let go
+of it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into
+the pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his
+mouth slightly open, as if to say, "Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in
+my pocket and that's quite simple and is no else's business."
+
+"Well, young man?" he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted
+brows he glanced into Rostov's eyes.
+
+Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin's eyes to
+Rostov's and back, and back again and again in an instant.
+
+"Come here," said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin's arm and almost
+dragging him to the window. "That money is Denisov's; you took
+it..." he whispered just above Telyanin's ear.
+
+"What? What? How dare you? What?" said Telyanin.
+
+But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an
+entreaty for pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an enormous load of
+doubt fell from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to
+pity the miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun
+had to be completed.
+
+"Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine," muttered
+Telyanin, taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room.
+"We must have an explanation..."
+
+"I know it and shall prove it," said Rostov.
+
+"I..."
+
+Every muscle of Telyanin's pale, terrified face began to quiver, his
+eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not
+rising to Rostov's face, and his sobs were audible.
+
+"Count!... Don't ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money,
+take it..." He threw it on the table. "I have an old father and
+mother!..."
+
+Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin's eyes, and went out of the
+room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced
+his steps. "O God," he said with tears in his eyes, "how could you
+do it?"
+
+"Count..." said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.
+
+"Don't touch me," said Rostov, drawing back. "If you need it, take
+the money," and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+That same evening there was an animated discussion among the
+squadron's officers in Denisov's quarters.
+
+"And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the colonel!"
+said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and
+many wrinkles on his large features, to Rostov who was crimson with
+excitement.
+
+The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks
+for affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.
+
+"I will allow no one to call me a liar!" cried Rostov. "He told me I
+lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me on
+duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make me
+apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it
+beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then..."
+
+"You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen," interrupted
+the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache.
+"You tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an
+officer has stolen..."
+
+"I'm not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of
+other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but
+I am not a diplomatist. That's why I joined the hussars, thinking that
+here one would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying- so
+let him give me satisfaction..."
+
+"That's all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that's not the
+point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet
+to demand satisfaction of his regimental commander?"
+
+Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the
+conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered
+the staff captain's question by a disapproving shake of his head.
+
+"You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other
+officers," continued the staff captain, "and Bogdanich" (the colonel
+was called Bogdanich) "shuts you up."
+
+"He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth."
+
+"Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and
+must apologize."
+
+"Not on any account!" exclaimed Rostov.
+
+"I did not expect this of you," said the staff captain seriously and
+severely. "You don't wish to apologize, but, man, it's not only to him
+but to the whole regiment- all of us- you're to blame all round. The
+case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and taken
+advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the
+officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and
+disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of
+one scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don't see it like
+that. And Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what
+was not true. It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear
+fellow? You landed yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth
+the thing over, some conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish
+to make the whole affair public. You are offended at being put on duty
+a bit, but why not apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever
+Bogdanich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel!
+You're quick at taking offense, but you don't mind disgracing the
+whole regiment!" The staff captain's voice began to tremble. "You have
+been in the regiment next to no time, my lad, you're here today and
+tomorrow you'll be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your
+fingers when it is said 'There are thieves among the Pavlograd
+officers!' But it's not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denisov?
+It's not the same!"
+
+Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked
+with his glittering black eyes at Rostov.
+
+"You value your own pride and don't wish to apologize," continued
+the staff captain, "but we old fellows, who have grown up in and,
+God willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of
+the regiment, and Bogdanich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old
+fellow! And all this is not right, it's not right! You may take
+offense or not but I always stick to mother truth. It's not right!"
+
+And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostov.
+
+"That's twue, devil take it" shouted Denisov, jumping up. "Now then,
+Wostov, now then!"
+
+Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one
+officer and then at the other.
+
+"No, gentlemen, no... you mustn't think... I quite understand.
+You're wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of
+the regiment I'd... Ah well, I'll show that in action, and for me
+the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, it's true I'm to blame,
+to blame all round. Well, what else do you want?..."
+
+"Come, that's right, Count!" cried the staff captain, turning
+round and clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big hand.
+
+"I tell you," shouted Denisov, "he's a fine fellow."
+
+"That's better, Count," said the staff captain, beginning to address
+Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confession. "Go and
+apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!"
+
+"Gentlemen, I'll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me,"
+said Rostov in an imploring voice, "but I can't apologize, by God I
+can't, do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little
+boy asking forgiveness?"
+
+Denisov began to laugh.
+
+"It'll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you'll pay
+for your obstinacy," said Kirsten.
+
+"No, on my word it's not obstinacy! I can't describe the feeling.
+I can't..."
+
+"Well, it's as you like," said the staff captain. "And what has
+become of that scoundrel?" he asked Denisov.
+
+"He has weported himself sick, he's to be stwuck off the list
+tomowwow," muttered Denisov.
+
+"It is an illness, there's no other way of explaining it," said
+the staff captain.
+
+"Illness or not, he'd better not cwoss my path. I'd kill him!"
+shouted Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.
+
+Just then Zherkov entered the room.
+
+"What brings you here?" cried the officers turning to the newcomer.
+
+"We're to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his
+whole army."
+
+"It's not true!"
+
+"I've seen him myself!"
+
+"What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?"
+
+"Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how
+did you come here?"
+
+"I've been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil,
+Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on
+Mack's arrival... What's the matter, Rostov? You look as if you'd just
+come out of a hot bath."
+
+"Oh, my dear fellow, we're in such a stew here these last two days."
+
+The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by
+Zherkov. They were under orders to advance next day.
+
+"We're going into action, gentlemen!"
+
+"Well, thank God! We've been sitting here too long!"
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges
+over the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October
+23 the Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the
+Russian baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were
+defiling through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.
+
+It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out
+before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the
+bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain,
+and then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects
+could be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down
+below, the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed
+houses, its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed
+jostling masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels,
+an island, and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the
+confluence of the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky
+left bank of the Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic
+background of green treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a
+convent stood out beyond a wild virgin pine forest, and far away on
+the other side of the Enns the enemy's horse patrols could be
+discerned.
+
+Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in
+command of the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the
+country through his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvitski, who
+had been sent to the rearguard by the commander in chief, was
+sitting on the trail of a gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied
+him had handed him a knapsack and a flask, and Nesvitski was
+treating some officers to pies and real doppelkummel. The officers
+gladly gathered round him, some on their knees, some squatting Turkish
+fashion on the wet grass.
+
+"Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It's
+a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?" Nesvitski
+was saying.
+
+"Thank you very much, Prince," answered one of the officers, pleased
+to be talking to a staff officer of such importance. "It's a lovely
+place! We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a
+splendid house!"
+
+"Look, Prince," said another, who would have dearly liked to take
+another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining
+the countryside- "See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look
+there in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging
+something. They'll ransack that castle," he remarked with evident
+approval.
+
+"So they will," said Nesvitski. "No, but what I should like,"
+added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, "would be
+to slip in over there."
+
+He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed
+and gleamed.
+
+"That would be fine, gentlemen!"
+
+The officers laughed.
+
+"Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls
+among them. On my word I'd give five years of my life for it!"
+
+"They must be feeling dull, too," said one of the bolder officers,
+laughing.
+
+Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out
+something to the general, who looked through his field glass.
+
+"Yes, so it is, so it is," said the general angrily, lowering the
+field glass and shrugging his shoulders, "so it is! They'll be fired
+on at the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?"
+
+On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and
+from their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant
+report of a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the
+crossing.
+
+Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.
+
+"Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?" he said.
+
+"It's a bad business," said the general without answering him,
+"our men have been wasting time."
+
+"Hadn't I better ride over, your excellency?" asked Nesvitski.
+
+"Yes, please do," answered the general, and he repeated the order
+that had already once been given in detail: "and tell the hussars that
+they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the
+inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected."
+
+"Very good," answered Nesvitski.
+
+He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the
+knapsack and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.
+
+"I'll really call in on the nuns," he said to the officers who
+watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the
+hill.
+
+"Now then, let's see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!" said
+the general, turning to an artillery officer. "Have a little fun to
+pass the time."
+
+"Crew, to your guns!" commanded the officer.
+
+In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and
+began loading.
+
+"One!" came the command.
+
+Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening
+metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our
+troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little
+smoke showing the spot where it burst.
+
+The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone
+got up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as
+plainly visible as if but a stone's throw away, and the movements of
+the approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came
+fully out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the
+solitary shot and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a
+single joyous and spirited impression.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Two of the enemy's shots had already flown across the bridge,
+where there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvitski, who
+had alighted from his horse and whose big body was body was jammed
+against the railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood
+a few steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each
+time Prince Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed
+him back again and pressed him against the railings, and all he
+could do was to smile.
+
+"What a fine fellow you are, friend!" said the Cossack to a convoy
+soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were
+crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. "What a fellow!
+You can't wait a moment! Don't you see the general wants to pass?"
+
+But the convoyman took no notice of the word "general" and shouted
+at the soldiers who were blocking his way. "Hi there, boys! Keep to
+the left! Wait a bit." But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder
+to shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a
+dense mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the
+rapid, noisy little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying
+round the piles of the bridge chased each other along. Looking on
+the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder
+straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and,
+under the shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and
+listless tired expressions, and feet that moved through the sticky mud
+that covered the planks of the bridge. Sometimes through the
+monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of
+the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with a type of face different
+from that of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a chip of
+wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or a
+townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and sometimes like
+a log floating down the river, an officers' or company's baggage
+wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on all sides,
+moved across the bridge.
+
+"It's as if a dam had burst," said the Cossack hopelessly. "Are
+there many more of you to come?"
+
+"A million all but one!" replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat,
+with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.
+
+"If he" (he meant the enemy) "begins popping at the bridge now,"
+said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, "you'll forget to
+scratch yourself."
+
+That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a
+cart.
+
+"Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?" said an
+orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.
+
+And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry
+soldiers who had evidently been drinking.
+
+"And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt
+end of his gun..." a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said
+gaily, with a wide swing of his arm.
+
+"Yes, the ham was just delicious..." answered another with a loud
+laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did not learn who
+had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.
+
+"Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they'll
+all be killed," a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.
+
+"As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean," said a young
+soldier with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, "I
+felt like dying of fright. I did, 'pon my word, I got that
+frightened!" said he, as if bragging of having been frightened.
+
+That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had
+gone before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a
+German, and seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine
+brindled cow with a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A
+woman with an unweaned baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl
+with bright red cheeks were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently
+these fugitives were allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes
+of all the soldiers turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was
+passing at foot pace all the soldiers' remarks related to the two
+young ones. Every face bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly
+thoughts about the women.
+
+"Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!"
+
+"Sell me the missis," said another soldier, addressing the German,
+who, angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast
+eyes.
+
+"See how smart she's made herself! Oh, the devils!"
+
+"There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!"
+
+"I have seen as much before now, mate!"
+
+"Where are you going?" asked an infantry officer who was eating an
+apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.
+
+The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.
+
+"Take it if you like," said the officer, giving the girl an apple.
+
+The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the men on
+the bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed.
+When they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with
+the same kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens,
+the horses of a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the
+bridge, and the whole crowd had to wait.
+
+"And why are they stopping? There's no proper order!" said the
+soldiers. "Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can't you wait?
+It'll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here's an officer jammed
+in too"- different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men
+looked at one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the
+bridge.
+
+Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitski
+suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching...
+something big, that splashed into the water.
+
+"Just see where it carries to!" a soldier near by said sternly,
+looking round at the sound.
+
+"Encouraging us to get along quicker," said another uneasily.
+
+The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was a cannon
+ball.
+
+"Hey, Cossack, my horse!" he said. "Now, then, you there! get out of
+the way! Make way!"
+
+With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting
+continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make
+way for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and
+those nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed
+still harder from behind.
+
+"Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!" came a hoarse voice from
+behind him.
+
+Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but
+separated by the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska Denisov, red
+and shaggy, with his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak
+hanging jauntily over his shoulder.
+
+"Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!" shouted Denisov
+evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot
+whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a
+small bare hand as red as his face.
+
+"Ah, Vaska!" joyfully replied Nesvitski. "What's up with you?"
+
+"The squadwon can't pass," shouted Vaska Denisov, showing his
+white teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which
+twitched its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting
+white foam from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his
+hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider
+let him. "What is this? They're like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of
+the way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart!
+I'll hack you with my saber!" he shouted, actually drawing his saber
+from its scabbard and flourishing it
+
+The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and
+Denisov joined Nesvitski.
+
+"How's it you're not drunk today?" said Nesvitski when the other had
+ridden up to him.
+
+"They don't even give one time to dwink!" answered Vaska Denisov.
+"They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to
+fight, let's fight. But the devil knows what this is."
+
+"What a dandy you are today!" said Nesvitski, looking at Denisov's
+new cloak and saddlecloth.
+
+Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that
+diffused a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski's nose.
+
+"Of course. I'm going into action! I've shaved, bwushed my teeth,
+and scented myself."
+
+The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and the
+determination of Denisov who flourished his sword and shouted
+frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through
+to the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the
+bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the
+order, and having done this he rode back.
+
+Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of the bridge.
+Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the
+ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw
+nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping,
+resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in
+front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to
+emerge on his side of it.
+
+The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the
+trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will,
+estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually
+encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past
+them in regular order.
+
+"Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!" said one.
+
+"What good are they? They're led about just for show!" remarked
+another.
+
+"Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose
+prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.
+
+"I'd like to put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine
+cords would soon get a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the
+mud off his face with his sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more
+like a bird than a man."
+
+"There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. You'd look
+fine," said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent
+under the weight of his knapsack.
+
+"Take a stick between your legs, that'll suit you for a horse!"
+the hussar shouted back.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing
+together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last
+the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last
+battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denisov's squadron of hussars
+remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could
+be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible
+from the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which
+the river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile
+away. At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of
+our Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the
+high ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These
+were the French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at
+a trot. All the officers and men of Denisov's squadron, though they
+tried to talk of other things and to look in other directions, thought
+only of what was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking
+at the patches appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the
+enemy's troops. The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun
+was descending brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around
+it. It was calm, and at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of
+the enemy could be heard from the hill. There was no one now between
+the squadron and the enemy except a few scattered skirmishers. An
+empty space of some seven hundred yards was all that separated them.
+The enemy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening, inaccessible,
+and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was all the
+more clearly felt.
+
+"One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line
+dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and
+death. And what is there? Who is there?- there beyond that field, that
+tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to
+know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner
+or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is
+there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other
+side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and
+are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and healthy men." So
+thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone who comes in sight of the
+enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness
+of impression to everything that takes place at such moments.
+
+On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon
+rose, and a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron.
+The officers who had been standing together rode off to their
+places. The hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence
+fell on the whole squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and
+at the squadron commander, awaiting the word of command. A second
+and a third cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the
+hussars, but the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads
+of the horsemen and fell somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not
+look round, but at the sound of each shot, as at the word of
+command, the whole squadron with its rows of faces so alike yet so
+different, holding its breath while the ball flew past, rose in the
+stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers without turning their heads
+glanced at one another, curious to see their comrades' impression.
+Every face, from Denisov's to that of the bugler, showed one common
+expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement, around chin and
+mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the soldiers as if
+threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every time a ball
+flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook- a handsome
+horse despite its game leg- had the happy air of a schoolboy called up
+before a large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he
+will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear,
+bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under
+fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same indication of
+something new and stern showed round the mouth.
+
+"Who's that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight!
+Look at me," cried Denisov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept
+turning his horse in front of the squadron.
+
+The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his whole
+short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in
+which he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually
+did, especially toward evening when he had emptied his second
+bottle; he was only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown
+back like birds when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into
+the sides of his good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling
+backwards in the saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the
+squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice to the men to look to their
+pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed,
+steady mare came at a walk to meet him. His face with its long
+mustache was serious as always, only his eyes were brighter than
+usual.
+
+"Well, what about it?" said he to Denisov. "It won't come to a
+fight. You'll see- we shall retire."
+
+"The devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah,
+Wostov," he cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it
+at last."
+
+And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet.
+Rostov felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the
+bridge. Denisov galloped up to him.
+
+"Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll dwive them off."
+
+"Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his
+face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you stopping
+here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the
+squadron back."
+
+The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire
+without having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in
+the front line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted
+the farther side of the river.
+
+The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up
+the hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdanich
+Schubert, came up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not far
+from Rostov, without taking any notice of him although they were now
+meeting for the first time since their encounter concerning
+Telyanin. Rostov, feeling that he was at the front and in the power of
+a man toward whom he now admitted that he had been to blame, did not
+lift his eyes from the colonel's athletic back, his nape covered
+with light hair, and his red neck. It seemed to Rostov that
+Bogdanich was only pretending not to notice him, and that his whole
+aim now was to test the cadet's courage, so he drew himself up and
+looked around him merrily; then it seemed to him that Bogdanich rode
+so near in order to show him his courage. Next he thought that his
+enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack just to punish
+him- Rostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack, Bogdanich would
+come up to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously extend the
+hand of reconciliation.
+
+The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the Pavlograds as
+he had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After
+his dismissal from headquarters Zherkov had not remained in the
+regiment, saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front
+when he could get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and
+had succeeded in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince
+Bagration. He now came to his former chief with an order from the
+commander of the rear guard.
+
+"Colonel," he said, addressing Rostov's enemy with an air of
+gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, "there is an
+order to stop and fire the bridge."
+
+"An order to who?" asked the colonel morosely.
+
+"I don't myself know 'to who,'" replied the cornet in a serious
+tone, "but the prince told me to 'go and tell the colonel that the
+hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.'"
+
+Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the
+colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout
+Nesvitski came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely
+carry his weight.
+
+"How's this, Colonel?" he shouted as he approached. "I told you to
+fire the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are
+all beside themselves over there and one can't make anything out."
+
+The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to
+Nesvitski.
+
+"You spoke to me of inflammable material," said he, "but you said
+nothing about firing it."
+
+"But, my dear sir," said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off his cap
+and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand,
+"wasn't I telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material
+had been put in position?"
+
+"I am not your 'dear sir,' Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell
+me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders
+strictly to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would
+it burn, I could not know by the holy spirit!"
+
+"Ah, that's always the way!" said Nesvitski with a wave of the hand.
+"How did you get here?" said he, turning to Zherkov.
+
+"On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!"
+
+"You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer..." continued the colonel in
+an offended tone.
+
+"Colonel," interrupted the officer of the suite, "You must be
+quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot."
+
+The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the
+stout staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned.
+
+"I will the bridge fire," he said in a solemn tone as if to announce
+that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would
+still do the right thing.
+
+Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to
+blame for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second
+squadron, that in which Rostov was serving under Denisov, to return to
+the bridge.
+
+"There, it's just as I thought," said Rostov to himself. "He
+wishes to test me!" His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his
+face. "Let him see whether I am a coward!" he thought.
+
+Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression
+appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostov watched his enemy,
+the colonel, closely- to find in his face confirmation of his own
+conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov, and
+looked as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came
+the word of command.
+
+"Look sharp! Look sharp!" several voices repeated around him.
+
+Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the
+hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The
+men were crossing themselves. Rostov no longer looked at the
+colonel, he had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the
+hussars, so much afraid that his heart stood still. His hand
+trembled as he gave his horse into an orderly's charge, and he felt
+the blood rush to his heart with a thud. Denisov rode past him,
+leaning back and shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the
+hussars running all around him, their spurs catching and their
+sabers clattering.
+
+"Stretchers!" shouted someone behind him.
+
+Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,
+trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not
+looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud,
+stumbled, and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.
+
+"At boss zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who,
+having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a
+triumphant, cheerful face.
+
+Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy
+and was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the
+front the better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing
+Rostov, shouted to him:
+
+"Who's that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right!
+Come back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who,
+showing off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:
+
+"Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he said.
+
+"Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning
+in his saddle.
+
+Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite were
+standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small
+group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,
+and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and
+then at what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side-
+the blue uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as
+artillery.
+
+"Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first? Will they
+get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within
+grapeshot range and wipe them out?" These were the questions each
+man of the troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily
+asked himself with a sinking heart- watching the bridge and the
+hussars in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing from
+the other side with their bayonets and guns.
+
+"Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said Nesvitski; "they are within
+grapeshot range now."
+
+"He shouldn't have taken so many men," said the officer of the
+suite.
+
+"True enough," answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have
+done the job just as well."
+
+"Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the
+hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know
+whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency!
+How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the
+Vladimir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered,
+the squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon.
+Our Bogdanich knows how things are done."
+
+"There now!" said the officer of the suite, "that's grapeshot."
+
+He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being
+detached and hurriedly removed.
+
+On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke
+appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at
+the moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two
+reports one after another, and a third.
+
+"Oh! Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the
+officer of the suite by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen,
+fallen!"
+
+"Two, I think."
+
+"If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning
+away.
+
+The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue
+uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but
+at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the
+bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening
+there, as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had
+succeeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries were now
+firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because the guns were
+trained and there was someone to fire at.
+
+The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the
+hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot
+went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of
+hussars and knocked three of them over.
+
+Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on
+the bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he
+had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the
+bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like
+the other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard
+a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar
+nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to
+him with the others. Again someone shouted, "Stretchers!" Four men
+seized the hussar and began lifting him.
+
+"Oooh! For Christ's sake let me alone!" cried the wounded man, but
+still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.
+
+Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something,
+gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky,
+and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm,
+and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what
+soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer
+still were the faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery,
+the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of
+their summits... There was peace and happiness... "I should wishing
+for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there," thought Rostov.
+"In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness;
+but here... groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry...
+There- they are shouting again, and again are all running back
+somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above
+me and around... Another instant and I shall never again see the
+sun, this water, that gorge!..."
+
+At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other
+stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and
+of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into
+one feeling of sickening agitation.
+
+"O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect
+me!" Rostov whispered.
+
+The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their
+voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from
+sight.
+
+"Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!" shouted Vaska Denisov just
+above his ear.
+
+"It's all over; but I am a coward- yes, a coward!" thought Rostov,
+and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one
+foot, from the orderly and began to mount.
+
+"Was that grapeshot?" he asked Denisov.
+
+"Yes and no mistake!" cried Denisov. "You worked like wegular bwicks
+and it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work! Hacking away at the
+dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting
+at you like a target."
+
+And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostov,
+composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer from
+the suite.
+
+"Well, it seems that no one has noticed," thought Rostov. And this
+was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation
+which the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.
+
+"Here's something for you to report," said Zherkov. "See if I
+don't get promoted to a sublieutenancy."
+
+"Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!" said the colonel
+triumphantly and gaily.
+
+"And if he asks about the losses?"
+
+"A trifle," said the colonel in his bass voice: "two hussars
+wounded, and one knocked out," he added, unable to restrain a happy
+smile, and pronouncing the phrase "knocked out" with ringing
+distinctness.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the
+command of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to
+it, losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of
+supplies, and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything
+that had been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men
+commanded by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube,
+stopping where overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions
+only as far as necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its
+heavy equipment. There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and
+Melk; but despite the courage and endurance- acknowledged even by
+the enemy- with which the Russians fought, the only consequence of
+these actions was a yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had
+escaped capture at Ulm and had joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated
+from the Russian army, and Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and
+exhausted forces. The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought
+of. Instead of an offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared
+in accord with the modern science of strategics, had been handed to
+Kutuzov when he was in Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the
+sole and almost unattainable aim remaining for him was to effect a
+junction with the forces that were advancing from Russia, without
+losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.
+
+On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army crossed to the
+left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with
+the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the
+thirtieth he attacked Mortier's division, which was on the left
+bank, and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were
+taken: banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time,
+after a fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a
+fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the French.
+Though the troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of
+their number in killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number
+of sick and wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube
+with a letter in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of the
+enemy; and though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems
+converted into military hospitals could no longer accommodate all
+the sick and wounded, yet the stand made at Krems and the victory over
+Mortier raised the spirits of the army considerably. Throughout the
+whole army and at headquarters most joyful though erroneous rumors
+were rife of the imaginary approach of columns from Russia, of some
+victory gained by the Austrians, and of the retreat of the
+frightened Bonaparte.
+
+Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the
+Austrian General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse
+had been wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a
+bullet. As a mark of the commander in chief's special favor he was
+sent with the news of this victory to the Austrian court, now no
+longer at Vienna (which was threatened by the French) but at Brunn.
+Despite his apparently delicate build Prince Andrew could endure
+physical fatigue far better than many very muscular men, and on the
+night of the battle, having arrived at Krems excited but not weary,
+with dispatches from Dokhturov to Kutuzov, he was sent immediately
+with a special dispatch to Brunn. To be so sent meant not only a
+reward but an important step toward promotion.
+
+The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow
+that had fallen the previous day- the day of the battle. Reviewing his
+impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself
+the impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the
+send-off given him by the commander in chief and his fellow
+officers, Prince Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise
+enjoying the feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a
+long-desired happiness. As soon as he closed his eyes his ears
+seemed filled with the rattle of the wheels and the sensation of
+victory. Then he began to imagine that the Russians were running
+away and that he himself was killed, but he quickly roused himself
+with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that this was not so
+but that on the contrary the French had run away. He again recalled
+all the details of the victory and his own calm courage during the
+battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark starry night
+was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was thawing in the
+sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides of the road
+were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.
+
+At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded.
+The Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the
+front cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each
+of the long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were
+being jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he
+heard Russian words), others were eating bread; the more severely
+wounded looked silently, with the languid interest of sick children,
+at the envoy hurrying past them.
+
+Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what
+action they had been wounded. "Day before yesterday, on the Danube,"
+answered the soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the
+soldier three gold pieces.
+
+"That's for them all," he said to the officer who came up.
+
+"Get well soon, lads!" he continued, turning to the soldiers.
+"There's plenty to do still."
+
+"What news, sir?" asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a
+conversation.
+
+"Good news!... Go on!" he shouted to the driver, and they galloped
+on.
+
+It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the
+paved streets of Brunn and found himself surrounded by high buildings,
+the lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all
+that atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so
+attractive to a soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and
+sleepless night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt
+even more vigorous and alert than he had done the day before. Only his
+eyes gleamed feverishly and his thoughts followed one another with
+extraordinary clearness and rapidity. He again vividly recalled the
+details of the battle, no longer dim, but definite and in the
+concise form concise form in which he imagined himself stating them to
+the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual questions that
+might be put to him and the answers he would give. He expected to be
+at once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance to the palace,
+however, an official came running out to meet him, and learning that
+he was a special messenger led him to another entrance.
+
+"To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will
+find the adjutant on duty," said the official. "He will conduct you to
+the Minister of War."
+
+The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait,
+and went in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and
+bowing with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along
+a corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The
+adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any
+attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.
+
+Prince Andrew's joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he
+approached the door of the minister's room. He felt offended, and
+without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into
+one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind
+instantly suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to
+despise the adjutant and the minister. "Away from the smell of powder,
+they probably think it easy to gain victories!" he thought. His eyes
+narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with
+peculiarly deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened
+when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading some papers
+and making pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three
+minutes taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each
+side of the minister's bent bald head with its gray temples. He went
+on reading to the end, without raising his eyes at the opening of
+the door and the sound of footsteps.
+
+"Take this and deliver it," said he to his adjutant, handing him the
+papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.
+
+Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov's army
+interested the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he
+was concerned with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger
+that impression. "But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me,"
+he thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together,
+arranged them evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual
+and distinctive head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the
+firm, intelligent expression on his face changed in a way evidently
+deliberate and habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial
+smile (which does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man
+who is continually receiving many petitioners one after another.
+
+"From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?" he asked. "I hope it is good
+news? There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was high
+time!"
+
+He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it
+with a mournful expression.
+
+"Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!" he exclaimed in German. "What a
+calamity! What a calamity!"
+
+Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and
+looked at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.
+
+"Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is
+not captured." Again he pondered. "I am very glad you have brought
+good news, though Schmidt's death is a heavy price to pay for the
+victory. His Majesty will no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I
+thank you! You must have a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the
+parade. However, I will let you know."
+
+The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking,
+reappeared.
+
+"Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to
+see you," he added, bowing his head.
+
+When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest and
+happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the
+indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant.
+The whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle
+seemed the memory of a remote event long past.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance
+of his in the diplomatic service.
+
+"Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,"
+said Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. "Franz, put the
+prince's things in my bedroom," said he to the servant who was
+ushering Bolkonski in. "So you're a messenger of victory, eh?
+Splendid! And I am sitting here ill, as you see."
+
+After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat's
+luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin
+settled down comfortably beside the fire.
+
+After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived
+of all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life,
+Prince Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious
+surroundings such as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides
+it was pleasant, after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not
+in Russian (for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who
+would, he supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the
+Austrians which was then particularly strong.
+
+Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle
+as Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in
+Petersburg, but had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in
+Vienna with Kutuzov. Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave
+promise of rising high in the military profession, so to an even
+greater extent Bilibin gave promise of rising in his diplomatic
+career. He still a young man but no longer a young diplomat, as he had
+entered the service at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris and
+Copenhagen, and now held a rather important post in Vienna. Both the
+foreign minister and our ambassador in Vienna knew him and valued him.
+He was not one of those many diplomats who are esteemed because they
+have certain negative qualities, avoid doing certain things, and speak
+French. He was one of those, who, liking work, knew how to do it,
+and despite his indolence would sometimes spend a whole night at his
+writing table. He worked well whatever the import of his work. It
+was not the question "What for?" but the question "How?" that
+interested him. What the diplomatic matter might be he did not care,
+but it gave him great pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum, or
+report, skillfully, pointedly, and elegantly. Bilibin's services
+were valued not only for what he wrote, but also for his skill in
+dealing and conversing with those in the highest spheres.
+
+Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be
+made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to
+say something striking and took part in a conversation only when
+that was possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with
+wittily original, finished phrases of general interest. These
+sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a
+portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society
+people might carry them from drawing room to drawing room. And, in
+fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing
+rooms and often had an influence on matters considered important.
+
+His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which
+always looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's fingers
+after a Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the
+principal play of expression on his face. Now his forehead would
+pucker into deep folds and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows
+would descend and deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small,
+deep-set eyes always twinkled and looked out straight.
+
+"Well, now tell me about your exploits," said he.
+
+Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself,
+described the engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.
+
+"They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of
+skittles," said he in conclusion.
+
+Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.
+
+"Cependant, mon cher," he remarked, examining his nails from a
+distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, "malgre la haute
+estime que je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j'avoue que
+votre victoire n'est pas des plus victorieuses."~^
+
+^~ "But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox Russian
+army, I must say that your victory was not particularly victorious."
+
+He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those
+words in Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.
+
+"Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate
+Mortier and his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your
+fingers! Where's the victory?"
+
+"But seriously," said Prince Andrew, "we can at any rate say without
+boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm..."
+
+"Why didn't you capture one, just one, marshal for us?"
+
+"Because not everything happens as one expects or with the
+smoothness of a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at
+their rear by seven in the morning but had not reached it by five in
+the afternoon."
+
+"And why didn't you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have
+been there at seven in the morning," returned Bilibin with a smile.
+"You ought to have been there at seven in the morning."
+
+"Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic
+methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?" retorted Prince
+Andrew in the same tone.
+
+"I know," interrupted Bilibin, "you're thinking it's very easy to
+take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but
+still why didn't you capture him? So don't be surprised if not only
+the Minister of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and
+King Francis is not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor
+secretary of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of
+my joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to
+the Prater... True, we have no Prater here..."
+
+He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his
+forehead.
+
+"It is now my turn to ask you 'why?' mon cher," said Bolkonski. "I
+confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties
+here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can't make it out. Mack
+loses a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl
+give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at
+last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility
+of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care to hear
+the details."
+
+"That's just it, my dear fellow. You see it's hurrah for the Tsar,
+for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but
+what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories?
+Bring us nice news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one
+archduke's as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only
+over a fire brigade of Bonaparte's, that will be another story and
+we'll fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on
+purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke
+Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its
+defense- as much as to say: 'Heaven is with us, but heaven help you
+and your capital!' The one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you
+expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit
+that more irritating news than yours could not have been conceived.
+It's as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose
+you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a
+victory, what effect would that have on the general course of
+events? It's too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!"
+
+"What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?"
+
+"Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and the count,
+our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders."
+
+After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception,
+and especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt that he could not
+take in the full significance of the words he heard.
+
+"Count Lichtenfels was here this morning," Bilibin continued, "and
+showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was
+fully described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that
+your victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can't be
+received as a savior."
+
+"Really I don't care about that, I don't care at all," said Prince
+Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle before
+Krems was really of small importance in view of such events as the
+fall of Austria's capital. "How is it Vienna was taken? What of the
+bridge and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard
+reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?" he said.
+
+"Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is
+defending us- doing it very badly, I think, but still he is
+defending us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has
+not yet been taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined and
+orders have been given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago
+have been in the mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would
+have spent a bad quarter of an hour between two fires."
+
+"But still this does not mean that the campaign is over," said
+Prince Andrew.
+
+"Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they
+daren't say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign,
+it won't be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that
+will decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin
+quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead,
+and pausing. "The only question is what will come of the meeting
+between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If
+Prussia joins the Allies, Austria's hand will be forced and there will
+be war. If not it is merely a question of settling where the
+preliminaries of the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up."
+
+"What an extraordinary genius!" Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
+clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, "and what
+luck the man has!"
+
+"Buonaparte?" said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to
+indicate that he was about to say something witty. "Buonaparte?" he
+repeated, accentuating the u: "I think, however, now that he lays down
+laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l'u!~^ I
+shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!"
+
+^~ "We must let him off the u!"
+
+"But joking apart," said Prince Andrew, "do you really think the
+campaign is over?"
+
+"This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is
+not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the
+first place because her provinces have been pillaged- they say the
+Holy Russian army loots terribly- her army is destroyed, her capital
+taken, and all this for the beaux yeux~^ of His Sardinian Majesty.
+And therefore- this is between ourselves- I instinctively feel that we
+are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France
+and projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately."
+
+^~ Fine eyes.
+
+"Impossible!" cried Prince Andrew. "That would be too base."
+
+"If we live we shall see," replied Bilibin, his face again
+becoming smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.
+
+When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in
+a clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows,
+he felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far
+away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria's treachery,
+Bonaparte's new triumph, tomorrow's levee and parade, and the audience
+with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.
+
+He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of
+musketry and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his
+ears, and now again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were
+descending the hill, the French were firing, and he felt his heart
+palpitating as he rode forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily
+whistling all around, and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as
+he had not done since childhood.
+
+He woke up...
+
+"Yes, that all happened!" he said, and, smiling happily to himself
+like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first
+thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be
+presented to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War,
+
+the polite Austrian adjutant, Bilibin, and last night's
+conversation. Having dressed for his attendance at court in full
+parade uniform, which he had not worn for a long time, he went into
+Bilibin's study fresh, animated, and handsome, with his hand bandaged.
+In the study were four gentlemen of the diplomatic corps. With
+Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, who was a secretary to the embassy,
+Bolkonski was already acquainted. Bilibin introduced him to the
+others.
+
+The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin's were young, wealthy, gay
+society men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which
+Bilibin, their leader, called les notres.~^ This set, consisting almost
+exclusively of diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had
+nothing to do with war or politics but related to high society, to
+certain women, and to the official side of the service. These
+gentlemen received Prince Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they
+did not extend to many. From politeness and to start conversation,
+they asked him a few questions about the army and the battle, and then
+the talk went off into merry jests and gossip.
+
+^~ Ours.
+
+"But the best of it was," said one, telling of the misfortune of a
+fellow diplomat, "that the Chancellor told him flatly that his
+appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it.
+Can you fancy the figure he cut?..."
+
+"But the worst of it, gentlemen- I am giving Kuragin away to you- is
+that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is taking
+advantage of it!"
+
+Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over
+its arm. He began to laugh.
+
+"Tell me about that!" he said.
+
+"Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!" cried several voices.
+
+"You, Bolkonski, don't know," said Bilibin turning to Prince Andrew,
+"that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of the
+Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing
+among the women!"
+
+"La femme est la compagne de l'homme,"~^ announced Prince
+Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.
+
+^~ "Woman is man's companion."
+
+Bilibin and the rest of "ours" burst out laughing in Hippolyte's
+face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom- he had to
+admit- he had almost been jealous on his wife's account, was the
+butt of this set.
+
+"Oh, I must give you a treat," Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski.
+"Kuragin is exquisite when he discusses politics- you should see his
+gravity!"
+
+He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began
+talking to him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered
+round these two.
+
+"The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance," began
+Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, "without
+expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless
+His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our
+alliance...
+
+"Wait, I have not finished..." he said to Prince Andrew, seizing him
+by the arm, "I believe that intervention will be stronger than
+nonintervention. And..." he paused. "Finally one cannot impute the
+nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end."
+And he released Bolkonski's arm to indicate that he had now quite
+finished.
+
+"Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden
+mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with
+satisfaction.
+
+Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was
+evidently distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain
+the wild laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.
+
+"Well now, gentlemen," said Bilibin, "Bolkonski is my guest in
+this house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I
+can, with all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it
+would be easy, but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more
+difficult, and I beg you all to help me. Brunn's attractions must be
+shown him. You can undertake the theater, I society, and you,
+Hippolyte, of course the women."
+
+"We must let him see Amelie, she's exquisite!" said one of "ours,"
+kissing his finger tips.
+
+"In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane
+interests," said Bilibin.
+
+"I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality,
+gentlemen, it is already time for me to go," replied Prince Andrew
+looking at his watch.
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"To the Emperor."
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir, Prince! Come
+back early to dinner," cried several voices. "We'll take you in hand."
+
+"When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the
+way that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated," said
+Bilibin, accompanying him to the hall.
+
+"I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I the facts, I
+can't," replied Bolkonski, smiling.
+
+"Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for
+giving audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can't do
+it, as you will see."
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he
+had been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into
+his face and just nodded to him with to him with his long head. But
+after it was over, the adjutant he had seen the previous day
+ceremoniously informed Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give
+him an audience. The Emperor Francis received him standing in the
+middle of the room. Before the conversation began Prince Andrew was
+struck by the fact that the Emperor seemed confused and blushed as
+if not knowing what to say.
+
+"Tell me, when did the battle begin?" he asked hurriedly.
+
+Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple:
+"Was Kutuzov well? When had he left Krems?" and so on. The Emperor
+spoke as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions-
+the answers to these questions, as was only too evident, did not
+interest him.
+
+"At what o'clock did the battle begin?" asked the Emperor.
+
+"I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o'clock the battle began at
+the front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our attack began after
+five in the afternoon," replied Bolkonski growing more animated and
+expecting that he would have a chance to give a reliable account,
+which he had ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the
+Emperor smiled and interrupted him.
+
+"How many miles?"
+
+"From where to where, Your Majesty?"
+
+"From Durrenstein to Krems."
+
+"Three and a half miles, Your Majesty."
+
+"The French have abandoned the left bank?"
+
+"According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during
+the night."
+
+"Is there sufficient forage in Krems?"
+
+"Forage has not been supplied to the extent..."
+
+The Emperor interrupted him.
+
+"At what o'clock was General Schmidt killed?"
+
+"At seven o'clock, I believe."
+
+"At seven o'clock? It's very sad, very sad!"
+
+The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew
+withdrew and was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides.
+Everywhere he saw friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday's
+adjutant reproached him for not having stayed at the palace, and
+offered him his own house. The Minister of War came up and
+congratulated him on the Maria Theresa Order of the third grade, which
+the Emperor was conferring on him. The Empress' chamberlain invited
+him to see Her Majesty. The archduchess also wished to see him. He did
+not know whom to answer, and for a few seconds collected his thoughts.
+Then the Russian ambassador took him by the shoulder, led him to the
+window, and began to talk to him.
+
+Contrary to Bilibin's forecast the news he had brought was
+joyfully received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutuzov was
+awarded the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army
+received rewards. Bolkonski was invited everywhere, and had to spend
+the whole morning calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries.
+Between four and five in the afternoon, having made all his calls,
+he was returning to Bilibin's house thinking out a letter to his
+father about the battle and his visit to Brunn. At the door he found a
+vehicle half full of luggage. Franz, Bilibin's man, was dragging a
+portmanteau with some difficulty out of the front door.
+
+Before returning to Bilibin's Prince Andrew had gone to bookshop
+to provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent
+some time in the shop.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, your excellency!" said Franz, with difficulty rolling the
+portmanteau into the vehicle, "we are to move on still farther. The
+scoundrel is again at our heels!"
+
+"Eh? What?" asked Prince Andrew.
+
+Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed
+excitement.
+
+"There now! Confess that this is delightful," said he. "This
+affair of the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without
+striking a blow!"
+
+Prince Andrew could not understand.
+
+"But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the
+town knows?"
+
+"I come from the archduchess'. I heard nothing there."
+
+"And you didn't see that everybody is packing up?"
+
+"I did not... What is it all about?" inquired Prince Andrew
+impatiently.
+
+"What's it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that
+Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat
+is now rushing along the road to Brunn and will be here in a day or
+two."
+
+"What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was
+mined?"
+
+"That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why."
+
+Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It
+will be cut off," said he.
+
+"That's just it," answered Bilibin. "Listen! The French entered
+Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday,
+those gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux,~^ Murat, Lannes,and Belliard,
+mount and ride to bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.)
+'Gentlemen,' says one of them, 'you know the Thabor Bridge is mined
+and doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its
+head and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow up
+the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign
+the Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and
+take it!' 'Yes, let's!' say the others. And off they go and take the
+bridge, cross it, and now with their whole army are on this side of
+the Danube, marching on us, you, and your lines of communication."
+
+^~ The marshalls.
+
+"Stop jesting," said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news
+grieved him and yet he was pleased.
+
+As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless
+situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead
+it out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift
+him from the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to
+fame! Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching
+the army he would give an opinion at the war council which would be
+the only one that could save the army, and how he alone would be
+entrusted with the executing of the plan.
+
+"Stop this jesting," he said
+
+"I am not jesting," Bilibin went on. "Nothing is truer or sadder.
+These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white
+handkerchiefs; they assure the officer on duty that they, the
+marshals, are on their way to negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets
+them enter the tete-de-pont.~^ They spin him a thousand gasconades,
+saying that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a
+meeting with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg,
+and so on. The officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace
+the officers, crack jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French
+battalion gets to the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary
+material into the water, and approaches the tete-de-pont. At length
+appears the lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg von
+Mautern himself. 'Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of
+the Turkish wars Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another's
+hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince
+Auersperg's acquaintance.' In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed,
+so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his
+rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals, and so
+dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes, qu'il n'y
+voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur
+l'ennemi!"~^ In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did
+not forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due
+appreciation. "The French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes
+the guns, and the bridge is taken! But what is best of all," he went
+on, his excitement subsiding under the delightful interest of his
+own story, "is that the sergeant in charge of the cannon which was
+to give the signal to fire the mines and blow up the bridge, this
+sergeant, seeing that the French troops were running onto the
+bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes stayed his hand. The sergeant,
+who was evidently wiser than his general, goes up to Auersperg and
+says: 'Prince, you are being deceived, here are the French!' Murat,
+seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed to speak, turns
+to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a true Gascon) and says:
+'I don't recognize the world-famous Austrian discipline, if you
+allow a subordinate to address you like that!' It was a stroke of
+genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and orders the
+sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair of the
+Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
+rascality...."
+
+^~ Bridgehead.
+
+^~ That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that he ought
+to be firing at the enemy.
+
+"It may be treachery," said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the
+gray overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of
+firing, and the glory that awaited him.
+
+"Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light," replied
+Bilibin."It's not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just as
+at Ulm... it is..."- he seemed to be trying to find the right
+expression. "C'est... c'est du Mack. Nous sommes mackes [It is... it
+is a bit of Mack. We are Macked]," he concluded, feeling that he had
+produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His
+hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a
+slight smile he began to examine his nails.
+
+"Where are you off to?" he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had
+risen and was going toward his room.
+
+"I am going away."
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"To the army."
+
+"But you meant to stay another two days?"
+
+"But now I am off at once."
+
+And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went
+to his room.
+
+"Do you know, mon cher," said Bilibin following him, "I have been
+thinking about you. Why are you going?"
+
+And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles
+vanished from his face.
+
+Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.
+
+"Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back
+to the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher,
+it is heroism!"
+
+"Not at all," said Prince Andrew.
+
+"But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the
+other side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the
+contrary, is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no
+longer fit for anything else.... You have not been ordered to return
+and have not been dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and
+go with us wherever our ill luck takes us. They say we are going to
+Olmutz, and Olmutz is a very decent town. You and I will travel
+comfortably in my caleche."
+
+"Do stop joking, Bilibin," cried Bolkonski.
+
+"I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are
+you going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two
+things," and the skin over his left temple puckered, "either you
+will not reach your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will
+share defeat and disgrace with Kutuzov's whole army."
+
+And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was
+insoluble.
+
+"I cannot argue about it," replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he
+thought: "I am going to save the army."
+
+"My dear fellow, you are a hero!" said Bilibin.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War,
+Bolkonski set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would
+find it and fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.
+
+In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the
+heavy baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf
+Prince Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was
+moving with great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was
+so obstructed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a
+carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack
+commander, and hungry and weary, making his way past the baggage
+wagons, rode in search of the commander in chief and of his own
+luggage. Very sinister reports of the position of the army reached him
+as he went along, and the appearance of the troops in their disorderly
+flight confirmed these rumors.
+
+"Cette armee russe que l'or de l'Angleterre a transportee des
+extremites de l'univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le meme
+sort- (le sort de l'armee d'Ulm)."~^ He remembered these words in
+Bonaparte's address to his army at the beginning of the campaign,
+and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a
+feeling of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. "And should there be
+nothing left but to die?" he thought. "Well, if need be, I shall do it
+no worse than others."
+
+^~ "That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of the
+earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same fate- (the
+fate of the army at Ulm)."
+
+He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of
+detachments, carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and
+vehicles of all kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy
+road, three and sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and
+before, as far as ear could reach, there were the rattle of wheels,
+the creaking of carts and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the
+crack of whips, shouts, the urging of horses, and the swearing of
+soldiers, orderlies, and officers. All along the sides of the road
+fallen horses were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and
+broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for
+something, and again soldiers straggling from their companies,
+crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or returned from
+them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At each ascent
+or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the din of
+shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud
+pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped,
+traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers
+directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their
+voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their
+faces that they despaired of the possibility of checking this
+disorder.
+
+"Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army," thought Bolkonski,
+recalling Bilibin's words.
+
+Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up
+to a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse
+vehicle, evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available
+materials and looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet,
+and a caleche. A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in
+shawls sat behind the apron under the leather hood of the vehicle.
+Prince Andrew rode up and was just putting his question to a soldier
+when his attention was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the
+woman in the vehicle. An officer in charge of transport was beating
+the soldier who was driving the woman's vehicle for trying to get
+ahead of others, and the strokes of his whip fell on the apron of
+the equipage. The woman screamed piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew
+she leaned out from behind the apron and, waving her thin arms from
+under the woolen shawl, cried:
+
+"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven's sake... Protect
+me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh
+Chasseurs.... They won't let us pass, we are left behind and have lost
+our people..."
+
+"I'll flatten you into a pancake!" shouted the angry officer to
+the soldier. "Turn back with your slut!"
+
+"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?" screamed
+the doctor's wife.
+
+"Kindly let this cart pass. Don't you see it's a woman?" said Prince
+Andrew riding up to the officer.
+
+The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the
+soldier. "I'll teach you to push on!... Back!"
+
+"Let them pass, I tell you!" repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his
+lips.
+
+"And who are you?" cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy
+rage, "who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander
+here, not you! Go back or I'll flatten you into a pancake," repeated
+he. This expression evidently pleased him.
+
+"That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp," came a voice
+from behind.
+
+Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless,
+tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his
+championship of the doctor's wife in her queer trap might expose him
+to what he dreaded more than anything in the world- to ridicule; but
+his instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence
+Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised
+his riding whip.
+
+"Kind...ly let- them- pass!"
+
+The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.
+
+"It's all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there's
+this disorder," he muttered. "Do as you like."
+
+Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the
+doctor's wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with a
+sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he
+galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander in
+chief was.
+
+On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,
+intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to
+sort out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his
+mind. "This is a mob of scoundrels and not an army," he was thinking
+as he went up to the window of the first house, when a familiar
+voice called him by name.
+
+He turned round. Nesvitski's handsome face looked out of the
+little window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed
+something, and flourishing his arm, called him to enter.
+
+"Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don't you hear? Eh? Come quick..." he
+shouted.
+
+Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another adjutant
+having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he
+had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm.
+This was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski's usually laughing
+countenance.
+
+"Where is the commander in chief?" asked Bolkonski.
+
+"Here, in that house," answered the adjutant.
+
+"Well, is it true that it's peace and capitulation?" asked
+Nesvitski.
+
+"I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I
+could do to get here."
+
+"And we, my dear boy! It's terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack,
+we're getting it still worse," said Nesvitski. "But sit down and
+have something to eat."
+
+"You won't be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,
+Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is," said the other
+adjutant.
+
+"Where are headquarters?"
+
+"We are to spend the night in Znaim."
+
+"Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses," said
+Nesvitski. "They've made up splendid packs for me- fit to cross the
+Bohemian mountains with. It's a bad lookout, old fellow! But what's
+the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that," he added,
+noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.
+
+"It's nothing," replied Prince Andrew.
+
+He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor's wife
+and the convoy officer.
+
+"What is the commander in chief doing here?" he asked.
+
+"I can't make out at all," said Nesvitski.
+
+"Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable,
+abominable, quite abominable!" said Prince Andrew, and he went off
+to the house where the commander in chief was.
+
+Passing by Kutuzov's carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his
+suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince
+Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the
+house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the
+Austrian general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little
+Kozlovski was squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk,
+with cuffs turned up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom
+upwards. Kozlovski's face looked worn- he too had evidently not
+slept all night. He glanced at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to
+him.
+
+"Second line... have you written it?" he continued dictating to
+the clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..."
+
+"One can't write so fast, your honor," said the clerk, glancing
+angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.
+
+Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov's voice, excited and
+dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the
+sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him,
+the disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the
+clerk and Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to
+the commander in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks
+holding the horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that
+something important and disastrous was about to happen.
+
+He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.
+
+"Immediately, Prince," said Kozlovski. "Dispositions for Bagration."
+
+"What about capitulation?"
+
+"Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle."
+
+Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard.
+Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened,
+and Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the
+doorway. Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the
+expression of the commander in chief's one sound eye showed him to
+be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of
+his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant's face without
+recognizing him.
+
+"Well, have you finished?" said he to Kozlovski.
+
+"One moment, your excellency."
+
+Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,
+impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in
+chief.
+
+"I have the honor to present myself," repeated Prince Andrew
+rather loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.
+
+Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!"
+
+Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.
+
+"Well, good-by, Prince," said he to Bagration. "My blessing, and may
+Christ be with you in your great endeavor!"
+
+His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his
+left hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right, on which
+he wore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a
+gesture evidently habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration
+kissed him on the neck instead.
+
+"Christ be with you!" Kutuzov repeated and went toward his carriage.
+"Get in with me," said he to Bolkonski.
+
+"Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to
+remain with Prince Bagration's detachment."
+
+"Get in," said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still delayed,
+he added: "I need good officers myself, need them myself!"
+
+They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.
+
+"There is still much, much before us," he said, as if with an old
+man's penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkonski's
+mind. "If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,"
+he added as if speaking to himself.
+
+Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov's face only a foot distant from him
+and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar
+near his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the
+empty eye socket. "Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those
+men's death," thought Bolkonski.
+
+"That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment," he said.
+
+Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had
+been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently
+swaying on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince
+Andrew. There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With
+delicate irony he questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his
+interview with the Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court
+concerning the Krems affair, and about some ladies they both knew.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news that the
+army he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported
+that the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing
+in immense force upon Kutuzov's line of communication with the
+troops that were arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at
+Krems, Napoleon's army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut
+him off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty
+thousand, and he would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If
+Kutuzov decided to abandon the road connecting him with the troops
+arriving from Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown
+parts of the Bohemian mountains, defending himself against superior
+forces of the enemy and abandoning all hope of a junction with
+Buxhowden. If Kutuzov decided to retreat along the road from Krems
+to Olmutz, to unite with the troops arriving from Russia, he risked
+being forestalled on that road by the French who had crossed the
+Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his baggage and transport, having
+to accept battle on the march against an enemy three times as
+strong, who would hem him in from two sides.
+
+Kutuzov chose this latter course.
+
+The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were
+advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles
+off on the line of Kutuzov's retreat. If he reached Znaim before the
+French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the
+French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army
+to a disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to
+forestall the French with his whole army was impossible. The road
+for the French from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the
+road for the Russians from Krems to Znaim.
+
+The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent Bagration's vanguard,
+four thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the
+Krems-Znaim to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march
+without resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and
+if he succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as
+long as possible. Kutuzov himself with all his transport took the road
+to Znaim.
+
+Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills,
+with his hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as
+stragglers by the way, Bagration came out on the Vienna-Znaim road
+at Hollabrunn a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching
+Hollabrunn from Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to
+march for some days before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagration
+with his four thousand hungry, exhausted men would have to detain
+for days the whole enemy army that came upon him at Hollabrunn,
+which was clearly impossible. But a freak of fate made the
+impossible possible. The success of the trick that had placed the
+Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without a fight led Murat
+to try to deceive Kutuzov in a similar way. Meeting Bagration's weak
+detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be Kutuzov's whole
+army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited the arrival of
+the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna, and with
+this object offered a three days' truce on condition that both
+armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared that
+negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he
+therefore offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count
+Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed
+Murat's emissary and retired, leaving Bagration's division exposed.
+Another emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace
+negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days' truce.
+Bagration replied that he was not authorized either to accept or
+refuse a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutuzov to report the offer he
+had received.
+
+A truce was Kutuzov's sole chance of gaining time, giving
+Bagration's exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport
+and heavy convoys (whose movements were concealed from the French)
+advance if but one stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the
+only, and a quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On
+receiving the news he immediately dispatched Adjutant General
+Wintzingerode, who was in attendance on him, to the enemy camp.
+Wintzingerode was not merely to agree to the truce but also to offer
+terms of capitulation, and meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back
+to hasten to the utmost the movements of the baggage trains of the
+entire army along the Krems-Znaim road. Bagration's exhausted and
+hungry detachment, which alone covered this movement of the
+transport and of the whole army, had to remain stationary in face of
+an enemy eight times as strong as itself.
+
+Kutuzov's expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which
+were in no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to
+pass, and also that Murat's mistake would very soon be discovered,
+proved correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen
+miles from Hollabrunn) received Murat's dispatch with the proposal
+of a truce and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the
+following letter to Murat:
+
+Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,
+
+at eight o'clock in the morning
+
+To PRINCE MURAT,
+
+I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command
+only my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice
+without my order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign.
+Break the armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him
+that the general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so,
+and that no one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.
+
+If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I
+will ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy the
+Russian army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage and
+artillery.
+
+The Russian Emperor's aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are
+nothing when they have no powers; this one had none.... The
+Austrians let themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna
+bridge, you are letting yourself be tricked by an aide-de-camp of
+the Emperor.
+
+NAPOLEON
+
+Bonaparte's adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to
+Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all
+the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim
+escape, and Bagration's four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,
+dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first
+time for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was
+in store for him.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who
+had persisted in his request to Kutuzov, arrived at Grunth and
+reported himself to Bagration. Bonaparte's adjutant had not yet
+reached Murat's detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In
+Bagration's detachment no one knew anything of the general position of
+affairs. They talked of peace but did not believe in its
+possibility; others talked of a battle but also disbelieved in the
+nearness of an engagement. Bagration, knowing Bolkonski to be a
+favorite and trusted adjutant, received him with distinction and
+special marks of favor, explaining to him that there would probably be
+an engagement that day or the next, and giving him full liberty to
+remain with him during the battle or to join the rearguard and have an
+eye on the order of retreat, "which is also very important."
+
+"However, there will hardly be an engagement today," said
+Bagration as if to reassure Prince Andrew.
+
+"If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a
+medal he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he
+wishes to stay with me, let him... he'll be of use here if he's a
+brave officer," thought Bagration. Prince Andrew, without replying,
+asked the prince's permission to ride round the position to see the
+disposition of the forces, so as to know his bearings should he be
+sent to execute an order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly
+dressed man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of
+speaking French though he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince
+Andrew.
+
+On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who
+seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors,
+benches, and fencing from the village.
+
+"There now, Prince! We can't stop those fellows," said the staff
+officer pointing to the soldiers. "The officers don't keep them in
+hand. And there," he pointed to a sutler's tent, "they crowd in and
+sit. This morning I turned them all out and now look, it's full again.
+I must go there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won't take a
+moment."
+
+"Yes, let's go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese,"
+said Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything.
+
+"Why didn't you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you
+something."
+
+They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed
+and weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking.
+
+"Now what does this mean, gentlemen?" said the staff officer, in the
+reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more than
+once. "You know it won't do to leave your posts like this. The
+prince gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you,
+Captain," and he turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer
+who without his boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to
+dry), in only his stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not
+altogether comfortably.
+
+"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Captain Tushin?" he
+continued. "One would think that as an artillery officer you would set
+a good example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be
+sounded and you'll be in a pretty position without your boots!" (The
+staff officer smiled.) "Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of
+you, all!" he added in a tone of command.
+
+Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery
+officer Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged
+foot to the other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent,
+kindly eyes from Prince Andrew to the staff officer.
+
+"The soldiers say it feels easier without boots," said Captain
+Tushin smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently
+wishing to adopt a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt
+that his jest was unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.
+
+"Kindly return to your posts," said the staff officer trying to
+preserve his gravity.
+
+Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer's small figure.
+There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather
+comic, but extremely attractive.
+
+The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode
+on.
+
+Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking
+soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left
+some entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which
+showed up red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt
+sleeves despite the cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host
+of white ants; spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown
+up from behind the bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer
+rode up, looked at the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it
+they came upon some dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by
+others, who ran from the entrenchment. They had to hold their noses
+and put their horses to a trot to escape from the poisoned
+atmosphere of these latrines.
+
+"Voila l'agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince,"~^ said the staff
+officer.
+
+^~ "This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince."
+
+They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could
+already be seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the
+position.
+
+"That's our battery," said the staff officer indicating the
+highest point. "It's in charge of the queer fellow we saw without
+his boots. You can see everything from there; let's go there, Prince."
+
+"Thank you very much, I will go on alone," said Prince Andrew,
+wishing to rid himself of this staff officer's company, "please
+don't trouble yourself further."
+
+The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone.
+
+The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly
+and cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had
+been in the baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road
+seven miles away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and
+alarm could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French
+lines the more confident was the appearance of our troops. The
+soldiers in their greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major
+and company officers were counting the men, poking the last man in
+each section in the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers
+scattered over the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and
+were building shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the
+fires sat others, dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg
+bands or mending boots or overcoats and crowding round the boilers and
+porridge cookers. In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers
+were gazing eagerly at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample,
+which a quartermaster sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an
+officer who sat on a log before his shelter, had been tasted.
+
+Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,
+crowded round a pock-marked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who,
+tilting a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to
+him. The soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with
+reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths,
+and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions,
+licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats.
+All their faces were as serene as if all this were happening at home
+awaiting peaceful encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before
+an action in which at least half of them would be left on the field.
+After passing a chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev
+grenadiers- fine fellows busy with similar peaceful affairs- near
+the shelter of the regimental commander, higher than and different
+from the others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of
+grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held him while
+two others were flourishing their switches and striking him
+regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally. A stout
+major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the screams
+kept repeating:
+
+"It's a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest,
+honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor
+in him, he's a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!"
+
+So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but
+unnatural screams, continued.
+
+"Go on, go on!" said the major.
+
+A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his
+face stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the
+adjutant as he rode by.
+
+Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our
+front line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and
+left flanks, but in the center where the men with a flag of truce
+had passed that morning, the lines were so near together that the
+men could see one another's faces and speak to one another. Besides
+the soldiers who formed the picket line on either side, there were
+many curious onlookers who, jesting and laughing, stared at their
+strange foreign enemies.
+
+Since early morning- despite an injunction not to approach the
+picket line- the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away.
+The soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a
+curiosity, no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the
+sight-seers and grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew
+halted to have a look at the French.
+
+"Look! Look there!" one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a
+Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer
+and was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. "Hark
+to him jabbering! Fine, isn't it? It's all the Frenchy can do to
+keep up with him. There now, Sidorov!"
+
+"Wait a bit and listen. It's fine!" answered Sidorov, who was
+considered an adept at French.
+
+The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince
+Andrew recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying.
+Dolokhov had come from the left flank where their regiment was
+stationed, with his captain.
+
+"Now then, go on, go on!" incited the officer, bending forward and
+trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible
+to him. "More, please: more! What's he saying?"
+
+Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot
+dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about
+the campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the
+Russians, was trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and
+had fled all the way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the
+Russians had not surrendered but had beaten the French.
+
+"We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you
+off," said Dolokhov.
+
+"Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!" said
+the French grenadier.
+
+The French onlookers and listeners laughed.
+
+"We'll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...,"~^ said Dolokhov.
+
+^~ "On vous fera danser."
+
+"Qu' est-ce qu'il chante?"~^ asked a Frenchman.
+
+^~ "What's he singing about?"
+
+"It's ancient history," said another, guessing that it referred to a
+former war. "The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the
+others..."
+
+"Bonaparte..." began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
+
+"Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!" cried he angrily.
+
+"The devil skin your Emperor."
+
+And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier's Russian and
+shouldering his musket walked away.
+
+"Let us go, Ivan Lukich," he said to the captain.
+
+"Ah, that's the way to talk French," said the picket soldiers. "Now,
+Sidorov, you have a try!"
+
+Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber
+meaningless sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter,
+Kaska," he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.
+
+"Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!" came peals of such healthy
+and good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the
+French involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed
+to be to unload the muskets, muskets, explode the ammunition, and
+all return home as quickly as possible.
+
+But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and
+entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon
+confronted one another as before.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left,
+Prince Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff
+officer had told him the whole field could be seen. Here he
+dismounted, and stopped beside the farthest of the four unlimbered
+cannon. Before the guns an artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he
+stood at attention when the officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his
+measured, monotonous pacing. Behind the guns were their limbers and
+still farther back picket ropes and artillerymen's bonfires. To the
+left, not far from the farthest cannon, was a small, newly constructed
+wattle shed from which came the sound of officers' voices in eager
+conversation.
+
+It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and
+the greater part of the enemy's opened out from this battery. Just
+facing it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schon
+Grabern could be seen, and in three places to left and right the
+French troops amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of
+whom were evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To
+the left from that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a
+battery, but it was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye.
+Our right flank was posted on a rather steep incline which dominated
+the French position. Our infantry were stationed there, and at the
+farthest point the dragoons. In the center, where Tushin's battery
+stood and from which Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the
+easiest and most direct descent and ascent to the brook separating
+us from Schon Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse,
+in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood.
+The French line was wider than ours, and it was plain that they
+could easily outflank us on both sides. Behind our position was a
+steep and deep dip, making it difficult for artillery and cavalry to
+retire. Prince Andrew took out his notebook and, leaning on the
+cannon, sketched a plan of the position. He made some notes on two
+points, intending to mention them to Bagration. His idea was, first,
+to concentrate all the artillery in the center, and secondly, to
+withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the dip. Prince Andrew,
+being always near the commander in chief, closely following the mass
+movements and general orders, and constantly studying historical
+accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the course of
+events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined only
+important possibilities: "If the enemy attacks the right flank," he
+said to himself, "the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseurs must
+hold their position till reserves from the center come up. In that
+case the dragoons could successfully make a flank counterattack. If
+they attack our center we, having the center battery on this high
+ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and retreat
+to the dip by echelons." So he reasoned.... All the time he had been
+beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly,
+but as often happens had not understood a word of what they were
+saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming from the
+shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen.
+
+"No, friend," said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew,
+a familiar voice, "what I say is that if it were possible to know what
+is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That's so, friend."
+
+Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: "Afraid or not, you can't
+escape it anyhow."
+
+"All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people," said a third
+manly voice interrupting them both. "Of course you artillery men are
+very wise, because you can take everything along with you- vodka and
+snacks."
+
+And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,
+laughed.
+
+"Yes, one is afraid," continued the first speaker, he of the
+familiar voice. "One is afraid of the unknown, that's what it is.
+Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there
+is no sky but only an atmosphere."
+
+The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.
+
+"Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin," it said.
+
+"Why," thought Prince Andrew, "that's the captain who stood up in
+the sutler's hut without his boots." He recognized the agreeable,
+philosophizing voice with pleasure.
+
+"Some herb vodka? Certainly!" said Tushin. "But still, to conceive a
+future life..."
+
+He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air;
+nearer and nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon
+ball, as if it had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded
+into the ground near the shed with super human force, throwing up a
+mass of earth. The ground seemed to groan at the terrible impact.
+
+And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth
+and his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed
+followed by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer
+who hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,
+looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes
+ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto
+motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was a
+battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two
+mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A
+small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,
+probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had
+not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a
+report. The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and
+galloped back to Grunth to find Prince Bagration. He heard the
+cannonade behind him growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our
+guns had begun to reply. From the bottom of the slope, where the
+parleys had taken place, came the report of musketry.
+
+Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte's stern
+letter, and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at
+once moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the
+Russian wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the
+Emperor to crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.
+
+"It has begun. Here it is!" thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood
+rush to his heart. "But where and how will my Toulon present itself?"
+
+Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and
+drinking vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same
+rapid movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets
+ready, and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that
+filled his heart. "It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but
+enjoyable!" was what the face of each soldier and each officer
+seemed to say.
+
+Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up,
+he saw, in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming
+toward him. The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and
+riding a white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew stopped,
+waiting for him to come up; Prince Bagration reined in his horse and
+recognizing Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while
+Prince Andrew told him what he had seen.
+
+The feeling, "It has begun! Here it is!" was seen even on Prince
+Bagration's hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.
+Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face
+and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking
+and feeling at that moment. "Is there anything at all behind that
+impassive face?" Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince
+Bagration bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew
+told him, and said, "Very good!" in a tone that seemed to imply that
+everything that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he
+had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride,
+spoke quickly. Prince Bagration, uttering his words with an Oriental
+accent, spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that
+there was no need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the
+direction of Tushin's battery. Prince Andrew followed with the
+suite. Behind Prince Bagration rode an officer of the suite, the
+prince's personal adjutant, Zherkov, an orderly officer, the staff
+officer on duty, riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian- an
+accountant who had asked permission to be present at the battle out of
+curiosity. The accountant, a stout, full-faced man, looked around
+him with a naive smile of satisfaction and presented a strange
+appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet
+coat, as he jolted on his horse with a convoy officer's saddle.
+
+"He wants to see a battle," said Zherkov to Bolkonski, pointing to
+the accountant, "but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach
+already."
+
+"Oh, leave off!" said the accountant with a beaming but rather
+cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of
+Zherkov's joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really
+was.
+
+"It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince," said the staff officer.
+(He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing
+a prince, but could not get it quite right.)
+
+By this time they were all approaching Tushin's battery, and a
+ball struck the ground in front of them.
+
+"What's that that has fallen?" asked the accountant with a naive
+smile.
+
+"A French pancake," answered Zherkov.
+
+"So that's what they hit with?" asked the accountant. "How awful!"
+
+He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished
+speaking when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which
+suddenly ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a
+Cossack, riding a little to their right and behind the accountant,
+crashed to earth with his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent
+over their saddles and turned their horses away. The accountant
+stopped, facing the Cossack, and examined him with attentive
+curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the horse still struggled.
+
+Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing
+the cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to
+say, "Is it worth while noticing trifles?" He reined in his horse with
+the case of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged
+his saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber
+of a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story
+of Suvorov giving his saber to Bagration in Italy, and the
+recollection was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had
+reached the battery at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined
+the battlefield.
+
+"Whose company?" asked Prince Bagration of an artilleryman
+standing by the ammunition wagon.
+
+He asked, "Whose company?" but he really meant, "Are you
+frightened here?" and the artilleryman understood him.
+
+"Captain Tushin's, your excellency!" shouted the red-haired,
+freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.
+
+"Yes, yes," muttered Bagration as if considering something, and he
+rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon.
+
+As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and
+his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they
+could see the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly
+back to its former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number
+One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while
+Number Two with a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon's
+mouth. The short, round-shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over
+the tail of the gun carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the
+general, looked out shading his eyes with his small hand.
+
+"Lift it two lines more and it will be just right," cried he in a
+feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill suited to
+his weak figure. "Number Two!" he squeaked. "Fire, Medvedev!"
+
+Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three fingers to his
+cap with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military
+salute but like a priest's benediction, approached the general. Though
+Tushin's guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing
+incendiary balls at the village of Schon Grabern visible just
+opposite, in front of which large masses of French were advancing.
+
+No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to fire, but
+after consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had
+great respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set
+fire to the village. "Very good!" said Bagration in reply to the
+officer's report, and began deliberately to examine the whole
+battlefield extended before him. The French had advanced nearest on
+our right. Below the height on which the Kiev regiment was
+stationed, in the hollow where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring
+rolling and crackling of musketry was heard, and much farther to the
+right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to
+Bagration a French column that was outflanking us. To the left the
+horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagration ordered two
+battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right flank.
+The officer of the suite ventured to remark to the prince that if
+these battalions went away, the guns would remain without support.
+Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull eyes looked
+at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the officer's
+remark was just and that really no answer could be made to it. But
+at that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the
+commander of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses
+of the French were coming down upon them and that his regiment was
+in disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince
+Bagration bowed his head in sign of assent and approval. He rode off
+at a walk to the right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with
+orders to attack the French. But this adjutant returned half an hour
+later with the news that the commander of the dragoons had already
+retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as a heavy fire had been
+opened on him and he was losing men uselessly, and so had hastened
+to throw some sharpshooters into the wood.
+
+"Very good!" said Bagration.
+
+As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also,
+and as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go
+there himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov to tell the general in
+command (the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutuzov at
+Braunau) that he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow
+in the rear, as the right flank would probably not be able to
+withstand the enemy's attack very long. About Tushin and the battalion
+that had been in support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince
+Andrew listened attentively to Bagration's colloquies with the
+commanding officers and the orders he gave them and, to his
+surprise, found that no orders were really given, but that Prince
+Bagration tried to make it appear that everything done by necessity,
+by accident, or by the will of subordinate commanders was done, if not
+by his direct command, at least in accord with his intentions.
+Prince Andrew noticed, however, that though what happened was due to
+chance and was independent of the commander's will, owing to the
+tact Bagration showed, his presence was very valuable. Officers who
+approached him with disturbed countenances became calm; soldiers and
+officers greeted him gaily, grew more cheerful in his presence, and
+were evidently anxious to display their courage before him.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of our right
+flank, began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard
+but where on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer
+they got to the hollow the less they could see but the more they
+felt the nearness of the actual battlefield. They began to meet
+wounded men. One with a bleeding head and no cap was being dragged
+along by two soldiers who supported him under the arms. There was a
+gurgle in his throat and he was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently
+hit him in the throat or mouth. Another was walking sturdily by
+himself but without his musket, groaning aloud and swinging his arm
+which had just been hurt, while blood from it was streaming over his
+greatcoat as from a bottle. He had that moment been wounded and his
+face showed fear rather than suffering. Crossing a road they descended
+a steep incline and saw several men lying on the ground; they also met
+a crowd of soldiers some of whom were unwounded. The soldiers were
+ascending the hill breathing heavily, and despite the general's
+presence were talking loudly and gesticulating. In front of them
+rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the smoke, and an
+officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting after the crowd of
+retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagration rode up to the
+ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning
+the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked
+with smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with
+it. Some were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the
+touchpans or taking charges from their pouches, while others were
+firing, though who they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke
+which there was no wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and
+whistling of bullets were often heard. "What is this?" thought
+Prince Andrew approaching the crowd of soldiers. "It can't be an
+attack, for they are not moving; it can't be a square- for they are
+not drawn up for that."
+
+The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a
+pleasant smile- his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,
+giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as
+a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had
+been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been
+repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack had
+been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had
+occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know
+what had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to
+him, and could not say with certainty whether the attack had been
+repulsed or his regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at
+the commencement of the action balls and shells began flying all
+over his regiment and hitting men and that afterwards someone had
+shouted "Cavalry!" and our men had begun firing. They were still
+firing, not at the cavalry which had disappeared, but at French
+infantry who had come into the hollow and were firing at our men.
+Prince Bagration bowed his head as a sign that this was exactly what
+he had desired and expected. Turning to his adjutant he ordered him to
+bring down the two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs whom they had
+just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by the changed expression on
+Prince Bagration's face at this moment. It expressed the
+concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of a man who
+on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water. The
+dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation of
+profound thought. The round, steady, hawk's eyes looked before him
+eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although
+his movements were still slow and measured.
+
+The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagration, entreating
+him to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were.
+"Please, your excellency, for God's sake!" he kept saying, glancing
+for support at an officer of the suite who turned away from him.
+"There, you see!" and he drew attention to the bullets whistling,
+singing, and hissing continually around them. He spoke in the tone
+of entreaty and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who
+has picked up an ax: "We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister
+your hands." He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and
+his half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to his words.
+The staff officer joined in the colonel's appeals, but Bagration did
+not reply; he only gave an order to cease firing and re-form, so as to
+give room for the two approaching battalions. While he was speaking,
+the curtain of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising
+wind, began to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible
+hand, and the hill opposite, with the French moving about on it,
+opened out before them. All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French
+column advancing against them and winding down over the uneven ground.
+One could already see the soldiers' shaggy caps, distinguish the
+officers from the men, and see the standard flapping against its
+staff.
+
+"They march splendidly," remarked someone in Bagration's suite.
+
+The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The
+clash would take place on this side of it...
+
+The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly
+formed up and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the
+laggards, came two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order.
+Before they had reached Bagration, the weighty tread of the mass of
+men marching in step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to
+Bagration, marched a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a
+stupid and happy expression- the same man who had rushed out of the
+wattle shed. At that moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how
+dashing a fellow he would appear as he passed the commander.
+
+With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly
+with his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to
+his full height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with
+the heavy tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He
+carried close to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and
+not like a real weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and
+now back at the men without losing step, his whole powerful body
+turning flexibly. It was as if all the powers of his soul were
+concentrated on passing the commander in the best possible manner, and
+feeling that he was doing it well he was happy. "Left... left...
+left..." he seemed to repeat to himself at each alternate step; and in
+time to this, with stern but varied faces, the wall of soldiers
+burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched in step, and each one of
+these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be repeating to himself at each
+alternate step, "Left... left... left..." A fat major skirted a
+bush, puffing and falling out of step; a soldier who had fallen
+behind, his face showing alarm at his defection, ran at a trot,
+panting to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the air,
+flew over the heads of Bagration and his suite, and fell into the
+column to the measure of "Left... left!" "Close up!" came the
+company commander's voice in jaunty tones. The soldiers passed in a
+semicircle round something where the ball had fallen, and an old
+trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who had stopped beside
+the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling into step with a
+hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous silence and the
+regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one seemed to hear
+left... left... left.
+
+"Well done, lads!" said Prince Bagration.
+
+"Glad to do our best, your ex'len-lency!" came a confused shout from
+the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on
+Bagration as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: "We
+know that ourselves!" Another, without looking round, as though
+fearing to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.
+
+The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.
+
+Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past him and
+dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over
+his felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The
+head of the French column, with its officers leading, appeared from
+below the hill.
+
+"Forward, with God!" said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous
+voice, turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging
+his arms, he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the
+awkward gait of a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible
+power was leading him forward, and experienced great happiness.
+
+The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside
+Bagration, could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets,
+and even their faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who,
+with gaitered legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with
+difficulty.) Prince Bagration gave no further orders and silently
+continued to walk on in front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after
+another rang out from the French, smoke appeared all along their
+uneven ranks, and musket shots sounded. Several of our men fell, among
+them the round-faced officer who had marched so gaily and
+complacently. But at the moment the first report was heard,
+Bagration looked round and shouted, "Hurrah!"
+
+"Hurrah- ah!- ah!" rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and
+passing Bagration and racing one another they rushed in an irregular
+but joyous and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right
+flank. In the center Tushin's forgotten battery, which had managed
+to set fire to the Schon Grabern village, delayed the French
+advance. The French were putting out the fire which the wind was
+spreading, and thus gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the
+center to the other side of the dip in the ground at the rear was
+hurried and noisy, but the different companies did not get mixed.
+But our left- which consisted of the Azov and Podolsk infantry and the
+Pavlograd hussars- was simultaneously attacked and outflanked by
+superior French forces under Lannes and was thrown into confusion.
+Bagration had sent Zherkov to the general commanding that left flank
+with orders to retreat immediately.
+
+Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse
+about and galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagration than his
+courage failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it
+was dangerous.
+
+Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where
+the firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where
+they could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.
+
+The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander
+of the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which
+Dolokhov was serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left
+flank had been assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment
+in which Rostov was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two
+commanders were much exasperated with one another and, long after
+the action had begun on the right flank and the French were already
+advancing, were engaged in discussion with the sole object of
+offending one another. But the regiments, both cavalry and infantry,
+were by no means ready for the impending action. From privates to
+general they were not expecting a battle and were engaged in
+peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the horses and the
+infantry collecting wood.
+
+"He higher iss dan I in rank," said the German colonel of the
+hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, "so
+let him do what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars...
+Bugler, sount ze retreat!"
+
+But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling
+together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the
+capotes of Lannes' sharpshooters were already seen crossing the
+milldam and forming up within twice the range of a musket shot. The
+general in command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky
+steps, and having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall and
+rode to the Pavlograd commander. The commanders met with polite bows
+but with secret malevolence in their hearts.
+
+"Once again, Colonel," said the general, "I can't leave half my
+men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you," he repeated, "to
+occupy the position and prepare for an attack."
+
+"I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!"
+suddenly replied the irate colonel. "If you vere in the cavalry..."
+
+"I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if
+you are not aware of the fact..."
+
+"Quite avare, your excellency," suddenly shouted the colonel,
+touching his horse and turning purple in the face. "Vill you be so
+goot to come to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don't
+vish to destroy my men for your pleasure!"
+
+"You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own
+pleasure and I won't allow it to be said!"
+
+Taking the colonel's outburst as a challenge to his courage, the
+general expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the front
+line, as if their differences would be settled there amongst the
+bullets. They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and
+they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the
+line, for from where they had been before it had been evident that
+it was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken
+ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The
+general and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another
+like two fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to
+detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination
+successfully. As there was nothing to said, and neither wished to give
+occasion for it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave
+the range of fire, they would have remained there for a long time
+testing each other's courage had it not been that just then they heard
+the rattle of musketry and a muffled shout almost behind them in the
+wood. The French had attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It
+was no longer possible for the hussars to retreat with the infantry.
+They were cut off from the line of retreat on the left by the
+French. However inconvenient the position, it was now necessary to
+attack in order to cut away through for themselves.
+
+The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely time to
+mount before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns
+bridge, there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and
+again that terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear-
+resembling the line separating the living from the dead- lay between
+them. All were conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether
+they would they would cross it or not, and how they would cross it,
+agitated them all.
+
+The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to
+questions put to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately
+insisting on having his own way, gave an order. No one said anything
+definite, but the rumor of an attack spread through the squadron.
+The command to form up rang out and the sabers whizzed as they were
+drawn from their scabbards. Still no one moved. The troops of the left
+flank, infantry and hussars alike, felt that the commander did not
+himself know what to do, and this irresolution communicated itself
+to the men.
+
+"If only they would be quick!" thought Rostov, feeling that at
+last the time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which
+he had so often heard from his fellow hussars.
+
+"Fo'ward, with God, lads!" rang out Denisov's voice. "At a twot
+fo'ward!"
+
+The horses' croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at
+the reins and started of his own accord.
+
+Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of his
+hussars and still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see
+distinctly but took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some
+way off.
+
+"Faster!" came the word of command, and Rostov felt Rook's flanks
+drooping as he broke into a gallop.
+
+Rostov anticipated his horse's movements and became more and more
+elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had
+been in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible- and now he
+had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but
+everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. "Oh, how I
+will slash at him!" thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber.
+
+"Hur-a-a-a-ah!" came a roar of voices. "Let anyone come my way now,"
+thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a
+full gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was
+already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep
+over the squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at
+that instant the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away
+from him, and Rostov felt as in a dream that he continued to be
+carried forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same
+spot. From behind him Bondarchuk, an hussar he knew, jolted against
+him and looked angrily at him. Bondarchuk's horse swerved and galloped
+past.
+
+"How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!" Rostov
+asked and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle
+of a field. Instead of the moving horses and hussars' backs, he saw
+nothing before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around
+him. There was warm blood under his arm. "No, I am wounded and the
+horse is killed." Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back,
+pinning his rider's leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled
+but could not rise. Rostov also tried to rise but fell back, his
+sabretache having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men
+were, and where the French, he did not know. There was no one near.
+
+Having disentangled his leg, he rose. "Where, on which side, was now
+the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself
+and could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he
+wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something
+superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if
+it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find
+blood on it. "Ah, here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing
+some men running toward him. "They will help me!" In front came a
+man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned,
+and with a hooked nose. Then came two more, and many more running
+behind. One of them said something strange, not in Russian. In among
+the hindmost of these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian hussar.
+He was being held by the arms and his horse was being led behind him.
+
+"It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will
+take me too? Who are these men?" thought Rostov, scarcely believing
+his eyes. "Can they be French?" He looked at the approaching
+Frenchmen, and though but a moment before he had been galloping to get
+at them and hack them to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful
+that he could not believe his eyes. "Who are they? Why are they
+running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom
+everyone is so fond of?" He remembered his mother's love for him,
+and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to
+kill him seemed impossible. "But perhaps they may do it!" For more
+than ten seconds he stood not moving from the spot or realizing the
+situation. The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked nose, was
+already so close that the expression of his face could be seen. And
+the excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down, holding
+his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostov. He seized his
+pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran
+with all his might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the
+feeling of doubt and conflict with which he had trodden the Enns
+bridge, but with the feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One
+single sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed
+his whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he fled across the field
+with the impetuosity he used to show at catchplay, now and then
+turning his good-natured, pale, young face to look back. A shudder
+of terror went through him: "No, better not look," he thought, but
+having reached the bushes he glanced round once more. The French had
+fallen behind, and just as he looked round the first man changed his
+run to a walk and, turning, shouted something loudly to a comrade
+farther back. Rostov paused. "No, there's some mistake," thought he.
+"They can't have wanted to kill me." But at the same time, his left
+arm felt as heavy as if a seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He
+could run no more. The Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov
+closed his eyes and stooped down. One bullet and then another whistled
+past him. He mustered his last remaining strength, took hold of his
+left hand with his right, and reached the bushes. Behind these were
+some Russian sharpshooters.
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the
+outskirts of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting
+mixed, and retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his
+fear, uttered the senseless cry, "Cut off!" that is so terrible in
+battle, and that word infected the whole crowd with a feeling of
+panic.
+
+"Surrounded! Cut off? We're lost!" shouted the fugitives.
+
+The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the
+general realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment,
+and the thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years' service
+who had never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters
+for negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the
+recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and
+above all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for
+self-preservation, he clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring
+his horse, galloped to the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell
+around, but fortunately missed him. His one desire was to know what
+was happening and at any cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he
+had made one, so that he, an exemplary officer of twenty-two years'
+service, who had never been censured, should not be held to blame.
+
+Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind
+the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and
+descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides
+the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of
+soldiers attend to the voice of their commander, or would they,
+disregarding him, continue their flight? Despite his desperate
+shouts that used to seem so terrible to the soldiers, despite his
+furious purple countenance distorted out of all likeness to his former
+self, and the flourishing of his saber, the soldiers all continued
+to run, talking, firing into the air, and disobeying orders. The moral
+hesitation which decided the fate of battles was evidently culminating
+in a panic.
+
+The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the
+powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at
+that moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any
+apparent reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and
+Russian sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was
+Timokhin's company, which alone had maintained its order in the wood
+and, having lain in ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French
+unexpectedly. Timokhin, armed only with a sword, had rushed at the
+enemy with such a desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination
+that, taken by surprise, the French had thrown down their muskets
+and run. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin, killed a Frenchman at
+close quarters and was the first to seize the surrendering French
+officer by his collar. Our fugitives returned, the battalions
+re-formed, and the French who had nearly cut our left flank in half
+were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to join
+up, and the fight was at an end. The regimental commander and Major
+Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the retreating companies
+pass by them, when a soldier came up and took hold of the
+commander's stirrup, almost leaning against him. The man was wearing a
+bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or cap, his head was
+bandaged, and over his shoulder a French munition pouch was slung.
+He had an officer's sword in his hand. The soldier was pale, his
+blue eyes looked impudently into the commander's face, and his lips
+were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving instructions
+to Major Ekonomov, he could not help taking notice of the soldier.
+
+"Your excellency, here are two trophies," said Dolokhov, pointing to
+the French sword and pouch. "I have taken an officer prisoner. I
+stopped the company." Dolokhov breathed heavily from weariness and
+spoke in abrupt sentences. "The whole company can bear witness. I
+beg you will remember this, your excellency!"
+
+"All right, all right," replied the commander, and turned to Major
+Ekonomov.
+
+But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around
+his head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.
+
+"A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your
+excellency!"
+
+Tushin's battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of
+the action did Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in the
+center, send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew
+also, to order the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When
+the supports attached to Tushin's battery had been moved away in the
+middle of the action by someone's order, the battery had continued
+firing and was only not captured by the French because the enemy could
+not surmise that anyone could have the effrontery to continue firing
+from four quite undefended guns. On the contrary, the energetic action
+of that battery led the French to suppose that here- in the center-
+the main Russian forces were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to
+attack this point, but on each occasion had been driven back by
+grapeshot from the four isolated guns on the hillock.
+
+Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had succeeded in
+setting fire to Schon Grabern.
+
+"Look at them scurrying! It's burning! Just see the smoke! Fine!
+Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke!" exclaimed the artillerymen,
+brightening up.
+
+All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the
+direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the
+soldiers cried at each shot: "Fine! That's good! Look at it... Grand!"
+The fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French
+columns that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as
+though in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the
+right of the village and began firing them at Tushin's battery.
+
+In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in
+successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed
+this battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our
+guns, one knocking over two horses and another tearing off a
+munition-wagon driver's leg. Their spirits once roused were,
+however, not diminished, but only changed character. The horses were
+replaced by others from a reserve gun carriage, the wounded were
+carried away, and the four guns were turned against the ten-gun
+battery. Tushin's companion officer had been killed at the beginning
+of the engagement and within an hour seventeen of the forty men of the
+guns' crews had been disabled, but the artillerymen were still as
+merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed the French appearing
+below them, and then they fired grapeshot at them.
+
+Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly
+to "refill my pipe for that one!" and then, scattering sparks from it,
+ran forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the
+French.
+
+"Smack at 'em, lads!" he kept saying, seizing the guns by the wheels
+and working the screws himself.
+
+Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always
+made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from
+gun to gun, now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders
+about replacing dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones,
+and shouting in his feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute.
+His face grew more and more animated. Only when a man was killed or
+wounded did he frown and turn away from the sight, shouting angrily at
+the men who, as is always the case, hesitated about lifting the
+injured or dead. The soldiers, for the most part handsome fellows and,
+as is always the case in an artillery company, a head and shoulders
+taller and twice as broad as their officer- all looked at their
+commander like children in an embarrassing situation, and the
+expression on his face was invariably reflected on theirs.
+
+Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and
+activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense
+of fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded
+never occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more
+elated. It seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a
+day, since he had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and
+that the corner of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar
+ground. Though he thought of everything, considered everything, and
+did everything the best of officers could do in his position, he was
+in a state akin to feverish delirium or drunkenness.
+
+From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle
+and thud of the enemy's cannon balls, from the flushed and
+perspiring faces of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight
+of the blood of men and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on
+the enemy's side (always followed by a ball flying past and striking
+the earth, a man, a gun, a horse), from the sight of all these
+things a fantastic world of his own had taken possession of his
+brain and at that moment afforded him pleasure. The enemy's guns
+were in his fancy not guns but pipes from which occasional puffs
+were blown by an invisible smoker.
+
+"There... he's puffing again," muttered Tushin to himself, as a
+small cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left
+by the wind.
+
+"Now look out for the ball... we'll throw it back."
+
+"What do you want, your honor?" asked an artilleryman, standing
+close by, who heard him muttering.
+
+"Nothing... only a shell..." he answered.
+
+"Come along, our Matvevna!" he said to himself. "Matvevna"~^ was
+the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which
+was large and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their
+guns seemed to him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard
+Number One of the second gun's crew was "uncle"; Tushin looked at
+him more often than at anyone else and took delight in his every
+movement. The sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now
+diminishing, now increasing, seemed like someone's breathing. He
+listened intently to the ebb and flow of these sounds.
+
+^~ Daughter of Matthew.
+
+"Ah! Breathing again, breathing!" he muttered to himself.
+
+He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was
+throwing cannon balls at the French with both hands.
+
+"Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don't let me down!" he was
+saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice
+called above his head: "Captain Tushin! Captain!"
+
+Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had
+turned him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping
+voice:
+
+"Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you..."
+
+"Why are they down on me?" thought Tushin, looking in alarm at his
+superior.
+
+"I... don't..." he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap.
+"I..."
+
+But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon
+ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse.
+He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another
+ball stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.
+
+"Retire! All to retire!" he shouted from a distance.
+
+The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the
+same order.
+
+It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the
+space where Tushin's guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with
+a broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed
+horses. Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the
+limbers lay several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he
+approached and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the
+mere thought of being afraid roused him again. "I cannot be afraid,"
+thought he, and dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the
+order and did not leave the battery. He decided to have the guns
+removed from their positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together
+with Tushin, stepping across the bodies and under a terrible fire from
+the French, he attended to the removal of the guns.
+
+"A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off," said an
+artilleryman to Prince Andrew. "Not like your honor!"
+
+Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both so busy as to
+seem not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two
+cannon that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down
+the hill (one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind),
+Prince Andrew rode up to Tushin.
+
+"Well, till we meet again..." he said, holding out his hand to
+Tushin.
+
+"Good-by, my dear fellow," said Tushin. "Dear soul! Good-by, my dear
+fellow!" and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his eyes.
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,
+hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing
+dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous.
+The cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on
+the right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin with his guns,
+continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range
+of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the
+staff, among them the staff officer and Zherkov, who had been twice
+sent to Tushin's battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one
+another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to
+proceed, reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin gave no orders, and,
+silently- fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to weep
+without knowing why- rode behind on his artillery nag. Though the
+orders were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves
+after troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty
+infantry officer who just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin's
+wattle shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on "Matvevna's"
+carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one
+hand with the other, came up to Tushin and asked for a seat.
+
+"Captain, for God's sake! I've hurt my arm," he said timidly. "For
+God's sake... I can't walk. For God's sake!"
+
+It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift
+and been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.
+
+"Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!"
+
+"Give him a seat," said Tushin. "Lay a cloak for him to sit on,
+lad," he said, addressing his favorite soldier. "And where is the
+wounded officer?"
+
+"He has been set down. He died," replied someone.
+
+"Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,
+Antonov."
+
+The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the other; he was
+pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on
+"Matvevna," the gun from which they had removed the dead officer.
+The cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his
+breeches and arm.
+
+"What, are you wounded, my lad?" said Tushin, approaching the gun on
+which Rostov sat.
+
+"No, it's a sprain."
+
+"Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?" inquired Tushin.
+
+"It was the officer, your honor, stained it," answered the
+artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if
+apologizing for the state of his gun.
+
+It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by
+the infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they
+halted. It had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the
+uniforms ten paces off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly,
+near by on the right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of
+shot gleamed in the darkness. This was the last French attack and
+was met by soldiers who had sheltered in the village houses. They
+all rushed out of the village again, but Tushin's guns could not move,
+and the artillerymen, Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances
+as they awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking
+eagerly, streamed out of a side street.
+
+"Not hurt, Petrov?" asked one.
+
+"We've given it 'em hot, mate! They won't make another push now,"
+said another.
+
+"You couldn't see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows!
+Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn't there something to
+drink?"
+
+The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and
+again in the complete darkness Tushin's guns moved forward, surrounded
+by the humming infantry as by a frame.
+
+In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was
+flowing always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and
+the sound of hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and
+voices of the wounded were more distinctly heard than any other
+sound in the darkness of the night. The gloom that enveloped the
+army was filled with their groans, which seemed to melt into one
+with the darkness of the night. After a while the moving mass became
+agitated, someone rode past on a white horse followed by his suite,
+and said something in passing: "What did he say? Where to, now?
+Halt, is it? Did he thank us?" came eager questions from all sides.
+The whole moving mass began pressing closer together and a report
+spread that they were ordered to halt: evidently those in front had
+halted. All remained where they were in the middle of the muddy road.
+
+Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Tushin,
+having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a
+dressing station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a
+bonfire the soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostov, too, dragged
+himself to the fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering
+shook his whole body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but
+he kept awake kept awake by an excruciating pain in his arm, for which
+he could find no satisfactory position. He kept closing his eyes and
+then again looking at the fire, which seemed to him dazzlingly red,
+and at the feeble, round-shouldered figure of Tushin who was sitting
+cross-legged like a Turk beside him. Tushin's large, kind, intelligent
+eyes were fixed with sympathy and commiseration on Rostov, who saw
+that Tushin with his whole heart wished to help him but could not.
+
+From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry,
+who were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The
+sound of voices, the tramping feet, the horses' hoofs moving in mud,
+the crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous
+rumble.
+
+It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through
+the gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a
+storm. Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what passed
+before and around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on
+his heels, held his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.
+
+"You don't mind your honor?" he asked Tushin. "I've lost my company,
+your honor. I don't know where... such bad luck!"
+
+With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came
+up to the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked him to have the guns
+moved a trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers
+rushed to the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately,
+each trying to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding
+on to.
+
+"You picked it up?... I dare say! You're very smart!" one of them
+shouted hoarsely.
+
+Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg
+band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.
+
+"Must one die like a dog?" said he.
+
+Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier
+ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.
+
+"A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you,
+fellow countrymen. Thanks for the fire- we'll return it with
+interest," said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.
+
+Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and
+passed by the fire. One of them stumbled.
+
+"Who the devil has put the logs on the road?" snarled he.
+
+"He's dead- why carry him?" said another.
+
+"Shut up!"
+
+And they disappeared into the darkness with with their load.
+
+"Still aching?" Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Your honor, you're wanted by the general. He is in the hut here,"
+said a gunner, coming up to Tushin.
+
+"Coming, friend."
+
+Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight,
+walked away from the fire.
+
+Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared
+for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking with some
+commanding officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old
+man with the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton
+bone, and the general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years,
+flushed by a glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with
+the signet ring, and Zherkov, uneasily glancing at them all, and
+Prince Andrew, pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering
+eyes.
+
+In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French,
+and the accountant with the naive face was feeling its texture,
+shaking his head in perplexity- perhaps because the banner really
+interested him, perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was,
+to look on at a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next
+hut there was a French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our
+dragoons. Our officers were flocking in to look at him. Prince
+Bagration was thanking the individual commanders and inquiring into
+details of the action and our losses. The general whose regiment had
+been inspected at Braunau was informing the prince that as soon as the
+action began he had withdrawn from the wood, mustered the men who were
+woodcutting, and, allowing the French to pass him, had made a
+bayonet charge with two battalions and had broken up the French
+troops.
+
+"When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was
+disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let them come
+on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'- and
+that's what I did."
+
+The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not
+managed to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened.
+Perhaps it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid
+all that confusion what did or did not happen?
+
+"By the way, your excellency, I should inform you," he continued-
+remembering Dolokhov's conversation with Kutuzov and his last
+interview with the gentleman-ranker- "that Private Dolokhov, who was
+reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my presence
+and particularly distinguished himself."
+
+"I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,"
+chimed in Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the
+hussars all that day, but had heard about them from an infantry
+officer. "They broke up two squares, your excellency."
+
+Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting one of
+his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to the
+glory of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a serious
+expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie
+devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the old colonel:
+
+"Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:
+infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were
+abandoned in the center?" he inquired, searching with his eyes for
+someone. (Prince Bagration did not ask about the guns on the left
+flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the
+very beginning of the action.) "I think I sent you?" he added, turning
+to the staff officer on duty.
+
+"One was damaged," answered the staff officer, "and the other I
+can't understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had
+only just left.... It is true that it was hot there," he added,
+modestly.
+
+Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close to the
+village and had already been sent for.
+
+"Oh, but you were there?" said Prince Bagration, addressing Prince
+Andrew.
+
+"Of course, we only just missed one another," said the staff
+officer, with a smile to Bolkonski.
+
+"I had not the pleasure of seeing you," said Prince Andrew, coldly
+and abruptly.
+
+All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and made his way
+timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past
+the generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always
+was by the sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of
+the banner and stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.
+
+"How was it a gun was abandoned?" asked Bagration, frowning, not
+so much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom
+Zherkov laughed loudest.
+
+Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his
+guilt and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive
+present themselves to Tushin in all their horror. He had been so
+excited that he had not thought about it until that moment. The
+officers' laughter confused him still more. He stood before
+Bagration with his lower jaw trembling and was hardly able to
+mutter: "I don't know... your excellency... I had no men... your
+excellency."
+
+"You might have taken some from the covering troops."
+
+Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that
+was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into
+trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagration as a schoolboy who
+has blundered looks at an examiner.
+
+The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently not
+wishing to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture
+to intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Tushin from under his brows
+and his fingers twitched nervously.
+
+"Your excellency!" Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt
+voice," you were pleased to send me to Captain Tushin's battery. I
+went there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two
+guns smashed, and no supports at all."
+
+Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at
+Bolkonski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.
+
+"And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion," he
+continued, "we owe today's success chiefly to the action of that
+battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company,"
+and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.
+
+Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to show
+distrust in Bolkonski's emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to
+credit it, bent his head, and told Tushin that he could go. Prince
+Andrew went out with him.
+
+"Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!" said Tushin.
+
+Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He
+felt sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had
+hoped.
+
+"Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will
+all this end?" thought Rostov, looking at the changing shadows
+before him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense.
+Irresistible drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his
+eyes, and the impression of those voices and faces and a sense of
+loneliness merged with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers-
+wounded and unwounded- it was they who were crushing, weighing down,
+and twisting the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm
+and shoulder. To rid himself of them he closed his eyes.
+
+For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things
+appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand,
+Sonya's thin little shoulders, Natasha's eyes and laughter, Denisov
+with his voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that affair with
+Telyanin and Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing as this soldier
+with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier that
+were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and
+always dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them,
+but they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair's
+breadth. It would not ache- it would be well- if only they did not
+pull it, but it was immpossible to get rid of them.
+
+He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung
+less than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling
+snow were fluttering in that light. Tushin had not returned, the
+doctor had not come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was
+sitting naked at the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow
+body.
+
+"Nobody wants me!" thought Rostov. "There is no one to help me or
+pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved." He
+sighed and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.
+
+"Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier, shaking his
+shirt out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt
+and added: "What a lot of men have been crippled today- frightful!"
+
+Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
+fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,
+bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his
+healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. "And why
+did I come here?" he wondered.
+
+Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant
+of Bagration's detachment was reunited to Kutuzov's army.
+
+BOOK THREE: 1805
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out his
+plans. Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own
+advantage. He was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom
+getting on had become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he
+never rightly accounted to himself, but which formed the whole
+interest of his life, were constantly shaping themselves in his
+mind, arising from the circumstances and persons he met. Of these
+plans he had not merely one or two in his head but dozens, some only
+beginning to form themselves, some approaching achievement, and some
+in course of disintegration. He did not, for instance, say to himself:
+"This man now has influence, I must gain his confidence and friendship
+and through him obtain a special grant." Nor did he say to himself:
+"Pierre is a rich man, I must entice him to marry my daughter and lend
+me the forty thousand rubles I need." But when he came across came
+across a man of position his instinct immediately told him that this
+man could be useful, and without any premeditation Prince Vasili
+
+took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him, become
+intimate with him, and finally make his request.
+
+He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an
+appointment as Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time
+conferred the status of Councilor of State, and insisted on the
+young man accompanying him to Petersburg and staying at his house.
+With apparent absent-mindedness, yet with unhesitating assurance
+that he was doing the right thing, Prince Vasili did everything to get
+Pierre to marry his daughter. Had he thought out his plans
+beforehand he could not have been so natural and shown such unaffected
+familiarity in intercourse with everybody both above and below him
+in social standing. Something always drew him toward those richer
+and more powerful than himself and he had rare skill in seizing the
+most opportune moment for making use of people.
+
+Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezukhov and a rich man, felt
+himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset
+and preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He
+had to sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the
+purpose of which was not clear to him, to question his chief
+steward, to visit his estate near Moscow, and to receive many people
+who formerly did not even wish to know of his existence but would
+now have been offended and grieved had he chosen not to see them.
+These different people- businessmen, relations, and acquaintances
+alike- were all disposed to treat the young heir in the most
+friendly and flattering manner: they were all evidently firmly
+convinced of Pierre's noble qualities. He was always hearing such
+words as: "With your remarkable kindness," or, "With your excellent
+heart," "You are yourself so honorable Count," or, "Were he as
+clever as you," and so on, till he began sincerely to believe in his
+own exceptional kindness and extraordinary intelligence, the more so
+as in the depth of his heart it had always seemed to him that he
+really was very kind and intelligent. Even people who had formerly
+been spiteful toward him and evidently unfriendly now became gentle
+and affectionate. The angry eldest princess, with the long waist and
+hair plastered down like a doll's, had come into Pierre's room after
+the funeral. With drooping eyes and frequent blushes she told him
+she was very sorry about their past misunderstandings and did not
+now feel she had a right to ask him for anything, except only for
+permission, after the blow she had received, to remain for a few weeks
+longer in the house she so loved and where she had sacrificed so much.
+She could not refrain from weeping at these words. Touched that this
+statuesque princess could so change, Pierre took her hand and begged
+her forgiveness, without knowing what for. From that day the eldest
+princess quite changed toward Pierre and began knitting a striped
+scarf for him.
+
+"Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put up with
+a great deal from the deceased," said Prince Vasili to him, handing
+him a deed to sign for the princess' benefit.
+
+Prince Vasili had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to
+throw this bone- a bill for thirty thousand rubles- to the poor
+princess that it might not occur to her to speak of his share in the
+affair of the inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed the deed and after
+that the princess grew still kinder. The younger sisters also became
+affectionate to him, especially the youngest, the pretty one with
+the mole, who often made him feel confused by her smiles and her own
+confusion when meeting him.
+
+It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like him, and it
+would have seemed so unnatural had anyone disliked him, that he
+could not but believe in the sincerity of those around him. Besides,
+he had no time to ask himself whether these people were sincere or
+not. He was always busy and always felt in a state of mild and
+cheerful intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some
+important and general movement; that something was constantly expected
+of him, that if he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many
+people, but if he did this and that, all would be well; and he did
+what was demanded of him, but still that happy result always
+remained in the future.
+
+More than anyone else, Prince Vasili took possession of Pierre's
+affairs and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of
+Count Bezukhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air
+of a man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would
+not, for pity's sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was
+the son of his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth,
+to the caprice of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few
+days he spent in Moscow after the death of Count Bezukhov, he would
+call Pierre, or go to him himself, and tell him what ought to be
+done in a tone of weariness and assurance, as if he were adding
+every time: "You know I am overwhelmed with business and it is
+purely out of charity that I trouble myself about you, and you also
+know quite well that what I propose is the only thing possible."
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last," said Prince
+Vasili one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre's elbow,
+speaking as if he were saying something which had long since been
+agreed upon and could not now be altered. "We start tomorrow and I'm
+giving you a place in my carriage. I am very glad. All our important
+business here is now settled, and I ought to have been off long ago.
+Here is something I have received from the chancellor. I asked him for
+you, and you have been entered in the diplomatic corps and made a
+Gentleman of the Bedchamber. The diplomatic career now lies open
+before you."
+
+Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with which these words
+were pronounced, Pierre, who had so long been considering his
+career, wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasili
+interrupted him in the special deep cooing tone, precluding the
+possibility of interrupting his speech, which he used in extreme cases
+when special persuasion was needed.
+
+"Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my
+conscience, and there is nothing to thank me for. No one has ever
+complained yet of being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you
+could throw it up tomorrow. But you will see everything for yourself
+when you get to Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from
+these terrible recollections." Prince Vasili sighed. "Yes, yes, my
+boy. And my valet can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly
+forgetting," he added. "You know, mon cher, your father and I had some
+accounts to settle, so I have received what was due from the Ryazan
+estate and will keep it; you won't require it. We'll go into the
+accounts later."
+
+By "what was due from the Ryazan estate" Prince Vasili meant several
+thousand rubles quitrent received from Pierre's peasants, which the
+prince had retained for himself.
+
+In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of
+gentleness and affection. He could not refuse the post, or rather
+the rank (for he did nothing), that Prince Vasili had procured for
+
+him, and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so
+numerous that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of
+bewilderment, bustle, and continual expectation of some good, always
+in front of him but never attained.
+
+Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in
+Petersburg. The Guards had gone to the front; Dolokhov had been
+reduced to the ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the
+provinces; Prince Andrew was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity
+to spend his nights as he used to like to spend them, or to open his
+mind by intimate talks with a friend older than himself and whom he
+respected. His whole time was taken up with dinners and balls and
+was spent chiefly at Prince Vasili's house in the company of the stout
+princess, his wife, and his beautiful daughter Helene.
+
+Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of
+attitude toward him that had taken place in society.
+
+Formerly in Anna Pavlovna's presence, Pierre had always felt that
+what he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that
+remarks which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind
+became foolish as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary
+Hippolyte's stupidest remarks came out clever and apt. Now
+everything Pierre said was charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say
+so, he could see that she wished to and only refrained out of regard
+for his modesty.
+
+In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna
+Pavlovna's usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added:
+"You will find the beautiful Helene here, whom it is always delightful
+to see."
+
+When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some
+link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and
+Helene, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation
+were being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased
+him as an entertaining supposition.
+
+Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" was like the former one, only the
+novelty she offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a
+diplomatist fresh from Berlin with the very latest details of the
+Emperor Alexander's visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august
+friends had pledged themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold
+the cause of justice against the enemy of the human race. Anna
+Pavlovna received Pierre with a shade of melancholy, evidently
+relating to the young man's recent loss by the death of Count Bezukhov
+(everyone constantly considered it a duty to assure Pierre that he was
+greatly afflicted by the death of the father he had hardly known), and
+her melancholy was just like the august melancholy she showed at the
+mention of her most august Majesty the Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre
+felt flattered by this. Anna Pavlovna arranged the different groups in
+her drawing room with her habitual skill. The large group, in which
+were Prince Vasili and the generals, had the benefit of the
+diplomat. Another group was at the tea table. Pierre wished to join
+the former, but Anna Pavlovna- who was in the excited condition of a
+commander on a battlefield to whom thousands of new and brilliant
+ideas occur which there is hardly time to put in action- seeing
+Pierre, touched his sleeve with her finger, saying:
+
+"Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening." (She
+glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) "My dear Helene, be charitable
+to my poor aunt who adores you. Go and keep her company for ten
+minutes. And that it will not be too dull, here is the dear count
+who will not refuse to accompany you."
+
+The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained Pierre,
+looking as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.
+
+"Isn't she exquisite?" she said to Pierre, pointing to the stately
+beauty as she glided away. "And how she carries herself! For so
+young a girl, such tact, such masterly perfection of manner! It
+comes from her heart. Happy the man who wins her! With her the least
+worldly of men would occupy a most brilliant position in society.
+Don't you think so? I only wanted to know your opinion," and Anna
+Pavlovna let Pierre go.
+
+Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Helene's
+perfection of manner. If he ever thought of Helene, it was just of her
+beauty and her remarkable skill in appearing silently dignified in
+society.
+
+The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed
+desirous of hiding her adoration for Helene and inclined rather to
+show her fear of Anna Pavlovna. She looked at her niece, as if
+inquiring what she was to do with these people. On leaving them,
+Anna Pavlovna again touched Pierre's sleeve, saying: "I hope you won't
+say that it is dull in my house again," and she glanced at Helene.
+
+Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not admit the
+possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt
+coughed, swallowed, and said in French that she was very pleased to
+see Helene, then she turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome
+and the same look. In the middle of a dull and halting conversation,
+Helene turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she
+gave to everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it had so
+little meaning for him, that he paid no attention to it. The aunt
+was just speaking of a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to
+Pierre's father, Count Bezukhov, and showed them her own box. Princess
+Helene asked to see the portrait of the aunt's husband on the box lid.
+
+"That is probably the work of Vinesse," said Pierre, mentioning a
+celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the table to take the
+snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.
+
+He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed him the
+snuffbox, passing it across Helene's back. Helene stooped forward to
+make room, and looked round with a smile. She was, as always at
+evening parties, wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut
+very low at front and back. Her bust, which had always seemed like
+marble to Pierre, was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could
+not but perceive the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near
+to his lips that he need only have bent his head a little to have
+touched them. He was conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of
+perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see
+her marble beauty forming a complete whole with her dress, but all the
+charm of her body only covered by her garments. And having once seen
+this he could not help being aware it, just as we cannot renew an
+illusion we have once seen through.
+
+"So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?" Helene seemed
+to say. "You had not noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a woman
+who may belong to anyone- to you too," said her glance. And at that
+moment Pierre felt that Helene not only could, but must, be his
+wife, and that it could not be otherwise.
+
+He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing
+at the altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know,
+he did not even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he
+knew not why, that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would
+happen.
+
+Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more
+to see her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen
+her every day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could
+not, any more than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe
+grass through the mist and taking it for a tree can again take it
+for a tree after he has once recognized it to be a tuft of grass.
+She was terribly close to him. She already had power over him, and
+between them there was no longer any barrier except the barrier of his
+own will.
+
+"Well, I will leave you in your little corner," came Anna Pavlovna's
+voice, "I see you are all right there."
+
+And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done
+anything reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him
+that everyone knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.
+
+A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna
+said to him: "I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?"
+
+This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and
+Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg
+house done up.
+
+"That's a good thing, but don't move from Prince Vasili's. It is
+good to have a friend like the prince," she said, smiling at Prince
+Vasili. "I know something about that. Don't I? And you are still so
+young. You need advice. Don't be angry with me for exercising an old
+woman's privilege."
+
+She paused, as women always do, expecting something after they
+have mentioned their age. "If you marry it will be a different thing,"
+she continued, uniting them both in one glance. Pierre did not look at
+Helene nor she at him. But she was just as terribly close to him. He
+muttered something and colored.
+
+When he got home he could not sleep for a long time for thinking
+of what had happened. What had happened? Nothing. He had merely
+understood that the woman he had known as a child, of whom when her
+beauty was mentioned he had said absent-mindedly: "Yes, she's good
+looking," he had understood that this woman might belong to him.
+
+"But she's stupid. I have myself said she is stupid," he thought.
+"There is something nasty, something wrong, in the feeling she excites
+in me. I have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with
+her and she with him, that there was quite a scandal and that that's
+why he was sent away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasili is her
+father... It's bad...." he reflected, but while he was thinking this
+(the reflection was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and
+was conscious that another line of thought had sprung up, and while
+thinking of her worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be
+his wife, how she would love him become quite different, and how all
+he had thought and heard of her might be false. And he again saw her
+not as the daughter of Prince Vasili, but visualized her whole body
+only veiled by its gray dress. "But no! Why did this thought never
+occur to me before?" and again he told himself that it was impossible,
+that there would be something unnatural, and as it seemed to him
+dishonorable, in this marriage. He recalled her former words and looks
+and the words and looks of those who had seen them together. He
+recalled Anna Pavlovna's words and looks when she spoke to him about
+his house, recalled thousands of such hints from Prince Vasili and
+others, and was seized by terror lest he had already, in some way,
+bound himself to do something that was evidently wrong and that he
+ought not to do. But at the very time he was expressing this
+conviction to himself, in another part of his mind her image rose in
+all its womanly beauty.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+In November, 1805, Prince Vasili had to go on a tour of inspection
+in four different provinces. He had arranged this for himself so as to
+visit his neglected estates at the same time and pick up his son
+Anatole where his regiment was stationed, and take him to visit Prince
+Nicholas Bolkonski in order to arrange a match for him with the
+daughter of that rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking
+these new affairs, Prince Vasili had to settle matters with Pierre,
+who, it is true, had latterly spent whole days at home, that is, in
+Prince Vasili's house where he was staying, and had been absurd,
+excited, and foolish in Helene's presence (as a lover should be),
+but had not yet proposed to her.
+
+"This is all very fine, but things must be settled," said Prince
+Vasili to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that
+Pierre who was under such obligations to him ("But never mind that")
+was not behaving very well in this matter. "Youth, frivolity...
+well, God be with him," thought he, relishing his own goodness of
+heart, "but it must be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow
+will be Lelya's name day. I will invite two or three people, and if he
+does not understand what he ought to do then it will be my affair-
+yes, my affair. I am her father."
+
+Six weeks after Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" and after the sleepless
+night when he had decided that to marry Helene would be a calamity and
+that he ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision,
+had not left Prince Vasili's and felt with terror that in people's
+eyes he was every day more and more connected with her, that it was
+impossible for him to return to his former conception of her, that
+he could not break away from her, and that though it would be a
+terrible thing he would have to unite his fate with hers. He might
+perhaps have been able to free himself but that Prince Vasili (who had
+rarely before given receptions) now hardly let a day go by without
+having an evening party at which Pierre had to be present unless he
+wished to spoil the general pleasure and disappoint everyone's
+expectation. Prince Vasili, in the rare moments when he was at home,
+would take Pierre's hand in passing and draw it downwards, or
+absent-mindedly hold out his wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek for Pierre
+to kiss and would say: "Till tomorrow," or, "Be in to dinner or I
+shall not see you," or, "I am staying in for your sake," and so on.
+And though Prince Vasili, when he stayed in (as he said) for
+Pierre's sake, hardly exchanged a couple of words with him, Pierre
+felt unable to disappoint him. Every day he said to himself one and
+the same thing: "It is time I understood her and made up my mind
+what she really is. Was I mistaken before, or am I mistaken now? No,
+she is not stupid, she is an excellent girl," he sometimes said to
+himself "she never makes a mistake, never says anything stupid. She
+says little, but what she does say is always clear and simple, so
+she is not stupid. She never was abashed and is not abashed now, so
+she cannot be a bad woman!" He had often begun to make reflections
+or think aloud in her company, and she had always answered him
+either by a brief but appropriate remark- showing that it did not
+interest her- or by a silent look and smile which more palpably than
+anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in
+regarding all arguments as nonsense in comparison with that smile.
+
+She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant
+for him alone, in which there was something more significant than in
+the general smile that usually brightened her face. Pierre knew that
+everyone was waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line,
+and he knew that sooner or later he would step across it, but an
+incomprehensible terror seized him at the thought of that dreadful
+step. A thousand times during that month and a half while he felt
+himself drawn nearer and nearer to that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to
+himself: "What am I doing? I need resolution. Can it be that I have
+none?"
+
+He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this
+matter he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself
+and really possessed. Pierre was one of those who are only strong when
+they feel themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was
+overpowered by a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at
+Anna Pavlovna's, an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire
+paralyzed his will.
+
+On Helene's name day, a small party of just their own people- as his
+wife said- met for supper at Prince Vasili's. All these friends and
+relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young girl
+would be decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper.
+Princess Kuragina, a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome,
+was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat the
+more important guests- an old general and his wife, and Anna
+Pavlovna Scherer. At the other end sat the younger and less
+important guests, and there too sat the members of the family, and
+Pierre and Helene, side by side. Prince Vasili was not having any
+supper: he went round the table in a merry mood, sitting down now by
+one, now by another, of the guests. To each of them he made some
+careless and agreeable remark except to Pierre and Helene, whose
+presence he seemed not to notice. He enlivened the whole party. The
+wax candles burned brightly, the silver and crystal gleamed, so did
+the ladies' toilets and the gold and silver of the men's epaulets;
+servants in scarlet liveries moved round the table, the clatter of
+plates, knives, and glasses mingled with the animated hum of several
+conversations. At one end of the table, the old chamberlain was
+heard assuring an old baroness that he loved her passionately, at
+which she laughed; at the other could be heard the story of the
+misfortunes of some Mary Viktorovna or other. At the center of the
+table, Prince Vasili attracted everybody's attention. With a facetious
+smile on his face, he was telling the ladies about last Wednesday's
+meeting of the Imperial Council, at which Sergey Kuzmich
+Vyazmitinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg, had
+received and read the then famous rescript of the Emperor Alexander
+from the army to Sergey Kuzmich, in which the Emperor said that he was
+receiving from all sides declarations of the people's loyalty, that
+the declaration from Petersburg gave him particular pleasure, and that
+he was proud to be at the head of such a nation and would endeavor
+to be worthy of it. This rescript began with the words: "Sergey
+Kuzmich, From all sides reports reach me," etc.
+
+"Well, and so he never got farther than: 'Sergey Kuzmich'?" asked
+one of the ladies.
+
+"Exactly, not a hair's breadth farther," answered Prince Vasili,
+laughing, "'Sergey Kuzmich... From all sides... From all sides...
+Sergey Kuzmich...' Poor Vyazmitinov could not get any farther! He
+began the rescript again and again, but as soon as he uttered 'Sergey'
+he sobbed, 'Kuz-mi-ch,' tears, and 'From all sides' was smothered in
+sobs and he could get no farther. And again his handkerchief, and
+again: 'Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides,'... and tears, till at last
+somebody else was asked to read it."
+
+"Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears," someone repeated
+laughing.
+
+"Don't be unkind," cried Anna Pavlovna from her end of the table
+holding up a threatening finger. "He is such a worthy and excellent
+man, our dear Vyazmitinov...."
+
+Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where
+the honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in high spirits and
+under the influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre
+and Helene sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the
+table, a suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that
+had nothing to do with Sergey Kuzmich- a smile of bashfulness at their
+own feelings. But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked,
+much as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however
+they avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant
+as they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances
+they gave that the story about Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the
+food were all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company
+was directed to- Pierre and Helene. Prince Vasili mimicked the sobbing
+of Sergey Kuzmich and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his
+daughter, and while he laughed the expression on his face clearly
+said: "Yes... it's getting on, it will all be settled today." Anna
+Pavlovna threatened him on behalf of "our dear Vyazmitinov," and in
+her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasili read
+a congratulation on his future son-in-law and on his daughter's
+happiness. The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to
+the old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and
+her sigh seemed to say: "Yes, there's nothing left for you and me
+but to sip sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for these
+young ones to be thus boldly, provocatively happy." "And what nonsense
+all this is that I am saying!" thought a diplomatist, glancing at
+the happy faces of the lovers. "That's happiness!"
+
+Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting
+that society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a
+healthy and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this
+human feeling dominated everything else and soared above all their
+affected chatter. Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the
+animation was evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the
+footmen waiting at table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their
+duties as they looked at the beautiful Helene with her radiant face
+and at the red, broad, and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It
+seemed as if the very light of the candles was focused on those two
+happy faces alone.
+
+Pierre felt that he the center of it all, and this both pleased
+and embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some
+occupation. He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only
+now and then detached ideas and impressions from the world of
+reality shot unexpectedly through his mind.
+
+"So it is all finished!" he thought. "And how has it all happened?
+How quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself
+alone, but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They
+are all expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I
+cannot, I cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not
+know, but it will certainly happen!" thought Pierre, glancing at those
+dazzling shoulders close to his eyes.
+
+Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it
+awkward to attract everyone's attention and to be considered a lucky
+man and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris
+possessed of a Helen. "But no doubt it always is and must be so!" he
+consoled himself. "And besides, what have I done to bring it about?
+How did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasili. Then
+there was nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I
+played cards with her and picked up her reticule and drove out with
+her. How did it begin, when did it all come about?" And here he was
+sitting by her side as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her
+nearness, her breathing, her movements, her beauty. Then it would
+suddenly seem to him that it was not she but he was so unusually
+beautiful, and that that was why they all looked so at him, and
+flattered by this general admiration he would expand his chest,
+raise his head, and rejoice at his good fortune. Suddenly he heard a
+familiar voice repeating something to him a second time. But Pierre
+was so absorbed that he did not understand what was said.
+
+"I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski," repeated
+Prince Vasili a third time. "How absent-minded you are, my dear
+fellow."
+
+Prince Vasili smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling
+at him and Helene. "Well, what of it, if you all know it?" thought
+Pierre. "What of it? It's the truth!" and he himself smiled his gentle
+childlike smile, and Helene smiled too.
+
+"When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmutz?" repeated Prince
+Vasili, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a
+dispute.
+
+"How can one talk or think of such trifles?" thought Pierre.
+
+"Yes, from Olmutz," he answered, with a sigh.
+
+After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the
+drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking
+leave of Helene. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an
+important occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go
+away, refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a
+mournful silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity
+of his diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre's happiness. The
+old general grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was.
+"Oh, the old fool," he thought. "That Princess Helene will be
+beautiful still when she's fifty."
+
+"I think I may congratulate you," whispered Anna Pavlovna to the old
+princess, kissing her soundly. "If I hadn't this headache I'd have
+stayed longer."
+
+The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her
+daughter's happiness.
+
+While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a
+long time alone with Helene in the little drawing room where they were
+sitting. He had often before, during the last six weeks, remained
+alone with her, but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt
+that it was inevitable, but he could not make up his mind to take
+the final step. He felt ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone
+else's place here beside Helene. "This happiness is not for you," some
+inner voice whispered to him. "This happiness is for those who have
+not in them what there is in you."
+
+But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether
+she was satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple
+manner that this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest
+she had ever had.
+
+Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in
+the large drawing room. Prince Vasili came up to Pierre with languid
+footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasili
+gave him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just
+said was so strange that one could not take it in. But then the
+expression of severity changed, and he drew Pierre's hand downwards,
+made him sit down, and smiled affectionately.
+
+"Well, Lelya?" he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and
+addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural
+to parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which
+Prince Vasili had only acquired by imitating other parents.
+
+And he again turned to Pierre.
+
+"Sergey Kuzmich- From all sides-" he said, unbuttoning the top
+button of his waistcoat.
+
+Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the
+story about Sergey Kuzmich that interested Prince Vasili just then,
+and Prince Vasili saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered
+something and went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince
+was disconcerted. The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the
+world touched Pierre: he looked at Helene and she too seemed
+disconcerted, and her look seemed to say: "Well, it is your own
+fault."
+
+"The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!" thought Pierre, and
+he again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergey
+Kuzmich, asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it
+properly. Helene answered with a smile that she too had missed it.
+
+When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the princess, his
+wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre.
+
+"Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear..."
+
+"Marriages are made in heaven," replied the elderly lady.
+
+Prince Vasili passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat
+down on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and
+seemed to be dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself.
+
+"Aline," he said to his wife, "go and see what they are about."
+
+The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified
+and indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room.
+Pierre and Helene still sat talking just as before.
+
+"Still the same," she said to her husband.
+
+Prince Vasili frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and
+his face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him.
+Shaking himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps
+went past the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he
+went joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant
+that Pierre rose in alarm on seeing it.
+
+"Thank God!" said Prince Vasili. "My wife has told me everything!-
+(He put one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)- "My
+dear boy... Lelya... I am very pleased." (His voice trembled.) "I
+loved your father... and she will make you a good wife... God bless
+you!..."
+
+He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with
+his malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks.
+
+"Princess, come here!" he shouted.
+
+The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using
+her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful
+Helene's hand several times. After a while they were left alone again.
+
+"All this had to be and could not be otherwise," thought Pierre, "so
+it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because
+it's definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt." Pierre held
+the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom
+as it rose and fell.
+
+"Helene!" he said aloud and paused.
+
+"Something special is always said in such cases," he thought, but
+could not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face.
+She drew nearer to him. Her face flushed.
+
+"Oh, take those off... those..." she said, pointing to his
+spectacles.
+
+Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes
+have from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a
+frightened and inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and
+kiss it, but with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she
+intercepted his lips and met them with her own. Her face struck
+Pierre, by its altered, unpleasantly excited expression.
+
+"It is too late now, it's done; besides I love her," thought Pierre.
+
+"Je vous aime!"~^ he said, remembering what has to be said at such
+moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of
+himself.
+
+^~ "I love you."
+
+Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezukhov's
+large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as
+people said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions
+of money.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Old Prince Nicholas Bolkonski received a letter from Prince Vasili
+in November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying
+him a visit. "I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of
+course I shall think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see
+you at the same time, my honored benefactor," wrote Prince Vasili. "My
+
+son Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you
+will allow him personally to express the deep respect that,
+emulating his father, he feels for you."
+
+"It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors
+are coming to us of their own accord," incautiously remarked the
+little princess on hearing the news.
+
+Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.
+
+A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili's servants came one
+evening in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.
+
+Old Bolkonski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasili's
+character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and
+Alexander Prince Vasili had risen to high position and honors. And
+now, from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little
+princess, he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion
+changed into a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever
+he mentioned him. On the day of Prince Vasili's arrival, Prince
+Bolkonski was particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether
+he was in a bad temper because Prince Vasili was coming, or whether
+his being in a bad temper made him specially annoyed at Prince
+Vasili's visit, he was in a bad temper, and in the morning Tikhon
+had already advised the architect not to go the prince with his
+report.
+
+"Do you hear how he's walking?" said Tikhon, drawing the architect's
+attention to the sound of the prince's footsteps. "Stepping flat on
+his heels- we know what that means...."
+
+However, at nine o'clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable
+collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day
+before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the
+habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still
+visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of
+the soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince
+went through the conservatories, the serfs' quarters, and the
+outbuildings, frowning and silent.
+
+"Can a sleigh pass?" he asked his overseer, a venerable man,
+resembling his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him
+back to the house.
+
+"The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor."
+
+The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. "God be
+thanked," thought the overseer, "the storm has blown over!"
+
+"It would have been hard to drive up, your honor," he added. "I
+heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor."
+
+The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,
+frowning.
+
+"What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?" he said in his
+shrill, harsh voice. "The road is not swept for the princess my
+daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!"
+
+"Your honor, I thought..."
+
+"You thought!" shouted the prince, his words coming more and more
+rapidly and indistinctly. "You thought!... Rascals! Blackgaurds!...
+I'll teach you to think!" and lifting his stick he swung it and
+would have hit Alpatych, the overseer, had not the latter
+instinctively avoided the blow. "Thought... Blackguards..." shouted
+the prince rapidly.
+
+But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding
+the stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly
+before him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he
+continued to shout: "Blackgaurds!... Throw the snow back on the road!"
+did not lift his stick again but hurried into the house.
+
+Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew
+that the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle
+Bourienne with a radiant face that said: "I know nothing, I am the
+same as usual," and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with
+downcast eyes. What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such
+occasions she ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could
+not. She thought: "If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not
+sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he
+will say (as he has done before) that I'm in the dumps."
+
+The prince looked at his daughter's frightened face and snorted.
+
+"Fool... or dummy!" he muttered.
+
+"And the other one is not here. They've been telling tales," he
+thought- referring to the little princess who was not in the dining
+room.
+
+"Where is the princess?" he asked. "Hiding?"
+
+"She is not very well," answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with a
+bright smile, "so she won't come down. It is natural in her state."
+
+"Hm! Hm!" muttered the prince, sitting down.
+
+His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he
+flung it away. Tikhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little
+princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the
+prince that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to
+appear.
+
+"I am afraid for the baby," she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne:
+"Heaven knows what a fright might do."
+
+In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear,
+and with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not
+realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The
+prince reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his
+contempt for her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to
+life at Bald Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle
+Bourienne, spent whole days with her, asked her to sleep in her
+room, and often talked with her about the old prince and criticized
+him.
+
+"So we are to have visitors, mon prince?" remarked Mademoiselle
+Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. "His
+Excellency Prince Vasili Kuragin and his son, I understand?" she
+said inquiringly.
+
+"Hm!- his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the
+service," said the prince disdainfully. "Why his son is coming I don't
+understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don't
+want him." (He looked at his blushing daughter.) "Are you unwell
+today? Eh? Afraid of the 'minister' as that idiot Alpatych called
+him this morning?"
+
+"No, mon pere."
+
+Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice
+of a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the
+conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and
+after the soup the prince became more genial.
+
+After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little
+princess was sitting at a small table, chattering with Masha, her
+maid. She grew pale on seeing her father-in-law.
+
+She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her
+cheeks had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.
+
+"Yes, I feel a kind of oppression," she said in reply to the
+prince's question as to how she felt.
+
+"Do you want anything?"
+
+"No, merci, mon pere."
+
+"Well, all right, all right."
+
+He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpatych stood
+with bowed head.
+
+"Has the snow been shoveled back?"
+
+"Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven's sake... It was only
+my stupidity."
+
+"All right, all right," interrupted the prince, and laughing his
+unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpatych to kiss, and
+then proceeded to his study.
+
+Prince Vasili arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by
+coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to
+one of the lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.
+
+Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.
+
+Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo
+before a table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly
+fixed his large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a
+continual round of amusement which someone for some reason had to
+provide for him. And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and
+a rich and ugly heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought,
+turn out very well and amusingly. "And why not marry her if she really
+has so much money? That never does any harm," thought Anatole.
+
+He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had
+become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his
+father's room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to him.
+Prince Vasili's two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked round
+with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter
+entered, as if to say: "Yes, that's how I want you to look."
+
+"I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?" Anatole asked,
+as if continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been
+mentioned during the journey.
+
+"Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious
+with the old prince."
+
+"If he starts a row I'll go away," said Prince Anatole. "I can't
+bear those old men! Eh?"
+
+"Remember, for you everything depends on this."
+
+In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants' rooms
+that the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of
+both had been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in
+her room, vainly trying to master her agitation.
+
+"Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never
+happen!" she said, looking at herself in the glass. "How shall I enter
+the drawing room? Even if I like him I can't now be myself with
+him." The mere thought of her father's look filled her with terror.
+The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received
+from Masha, the lady's maid, the necessary report of how handsome
+the minister's son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and
+with what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while
+the son had followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time.
+Having received this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle
+Bourienne, whose chattering voices had reached her from the
+corridor, went into Princess Mary's room.
+
+"You know they've come, Marie?" said the little princess, waddling
+in, and sinking heavily into an armchair.
+
+She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the
+morning, but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully
+done and her face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its
+sunken and faded outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg
+society, it was still more noticeable how much plainer she had become.
+Some unobtrusive touch had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne's
+toilet which rendered her fresh and prettyface yet more attractive.
+
+"What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?" she
+began. "They'll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing
+room and we shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself
+up at all!"
+
+The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and
+merrily began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary
+should be dressed. Princess Mary's self-esteem was wounded by the fact
+that the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both
+her companions' not having the least conception that it could be
+otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them
+would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to
+dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed,
+her beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it
+took on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as
+she submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these
+women quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so
+plain that neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they
+began dressing her with perfect sincerity, and with the naive and firm
+conviction women have that dress can make a face pretty.
+
+"No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty," said Lise, looking
+sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. "You have a maroon
+dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life
+may be at stake. But this one is too light, it's not becoming!"
+
+It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary
+that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little
+princess felt this; they still thought that if a blue ribbon were
+placed in the hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged
+lower on the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They
+forgot that the frightened face and the figure could not be altered,
+and that however they might change the setting and adornment of that
+face, it would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three
+changes to which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair
+had been arranged on the top of her head (a style that quite altered
+and spoiled her looks) and she had put on a maroon dress with a
+pale-blue scarf, the little princess walked twice round her, now
+adjusting a fold of the dress with her little hand, now arranging
+the scarf and looking at her with her head bent first on one side
+and then on the other.
+
+"No, it will not do," she said decidedly, clasping her hands. "No,
+Mary, really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little
+gray everyday dress. Now please, do it for my sake. Katie," she said
+to the maid, "bring the princess her gray dress, and you'll see,
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I shall arrange it," she added, smiling
+with a foretaste of artistic pleasure.
+
+But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained
+sitting motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in
+the mirror her eyes full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to
+burst into sobs.
+
+"Come, dear princess," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "just one more
+little effort."
+
+The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to
+Princess Mary.
+
+"Well, now we'll arrange something quite simple and becoming," she
+said.
+
+The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne's, and Katie's, who
+was laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping
+of birds.
+
+"No, leave me alone," said Princess Mary.
+
+Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the
+birds was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large,
+thoughtful eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and
+imploringly at them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel
+to insist.
+
+"At least, change your coiffure," said the little princess.
+"Didn't I tell you," she went on, turning reproachfully to
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, "Mary's is a face which such a coiffure does
+not suit in the least. Not in the least! Please change it."
+
+"Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same
+to me," answered a voice struggling with tears.
+
+Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to
+themselves that Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse
+than usual, but it was too late. She was looking at them with an
+expression they both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This
+expression in Princess Mary did not frighten them (she never
+inspired fear in anyone), but they knew that when it appeared on her
+face, she became mute and was not to be shaken in her determination.
+
+"You will change it, won't you?" said Lise. And as Princess Mary
+gave no answer, she left the room.
+
+Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise's
+request, she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look
+in her glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with
+downcast eyes and pondered. A husband, a man, a strong dominant and
+strangely attractive being rose in her imagination, and carried her
+into a totally different happy world of his own. She fancied a
+child, her own- such as she had seen the day before in the arms of her
+nurse's daughter- at her own breast, the husband standing by and
+gazing tenderly at her and the child. "But no, it is impossible, I
+am too ugly," she thought.
+
+"Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment," came the
+maid's voice at the door.
+
+She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking,
+and before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and,
+her eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit
+by a lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments.
+A painful doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly
+love for a man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess
+Mary dreamed of happiness and of children, but her strongest, most
+deeply hidden longing was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide
+this feeling from others and even from herself, the stronger it
+grew. "O God," she said, "how am I to stifle in my heart these
+temptations of the devil? How am I to renounce forever these vile
+fancies, so as peacefully to fulfill Thy will?" And scarcely had she
+put that question than God gave her the answer in her own heart.
+"Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or
+envious. Man's future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee,
+but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be God's
+will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfill
+His will." With this consoling thought (but yet with a hope for the
+fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing) Princess Mary sighed,
+and having crossed herself went down, thinking neither of her gown and
+coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what she would say. What
+could all that matter in comparison with the will of God, without
+Whose care not a hair of man's head can fall?
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasili and his son were already
+in the drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle
+Bourienne. When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her
+heels, the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little
+princess, indicating her to the gentlemen, said: "Voila Marie!"
+Princess Mary saw them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince
+Vasili's face, serious for an instant at the sight of her, but
+immediately smiling again, and the little princess curiously noting
+the impression "Marie" produced on the visitors. And she saw
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, with her ribbon and pretty face, and her
+unusually animated look which was fixed on him, but him she could
+not see, she only saw something large, brilliant, and handsome
+moving toward her as she entered the room. Prince Vasili approached
+first, and she kissed the bold forehead that bent over her hand and
+answered his question by saying that, on the contrary, she
+remembered him quite well. Then Anatole came up to her. She still
+could not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking hers firmly, and
+she touched with her lips a white forehead, over which was beautiful
+light-brown hair smelling of pomade. When she looked up at him she was
+struck by his beauty. Anatole stood with his right thumb under a
+button of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in,
+slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head a little bent, looked
+with beaming face at the princess without speaking and evidently not
+thinking about her at all. Anatole was not quick-witted, nor ready
+or eloquent in conversation, but he had the faculty, so invaluable
+in society, of composure and imperturbable self-possession. If a man
+lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on a first introduction and
+betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of such silence and an
+anxiety to find something to say, the effect is bad. But Anatole was
+dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly examined the princess' hair. It
+was evident that he could be silent in this way for a very long
+time. "If anyone finds this silence inconvenient, let him talk, but
+I don't want to"' he seemed to say. Besides this, in his behavior to
+women Anatole had a manner which particularly inspires in them
+curiosity, awe, and even love- a supercilious consciousness of his own
+superiority. It was was as if he said to them: "I know you, I know
+you, but why should I bother about you? You'd be only too glad, of
+course." Perhaps he did not really think this when he met women-
+even probably he did not, for in general he thought very little- but
+his looks and manner gave that impression. The princess felt this, and
+as if wishing to show him that she did not even dare expect to
+interest him, she turned to his father. The conversation was general
+and animated, thanks to Princess Lise's voice and little downy lip
+that lifted over her white teeth. She met Prince Vasili with that
+playful manner often employed by lively chatty people, and
+consisting in the assumption that between the person they so address
+and themselves there are some semi-private, long-established jokes and
+amusing reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really exist- just
+as none existed in this case. Prince Vasili readily adopted her tone
+and the little princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew,
+into these amusing recollections of things that had never occurred.
+Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared them and even Princess Mary felt
+herself pleasantly made to share in these merry reminiscences.
+
+"Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to
+ourselves, dear prince," said the little princess (of course, in
+French) to Prince Vasili. "It's not as at Annette's~^ receptions
+where you always ran away; you remember cette chere Annette!"
+
+^~ Anna Pavlovna.
+
+"Ah, but you won't talk politics to me like Annette!"
+
+"And our little tea table?"
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"Why is it you were never at Annette's?" the little princess asked
+Anatole. "Ah, I know, I know," she said with a sly glance, "your
+brother Hippolyte told me about your goings on. Oh!" and she shook her
+finger at him, "I have even heard of your doings in Paris!"
+
+"And didn't Hippolyte tell you?" asked Prince Vasili, turning to his
+son and seizing the little princess' arm as if she would have run away
+and he had just managed to catch her, "didn't he tell you how he
+himself was pining for the dear princess, and how she showed him the
+door? Oh, she is a pearl among women, Princess," he added, turning
+to Princess Mary.
+
+When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne for her part seized
+the opportunity of joining in the general current of recollections.
+
+She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long since
+Anatole had left Paris and how he had liked that city. Anatole
+answered the Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a
+smile, talked to her about her native land. When he saw the pretty
+little Bourienne, Anatole came to the conclusion that he would not
+find Bald Hills dull either. "Not at all bad!" he thought, examining
+her, "not at all bad, that little companion! I hope she will bring her
+along with her when we're married, la petite est gentille."~^
+
+^~ The little one is charming.
+
+The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and
+considering what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed
+him. "What are Prince Vasili and that son of his to me? Prince
+Vasili is a shallow braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine
+specimen," he grumbled to himself. What angered him was that the
+coming of these visitors revived in his mind an unsettled question
+he always tried to stifle, one about which he always deceived himself.
+The question was whether he could ever bring himself to part from
+his daughter and give her to a husband. The prince never directly
+asked himself that question, knowing beforehand that he would have
+to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only with his feelings
+but with the very possibility of life. Life without Princess Mary,
+little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to him. "And why
+should she marry?" he thought. "To be unhappy for certain. There's
+Lise, married to Andrew- a better husband one would think could hardly
+be found nowadays- but is she contented with her lot? And who would
+marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward! They'll take her for her
+connections and wealth. Are there no women living unmarried, and
+even the happier for it?" So thought Prince Bolkonski while
+dressing, and yet the question he was always putting off demanded an
+immediate answer. Prince Vasili had brought his son with the evident
+intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask
+for an answer. His birth and position in society were not bad.
+"Well, I've nothing against it," the prince said to himself, "but he
+must be worthy of her. And that is what we shall see."
+
+"That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!" he added
+aloud.
+
+He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing
+rapidly round the company. He noticed the change in the little
+princess' dress, Mademoiselle Bourienne's ribbon, Princess Mary's
+unbecoming coiffure, Mademoiselle Bourienne's and Anatole's smiles,
+and the loneliness of his daughter amid the general conversation. "Got
+herself up like a fool!" he thought, looking irritably at her. "She is
+shameless, and he ignores her!"
+
+He went straight up to Prince Vasili.
+
+"Well! How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Glad to see you!"
+
+"Friendship laughs at distance," began Prince Vasili in his usual
+rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. "Here is my second son; please
+love and befriend him."
+
+Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole.
+
+"Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!" he said. "Well, come and
+kiss me," and he offered his cheek.
+
+Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and
+perfect composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his
+father had told him to expect.
+
+Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the
+sofa and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasili, pointed to it
+and began questioning him about political affairs and news. He
+seemed to listen attentively to what Prince Vasili said, but kept
+glancing at Princess Mary.
+
+"And so they are writing from Potsdam already?" he said, repeating
+Prince Vasili's last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his
+daughter.
+
+"Is it for visitors you've got yourself up like that, eh?" said
+he. "Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for
+the visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you
+are never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent."
+
+"It was my fault, mon pere," interceded the little princess, with
+a blush.
+
+"You must do as you please," said Prince Bolkonski, bowing to his
+daughter-in-law, "but she need not make a fool of herself, she's plain
+enough as it is."
+
+And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who
+was reduced to tears.
+
+"On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well,"
+said Prince Vasili.
+
+"Now you, young prince, what's your name?" said Prince Bolkonski,
+turning to Anatole, "come here, let us talk and get acquainted."
+
+"Now the fun begins," thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile
+beside the old prince.
+
+"Well, my dear boy, I hear you've been educated abroad, not taught
+to read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me,
+my dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?" asked the old
+man, scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.
+
+"No, I have been transferred to the line," said Anatole, hardly able
+to restrain his laughter.
+
+"Ah! That's a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the
+Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve.
+Well, are you off to the front?"
+
+"No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am
+attached... what is it I am attached to, Papa?" said Anatole,
+turning to his father with a laugh.
+
+"A splendid soldier, splendid! 'What am I attached to!' Ha, ha, ha!"
+laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly
+Prince Bolkonski frowned.
+
+"You may go," he said to Anatole.
+
+Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.
+
+"And so you've had him educated abroad, Prince Vasili, haven't you?"
+said the old prince to Prince Vasili.
+
+"I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education
+there is much better than ours."
+
+"Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The
+lad's a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now." He took
+Prince Vasili's arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were
+alone together, Prince Vasili announced his hopes and wishes to the
+old prince.
+
+"Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can't part from
+her?" said the old prince angrily. "What an idea! I'm ready for it
+tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better.
+You know my principles- everything aboveboard? I will ask her tomorrow
+in your presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can
+stay and I'll see." The old prince snorted. "Let her marry, it's all
+the same to me!" he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting
+from his son.
+
+"I will tell you frankly," said Prince Vasili in the tone of a
+crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so
+keen-sighted companion. "You know, you see right through people.
+Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an
+excellent son or kinsman."
+
+"All right, all right, we'll see!"
+
+As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of
+time without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women
+of Prince Bolkonski's household felt that their life had not been real
+till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing
+immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have
+been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full
+of significance.
+
+Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The
+handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband
+absorbed all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave,
+determined, manly, and magnanimous. She felt convinced of that.
+Thousands of dreams of a future family life continually rose in her
+imagination. She drove them away and tried to conceal them.
+
+"But am I not too cold with him?" thought the princess. "I try to be
+reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him
+already, but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine
+that I do not like him."
+
+And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to
+her new guest. "Poor girl, she's devilish ugly!" thought Anatole.
+
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole's
+arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young
+woman without any definite position, without relations or even a
+country, did not intend to devote her life to serving Prince
+Bolkonski, to reading aloud to him and being friends with Princess
+Mary. Mademoiselle Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian
+prince who, able to appreciate at a glance her superiority to the
+plain, badly dressed, ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in
+love with her and carry her off; and here at last was a Russian
+prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew a story, heard from her aunt but
+finished in her own way, which she liked to repeat to herself. It
+was the story of a girl who had been seduced, and to whom her poor
+mother (sa pauvre mere) appeared, and reproached her for yielding to a
+man without being married. Mademoiselle Bourienne was often touched to
+tears as in imagination she told this story to him, her seducer. And
+now he, a real Russian prince, had appeared. He would carry her away
+and then sa pauvre mere would appear and he would marry her. So her
+future shaped itself in Mademoiselle Bourienne's head at the very time
+she was talking to Anatole about Paris. It was not calculation that
+guided her (she did not even for a moment consider what she should
+do), but all this had long been familiar to her, and now that
+Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself around him and she
+wished and tried to please him as much as possible.
+
+The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet,
+unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the
+familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any
+struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.
+
+Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man
+tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the
+spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was
+beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle
+Bourienne that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him
+with great suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless
+actions.
+
+After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess
+Mary was asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in
+high spirits, came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside
+Mademoiselle Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully
+joyous emotion. Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately
+poetic world and the look she felt upon her made that world still more
+poetic. But Anatole's expression, though his eyes were fixed on her,
+referred not to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne's
+little foot, which he was then touching with his own under the
+clavichord. Mademoiselle Bourienne was also looking at Princess
+Mary, and in her lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and
+hope that was also new to the princess.
+
+"How she loves me!" thought Princess Mary. "How happy I am now,
+and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband?
+Can it be possible?" she thought, not daring to look at his face,
+but still feeling his eyes gazing at her.
+
+In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole
+kissed Princess Mary's hand. She did not know how she found the
+courage, but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came
+near to her shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up
+and kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand. (This was not etiquette, but
+then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!)
+Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened
+look.
+
+"What delicacy! " thought the princess. "Is it possible that Amelie"
+(Mademoiselle Bourienne) "thinks I could be jealous of her, and not
+value her pure affection and devotion to me?" She went up to her and
+kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little princess' hand.
+
+"No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are
+behaving well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!" she
+said. And smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as
+he got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night.
+
+"Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind- yes,
+kind, that is the chief thing," thought Princess Mary; and fear, which
+she had seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round,
+it seemed to her that someone was there standing behind the screen
+in the dark corner. And this someone was he- the devil- and he was
+also this man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.
+
+She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.
+
+Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a
+long time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at
+someone, now working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of
+her pauvre mere rebuking her for her fall.
+
+The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly
+made. She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every
+position was awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her
+now more than ever because Anatole's presence had vividly recalled
+to her the time when she was not like that and when everything was
+light and gay. She sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and
+nightcap and Katie, sleepy and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy
+feather bed for the third time, muttering to herself.
+
+"I told you it was all lumps and holes!" the little princess
+repeated. "I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it's not my
+fault!" and her voice quivered like that of a child about to cry.
+
+The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep, heard
+him pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though
+
+he had been insulted through his daughter. The insult was the more
+pointed because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter,
+whom he loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he would
+consider the whole matter and decide what was right and how he
+should act, but instead of that he only excited himself more and more.
+
+"The first man that turns up- she forgets her father and
+everything else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags her
+tail and is unlike herself! Glad to throw her father over! And she
+knew I should notice it. Fr... fr... fr! And don't I see that that
+idiot had eyes only for Bourienne- I shall have to get rid of her. And
+how is it she has not pride enough to see it? If she has no pride
+for herself she might at least have some for my sake! She must be
+shown that the blockhead thinks nothing of her and looks only at
+Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but I'll let her see...."
+
+The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a
+mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne,
+Princess Mary's self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to
+be parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this
+thought, he called Tikhon and began to undress.
+
+"What devil brought them here?" thought he, while Tikhon was putting
+the nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest. "I
+never invited them. They came to disturb my life- and there is not
+much of it left."
+
+"Devil take 'em!" he muttered, while his head was still covered by
+the shirt.
+
+Tikhon knew his master's habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and
+therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive
+expression of the face that emerged from the shirt.
+
+"Gone to bed?" asked the prince.
+
+Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of
+his master's thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince
+Vasili and his son.
+
+"They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency."
+
+"No good... no good..." said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his
+feet into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing
+gown, he went to the couch on which he slept.
+
+Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle
+Bourienne, they quite understood one another as to the first part of
+their romance, up to the appearance of the pauvre mere; they
+understood that they had much to say to one another in private and
+so they had been seeking an opportunity since morning to meet one
+another alone. When Princess Mary went to her father's room at the
+usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and Anatole met in the
+conservatory.
+
+Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special
+trepidation. It seemed to her that not only did everybody know that
+her fate would be decided that day, but that they also knew what she
+thought about it. She read this in Tikhon's face and in that of Prince
+Vasili's valet, who made her a low bow when she met him in the
+corridor carrying hot water.
+
+The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of
+his daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking
+expression of her father's. His face wore that expression when his dry
+hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in
+arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk away from her,
+repeating in a low voice the same words several times over.
+
+He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.
+
+"I have had a proposition made me concerning you," he said with an
+unnatural smile. "I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasili has not
+come and brought his pupil with him" (for some reason Prince Bolkonski
+referred to Anatole as a "pupil") "for the sake of my beautiful
+eyes. Last night a proposition was made me on your account and, as you
+know my principles, I refer it to you."
+
+"How am I to understand you, mon pere?" said the princess, growing
+pale and then blushing.
+
+"How understand me!" cried her father angrily. "Prince Vasili
+finds you to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to
+you on his pupil's behalf. That's how it's to be understood! 'How
+understand it'!... And I ask you!"
+
+"I do not know what you think, Father," whispered the princess.
+
+"I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I'm not going to
+get married. What about you? That's what I want to know."
+
+The princess saw that her father regarded the matter with
+disapproval, but at that moment the thought occurred to her that her
+fate would be decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not
+to see the gaze under which she felt that she could not think, but
+would only be able to submit from habit, and she said: "I wish only to
+do your will, but if I had to express my own desire..." She had no
+time to finish. The old prince interrupted her.
+
+"That's admirable!" he shouted. "He will take you with your dowry
+and take Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She'll be the
+wife, while you..."
+
+The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had produced on
+his daughter. She lowered her head and was ready to burst into tears.
+
+"Now then, now then, I'm only joking!" he said. "Remember this,
+Princess, I hold to the principle that a maiden has a full right to
+choose. I give you freedom. Only remember that your life's happiness
+depends on your decision. Never mind me!"
+
+"But I do not know, Father!"
+
+"There's no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry
+you or anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room,
+think it over, and come back in an hour and tell me in his presence:
+yes or no. I know you will pray over it. Well, pray if you like, but
+you had better think it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!" he
+still shouted when the princess, as if lost in a fog, had already
+staggered out of the study.
+
+Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had
+said about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be
+sure, but still it was terrible, and she could not help thinking of
+it. She was going straight on through the conservatory, neither seeing
+nor hearing anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of
+Mademoiselle Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes, and two steps
+away saw Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to
+her. With a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole
+looked at Princess Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the
+waist of Mademoiselle Bourienne who had not yet seen her.
+
+"Who's that? Why? Wait a moment!" Anatole's face seemed to say.
+Princess Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand
+it. At last Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole
+bowed to Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in
+a laugh at this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders
+went to the door that led to his own apartments.
+
+An hour later, Tikhon came to call Princess Mary to the old
+prince; he added that Prince Vasili was also there. When Tikhon came
+to her Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in her room, holding
+the weeping Mademoiselle Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her
+hair. The princess' beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance
+were looking with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle
+Bourienne's pretty face.
+
+"No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!" said
+Mademoiselle Bourienne.
+
+"Why? I love you more than ever," said Princess Mary, "and I will
+try to do all I can for your happiness."
+
+"But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand
+being so carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother..."
+
+"I quite understand," answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile.
+"Calm yourself, my dear. I will go to my father," she said, and went
+out.
+
+Prince Vasili, with one leg thrown high over the other and a
+snuffbox in his hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion
+on his face, as if stirred to his heart's core and himself
+regretting and laughing at his own sensibility, when Princess Mary
+entered. He hurriedly took a pinch of snuff.
+
+"Ah, my dear, my dear!" he began, rising and taking her by both
+hands. Then, sighing, he added: "My son's fate is in your hands.
+Decide, my dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a
+daughter!"
+
+He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.
+
+"Fr... fr..." snorted Prince Bolkonski. "The prince is making a
+proposition to you in his pupil's- I mean, his son's- name. Do you
+wish or not to be Prince Anatole Kuragin's wife? Reply: yes or no," he
+shouted, "and then I shall reserve the right to state my opinion also.
+Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion," added Prince Bolkonski, turning
+to Prince Vasili and answering his imploring look. "Yes, or no?"
+
+"My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my
+life from yours. I don't wish to marry," she answered positively,
+glancing at Prince Vasili and at her father with her beautiful eyes.
+
+"Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!" cried Prince
+Bolkonski, frowning and taking his daughter's hand; he did not kiss
+her, but only bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and
+pressed her hand so that she winced and uttered a cry.
+
+Prince Vasili rose.
+
+"My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never
+forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching
+this heart, so kind and generous? Say 'perhaps'... The future is so
+long. Say 'perhaps.'"
+
+"Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you
+for the honor, but I shall never be your son's wife."
+
+"Well, so that's finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have
+seen you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!" said the
+old prince. "Very, very glad to glad to have seen you," repeated he,
+embracing Prince Vasili.
+
+"My vocation is a different one," thought Princess Mary. "My
+vocation is to be happy with another kind of happiness, the
+happiness of love and self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will
+arrange poor Amelie's happiness, she loves him so passionately, and so
+passionately repents. I will do all I can to arrange the match between
+them. If he is not rich I will give her the means; I will ask my
+father and Andrew. I shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so
+unfortunate, a stranger, alone, helpless! And, oh God, how
+passionately she must love him if she could so far forget herself!
+Perhaps I might have done the same!..." thought Princess Mary.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till
+midwinter was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son's
+handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm
+and haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read
+the letter.
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the
+house, on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the
+room and found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing
+at the same time.
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still
+living with the Rostovs.
+
+"My dear friend?" said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry,
+prepared to sympathize in any way.
+
+The count sobbed yet more.
+
+"Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling
+boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How
+tell the little countess!"
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief
+wiped the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried
+her own eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and
+till teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God's
+help, would inform her.
+
+At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time about the war
+news and about Nikolenka, twice asked when the last letter had been
+received from him, though she knew that already, and remarked that
+they might very likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each
+time that these hints began to make the countess anxious and she
+glanced uneasily at the count and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter very
+adroitly turned the conversation to insignificant matters. Natasha,
+who, of the whole family, was the most gifted with a capacity to
+feel any shades of intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her
+ears from the beginning of the meal and was certain that there was
+some secret between her father and Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had
+something to do with her brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was
+preparing them for it. Bold as she was, Natasha, who knew how
+sensitive her mother was to anything relating to Nikolenka, did not
+venture to ask any questions at dinner, but she was too excited to eat
+anything and kept wriggling about on her chair regardless of her
+governess' remarks. After dinner, she rushed head long after Anna
+Mikhaylovna and, dashing at her, flung herself on her neck as soon
+as she overtook her in the sitting room.
+
+"Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!"
+
+"Nothing, my dear."
+
+"No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won't give up- I know you know
+something."
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.
+
+"You are a little slyboots," she said.
+
+"A letter from Nikolenka! I'm sure of it!" exclaimed Natasha,
+reading confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna's face.
+
+"But for God's sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your
+mamma."
+
+"I will, I will, only tell me! You won't? Then I will go and tell at
+once."
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the
+letter, on condition that she should tell no one.
+
+"No, on my true word of honor," said Natasha,crossing herself, "I
+won't tell anyone!" and she ran off at once to Sonya.
+
+"Nikolenka... wounded... a letter," she announced in gleeful
+triumph.
+
+"Nicholas!" was all Sonya said, instantly turning white.
+
+Natasha, seeing the impression the of her brother's wound produced
+on Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.
+
+She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.
+
+"A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he
+wrote himself," said she through her tears.
+
+"There now! It's true that all you women are crybabies," remarked
+Petya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides. "Now I'm very
+glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself
+so. You are all blubberers and understand nothing."
+
+Natasha smiled through her tears.
+
+"You haven't read the letter?" asked Sonya.
+
+"No, but she said that it was all over and that he's now an
+officer."
+
+"Thank God!" said Sonya, crossing herself. "But perhaps she deceived
+you. Let us go to Mamma."
+
+Petya paced the room in silence for a time.
+
+"If I'd been in Nikolenka's place I would have killed even more of
+those Frenchmen," he said. "What nasty brutes they are! I'd have
+killed so many that there'd have been a heap of them."
+
+"Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!"
+
+"I'm not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles," said Petya.
+
+"Do you remember him?" Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment's
+silence.
+
+Sonya smiled.
+
+"Do I remember Nicholas?"
+
+"No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you remember him
+perfectly, remember everything?" said Natasha, with an expressive
+gesture, evidently wishing to give her words a very definite
+meaning. "I remember Nikolenka too, I remember him well," she said.
+"But I don't remember Boris. I don't remember him a bit."
+
+"What! You don't remember Boris?" asked Sonya in surprise.
+
+"It's not that I don't remember- I know what he is like, but not
+as I remember Nikolenka. Him- I just shut my eyes and remember, but
+Boris... No!" (She shut her eyes.)"No! there's nothing at all."
+
+"Oh, Natasha!" said Sonya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her
+friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to
+say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was
+out of the question, "I am in love with your brother once for all and,
+whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him
+as long as I live."
+
+Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and
+said nothing. She felt that Sonya was speaking the truth, that there
+was such love as Sonya was speaking of. But Natasha had not yet felt
+anything like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.
+
+"Shall you write to him?" she asked.
+
+Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas,
+and whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already
+an officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of
+herself and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had
+taken on himself?
+
+"I don't know. I think if he writes, I will write too," she said,
+blushing.
+
+"And you won't feel ashamed to write to him?"
+
+Sonya smiled.
+
+"No."
+
+"And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I'm not going to."
+
+"Why should you be ashamed?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. It's awkward and would make me ashamed."
+
+"And I know why she'd be ashamed," said Petya, offended by Natasha's
+previous remark. "It's because she was in love with that fat one in
+spectacles" (that was how Petya described his namesake, the new
+Count Bezukhov) "and now she's in love with that singer" (he meant
+Natasha's Italian singing master), "that's why she's ashamed!"
+
+"Petya, you're a stupid!" said Natasha.
+
+"Not more stupid than you, madam," said the nine-year-old Petya,
+with the air of an old brigadier.
+
+The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna's hints at
+dinner. On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her
+eyes fixed on a miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a
+snuffbox, while the tears kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna,
+with the letter, came on tiptoe to the countess' door and paused.
+
+"Don't come in," she said to the old count who was following her.
+"Come later." And she went in, closing the door behind her.
+
+The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.
+
+At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna
+Mikhaylovna's voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then
+silence, then both voices together with glad intonations, and then
+footsteps. Anna Mikhaylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud
+expression of a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation
+and admits the public to appreciate his skill.
+
+"It is done!" she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the
+countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait
+and in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her
+lips.
+
+When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him,
+embraced his bald head, over which she again looked at the letter
+and the portrait, and in order to press them again to her lips, she
+slightly pushed away the bald head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya
+now entered the room, and the reading of the letter began. After a
+brief description of the campaign and the two battles in which he
+had taken part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his
+father's and mother's hands asking for their blessing, and that he
+kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya. Besides that, he sent greetings to
+Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them
+to kiss for him "dear Sonya, whom he loved and thought of just the
+same as ever." When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came
+into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran
+away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with her
+dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped
+down on the floor. The countess was crying.
+
+"Why are you crying, Mamma?" asked Vera. "From all he says one
+should be glad and not cry."
+
+This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natasha looked
+at her reproachfully. "And who is it she takes after?" thought the
+countess.
+
+Nicholas' letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were
+considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she
+did not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses,
+and Dmitri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the
+letter each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it
+fresh proofs of Nikolenka's virtues. How strange, how extraordinary,
+how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of
+whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son
+about whom she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count,
+that son who had first learned to say "pear" and then "granny," that
+this son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange
+surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of man's work of his
+own, without help or guidance. The universal experience of ages,
+showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to
+manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son's growth toward
+manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her
+as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up
+in the same way. As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the
+little creature who lived somewhere under her heart would ever cry,
+suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe that
+that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this model son
+and officer that, judging by this letter, he now was.
+
+"What a style! How charmingly he describes!" said she, reading the
+descriptive part of the letter. "And what a soul! Not a word about
+himself.... Not a word! About some Denisov or other, though he
+himself, I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about
+his sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has
+remembered everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was
+only so high- I always said...."
+
+For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of
+letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied
+out, while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of
+the count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and
+equipment of the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna
+Mikhaylovna, practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor
+with army authorities to secure advantageous means of communication
+for herself and her son. She had opportunities of sending her
+letters to the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the
+Guards. The Rostovs supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was
+quite a definite address, and that if a letter reached the Grand
+Duke in command of the Guards there was no reason why it should not
+reach the Pavlograd regiment, which was presumably somewhere in the
+same neighborhood. And so it was decided to send the letters and money
+by the Grand Duke's courier to Boris and Boris was to forward them
+to Nicholas. The letters were from the old count, the countess, Petya,
+Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, and finally there were six thousand rubles
+for his outfit and various other things the old count sent to his son.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+On the twelfth of November, Kutuzov's active army, in camp before
+Olmutz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors- the
+Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia,
+spent the night ten miles from Olmutz and next morning were to come
+straight to the review, reaching the field at Olmutz by ten o'clock.
+
+That day Nicholas Rostov received a letter from Boris, telling him
+that the Ismaylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles
+from Olmutz and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money
+for him. Rostov was particularly in need of money now that the troops,
+after their active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the camp
+swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all
+sorts of tempting wares. The Pavlograds held feast after feast,
+celebrating awards they had received for the campaign, and made
+expeditions to Olmutz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who
+had recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses.
+Rostov, who had just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought
+Denisov's horse, Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and
+the sutlers. On receiving Boris' letter he rode with a fellow
+officer to Olmutz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set
+off alone to the Guards' camp to find his old playmate. Rostov had not
+yet had time to get his uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket,
+decorated with a soldier's cross, equally shabby cadet's riding
+breeches lined with worn leather, and an officer's saber with a
+sword knot. The Don horse he was riding was one he had bought from a
+Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a crumpled hussar cap stuck
+jauntily back on one side of his head. As he rode up to the camp he
+thought how he would impress Boris and all his comrades of the
+Guards by his appearance- that of a fighting hussar who had been under
+fire.
+
+The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip,
+parading their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy
+stages, their knapsacks conveyed on carts, and the Austrian
+authorities had provided excellent dinners for the officers at every
+halting place. The regiments had entered and left the town with
+their bands playing, and by the Grand Duke's orders the men had
+marched all the way in step (a practice on which the Guards prided
+themselves), the officers on foot and at their proper posts. Boris had
+been quartered, and had marched all the way, with Berg who was already
+in command of a company. Berg, who had obtained his captaincy during
+the campaign, had gained the confidence of his superiors by his
+promptitude and accuracy and had arranged his money matters very
+satisfactorily. Boris, during the campaign, had made the
+acquaintance of many persons who might prove useful to him, and by a
+letter of recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become
+acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom he hoped to
+obtain a post on the commander in chief's staff. Berg and Boris,
+having rested after yesterday's march, were sitting, clean and
+neatly dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to
+them, playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees.
+Boris, in the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a
+little pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while
+awaiting Berg's move, and watched his opponent's face, evidently
+thinking about the game as he always thought only of whatever he was
+engaged on.
+
+"Well, how are you going to get out of that?" he remarked.
+
+"We'll try to," replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing
+his hand.
+
+At that moment the door opened.
+
+"Here he is at last!" shouted Rostov. "And Berg too! Oh, you
+petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!" he exclaimed, imitating his Russian
+nurse's French, at which he and Boris used to laugh long ago.
+
+"Dear me, how you have changed!"
+
+Boris rose to meet Rostov, but in doing so did not omit to steady
+and replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace
+his friend, but Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of
+youth, that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a
+manner different from that of its elders which is often insincere,
+Nicholas wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He
+wanted to pinch him, push him, do anything but kiss him- a thing
+everybody did. But notwithstanding this, Boris embraced him in a
+quiet, friendly way and kissed him three times.
+
+They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when
+young men take their first steps on life's road, each saw immense
+changes in the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which
+they had taken those first steps. Both had changed greatly since
+they last met and both were in a hurry to show the changes that had
+taken place in them.
+
+"Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you'd been to a fete,
+not like us sinners of the line," cried Rostov, with martial swagger
+and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his
+own mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov's
+loud voice, popped her head in at the door.
+
+"Eh, is she pretty?" he asked with a wink.
+
+"Why do you shout so? You'll frighten them!" said Boris. "I did
+not expect you today," he added. "I only sent you the note yesterday
+by Bolkonski- an adjutant of Kutuzov's, who's a friend of mine. I
+did not think he would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you?
+Been under fire already?" asked Boris.
+
+Without answering, Rostov shook the soldier's Cross of St. George
+fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm,
+glanced at Berg with a smile.
+
+"As you see," he said.
+
+"Indeed? Yes, yes!" said Boris, with a smile. "And we too have had a
+splendid march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness rode
+with our regiment all the time, so that we had every comfort and every
+advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and balls! I
+can't tell you. And the Tsarevich was very gracious to all our
+officers."
+
+And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of
+his hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the
+pleasures and advantages of service under members of the Imperial
+family.
+
+"Oh, you Guards!" said Rostov. "I say, send for some wine."
+
+Boris made a grimace.
+
+"If you really want it," said he.
+
+He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and
+sent for wine.
+
+"Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you," he added.
+
+Rostov took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both
+arms on the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he
+glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind
+the letter.
+
+"Well, they've sent you a tidy sum," said Berg, eying the heavy
+purse that sank into the sofa. "As for us, Count, we get along on
+our pay. I can tell you for myself..."
+
+"I say, Berg, my dear fellow," said Rostov, "when you get a letter
+from home and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk
+everything over with, and I happen to be there, I'll go at once, to be
+out of your way! Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!" he
+exclaimed, and immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking
+amiably into his face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his
+words, he added, "Don't be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak from
+my heart as to an old acquaintance."
+
+"Oh, don't mention it, Count! I quite understand," said Berg,
+getting up and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice.
+
+"Go across to our hosts: they invited you," added Boris.
+
+Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of
+dust, stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples
+upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor Alexander, and, having
+assured himself from the way Rostov looked at it that his coat had
+been noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile.
+
+"Oh dear, what a beast I am!" muttered Rostov, as he read the
+letter.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them
+such a fright! Oh, what a pig I am!" he repeated, flushing suddenly.
+"Well, have you sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let's have
+some!"
+
+In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of
+recommendation to Bagration which the old countess at Anna
+Mikhaylovna's advice had obtained through an acquaintance and sent
+to her son, asking him to take it to its destination and make use of
+it.
+
+"What nonsense! Much I need it!" said Rostov, throwing the letter
+under the table.
+
+"Why have you thrown that away?" asked Boris.
+
+"It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want
+it for!"
+
+"Why 'What the devil'?" said Boris, picking it up and reading the
+address. "This letter would be of great use to you."
+
+"I want nothing, and I won't be anyone's adjutant."
+
+"Why not?" inquired Boris.
+
+"It's a lackey's job!"
+
+"You are still the same dreamer, I see," remarked Boris, shaking his
+head.
+
+"And you're still the same diplomatist! But that's not the
+point... Come, how are you?" asked Rostov.
+
+"Well, as you see. So far everything's all right, but I confess I
+should much like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try
+to make as successful a career of it as possible."
+
+"Oh, that's it!" said Rostov, evidently thinking of something else.
+
+He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently
+trying in vain to find the answer to some question.
+
+Old Gabriel brought in the wine.
+
+"Shouldn't we now send for Berg?" asked Boris. "He would drink
+with you. I can't."
+
+"Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?"
+asked Rostov, with a contemptuous smile.
+
+"He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow," answered
+Boris.
+
+Again Rostov looked intently into Boris' eyes and sighed. Berg
+returned, and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three
+officers became animated. The Guardsmen told Rostov of their march and
+how they had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They
+spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke,
+and told stories of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual,
+kept silent when the subject did not relate to himself, but in
+connection with the stories of the Grand Duke's quick temper he
+related with gusto how in Galicia he had managed to deal with the
+Grand Duke when the latter made a tour of the regiments and was
+annoyed at the irregularity of a movement. With a pleasant smile
+Berg related how the Grand Duke had ridden up to him in a violent
+passion, shouting: "Arnauts!" ("Arnauts" was the Tsarevich's
+favorite expression when he was in a rage) and called for the
+company commander.
+
+"Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I
+knew I was right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know
+the Army Orders by heart and know the Regulations as well as I do
+the Lord's Prayer. So, Count, there never is any negligence in my
+company, and so my conscience was at ease. I came forward...." (Berg
+stood up and showed how he presented himself, with his hand to his
+cap, and really it would have been difficult for a face to express
+greater respect and self-complacency than his did.) "Well, he
+stormed at me, as the saying is, stormed and stormed and stormed! It
+was not a matter of life but rather of death, as the saying is.
+'Albanians!' and 'devils!' and 'To Siberia!'" said Berg with a
+sagacious smile. "I knew I was in the right so I kept silent; was
+not that best, Count?... 'Hey, are you dumb?' he shouted. Still I
+remained silent. And what do you think, Count? The next day it was not
+even mentioned in the Orders of the Day. That's what keeping one's
+head means. That's the way, Count," said Berg, lighting his pipe and
+emitting rings of smoke.
+
+"Yes, that was fine," said Rostov, smiling.
+
+But Boris noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and
+skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and
+where he got his wound. This pleased Rostov and he began talking about
+it, and as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of
+his Schon Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a
+battle generally do describe it, that is, as they would like it to
+have been, as they have heard it described by others, and as sounds
+well, but not at all as it really was. Rostov was a truthful young man
+and would on no account have told a deliberate lie. He began his story
+meaning to tell everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly,
+involuntarily, and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told
+the truth to his hearers- who like himself had often heard stories
+of attacks and had formed a definite idea of what an attack was and
+were expecting to hear just such a story- they would either not have
+believed him or, still worse, would have thought that Rostov was
+himself to blame since what generally happens to the narrators of
+cavalry attacks had not happened to him. He could not tell them simply
+that everyone went at a trot and that he fell off his horse and
+sprained his arm and then ran as hard as he could from a Frenchman
+into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as it really happened, it
+would have been necessary to make an effort of will to tell only
+what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young
+people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a story of how
+beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like a
+storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his
+saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And
+so he told them all that.
+
+In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: "You cannot
+imagine what a strange frenzy one experiences during an attack,"
+Prince Andrew, whom Boris was expecting, entered the room. Prince
+Andrew, who liked to help young men, was flattered by being asked
+for his assistance and being well disposed toward Boris, who had
+managed to please him the day before, he wished to do what the young
+man wanted. Having been sent with papers from Kutuzov to the
+Tsarevich, he looked in on Boris, hoping to find him alone. When he
+came in and saw an hussar of the line recounting his military exploits
+(Prince Andrew could not endure that sort of man), he gave Boris a
+pleasant smile, frowned as with half-closed eyes he looked at
+Rostov, bowed slightly and wearily, and sat down languidly on the
+sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped in on bad company.
+Rostov flushed up on noticing this, but he did not care, this was a
+mere stranger. Glancing, however, at Boris, he saw that he too
+seemed ashamed of the hussar of the line.
+
+In spite of Prince Andrew's disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of
+the contempt with which Rostov, from his fighting army point of
+view, regarded all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the
+newcomer was evidently one, Rostov felt confused, blushed, and
+became silent. Boris inquired what news there might be on the staff,
+and what, without indiscretion, one might ask about our plans.
+
+"We shall probably advance," replied Bolkonski, evidently
+reluctant to say more in the presence of a stranger.
+
+Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as
+was rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies
+would be doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that
+he could give no opinion on such an important government order, and
+Berg laughed gaily.
+
+"As to your business," Prince Andrew continued, addressing Boris,
+"we will talk of it later" (and he looked round at Rostov). "Come to
+me after the review and we will do what is possible."
+
+And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to
+Rostov, whose state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now
+changing to anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: "I
+think you were talking of the Schon Grabern affair? Were you there?"
+
+"I was there," said Rostov angrily, as if intending to insult the
+aide-de-camp.
+
+Bolkonski noticed the hussar's state of mind, and it amused him.
+With a slightly contemptuous smile, he said: "Yes, there are many
+stories now told about that affair!"
+
+"Yes, stories!" repeated Rostov loudly, looking with eyes suddenly
+grown furious, now at Boris, now at Bolkonski. "Yes, many stories! But
+our stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy's
+fire! Our stories have some weight, not like the stories of those
+fellows on the staff who get rewards without doing anything!"
+
+"Of whom you imagine me to be one?" said Prince Andrew, with a quiet
+and particularly amiable smile.
+
+A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this
+man's self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostov's soul.
+
+"I am not talking about you," he said, "I don't know you and,
+frankly, I don't want to. I am speaking of the staff in general."
+
+"And I will tell you this," Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of
+quiet authority, "you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree
+with you that it would be very easy to do so if you haven't sufficient
+self-respect, but admit that the time and place are very badly chosen.
+In a day or two we shall all have to take part in a greater and more
+serious duel, and besides, Drubetskoy, who says he is an old friend of
+yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the misfortune to
+displease you. However," he added rising, "you know my name and
+where to find me, but don't forget that I do not regard either
+myself or you as having been at all insulted, and as a man older
+than you, my advice is to let the matter drop. Well then, on Friday
+after the review I shall expect you, Drubetskoy. Au revoir!" exclaimed
+Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them both he went out.
+
+Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostov think of what he ought
+to have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it.
+He ordered his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Boris, rode
+home. Should he go to headquarters next day and challenge that
+affected adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question
+that worried him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure he
+would have at seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud
+man when covered by his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of
+all the men he knew there was none he would so much like to have for a
+friend as that very adjutant whom he so hated.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The day after Rostov had been to see Boris, a review was held of the
+Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia
+and those who had been campaigning under Kutuzov. The two Emperors,
+the Russian with his heir the Tsarevich, and the Austrian with the
+Archduke, inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men.
+
+From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move,
+forming up on the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and
+bayonets moved and halted at the officers' command, turned with
+banners flying, formed up at intervals, and wheeled round other
+similar masses of infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the
+rhythmic beat of hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red,
+and green braided uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in front
+mounted on black, roan, or gray horses; then again, spreading out with
+the brazen clatter of the polished shining cannon that quivered on the
+gun carriages and with the smell of linstocks, came the artillery
+which crawled between the infantry and cavalry and took up its
+appointed position. Not only the generals in full parade uniforms,
+with their thin or thick waists drawn in to the utmost, their red
+necks squeezed into their stiff collars, and wearing scarves and all
+their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded officers, but every
+soldier with his freshly washed and shaven face and his weapons
+clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse groomed till its
+coat shone like satin and every hair of its wetted mane lay smooth-
+felt that no small matter was happening, but an important and solemn
+affair. Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own
+insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and
+yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that
+enormous whole.
+
+From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by
+ten o'clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were
+drown up on the vast field. The whole army was extended in three
+lines: the cavalry in front, behind it the artillery, and behind
+that again the infantry.
+
+A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The
+three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutuzov's
+fighting army (with the Pavlograds on the right flank of the front);
+those recently arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the
+line; and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines,
+under one command, and in a like order.
+
+Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: "They're coming!
+They're coming!" Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final
+preparation swept over all the troops.
+
+From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group was seen
+approaching. And at that moment, though the day was still, a light
+gust of wind blowing over the army slightly stirred the streamers on
+the lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their
+staffs. It looked as if by that slight motion the army itself was
+expressing its joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was
+heard shouting: "Eyes front!" Then, like the crowing of cocks at
+
+sunrise, this was repeated by others from various sides and all became
+silent.
+
+In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard.
+This was the Emperors' suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank,
+and the trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general
+march. It seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as
+if the army itself, rejoicing at the Emperors' approach, had naturally
+burst into music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of
+the Emperor Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of
+greeting, and the first regiment roared "Hurrah!" so deafeningly,
+continuously, and joyfully that the men themselves were awed by
+their multitude and the immensity of the power they constituted.
+
+Rostov, standing in the front lines of Kutuzov's army which the Tsar
+approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in
+that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of
+might, and a passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this
+triumph.
+
+He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass
+(and he himself an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and
+water, commit crime, die, or perform deeds of highest heroism, and
+so he could not but tremble and his heart stand still at the imminence
+of that word.
+
+"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" thundered from all sides, one regiment
+after another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and
+then "Hurrah!"... Then the general march, and again "Hurrah!
+Hurrah!" growing ever stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening
+roar.
+
+Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and
+immobility seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it
+became alive, its thunder joining the roar of the whole line along
+which he had already passed. Through the terrible and deafening roar
+of those voices, amid the square masses of troops standing
+motionless as if turned to stone, hundreds of riders composing the
+suites moved carelessly but symmetrically and above all freely, and in
+front of them two men- the Emperors. Upon them the undivided,
+tensely passionate attention of that whole mass of men was
+concentrated.
+
+The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse
+Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his
+pleasant face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone's
+attention.
+
+Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight
+had recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within
+twenty paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of
+his handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling tenderness
+and ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every
+movement of the Tsar's seemed to him enchanting.
+
+Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said something in
+French to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.
+
+Seeing that smile, Rostov involuntarily smiled himself and felt a
+still stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show
+that love in some way and knowing that this was impossible was ready
+to cry. The Tsar called the colonel of the regiment and said a few
+words to him.
+
+"Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?"
+thought Rostov. "I should die of happiness!"
+
+The Tsar addressed the officers also: "I thank you all, gentlemen, I
+thank you with my whole heart." To Rostov every word sounded like a
+voice from heaven. How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!
+
+"You have earned the St. George's standards and will be worthy of
+them."
+
+"Oh, to die, to die for him " thought Rostov.
+
+The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not hear, and the
+soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted "Hurrah!"
+
+Rostov too, bending over his saddle, shouted "Hurrah!" with all
+his might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout,
+if only to express his rapture fully.
+
+The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if
+undecided.
+
+"How can the Emperor be undecided?" thought Rostov, but then even
+this indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like
+everything else the Tsar did.
+
+That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar's foot, in the
+narrow pointed boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the
+bobtailed bay mare he rode, his hand in a white glove gathered up
+the reins, and he moved off accompanied by an irregularly swaying
+sea of aides-de-camp. Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at
+other regiments, till at last only his white plumes were visible to
+Rostov from amid the suites that surrounded the Emperors.
+
+Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed Bolkonski,
+sitting his horse indolently and carelessly. Rostov recalled their
+quarrel of yesterday and the question presented itself whether he
+ought or ought not to challenge Bolkonski. "Of course not!" he now
+thought. "Is it worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment?
+At a time of such love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do
+any of our quarrels and affronts matter? I love and forgive
+everybody now."
+
+When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops
+began a ceremonial march past him, and Rostov on Bedouin, recently
+purchased from Denisov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron-
+that is, alone and in full view of the Emperor.
+
+Before he reached him, Rostov, who was a splendid horseman,
+spurred Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in
+which the animal went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to
+his chest, his tail extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the
+Emperor's eye upon him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a
+high and graceful action, as if flying through the air without
+touching the ground.
+
+Rostov himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and
+feeling himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a
+frowning but blissful face "like a vewy devil," as Denisov expressed
+it.
+
+"Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!" remarked the Emperor.
+
+"My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the
+fire this instant!" thought Rostov.
+
+When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also
+Kutuzov's, collected in groups and began to talk about the awards,
+about the Austrians and their uniforms, about their lines, about
+Bonaparte, and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if
+the Essen corps arrived and Prussia took our side.
+
+But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander.
+His every word and movement was described with ecstasy.
+
+They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against
+the enemy under the Emperor's command. Commanded by the Emperor
+himself they could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might:
+so thought Rostov and most of the officers after the review.
+
+All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two
+battles would have made them.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The day after the review, Boris, in his best uniform and with his
+comrade Berg's best wishes for success, rode to Olmutz to see
+Bolkonski, wishing to profit by his friendliness and obtain for
+himself the best post he could- preferably that of adjutant to some
+important personage, a position in the army which seemed to him most
+attractive. "It is all very well for Rostov, whose father sends him
+ten thousand rubles at a time, to talk about not wishing to cringe
+to anybody and not be anyone's lackey, but I who have nothing but my
+brains have to make a career and must not miss opportunities, but must
+avail myself of them!" he reflected.
+
+He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmutz that day, but the appearance
+of the town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were
+stationed and the two Emperors were living with their suites,
+households, and courts only strengthened his desire to belong to
+that higher world.
+
+He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman's uniform, all these
+exalted personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages
+with their plumes, ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military
+men, seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the
+Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could not, be
+aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander in chief,
+Kutuzov, where he inquired for Bolkonski, all the adjutants and even
+the orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a
+great many officers like him were always coming there and that
+everybody was heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather
+because of it, next day, November 15, after dinner he again went to
+Olmutz and, entering the house occupied by Kutuzov, asked for
+Bolkonski. Prince Andrew was in and Boris was shown into a large
+hall probably formerly used for dancing, but in which five beds now
+stood, and furniture of various kinds: a table, chairs, and a
+clavichord. One adjutant, nearest the door, was sitting at the table
+in a Persian dressing gown, writing. Another, the red, stout
+Nesvitski, lay on a bed with his arms under his head, laughing with an
+officer who had sat down beside him. A third was playing a Viennese
+waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on the clavichord, sang
+the tune. Bolkonski was not there. None of these gentlemen changed his
+position on seeing Boris. The one who was writing and whom Boris
+addressed turned round crossly and told him Bolkonski was on duty
+and that he should go through the door on the left into the
+reception room if he wished to see him. Boris thanked him and went
+to the reception room, where he found some ten officers and generals.
+
+When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously
+(with that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says,
+"If it were not my duty I would not talk to you for a moment"), was
+listening to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very
+erect, almost on tiptoe, with a soldier's obsequious expression on his
+purple face, reporting something.
+
+"Very well, then, be so good as to wait," said Prince Andrew to
+
+the general, in Russian, speaking with the French intonation he
+affected when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Boris,
+Prince Andrew, paying no more heed to the general who ran after him
+imploring him to hear something more, nodded and turned to him with
+a cheerful smile.
+
+At that moment Boris clearly realized what he had before surmised,
+that in the army, besides the subordination and discipline
+prescribed in the military code, which he and the others knew in the
+regiment, there was another, more important, subordination, which made
+this tight-laced, purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain
+Prince Andrew, for his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant
+Drubetskoy. More than ever was Boris resolved to serve in future not
+according to the written code, but under this unwritten law. He felt
+now that merely by having been recommended to Prince Andrew he had
+already risen above the general who at the front had the power to
+annihilate him, a lieutenant of the Guards. Prince Andrew came up to
+him and took his hand.
+
+"I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing
+about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the
+dispositions. When Germans start being accurate, there's no end to
+it!"
+
+Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to
+as something generally known. But it the first time he had heard
+Weyrother's name, or even the term "dispositions."
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have
+been thinking about you."
+
+"Yes, I was thinking"- for some reason Boris could not help
+blushing- "of asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter
+from Prince Kuragin about me. I only wanted to ask because I fear
+the Guards won't be in action," he added as if in apology.
+
+"All right, all right. We'll talk it over," replied Prince Andrew.
+"Only let me report this gentleman's business, and I shall be at
+your disposal."
+
+While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general,
+that gentleman- evidently not sharing Boris' conception of the
+advantages of the unwritten code of subordination- looked so fixedly
+at the presumptuous lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he
+had to say to the adjutant that Boris felt uncomfortable. He turned
+away and waited impatiently for Prince Andrew's return from the
+commander in chief's room.
+
+"You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you," said
+Prince Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the
+clavichord was. "It's no use your going to the commander in chief.
+He would say a lot of pleasant things, ask you to dinner" ("That would
+not be bad as regards the unwritten code," thought Boris), "but
+nothing more would come of it. There will soon be a battalion of us
+aides-de-camp and adjutants! But this is what we'll do: I have a
+good friend, an adjutant general and an excellent fellow, Prince
+Dolgorukov; and though you may not know it, the fact is that now
+Kutuzov with his staff and all of us count for nothing. Everything
+is now centered round the Emperor. So we will go to Dolgorukov; I have
+to go there anyhow and I have already spoken to him about you. We
+shall see whether he cannot attach you to himself or find a place
+for you somewhere nearer the sun."
+
+Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a
+young man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining
+help of this kind for another, which from pride he would never
+accept for himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers
+success and which attracted him. He very readily took up Boris'
+cause and went with him to Dolgorukov.
+
+It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmutz
+occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.
+
+That same day a council of war had been held in which all the
+members of the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that
+council, contrary to the views of the old generals Kutuzov and
+Prince Schwartzenberg, it had been decided to advance immediately
+and give battle to Bonaparte. The council of war was just over when
+Prince Andrew accompanied by Boris arrived at the palace to find
+Dolgorukov. Everyone at headquarters was still under the spell of
+the day's council, at which the party of the young had triumphed.
+The voices of those who counseled delay and advised waiting for
+something else before advancing had been so completely silenced and
+their arguments confuted by such conclusive evidence of the advantages
+of attacking that what had been discussed at the council- the coming
+battle and the victory that would certainly result from it- no
+longer seemed to be in the future but in the past. All the
+advantages were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly superior
+to Napoleon's, were concentrated in one place, the troops inspired
+by the Emperors' presence were eager for action. The strategic
+position where the operations would take place was familiar in all its
+details to the Austrian General Weyrother: a lucky accident had
+ordained that the Austrian army should maneuver the previous year on
+the very fields where the French had now to be fought; the adjacent
+locality was known and shown in every detail on the maps, and
+Bonaparte, evidently weakened, was undertaking nothing.
+
+Dolgorukov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just
+returned from the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud
+of the victory that had been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his
+protege, but Prince Dolgorukov politely and firmly pressing his hand
+said nothing to Boris and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts
+which were uppermost in his mind at that moment, addressed Prince
+Andrew in French.
+
+"Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that
+the one that will result from it will be as victorious! However,
+dear fellow," he said abruptly and eagerly, "I must confess to
+having been unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother.
+What exactitude, what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what
+foresight for every eventuality, every possibility even to the
+smallest detail! No, my dear fellow, no conditions better than our
+present ones could have been devised. This combination of Austrian
+precision with Russian valor- what more could be wished for?"
+
+"So the attack is definitely resolved on?" asked Bolkonski.
+
+"And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte
+has decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received
+from him today for the Emperor." Dolgorukov smiled significantly.
+
+"Is that so? And what did he say?" inquired Bolkonski.
+
+"What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain
+time. I tell you he is in our hands, that's certain! But what was most
+amusing," he continued, with a sudden, good-natured laugh, "was that
+we could not think how to address the reply! If not as 'Consul' and of
+course not as 'Emperor,' it seemed to me it should be to 'General
+Bonaparte.'"
+
+"But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him
+General Bonaparte, there is a difference," remarked Bolkonski.
+
+"That's just it," interrupted Dolgorukov quickly, laughing. "You
+know Bilibin- he's a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him
+as 'Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.'"
+
+Dolgorukov laughed merrily.
+
+"Only that?" said Bolkonski.
+
+"All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form for the
+address. He is a wise and clever fellow."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement
+francais," said Dolgorukov, with grave satisfaction. "Good, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes, but he will dislike it extremely," said Bolkonski.
+
+"Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he's dined with him- the
+present Emperor- more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met
+a more cunning or subtle diplomatist- you know, a combination of
+French adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale
+about him and Count Markov? Count Markov was the only man who knew how
+to handle him. You know the story of the handkerchief? It is
+delightful!"
+
+And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris, now to Prince
+Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markov, our ambassador,
+purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking
+at Markov, probably expecting Markov to pick it up for him, and how
+Markov immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up
+without touching Bonaparte's.
+
+"Delightful!" said Bolkonski. "But I have come to you, Prince, as
+a petitioner on behalf of this young man. You see..." but before
+Prince Andrew could finish, an aide-de-camp came in to summon
+Dolgorukov to the Emperor.
+
+"Oh, what a nuisance," said Dolgorukov, getting up hurriedly and
+pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Boris. "You know I should be
+very glad to do all in my power both for you and for this dear young
+man." Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of
+good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. "But you see... another
+time!"
+
+Boris was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher
+powers as he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious
+that here he was in contact with the springs that set in motion the
+enormous movements of the mass of which in his regiment he felt
+himself a tiny, obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince
+Dolgorukov out into the corridor and met- coming out of the door of
+the Emperor's room by which Dolgorukov had entered- a short man in
+civilian clothes with a clever face and sharply projecting jaw
+which, without spoiling his face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and
+shiftiness of expression. This short man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an
+intimate friend and stared at Prince Andrew with cool intensity,
+walking straight toward him and evidently expecting him to bow or to
+step out of his way. Prince Andrew did neither: a look of animosity
+appeared on his face and the other turned away and went down the
+side of the corridor.
+
+"Who was that?" asked Boris.
+
+"He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of men-
+the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartoryski.... It is
+such men as he who decide the fate of nations," added Bolkonski with a
+sigh he could not suppress, as they passed out of the palace.
+
+Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle
+of Austerlitz, Boris was unable to see either Prince Andrew or
+Dolgorukov again and remained for a while with the Ismaylov regiment.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denisov's squadron, in which
+Nicholas Rostov served and which was in Prince Bagration's detachment,
+moved from the place where it had spent the night, advancing into
+action as arranged, and after going behind other columns for about two
+thirds of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostov saw the
+Cossacks and then the first and second squadrons of hussars and
+infantry battalions and artillery pass by and go forward and then
+Generals Bagration and Dolgorukov ride past with their adjutants.
+All the fear before action which he had experienced as previously, all
+the inner struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of
+distinguishing himself as a true hussar in this battle, had been
+wasted. Their squadron remained in reserve and Nicholas Rostov spent
+that day in a dull and wretched mood. At nine in the morning, he heard
+firing in front and shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being brought
+back (there were not many of them), and at last he saw how a whole
+detachment of French cavalry was brought in, convoyed by a sontnya
+of Cossacks. Evidently the affair was over and, though not big, had
+been a successful engagement. The men and officers returning spoke
+of a brilliant victory, of the occupation of the town of Wischau and
+the capture of a whole French squadron. The day was bright and sunny
+after a sharp night frost, and the cheerful glitter of that autumn day
+was in keeping with the news of victory which was conveyed, not only
+by the tales of those who had taken part in it, but also by the joyful
+expression on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and
+adjutants, as they passed Rostov going or coming. And Nicholas, who
+had vainly suffered all the dread that precedes a battle and had spent
+that happy day in inactivity, was all the more depressed.
+
+"Come here, Wostov. Let's dwink to dwown our gwief!" shouted
+Denisov, who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some
+food.
+
+The officers gathered round Denisov's canteen, eating and talking.
+
+"There! They are bringing another!" cried one of the officers,
+indicating a captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot
+by two Cossacks.
+
+One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he
+had taken from the prisoner.
+
+"Sell us that horse!" Denisov called out to the Cossacks.
+
+"If you like, your honor!"
+
+The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner.
+The French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German
+accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when
+he heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers,
+addressing first one, then another. He said he would not have been
+taken, it was not his fault but the corporal's who had sent him to
+seize some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were
+there. And at every word he added: "But don't hurt my little horse!"
+and stroked the animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where
+he was. Now he excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now,
+imagining himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly
+discipline and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our
+rearguard all the freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which
+was so alien to us.
+
+The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostov, being
+the richest of the officers now that he had received his money, bought
+it.
+
+"But don't hurt my little horse!" said the Alsatian good-naturedly
+to Rostov when the animal was handed over to the hussar.
+
+Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.
+
+"Alley! Alley!" said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to
+make him go on.
+
+"The Emperor! The Emperor!" was suddenly heard among the hussars.
+
+All began to run and bustle, and Rostov saw coming up the road
+behind him several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment
+everyone was in his place, waiting.
+
+Rostov did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted.
+Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected
+mood amid people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every
+thought of himself had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his
+nearness to the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made
+up to him for the day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when the
+longed-for moment of meeting arrives. Not daring to look round and
+without looking round, he was ecstatically conscious of his
+approach. He felt it not only from the sound of the hoofs of the
+approaching cavalcade, but because as he drew near everything grew
+brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more festive around
+him. Nearer and nearer to Rostov came that sun shedding beams of
+mild and majestic light around, and already he felt himself
+enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm, and
+majestic voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with
+Rostov's feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was heard
+the Emperor's voice.
+
+"The Pavlograd hussars?" he inquired.
+
+"The reserves, sire!" replied a voice, a very human one compared
+to that which had said: "The Pavlograd hussars?"
+
+The Emperor drew level with Rostov and halted. Alexander's face
+was even more beautiful than it had been three days before at the
+review. It shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that
+it suggested the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was
+the face of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the
+squadron, the Emperor's eyes met Rostov's and rested on them for not
+more than two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was
+going on in Rostov's soul (it seemed to Rostov that he understood
+everything), at any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two
+seconds into Rostov's face. A gentle, mild light poured from them.
+Then all at once he raised his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse
+with his left foot, and galloped on.
+
+The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the
+battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at
+twelve o'clock left the third column with which he had been and
+galloped toward the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars,
+several adjutants met him with news of the successful result of the
+action.
+
+This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron,
+was represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the
+Emperor and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over the
+battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were
+retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had
+passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau
+itself, a petty German town, Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the
+market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
+Emperor's arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom
+there had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his
+suite of officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare,
+a different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and
+bending to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes
+and looked at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered
+head. The wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his
+proximity to the Emperor shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the
+Emperor's rather round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run
+down them, how his left foot began convulsively tapping the horse's
+side with the spur, and how the well-trained horse looked round
+unconcerned and did not stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the
+soldier under the arms to place him on a stretcher that had been
+brought. The soldier groaned.
+
+"Gently, gently! Can't you do it more gently?" said the Emperor
+apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.
+
+Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor's eyes and heard him, as he was
+riding away, say to Czartoryski: "What a terrible thing war is: what a
+terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!"
+
+The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within
+sight of the enemy's lines, which all day long had yielded ground to
+us at the least firing. The Emperor's gratitude was announced to the
+vanguard, rewards were promised, and the men received a double
+ration of vodka. The campfires crackled and the soldiers' songs
+resounded even more merrily than on the previous night. Denisov
+celebrated his promotion to the rank of major, and Rostov, who had
+already drunk enough, at the end of the feast proposed the Emperor's
+health. "Not 'our Sovereign, the Emperor,' as they say at official
+dinners," said he, "but the health of our Sovereign, that good,
+enchanting, and great man! Let us drink to his health and to the
+certain defeat of the French!"
+
+"If we fought before," he said, "not letting the French pass, as
+at Schon Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We
+will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not
+saying it right, I have drunk a good deal- but that is how I feel, and
+so do you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!"
+
+"Hurrah!" rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.
+
+And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and
+no less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostov.
+
+When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kirsten
+filled others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand
+to the soldiers' bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white
+chest showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the
+light of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.
+
+"Lads! here's to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our
+enemies! Hurrah!" he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar's baritone.
+
+The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.
+
+Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his short hand
+patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder.
+
+"As there's no one to fall in love with on campaign, he's fallen
+in love with the Tsar," he said.
+
+"Denisov, don't make fun of it!" cried Rostov. "It is such a
+lofty, beautiful feeling, such a..."
+
+"I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove..."
+
+"No, you don't understand!"
+
+And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming
+of what happiness it would be to die- not in saving the Emperor's life
+(he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before
+his eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the
+Russian arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only
+man to experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding
+the battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army
+were then in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the
+glory of the Russian arms.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his
+physician, was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and
+among the troops near by the news spread that the Emperor was
+unwell. He ate nothing and had slept badly that night, those around
+him reported. The cause of this indisposition was the strong
+impression made on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and
+wounded.
+
+At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with a
+flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was
+brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The
+Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At
+midday he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off
+with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French army.
+
+It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander a
+meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a
+personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince
+Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate
+with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were
+actuated by a real desire for peace.
+
+Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to the Tsar,
+and remained alone with him for a long time.
+
+On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced
+two days' march and the enemy's outposts after a brief interchange
+of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the
+nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted
+till the morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of
+Austerlitz was fought.
+
+Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity- the eager talk, running
+to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants- was confined to the
+Emperor's headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this
+activity reached Kutiizov's headquarters and the staffs of the
+commanders of columns. By evening, the adjutants had spread it to
+all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the nineteenth
+to the twentieth, the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from
+their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started
+in one enormous mass six miles long.
+
+The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's
+headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that
+followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large
+tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and
+a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and
+cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands
+to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.
+
+Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the
+military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and
+just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is
+transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse
+has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage
+one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their
+movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though
+it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment
+comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel
+begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of
+which are beyond its ken.
+
+Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of
+innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement
+of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated
+human activities of 160,000 Russians and French- all their passions,
+desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride,
+fear, and enthusiasm- was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz,
+the so-called battle of the three Emperors- that is to say, a slow
+movement of the hand on the dial of human history.
+
+Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the
+commander in chief.
+
+At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor's headquarters
+and after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand
+marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.
+
+Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the
+coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and
+dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were
+dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor's headquarters
+everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something
+others do not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.
+
+"Well, how d'you do, my dear fellow?" said Dolgorukov, who was
+sitting at tea with Bilibin. "The fete is for tomorrow. How is your
+old fellow? Out of sorts?"
+
+"I won't say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be
+heard."
+
+"But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when
+he talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when
+Bonaparte fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible."
+
+"Yes, you have seen him?" said Prince Andrew. "Well, what is
+Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?"
+
+"Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a
+general engagement," repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this
+general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with
+Napoleon. "If he weren't afraid of a battle why did he ask for that
+interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat
+is so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is
+afraid, afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!"
+
+"But tell me, what is he like, eh?" said Prince Andrew again.
+
+"He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him
+'Your Majesty,' but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me!
+That's the sort of man he is, and nothing more," replied Dolgorukov,
+looking round at Bilibin with a smile.
+
+"Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov," he continued, "we should
+be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a
+chance to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in
+our hands! No, we mustn't forget Suvorov and his rule- not to put
+yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe
+me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than
+all the experience of old Cunctators."
+
+"But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the
+outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces
+are situated," said Prince Andrew.
+
+He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself
+formed.
+
+"Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting
+up he spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been
+foreseen. If he is standing before Brunn..."
+
+And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's
+plan of a flanking movement.
+
+Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which
+might have been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage
+that Weyrother's had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew
+began to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his
+own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed
+absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew's face.
+
+"There will be a council of war at Kutuzov's tonight, though; you
+can say all this there," remarked Dolgorukov.
+
+"I will do so," said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.
+
+"Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?" said Bilibin, who,
+till then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and
+now was evidently ready with a joke. "Whether tomorrow brings
+victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except
+your Kutuzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column!
+The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le
+Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally
+Prishprish, and so on like all those Polish names."
+
+"Be quiet, backbiter!" said Dolgorukov. "It is not true; there are
+now two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov, and there would be a
+third, Count Arakcheev, if his nerves were not too weak."
+
+"However, I think General Kutuzov has come out," said Prince Andrew.
+"I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!" he added and went out
+after shaking hands with Dolgorukov and Bilibin.
+
+On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking
+Kutuzov, who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of
+tomorrow's battle.
+
+Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause,
+replied: "I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy
+and asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? 'But,
+my dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after
+military matters yourself!' Yes... That was the answer I got!"
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his
+plans to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held.
+All the commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in
+chief's and with the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to
+come, were all there at the appointed time.
+
+Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his
+eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the
+dissatisfied and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly played the part of
+chairman and president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt
+himself to be at the head of a movement that had already become
+unrestrainable. He was like a horse running downhill harnessed to a
+heavy cart. Whether he was pulling it or being pushed by it he did not
+know, but rushed along at headlong speed with no time to consider what
+this movement might lead to. Weyrother had been twice that evening
+to the enemy's picket line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the
+Emperors, Russian and Austrian, to report and explain, and to his
+headquarters where he had dictated the dispositions in German, and
+now, much exhausted, he arrived at Kutuzov's.
+
+He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the
+commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and
+indistinctly, without looking at the man he was addressing, and did
+not reply to questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had
+a pitiful, weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was
+haughty and self-confident.
+
+Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman's castle of modest dimensions
+near Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the
+commander in chief's office were gathered Kutuzov himself,
+Weyrother, and the members of the council of war. They were drinking
+tea, and only awaited Prince Bagration to begin the council. At last
+Bagration's orderly came with the news that the prince could not
+attend. Prince Andrew came in to inform the commander in chief of this
+and, availing himself of permission previously given him by Kutuzov to
+be present at the council, he remained in the room.
+
+"Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin," said
+Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on
+which an enormous map of the environs of Brunn was spread out.
+
+Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged
+over his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low
+chair, with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms.
+At the sound of Weyrother's voice, he opened his one eye with an
+effort.
+
+"Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late," said he, and
+nodding his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.
+
+If at first the members of the council thought that Kutuzov was
+pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading
+that followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was
+absorbed by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his
+contempt for the dispositions or anything else- he was engaged in
+satisfying the irresistible human need for sleep. He really was
+asleep. Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose a
+moment, glanced at Kutuzov and, having convinced himself that he was
+asleep, took up a paper and in a loud, monotonous voice began to
+read out the dispositions for the impending battle, under a heading
+which he also read out:
+
+"Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz
+and Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805."
+
+The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began
+as follows:
+
+"As the enemy's left wing rests on wooded hills and his right
+extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there,
+while we, on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his
+right, it is advantageous to attack the enemy's latter wing especially
+if we occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can
+both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain between
+Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of
+Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy's front. For this
+object it is necessary that... The first column marches... The
+second column marches... The third column marches..." and so on,
+read Weyrother.
+
+The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult
+dispositions. The tall, fair-haired General Buxhowden stood, leaning
+his back against the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and
+seemed not to listen or even to wish to be thought to listen.
+Exactly opposite Weyrother, with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed
+upon him and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy
+Miloradovich in a military pose, his elbows turned outwards, his hands
+on his knees, and his shoulders raised. He remained stubbornly silent,
+gazing at Weyrother's face, and only turned away his eyes when the
+Austrian chief of staff finished reading. Then Miloradovich looked
+round significantly at the other generals. But one could not tell from
+that significant look whether he agreed or disagreed and was satisfied
+or not with the arrangements. Next to Weyrother sat Count Langeron
+who, with a subtle smile that never left his typically southern French
+face during the whole time of the reading, gazed at his delicate
+fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners a gold snuffbox on
+which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the longest sentences,
+he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised his head, and
+with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his thin lips
+interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the Austrian
+general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his elbows, as
+if to say: "You can tell me your views later, but now be so good as to
+look at the map and listen." Langeron lifted his eyes with an
+expression of perplexity, turned round to Miloradovich as if seeking
+an explanation, but meeting the latter's impressive but meaningless
+gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox.
+
+"A geography lesson!" he muttered as if to himself, but loud
+enough to be heard.
+
+Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his
+hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in
+attention. Dohkturov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with an
+assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map
+conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar
+locality. He asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had
+not clearly heard and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother
+complied and Dohkturov noted them down.
+
+When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron
+again brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother
+or at anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry
+out such a plan in which the enemy's position was assumed to be known,
+whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.
+Langeron's objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief
+aim was to show General Weyrother- who had read his dispositions
+with as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children-
+that he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him
+something in military matters.
+
+When the monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov
+opened his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the
+mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if
+remarking, "So you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed
+his eye again, and let his head sink still lower.
+
+Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's
+vanity as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might
+easily attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of
+this plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a
+firm and contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all
+objections be they what they might.
+
+"If he could attack us, he would have done so today," said he.
+
+"So you think he is powerless?" said Langeron.
+
+"He has forty thousand men at most," replied Weyrother, with the
+smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the
+treatment of a case.
+
+"In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack,"
+said Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round
+for support to Miloradovich who was near him.
+
+But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything
+rather than of what the generals were disputing about.
+
+"Ma foi!" said he, "tomorrow we shall see all that on the
+battlefield."
+
+Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it
+was strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals
+and to have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced
+himself of, but had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.
+
+"The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard
+from his camp," said he. "What does that mean? Either he is
+retreating, which is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing
+his position." (He smiled ironically.) "But even if he also took up
+a position in the Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of
+trouble and all our arrangements to the minutest detail remain the
+same."
+
+"How is that?..." began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting
+an opportunity to express his doubts.
+
+Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the
+generals.
+
+"Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow- or rather for today,
+for it is past midnight- cannot now be altered," said he. "You have
+heard them, and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there
+is nothing more important..." he paused, "than to have a good sleep."
+
+He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was
+past midnight. Prince Andrew went out.
+
+The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to
+express his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy
+impression. Whether Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron,
+and the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were
+right- he did not know. "But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to
+state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account
+of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and
+my life, my life," he thought, "must be risked?"
+
+"Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow," he
+thought. And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of
+most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he
+remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he
+remembered the days when he first loved her. He thought of her
+pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously
+emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he was
+billeted with Nesvitski and began to walk up and down before it.
+
+The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed
+mysteriously. "Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!" he thought. "Tomorrow
+everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more,
+none of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even
+certainly, I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall
+have to show all I can do." And his fancy pictured the battle, its
+loss, the concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation
+of all the commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for
+which he had so long waited, presents itself to him at last. He firmly
+and clearly expresses his opinion to Kutuzov, to Weyrother, and to the
+Emperors. All are struck by the justness of his views, but no one
+undertakes to carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division-
+stipulates that no one is to interfere with his arrangements- leads
+his division to the decisive point, and gains the victory alone.
+"But death and suffering?" suggested another voice. Prince Andrew,
+however, did not answer that voice and went on dreaming of his
+triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are planned by him
+alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutuzov's staff, but he
+does everything alone. The next battle is won by him alone. Kutuzov is
+removed and he is appointed... "Well and then?" asked the other voice.
+"If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed,
+well... what then?..." "Well then," Prince Andrew answered himself, "I
+don't know what will happen and don't want to know, and can't, but
+if I want this- want glory, want to be known to men, want to be
+loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it and want nothing
+but that and live only for that. Yes, for that alone! I shall never
+tell anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame
+and men's esteem? Death, wounds, the loss of family- I fear nothing.
+And precious and dear as many persons are to me- father, sister, wife-
+those dearest to me- yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would
+give them all at once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of
+love from men I don't know and never shall know, for the love of these
+men here," he thought, as he listened to voices in Kutuzov's
+courtyard. The voices were those of the orderlies who were packing up;
+one voice, probably a coachman's, was teasing Kutuzov's old cook
+whom Prince Andrew knew, and who was called Tit. He was saying,
+"Tit, I say, Tit!"
+
+"Well?" returned the old man.
+
+"Go, Tit, thresh a bit!" said the wag.
+
+"Oh, go to the devil!" called out a voice, drowned by the laughter
+of the orderlies and servants.
+
+"All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I
+value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in
+this mist!"
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in
+front of Bagration's detachment. His hussars were placed along the
+line in couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master
+the sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with
+our army's campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind
+him; in front of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing,
+peer as he would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray,
+now there was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer
+where the enemy ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in
+his own eyes. His eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared- now
+the Emperor, now Denisov, and now Moscow memories- and he again
+hurriedly opened his eyes and saw close before him the head and ears
+of the horse he was riding, and sometimes, when he came within six
+paces of them, the black figures of hussars, but in the distance was
+still the same misty darkness. "Why not?... It might easily happen,"
+thought Rostov, "that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as
+he would to any other officer; he'll say: 'Go and find out what's
+there.' There are many stories of his getting to know an officer in
+just such a chance way and attaching him to himself! What if he gave
+me a place near him? Oh, how I would guard him, how I would tell him
+the truth, how I would unmask his deceivers!" And in order to
+realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign, Rostov pictured to
+himself an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would not only kill
+with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before the Emperor.
+Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started and opened his eyes.
+
+"Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and
+watchword- shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in
+reserve tomorrow," he thought. "I'll ask leave to go to the front,
+this may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won't be long now
+before I am off duty. I'll take another turn and when I get back
+I'll go to the general and ask him." He readjusted himself in the
+saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round his hussars.
+It seemed to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a
+sloping descent lit up, and facing it a black knoll that seemed as
+steep as a wall. On this knoll there was a white patch that Rostov
+could not at all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by the
+moon, or some unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even thought
+something moved on that white spot. "I expect it's snow... that
+spot... a spot- une tache," he thought. "There now... it's not a
+tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won't she be
+surprised when I tell her how I've seen the Emperor?) Natasha...
+take my sabretache..."- "Keep to the right, your honor, there are
+bushes here," came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostov was riding
+in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his head that had sunk
+almost to his horse's mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was
+succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. "But what
+was I thinking? I mustn't forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor?
+No, that's not it- that's tomorrow. Oh yes! Natasha... sabretache...
+saber them...Whom? The hussars... Ah, the hussars with mustaches.
+Along the Tverskaya Street rode the hussar with mustaches... I thought
+about him too, just opposite Guryev's house... Old Guryev.... Oh,
+but Denisov's a fine fellow. But that's all nonsense. The chief
+thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished to
+say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not. But
+that's nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important
+thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes!
+That's right!" And his head once more sank to his horse's neck. All at
+once it seemed to him that he was being fired at. "What? What?
+What?... Cut them down! What?..." said Rostov, waking up. At the
+moment he opened his eyes his eyes he heard in front of him, where the
+enemy was, the long-drawn shouts of thousands of voices. His horse and
+the horse of the hussar near him pricked their ears at these shouts.
+Over there, where the shouting came from, a fire flared up and went
+out again, then another, and all along the French line on the hill
+fires flared up and the shouting grew louder and louder. Rostov
+could hear the sound of French words but could not distinguish them.
+The din of many voices was too great; all he could hear was: "ahahah!"
+and "rrrr!"
+
+"What's that? What do you make of it?" said Rostov to the hussar
+beside him. "That must be the enemy's camp!"
+
+The hussar did not reply.
+
+"Why, don't you hear it?" Rostov asked again, after waiting for a
+reply.
+
+"Who can tell, your honor?" replied the hussar reluctantly.
+
+"From the direction, it must be the enemy," repeated Rostov.
+
+"It may be he or it may be nothing," muttered the hussar. "It's
+dark... Steady!" he cried to his fidgeting horse.
+
+Rostov's horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground,
+pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting
+grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army
+of several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and
+farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no
+longer wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy
+army had a stimulating effect on him. "Vive l'Empereur! L'Empereur!"
+he now heard distinctly.
+
+"They can't be far off, probably just beyond the stream," he said to
+the hussar beside him.
+
+The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The
+sound of horse's hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars
+was heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of
+hussars suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.
+
+"Your honor, the generals!" said the sergeant, riding up to Rostov.
+
+Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode
+with the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the
+line. One was on a white horse. Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov
+with their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the
+lights and shouts in the enemy's camp. Rostov rode up to Bagration,
+reported to him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the
+generals were saying.
+
+"Believe me," said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, "it is
+nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to
+kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us."
+
+"Hardly," said Bagration. "I saw them this evening on that knoll; if
+they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too....
+Officer!" said Bagration to Rostov, "are the enemy's skirmishers still
+there?"
+
+"They were there this evening, but now I don't know, your
+excellency. Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?" replied
+Rostov.
+
+Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostov's face
+in the mist.
+
+"Well, go and see," he said, after a pause.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko and two other
+hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the
+direction from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and
+pleased to be riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and
+dangerous misty distance where no one had been before him. Bagration
+called to him from the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostov
+pretended not to hear him and did not stop but rode on and on,
+continually mistaking bushes for trees and gullies for men and
+continually discovering his mistakes. Having descended the hill at a
+trot, he no longer saw either our own or the enemy's fires, but
+heard the shouting of the French more loudly and distinctly. In the
+valley he saw before him something like a river, but when he reached
+it he found it was a road. Having come out onto the road he reined
+in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it and ride
+over the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which
+gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it would be
+easier to see people coming along it. "Follow me!" said he, crossed
+the road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop toward the point
+where the French pickets had been standing that evening.
+
+"Your honor, there he is!" cried one of the hussars behind him.
+And before Rostov had time to make out what the black thing was that
+had suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a
+report, and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive
+sound passed out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in
+the pan. Rostov turned his horse and galloped back. Four more
+reports followed at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the
+fog singing in different tones. Rostov reined in his horse, whose
+spirits had risen, like his own, at the firing, and went back at a
+footpace. "Well, some more! Some more!" a merry voice was saying in
+his soul. But no more shots came.
+
+Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his horse gallop
+again, and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.
+
+Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had
+only lit fires to deceive us.
+
+"What does that prove?" he was saying as Rostov rode up. "They might
+retreat and leave the pickets."
+
+"It's plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince," said
+Bagration. "Wait till tomorrow morning, we'll find out everything
+tomorrow."
+
+"The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was
+in the evening," reported Rostov, stooping forward with his hand at
+the salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his
+ride and especially by the sound of the bullets.
+
+"Very good, very good," said Bagration. "Thank you, officer."
+
+"Your excellency," said Rostov, "may I ask a favor?"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached
+to the first squadron?"
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Count Rostov."
+
+"Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me."
+
+"Count Ilya Rostov's son?" asked Dolgorukov.
+
+But Rostov did not reply.
+
+"Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?"
+
+"I will give the order."
+
+"Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the
+Emperor," thought Rostov.
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+The fires and shouting in the enemy's army were occasioned by the
+fact that while Napoleon's proclamation was being read to the troops
+the Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing
+him, lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, "Vive
+l'Empereur!" Napoleon's proclamation was as follows:
+
+Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the
+Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at
+Hollabrunn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position
+we occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round
+me on the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will
+myself direct your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with
+your habitual valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy's
+ranks, but should victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see
+your Emperor exposing himself to the first blows of the enemy, for
+there must be no doubt of victory, especially on this day when what is
+at stake is the honor of the French infantry, so necessary to the
+honor of our nation.
+
+Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let
+every man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these
+hirelings of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This
+victory will conclude our campaign and we can return to winter
+quarters, where fresh French troops who are being raised in France
+will join us, and the peace I shall conclude will be worthy of my
+people, of you, and of myself.
+
+NAPOLEON
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the
+center, the reserves, and Bagration's right flank had not yet moved,
+but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery,
+which were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French
+right flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to
+plan, were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into
+which they were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes
+smart. It was cold and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking
+tea and breakfasting, the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a
+tattoo with their feet to warm themselves, gathering round the fires
+throwing into the flames the remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels,
+tubs, and everything that they did not want or could not carry away
+with them. Austrian column guides were moving in and out among the
+Russian troops and served as heralds of the advance. As soon as an
+Austrian officer showed himself near a commanding officer's
+quarters, the regiment began to move: the soldiers ran from the fires,
+thrust their pipes into their boots, their bags into the carts, got
+their muskets ready, and formed rank. The officers buttoned up their
+coats, buckled on their swords and pouches, and moved along the
+ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and packed
+the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and battalion and
+regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave final
+instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men who
+remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet
+resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and
+unable, from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog,
+to see either the place they were leaving or that to which they were
+going.
+
+A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his
+regiment as much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has
+walked, whatever strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches,
+just as a sailor is always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and
+rigging of his ship, so the soldier always has around him the same
+comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the
+same company dog Jack, and the same commanders. The sailor rarely
+cares to know the latitude in which his ship is sailing, but on the
+day of battle- heaven knows how and whence- a stern note of which
+all are conscious sounds in the moral atmosphere of an army,
+announcing the approach of something decisive and solemn, and
+awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of battle the
+soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their
+regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning
+what is going on around them.
+
+The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they
+could not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and
+level ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one
+might encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns
+advanced for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and
+ascending hills, avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and
+unknown ground, and nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary,
+the soldiers became aware that in front, behind, and on all sides,
+other Russian columns were moving in the same direction. Every soldier
+felt glad to know that to the unknown place where he was going, many
+more of our men were going too.
+
+"There now, the Kurskies have also gone past," was being said in the
+ranks.
+
+"It's wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last
+night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A
+regular Moscow!"
+
+Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or
+talked to the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war,
+were out of humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not
+exert themselves to cheer the men but merely carried out the
+orders), yet the troops marched gaily, as they always do when going
+into action, especially to an attack. But when they had marched for
+about an hour in the dense fog, the greater part of the men had to
+halt and an unpleasant consciousness of some dislocation and blunder
+spread through the ranks. How such a consciousness is communicated
+is very difficult to define, but it certainly is communicated very
+surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly, and irrepressibly, as
+water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been alone without any
+allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before this
+consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as
+it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the
+stupid Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had
+been occasioned by the sausage eaters.
+
+"Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up
+against the French?"
+
+"No, one can't hear them. They'd be firing if we had."
+
+"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in
+the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's all those damned
+Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!"
+
+"Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're crowding up
+behind. And now here we stand hungry."
+
+"I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking
+the way," said an officer.
+
+"Ah, those damned Germans! They don't know their own country!"
+said another.
+
+"What division are you?" shouted an adjutant, riding up.
+
+"The Eighteenth."
+
+"Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you
+won't get there till evening."
+
+"What stupid orders! They don't themselves know what they are
+doing!" said the officer and rode off.
+
+Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.
+
+"Tafa-lafa! But what he's jabbering no one can make out," said a
+soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. "I'd shoot them,
+the scoundrels!"
+
+"We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven't
+got halfway. Fine orders!" was being repeated on different sides.
+
+And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to
+turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the
+Germans.
+
+The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was
+moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center
+was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all
+ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in
+front of the infantry, who had to wait.
+
+At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a
+Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry
+should be halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher
+command, was to blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and
+dispirited. After an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending
+the hill. The fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more
+densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog a
+shot was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying
+intervals- trata... tat- and then more and more regularly and rapidly,
+and the action at the Goldbach Stream began.
+
+Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having
+stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their
+commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading
+through the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front
+or around them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the
+enemy lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders
+from the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in
+those unknown surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this
+way the action began for the first, second, and third columns, which
+had gone down into the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov
+was, stood on the Pratzen Heights.
+
+Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog;
+on the higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of
+what was going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we
+supposed, six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea
+of mist, no one knew till after eight o'clock.
+
+It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a
+sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where
+Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above
+him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a
+huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist.
+The whole French army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff,
+were not on the far side of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and
+Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take up our position and
+begin the action, but were on this side, so close to our own forces
+that Napoleon with the naked eye could distinguish a mounted man
+from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak which he had worn on his
+Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab horse a little in front
+of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills which seemed to rise
+out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian troops were moving
+in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of firing in the
+valley. Not a single muscle of his face- which in those days was still
+thin- moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one spot. His
+predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian force had
+already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes and
+part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack
+and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that
+in a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian
+columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one
+direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into
+the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from
+the sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the
+night, by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all
+indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far
+away in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen
+constituted the center of the Russian army, and that that center was
+already sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still
+he did not begin the engagement.
+
+Today was a great day for him- the anniversary of his coronation.
+Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and
+in good spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field in
+that happy mood in which everything seems possible and everything
+succeeds. He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above
+the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident,
+self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily
+in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his
+attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun
+floating up out of the mist.
+
+When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and
+mist were aglow with dazzling light- as if he had only awaited this to
+begin the action- he drew the glove from his shapely white hand,
+made a sign with it to the marshals, and ordered the action to
+begin. The marshals, accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in
+different directions, and a few minutes later the chief forces of
+the French army moved rapidly toward those Pratzen Heights which
+were being more and more denuded by Russian troops moving down the
+valley to their left.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+At eight o'clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth
+column, Miloradovich's, the one that was to take the place of
+Przebyszewski's and Langeron's columns which had already gone down
+into the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and
+gave them the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to
+lead that column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen
+he halted. Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number
+forming the commander in chief's suite. He was in a state of
+suppressed excitement and irritation, though controlledly calm as a
+man is at the approach of a long-awaited moment. He was firmly
+convinced that this was the day of his Toulon, or his bridge of
+Arcola. How it would come about he did not know, but he felt sure it
+would do so. The locality and the position of our troops were known to
+him as far as they could be known to anyone in our army. His own
+strategic plan, which obviously could not now be carried out, was
+forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother's plan, Prince Andrew
+considered possible contingencies and formed new projects such as
+might call for his rapidity of perception and decision.
+
+To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen
+forces could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight
+would concentrate. "There we shall encounter difficulties, and there,"
+thought he, "I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there,
+standard in hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of
+me."
+
+He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions.
+Seeing them he kept thinking, "That may be the very standard with
+which I shall lead the army."
+
+In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights
+was a hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay
+like a milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left
+into which our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of
+firing. Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the
+vast orb of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that
+sea of mist, some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there
+the enemy probably was, for something could be descried. On the
+right the Guards were entering the misty region with a sound of
+hoofs and wheels and now and then a gleam of bayonets; to the left
+beyond the village similar masses of cavalry came up and disappeared
+in the sea of mist. In front and behind moved infantry. The
+commander in chief was standing at the end of the village letting
+the troops pass by him. That morning Kutuzov seemed worn and
+irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt without
+any command being given, apparently obstructed by something in front.
+
+"Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the
+village!" he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. "Don't you
+understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile
+through narrow village streets when we are marching against the
+enemy?"
+
+"I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,"
+answered the general.
+
+Kutuzov laughed bitterly.
+
+"You'll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy!
+Very fine!"
+
+"The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the
+dispositions..."
+
+"The dispositions!" exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. "Who told you
+that?... Kindly do as you are ordered."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"My dear fellow," Nesvitski whispered to Prince Andrew, "the old man
+is as surly as a dog."
+
+An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his
+hat galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the Emperor's name had the
+fourth column advanced into action.
+
+Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to
+fall upon Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutuzov's
+malevolent and caustic expression softened, as if admitting that
+what was being done was not his adjutant's fault, and still not
+answering the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski.
+
+"Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed
+the village. Tell it to stop and await my orders."
+
+Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.
+
+"And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted," he added. "What
+are they doing? What are they doing?" he murmured to himself, still
+not replying to the Austrian.
+
+Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.
+
+Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped
+the third division and convinced himself that there really were no
+sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of
+the regiment was much surprised at the commander in chief's order to
+throw out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were
+other troops in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six
+miles away. There was really nothing to be seen in front except a
+barren descent hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the
+commander in chief's name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew
+galloped back. Kutuzov still in the same place, his stout body resting
+heavily in the saddle with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily
+with closed eyes. The troops were no longer moving, but stood with the
+butts of their muskets on the ground.
+
+"All right, all right!" he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a
+general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all
+the left-flank columns had already descended.
+
+"Plenty of time, your excellency," muttered Kutuzov in the midst
+of a yawn. "Plenty of time," he repeated.
+
+Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the sound of
+regiments saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole
+extended line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person
+they were greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the
+regiment in front of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he
+rode a little to one side and looked round with a frown. Along the
+road from Pratzen galloped what looked like a squadron of horsemen
+in various uniforms. Two of them rode side by side in front, at full
+gallop. One in a black uniform with white plumes in his hat rode a
+bobtailed chestnut horse, the other who was in a white uniform rode
+a black one. These were the two Emperors followed by their suites.
+Kutuzov, affecting the manners of an old soldier at the front, gave
+the command "Attention!" and rode up to the Emperors with a salute.
+His whole appearance and manner were suddenly transformed. He put on
+the air of a subordinate who obeys without reasoning. With an
+affectation of respect which evidently struck Alexander
+unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.
+
+This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy
+face of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and
+vanished. After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than
+on the field of Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time
+abroad, but there was still the same bewitching combination of majesty
+and mildness in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the
+same capacity for varying expression and the same prevalent appearance
+of goodhearted innocent youth.
+
+At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed
+brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping
+two miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked
+round at the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own.
+Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the others,
+all richly dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh,
+only slightly heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had
+stopped behind the Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced
+young man, sat very erect on his handsome black horse, looking about
+him in a leisurely and preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his
+white adjutants and asked some question- "Most likely he is asking
+at what o'clock they started," thought Prince Andrew, watching his old
+acquaintance with a smile he could not repress as he recalled his
+reception at Brunn. In the Emperors' suite were the picked young
+orderly officers of the Guard and line regiments, Russian and
+Austrian. Among them were grooms leading the Tsar's beautiful relay
+horses covered with embroidered cloths.
+
+As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields
+enters a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and
+confidence of success reached Kutuzov's cheerless staff with the
+galloping advent of all these brilliant young men.
+
+"Why aren't you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?" said the Emperor
+Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov, glancing courteously at the same
+time at the Emperor Francis.
+
+"I am waiting, Your Majesty," answered Kutuzov, bending forward
+respectfully.
+
+The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had
+not quite heard.
+
+"Waiting, Your Majesty," repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrew noted that
+Kutuzov's upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the word
+"waiting.") "Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty."
+
+The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his
+rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosiltsev who was near him, as
+if complaining of Kutuzov.
+
+"You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not are not on the
+Empress' Field where a parade does not begin till all the troops are
+assembled," said the Tsar with another glance at the Emperor
+Francis, as if inviting him if not to join in at least to listen to
+what he was saying. But the Emperor Francis continued to look about
+him and did not listen.
+
+"That is just why I do not begin, sire," said Kutuzov in a
+resounding voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not
+being heard, and again something in his face twitched- "That is just
+why I do not begin, sire, because we are not on parade and not on
+the Empress' Field." said clearly and distinctly.
+
+In the Emperor's suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed
+dissatisfaction and reproach. "Old though he may be, he should not, he
+certainly should not, speak like that," their glances seemed to say.
+
+The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutuzov's eye
+waiting to hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutuzov,
+with respectfully bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence
+lasted for about a minute.
+
+"However, if you command it, Your Majesty," said Kutuzov, lifting
+his head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning,
+but submissive general.
+
+He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich, the commander
+of the column, gave him the order to advance.
+
+The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Novgorod
+and one of the Apsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.
+
+As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Miloradovich,
+without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous
+tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners
+front and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing
+salute reined in his horse before the Emperor.
+
+"God be with you, general!" said the Emperor.
+
+"Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilite,
+sire,"~^ he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among
+the gentlemen of the Tsar's suite by his poor French.
+
+^~ "Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to do, Sire."
+
+Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a
+little behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men, excited by the Tsar's
+presence, passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a
+bold, brisk pace.
+
+"Lads!" shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery
+voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect
+of battle, and by the sight of the gallant Apsherons, his comrades
+in Suvorov's time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors,
+that he forgot the sovereigns' presence. "Lads, it's not the first
+village you've had to take," cried he.
+
+"Glad to do our best!" shouted the soldiers.
+
+The Emperor's horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had
+carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the
+field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot
+and pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the
+Empress' Field, not understanding the significance of the firing,
+nor of the nearness of the Emperor Francis' black cob, nor of all that
+was being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.
+
+The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a
+remark to him, pointing to the gallant Apsherons.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind
+the carabineers.
+
+When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column
+he stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been
+an inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops
+were marching along both.
+
+The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly
+visible about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down
+below, on the left, the firing became more distinct. Kutuzov had
+stopped and was speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who
+was a little behind looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask
+him for a field glass.
+
+"Look, look!" said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the
+distance, but down the hill before him. "It's the French!"
+
+The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass,
+trying to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their
+faces suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to
+be a mile and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly
+appeared just in front of us.
+
+"It's the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But
+how is that?" said different voices.
+
+With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not
+more than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing, a
+dense French column coming up to meet the Apsherons.
+
+"Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come,"
+thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutuzov.
+
+"The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency," cried he. But at
+that very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was
+heard quite close at hand, and a voice of naive terror barely two
+steps from Prince Andrew shouted, "Brothers! All's lost!" And at
+this as if at a command, everyone began to run.
+
+Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where
+five minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would
+it have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible
+not to be carried back with it oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to
+lose touch with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp
+what was happening in front of him. Nesvitski with an angry face,
+red and unlike himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he did not
+ride away at once he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov
+remained in the same place and without answering drew out a
+handkerchief. Blood was flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced
+his way to him.
+
+"You are wounded?" he asked, hardly able to master the trembling
+of his lower jaw.
+
+"The wound is not here, it is there!" said Kutuzov, pressing the
+handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing
+soldiers. "Stop them!" he shouted, and at the same moment, probably
+realizing that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and
+rode to the right.
+
+A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.
+
+The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by
+them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, "Get on! Why
+are you hindering us?" Another in the same place turned round and
+fired in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode.
+Having by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of
+men, Kutuzov, with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward
+a sound of artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the
+crowd of fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutuzov, saw on
+the slope of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was
+still firing and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some
+Russian infantry, neither moving forward to protect the battery nor
+backward with the fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself
+from the infantry and approached Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov's suite only four
+remained. They were all pale and exchanged looks in silence.
+
+"Stop those wretches!" gasped Kutuzov to the regimental commander,
+pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to
+punish him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment
+and across Kutuzov's suite like a flock of little birds.
+
+The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were firing
+at him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his
+leg; several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding
+the flag let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on
+the muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing
+without orders.
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Kutuzov despairingly and looked around....
+"Bolkonski!" he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness of
+the feebleness of age, "Bolkonski!" he whispered, pointing to the
+disordered battalion and at the enemy, "what's that?"
+
+But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of
+shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and
+run to the standard.
+
+"Forward, lads!" he shouted in a voice piercing as a child's.
+
+"Here it is!" thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and
+hearing with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him.
+Several soldiers fell.
+
+"Hurrah!" shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up the
+heavy standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole
+battalion would follow him.
+
+And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then
+another and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting "Hurrah!"
+and overtook him. A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag
+that was swaying from its weight in Prince Andrew's hands, but he
+was immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard and,
+dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front he saw
+our artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others, having
+abandoned their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French
+infantry soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning
+the guns round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within
+twenty paces of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above
+him unceasingly and to right and left of him soldiers continually
+groaned and dropped. But he did not look at them: he looked only at
+what was going on in front of him- at the battery. He now saw
+clearly the figure of a red-haired gunner with his shako knocked awry,
+pulling one end of a mop while a French soldier tugged at the other.
+He could distinctly see the distraught yet angry expression on the
+faces of these two men, who evidently did not realize what they were
+doing.
+
+"What are they about?" thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them.
+"Why doesn't the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed? Why
+doesn't the Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the
+Frenchman remembers his bayonet and stabs him...."
+
+And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to
+the struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had
+triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited
+him, was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it
+ended. It seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him
+on the head with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but
+the worst of it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his
+seeing what he had been looking at.
+
+"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way," thought he, and
+fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle
+of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner
+had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or
+saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the
+sky- the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with
+gray clouds gliding slowly across it. "How quiet, peaceful, and
+solemn; not at all as I ran," thought Prince Andrew- "not as we ran,
+shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with
+frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do
+those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did
+not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it
+at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite
+sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not
+exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!..."
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine o'clock the
+battle had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorukov's
+demand to commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility
+from himself, Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to
+inquire of the commander in chief. Bagration knew that as the distance
+between the two flanks was more than six miles, even if the
+messenger were not killed (which he very likely would be), and found
+the commander in chief (which would be very difficult), he would not
+be able to get back before evening.
+
+Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his
+suite, and the boyish face Rostov, breathless with excitement and
+hope, was the first to catch his eye. He sent him.
+
+"And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in
+chief, your excellency?" said Rostov, with his hand to his cap.
+
+"You can give the message to His Majesty," said Dolgorukov,
+hurriedly interrupting Bagration.
+
+On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had managed to get a few
+hours' sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute,
+with elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and
+generally in that state of mind which makes everything seem
+possible, pleasant, and easy.
+
+All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be
+a general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he
+was orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going
+with a message to Kutuzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself.
+The morning was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart
+was full of joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his
+horse the rein and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the
+line of Bagration's troops, which had not yet advanced into action but
+were standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by
+Uvarov's cavalry and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation
+for battle; having passed Uvarov's cavalry he clearly heard the
+sound of cannon and musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder
+and louder.
+
+In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket
+shots at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two
+cannon shots, but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the
+hill before Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon
+that sometimes several of them were not separated from one another but
+merged into a general roar.
+
+He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one
+another down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling,
+spreading, and mingling with one another. He could also, by the
+gleam of bayonets visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of
+infantry and narrow lines of artillery with green caissons.
+
+Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was
+going on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand
+or make out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men
+of some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of
+troops; but why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make
+out. These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating
+effect on him; on the contrary, they stimulated his energy and
+determination.
+
+"Go on! Go on! Give it them!" he mentally exclaimed at these sounds,
+and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther
+and farther into the region where the army was already in action.
+
+"How it will be there I don't know, but all will be well!" thought
+Rostov.
+
+After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part
+of the line (the Guards) was already in action.
+
+"So much the better! I shall see it close," he thought.
+
+He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came
+galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered ranks
+were returning from the attack. Rostov got out of their way,
+involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.
+
+"That is no business of mine," he thought. He had not ridden many
+hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole
+width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white
+uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and
+across his path. Rostov put his horse to full gallop to get out of the
+way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at
+the same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of
+the horses were already galloping. Rostov heard the thud of their
+hoofs and the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their
+figures, and even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our
+Horse Guards, advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming
+to meet them.
+
+The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their
+horses. Rostov could already see their faces and heard the command:
+"Charge!" shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to
+full speed. Rostov, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack
+on the French, galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go,
+but still was not in time to avoid them.
+
+The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned
+angrily on seeing Rostov before him, with whom he would inevitably
+collide. This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostov and his
+Bedouin over (Rostov felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to
+these gigantic men and horses) had it not occurred to Rostov to
+flourish his whip before the eyes of the Guardsman's horse. The
+heavy black horse, sixteen hands high, shied, throwing back its
+ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman drove his huge spurs in
+violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail and extending its neck,
+galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse Guards passed Rostov
+before he heard them shout, "Hurrah!" and looking back saw that
+their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry with
+red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing more, for
+immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke
+enveloped everything.
+
+At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him,
+disappeared in the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after
+them or to go where he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of
+the Horse Guards that amazed the French themselves. Rostov was
+horrified to hear later that of all that mass of huge and handsome
+men, of all those brilliant, rich youths, officers and cadets, who had
+galloped past him on their thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were
+left after the charge.
+
+"Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall
+see the Emperor immediately! " thought Rostov and galloped on.
+
+When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them
+and around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so
+much because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on
+the soldiers' faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the
+officers.
+
+Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he
+heard a voice calling him by name.
+
+"Rostov!"
+
+"What?" he answered, not recognizing Boris.
+
+"I say, we've been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!" said
+Boris with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have
+been under fire for the first time.
+
+Rostov stopped.
+
+"Have you?" he said. "Well, how did it go?"
+
+"We drove them back!" said Boris with animation, growing
+talkative. "Can you imagine it?" and he began describing how the
+Guards, having taken up their position and seeing troops before
+them, thought they were Austrians, and all at once discovered from the
+cannon balls discharged by those troops that they were themselves in
+the front line and had unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov
+without hearing Boris to the end spurred his horse.
+
+"Where are you off to?" asked Boris.
+
+"With a message to His Majesty."
+
+"There he is!" said Boris, thinking Rostov had said "His
+Highness," and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high
+shoulders and frowning brows stood a hundred paces away from them in
+his helmet and Horse Guards' jacket, shouting something to a pale,
+white uniformed Austrian officer.
+
+"But that's the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the
+Emperor," said Rostov, and was about to spur his horse.
+
+"Count! Count!" shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager
+as Boris. "Count! I am wounded in my right hand" (and he showed his
+bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) "and I remained at
+the front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family- the
+von Bergs- have been knights!"
+
+He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to hear it and
+rode away.
+
+Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostov, to
+avoid again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the
+Horse Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round
+the place where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard.
+Suddenly he heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind
+our troops, where he could never have expected the enemy to be.
+
+"What can it be?" he thought. "The enemy in the rear of our army?
+Impossible!" And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself
+and for the issue of the whole battle. "But be that what it may," he
+reflected, "there is no riding round it now. I must look for the
+commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish
+with the rest."
+
+The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostov was more
+and more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the
+village of Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.
+
+"What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is
+firing?" Rostov kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian
+soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.
+
+"The devil knows! They've killed everybody! It's all up now!" he was
+told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who
+understood what was happening as little as he did.
+
+"Kill the Germans!" shouted one.
+
+"May the devil take them- the traitors!"
+
+"Zum Henker diese Russen!"~^ muttered a German.
+
+^~ "Hang these Russians!"
+
+Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse,
+screams, and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing
+died down. Rostov learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had
+been firing at one another.
+
+"My God! What does it all mean?" thought he. "And here, where at any
+moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a
+handful of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can't be that, it
+can't be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!"
+
+The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov's head.
+Though he saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights
+just where he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief,
+he could not, did not wish to, believe that.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor near the
+village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer
+were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He
+urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but
+the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
+which he had come out was thronged with caleches, carriages of all
+sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
+some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the
+dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries
+stationed on the Pratzen Heights.
+
+"Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?" Rostov kept asking
+everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.
+
+At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.
+
+"Eh, brother! They've all bolted long ago!" said the soldier,
+laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.
+
+Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov stopped the
+horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to
+question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a
+carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and
+that he was dangerously wounded.
+
+"It can't be!" said Rostov. "It must have been someone else."
+
+"I saw him myself." replied the man with a self-confident smile of
+derision. "I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I've
+seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat
+in the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black
+horses fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It's time I knew the
+Imperial horses and Ilya Ivanych. I don't think Ilya drives anyone
+except the Tsar!"
+
+Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a
+wounded officer passing by addressed him:
+
+"Who is it you want?" he asked. "The commander in chief? He was
+killed by a cannon ball- struck in the breast before our regiment."
+
+"Not killed- wounded!" another officer corrected him.
+
+"Who? Kutuzov?" asked Rostov.
+
+"Not Kutuzov, but what's his name- well, never mind... there are not
+many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders
+are there," said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek,
+and he walked on.
+
+Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now
+going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible
+to doubt it now. Rostov rode in the direction pointed out to him, in
+which he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now
+to say to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were alive and
+unwounded?
+
+"Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!" a
+soldier shouted to him. "They'd kill you there!"
+
+"Oh, what are you talking about?" said another. "Where is he to
+go? That way is nearer."
+
+Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where they said he
+would be killed.
+
+"It's all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to
+save myself?" he thought. He rode on to the region where the
+greatest number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The
+French had not yet occupied that region, and the Russians- the
+uninjured and slightly wounded- had left it long ago. All about the
+field, like heaps of manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to
+fifteen dead and wounded to each couple of acres. The wounded crept
+together in twos and threes and one could hear their distressing
+screams and groans, sometimes feigned- or so it seemed to Rostov. He
+put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all these suffering men, and
+he felt afraid- afraid not for his life, but for the courage he needed
+and which he knew would not stand the sight of these unfortunates.
+
+The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and
+wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an
+adjutant riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several
+shots. The sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the
+corpses around him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling of
+terror and pity for himself. He remembered his mother's last letter.
+"What would she feel," thought he, "if she saw me here now on this
+field with the cannon aimed at me?"
+
+In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from
+the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less
+disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry
+fire sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the
+battle was lost. No one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the
+Emperor or Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was
+wounded was correct, others that it was not, and explained the false
+rumor that had spread by the fact that the Emperor's carriage had
+really galloped from the field of battle with the pale and terrified
+Ober-Hofmarschal Count Tolstoy, who had ridden out to the
+battlefield with others in the Emperor's suite. One officer told
+Rostov that he had seen someone from headquarters behind the village
+to the left, and thither Rostov rode, not hoping to find anyone but
+merely to ease his conscience. When he had ridden about two miles
+and had passed the last of the Russian troops, he saw, near a
+kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men on horseback facing
+the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed familiar to
+Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which Rostov
+fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his horse
+with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only a
+little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse's hind hoofs.
+Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and
+deferentially addressed the horseman with the white plumes,
+evidently suggesting that he should do the same. The rider, whose
+figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily riveted his
+attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head and hand and by
+that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his lamented and adored
+monarch.
+
+"But it can't be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!"
+thought Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostov
+saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory.
+The Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the
+charm, the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostov was
+happy in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded
+were false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and
+even ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorukov had
+ordered him to deliver.
+
+But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter
+the thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help
+or a chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and
+he is alone with her, so Rostov, now that he had attained what he
+had longed for more than anything else in the world, did not know
+how to approach the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him
+why it would be inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.
+
+"What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of
+his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant
+or painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to
+him now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere
+sight of him?" Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the
+Emperor that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall.
+Those speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for
+the most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph,
+generally when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked
+him for heroic deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his
+actions had proved.
+
+"Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the
+right flank now that it is nearly four o'clock and the battle is lost?
+No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his
+reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind
+look or bad opinion from him," Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and
+with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at
+the Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.
+
+While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,
+Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the
+Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him
+to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling
+unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.
+Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke
+long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,
+covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll's hand.
+
+"And I might have been in his place!" thought Rostov, and hardly
+restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter
+despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.
+
+His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness
+was the cause his grief.
+
+He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the
+sovereign. It was a unique chance to show his devotion to the
+Emperor and he had not made use of it.... "What have I done?"
+thought he. And he turned round and galloped back to the place where
+he had seen the Emperor, but there was no one beyond the ditch now.
+Only some carts and carriages were passing by. From one of the drivers
+he learned that Kutuzov's staff were not far off, in the village the
+vehicles were going to. Rostov followed them. In front of him walked
+Kutuzov's groom leading horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and
+behind that walked an old, bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked
+cap and sheepskin coat.
+
+"Tit! I say, Tit!" said the groom.
+
+"What?" answered the old man absent-mindedly.
+
+"Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!"
+
+"Oh, you fool!" said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed
+in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.
+
+Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points.
+More than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.
+
+Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other
+columns after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly
+confused masses.
+
+The remains of Langeron's and Dokhturov's mingled forces were
+crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of
+Augesd.
+
+After five o'clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot
+cannonade (delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from
+numerous batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights,
+directed at our retreating forces.
+
+In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions kept
+up a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops.
+It was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many
+years the old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap
+peacefully angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled
+up, handled the floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on
+that dam over which for so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and
+blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse carts loaded with
+wheat and had returned dusty with flour whitening their carts- on that
+narrow dam amid the wagons and the cannon, under the horses' hoofs and
+between the wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now
+crowded together, crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying
+and killing one another, only to move on a few steps and be killed
+themselves in the same way.
+
+Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around,
+or a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and
+splashing with blood those near them.
+
+Dolokhov- now an officer- wounded in the arm, and on foot, with
+the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,
+represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by
+the crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and,
+jammed in on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had
+fallen under a cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon
+ball killed someone behind them, another fell in front and splashed
+Dolokhov with blood. The crowd, pushing forward desperately,
+squeezed together, moved a few steps, and again stopped.
+
+"Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here
+another two minutes and it is certain death," thought each one.
+
+Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the
+edge of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto
+the slippery ice that covered the millpool.
+
+"Turn this way!" he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked
+under him; "turn this way!" he shouted to those with the gun. "It
+bears!..."
+
+The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it
+would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon
+even under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to
+the bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at
+the entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to
+address Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd
+that everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general
+fell from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or
+thought of raising him.
+
+"Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don't you hear? Go
+on!" innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the
+general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were
+shouting.
+
+One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto
+the ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen
+pond. The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg
+slipped into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to
+his waist. The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped
+his horse, but from behind still came the shouts: "Onto the ice, why
+do you stop? Go on! Go on!" And cries of horror were heard in the
+crowd. The soldiers near the gun waved their arms and beat the
+horses to make them turn and move on. The horses moved off the bank.
+The ice, that had held under those on foot, collapsed in a great mass,
+and some forty men who were on it dashed, some forward and some
+back, drowning one another.
+
+Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop
+onto the ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd
+that covered the dam, the pond, and the bank.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in
+his hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding profusely and
+unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.
+
+Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did
+not know how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt
+that he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his
+head.
+
+"Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw
+today?" was his first thought. "And I did not know this suffering
+either," he thought. "Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all
+till now. But where am I?"
+
+He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices
+speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same
+lofty sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher,
+and between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and
+did not see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had
+ridden up and stopped near him.
+
+It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding
+over the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the
+batteries firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and
+wounded left on the field.
+
+"Fine men!" remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian
+grenadier, who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened
+nape, lay on his stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.
+
+"The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your
+Majesty," said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were
+firing at Augesd.
+
+"Have some brought from the reserve," said Napoleon, and having gone
+on a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back
+with the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had
+already been taken by the French as a trophy.)
+
+"That's a fine death!" said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonski.
+
+Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was
+Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he
+heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not
+only did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at
+once forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to
+death, and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He
+knew it was Napoleon- his hero- but at that moment Napoleon seemed
+to him such a small, insignificant creature compared with what was
+passing now between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the
+clouds flying over it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who
+might be standing over him, or what was said of him; he was only
+glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they
+would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so
+beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so
+differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and utter a sound.
+He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan which aroused
+his own pity.
+
+"Ah! He is alive," said Napoleon. "Lift this young man up and
+carry him to the dressing station."
+
+Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who,
+hat in hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the
+victory.
+
+Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from
+the terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting
+while being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing
+station. He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when
+with other wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the
+hospital. During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was
+able to look about him and even speak.
+
+The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a
+French convoy officer, who said rapidly: "We must halt here: the
+Emperor will pass here immediately; it will please him to see these
+gentlemen prisoners."
+
+"There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army,
+that he is probably tired of them," said another officer.
+
+"All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor
+Alexander's Guards," said the first one, indicating a Russian
+officer in the white uniform of the Horse Guards.
+
+Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met in Petersburg
+society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of
+the Horse Guards.
+
+Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.
+
+"Which is the senior?" he asked, on seeing the prisoners.
+
+They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.
+
+"You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander's regiment of
+Horse Guards?" asked Napoleon.
+
+"I commanded a squadron," replied Repnin.
+
+"Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably," said Napoleon.
+
+"The praise of a great commander is a soldier's highest reward,"
+said Repnin.
+
+"I bestow it with pleasure," said Napoleon. "And who is that young
+man beside you?"
+
+Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.
+
+After looking at him Napoleon smiled.
+
+"He's very young to come to meddle with us."
+
+"Youth is no hindrance to courage," muttered Sukhtelen in a
+failing voice.
+
+"A splendid reply!" said Napoleon. "Young man, you will go far!"
+
+Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the
+Emperor's eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to
+attract his attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on
+the battlefield and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young
+man" that was connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.
+
+"Well, and you, young man," said he. "How do you feel, mon brave?"
+
+Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few
+words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed
+straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that
+moment seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so
+mean did his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory
+appear, compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he
+had seen and understood, that he could not answer him.
+
+Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the
+stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood,
+suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into
+Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of
+greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and
+the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one
+alive could understand or explain.
+
+The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to
+one of the officers as he went: "Have these gentlemen attended to
+and taken to my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their
+wounds. Au revoir, Prince Repnin!" and he spurred his horse and
+galloped away.
+
+His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.
+
+The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the
+little gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother's neck,
+but seeing the favor the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now
+hastened to return the holy image.
+
+Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the
+little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his
+chest outside his uniform.
+
+"It would be good," thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon
+his sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence,
+"it would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems
+to Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this
+life, and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm
+I should be if I could now say: 'Lord, have mercy on me!'... But to
+whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable,
+incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address but which I cannot
+even express in words- the Great All or Nothing-" said he to
+himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary!
+There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of
+everything I understand, and the greatness of something
+incomprehensible but all-important.
+
+The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable
+pain; his feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his
+father, wife, sister, and future son, and the tenderness he had felt
+the night before the battle, the figure of the insignificant little
+Napoleon, and above all this the lofty sky, formed the chief
+subjects of his delirious fancies.
+
+The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented
+itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that little
+Napoleon had suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of
+shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and
+torments had followed, and only the heavens promised peace. Toward
+morning all these dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness
+of unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon's
+doctor, Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in
+convalescence.
+
+"He is a nervous, bilious subject," said Larrey, "and will not
+recover."
+
+And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care
+of the inhabitants of the district.
+
+BOOK FOUR: 1806
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home on leave.
+Denisov was going home to Voronezh and Rostov persuaded him to
+travel with him as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a
+comrade at the last post station but one before Moscow, Denisov had
+drunk three bottles of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts
+across the snow-covered road, did not once wake up on the way to
+Moscow, but lay at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostov, who grew
+more and more impatient the nearer they got to Moscow.
+
+"How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets,
+shops, bakers' signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!" thought Rostov,
+when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and they had
+entered Moscow.
+
+"Denisov! We're here! He's asleep," he added, leaning forward with
+his whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed
+of the sleigh.
+
+Denisov gave no answer.
+
+"There's the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhar, has
+his stand, and there's Zakhar himself and still the same horse! And
+here's the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can't you
+hurry up? Now then!"
+
+"Which house is it?" asked the driver.
+
+"Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don't you see? That's
+our house," said Rostov. "Of course, it's our house! Denisov, Denisov!
+We're almost there!"
+
+Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.
+
+"Dmitri," said Rostov to his valet on the box, "those lights are
+in our house, aren't they?"
+
+"Yes, sir, and there's a light in your father's study."
+
+"Then they've not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now,
+don't forget to put out my new coat," added Rostov, fingering his
+new mustache. "Now then, get on," he shouted to the driver. "Do wake
+up, Vaska!" he went on, turning to Denisov, whose head was again
+nodding. "Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for vodka- get
+on!" Rostov shouted, when the sleigh was only three houses from his
+door. It seemed to him the horses were not moving at all. At last
+the sleigh bore to the right, drew up at an entrance, and Rostov saw
+overhead the old familiar cornice with a bit of plaster broken off,
+the porch, and the post by the side of the pavement. He sprang out
+before the sleigh stopped, and ran into the hall. The house stood cold
+and silent, as if quite regardless of who had come to it. There was no
+one in the hall. "Oh God! Is everyone all right?" he thought, stopping
+for a moment with a sinking heart, and then immediately starting to
+run along the hall and up the warped steps of the familiar
+staircase. The well-known old door handle, which always angered the
+countess when it was not properly cleaned, turned as loosely as
+ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in the anteroom.
+
+Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the footman, who was
+so strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat
+plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the
+opening door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly
+changed to one of delighted amazement.
+
+"Gracious heavens! The young count!" he cried, recognizing his young
+master. "Can it be? My treasure!" and Prokofy, trembling with
+excitement, rushed toward the drawing-room door, probably in order
+to announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss
+the young man's shoulder.
+
+"All well?" asked Rostov, drawing away his arm.
+
+"Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They've just finished supper. Let me have
+a look at you, your excellency."
+
+"Is everything quite all right?"
+
+"The Lord be thanked, yes!"
+
+Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not wishing anyone
+to forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the
+large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card
+tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had
+already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the
+drawing room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and
+began hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the
+same kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more
+kissing, more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish
+which was Papa, which Natasha, and which Petya. Everyone shouted,
+talked, and kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not
+there, he noticed that.
+
+"And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..."
+
+"Here he is... our own... Kolya,~^ dear fellow... How he has
+changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!..."
+
+^~ Nicholas.
+
+"And me, kiss me!"
+
+"Dearest... and me!"
+
+Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and the old count
+were all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the
+room, exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing.
+
+Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, "And me too!"
+
+Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his
+face with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang
+away and pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked
+piercingly.
+
+All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all
+around were lips seeking a kiss.
+
+Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss,
+looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she
+longed. Sonya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at
+this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not
+taking her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave
+her a grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for
+someone. The old countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard
+at the door, steps so rapid that they could hardly be his mother's.
+
+Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made
+since he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her.
+When they met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her
+face, but only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar's jacket.
+Denisov, who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there
+and wiped his eyes at the sight.
+
+"Vasili Denisov, your son's friend," he said, introducing himself to
+the count, who was looking inquiringly at him.
+
+"You are most welcome! I know, I know," said the count, kissing
+and embracing Denisov. "Nicholas wrote us... Natasha, Vera, look! Here
+is Denisov!"
+
+The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of
+Denisov.
+
+"Darling Denisov!" screamed Natasha, beside herself with rapture,
+springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This
+escapade made everybody feel confused. Denisov blushed too, but smiled
+and, taking Natasha's hand, kissed it.
+
+Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostovs
+all gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room.
+
+The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every
+moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every
+movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully
+adoring eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places
+nearest to him and disputed with one another who should bring him
+his tea, handkerchief, and pipe.
+
+Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first
+moment of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed
+insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more.
+
+Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers
+slept till ten o'clock.
+
+In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers,
+satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly
+cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The
+servants were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving,
+and their well-brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell
+of tobacco.
+
+"Hallo, Gwiska- my pipe!" came Vasili Denisov's husky voice.
+"Wostov, get up!"
+
+Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his
+disheveled head from the hot pillow.
+
+"Why, is it late?"
+
+"Late! It's nearly ten o'clock," answered Natasha's voice. A
+rustle of starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of
+girls' voices came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a
+crack and there was a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black
+hair, and merry faces. It was Natasha, Sonya, and Petya, who had
+come to see whether they were getting up.
+
+"Nicholas! Get up!" Natasha's voice was again heard at the door.
+
+"Directly!"
+
+Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer
+room, with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder
+brother, and forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see
+men undressed, opened the bedroom door.
+
+"Is this your saber?" he shouted.
+
+The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs under the
+blanket, looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door,
+having let Petya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from
+behind it.
+
+"Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!" said Natasha's voice.
+
+"Is this your saber?" asked Petya. "Or is it yours?" he said,
+addressing the black-mustached Denisov with servile deference.
+
+Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing
+gown, and went out. Natasha had put on one spurred boot and was just
+getting her foot into the other. Sonya, when he came in, was
+twirling round and was about to expand her dresses into a balloon
+and sit down. They were dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and
+were both fresh, rosy, and bright. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking
+her brother's arm, led him into the sitting room, where they began
+talking. They hardly gave one another time to ask questions and give
+replies concerning a thousand little matters which could not
+interest anyone but themselves. Natasha laughed at every word he
+said or that she said herself, not because what they were saying was
+amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable to control her
+joy which expressed itself by laughter.
+
+"Oh, how nice, how splendid!" she said to everything.
+
+Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that
+childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he
+left home now for the first time after eighteen months again
+brightened his soul and his face.
+
+"No, but listen," she said, "now you are quite a man, aren't you?
+I'm awfully glad you're my brother." She touched his mustache. "I want
+to know what you men are like. Are you the same as we? No?"
+
+"Why did Sonya run away?" asked Rostov.
+
+"Ah, yes! That's a whole long story! How are you going to speak to
+her- thou or you?"
+
+"As may happen," said Rostov.
+
+"No, call her you, please! I'll tell you all about it some other
+time. No, I'll tell you now. You know Sonya's my dearest friend.
+Such a friend that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!"
+
+She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her
+long, slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is
+covered even by a ball dress.
+
+"I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in
+the fire and pressed it there!"
+
+Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what
+used to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natasha's wildly
+bright eyes, Rostov re-entered that world of home and childhood
+which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best
+joys of his life; and the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of
+love did not seem to him senseless, he understood and was not
+surprised at it.
+
+"Well, and is that all?" he asked.
+
+"We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just
+nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does
+it for life, but I don't understand that, I forget quickly."
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Well, she loves me and you like that."
+
+Natasha suddenly flushed.
+
+"Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are
+to forget all that.... She says: 'I shall love him always, but let him
+be free.' Isn't that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn't it?"
+asked Natasha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that
+what she was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.
+
+Rostov became thoughtful.
+
+"I never go back on my word," he said. "Besides, Sonya is so
+charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness."
+
+"No, no!" cried Natasha, "she and I have already talked it over.
+We knew you'd say so. But it won't do, because you see, if you say
+that- if you consider yourself bound by your promise- it will seem
+as if she had not meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were
+marrying her because you must, and that wouldn't do at all."
+
+Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them. Sonya had
+already struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when
+he had caught a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She
+was a charming girl of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with
+him (he did not doubt that for an instant). Why should he not love her
+now, and even marry her, Rostov thought, but just now there were so
+many other pleasures and interests before him! "Yes, they have taken a
+wise decision," he thought, "I must remain free."
+
+"Well then, that's excellent," said he. "We'll talk it over later
+on. Oh, how glad I am to have you!
+
+"Well, and are you still true to Boris?" he continued.
+
+"Oh, what nonsense!" cried Natasha, laughing. "I don't think about
+him or anyone else, and I don't want anything of the kind."
+
+"Dear me! Then what are you up now?"
+
+"Now?" repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her face. "Have
+you seen Duport?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Not seen Duport- the famous dancer? Well then, you won't
+understand. That's what I'm up to."
+
+Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran
+back a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply
+together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.
+
+"See, I'm standing! See!" she said, but could not maintain herself
+on her toes any longer. "So that's what I'm up to! I'll never marry
+anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don't tell anyone."
+
+Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in his bedroom,
+felt envious and Natasha could not help joining in.
+
+"No, but don't you think it's nice?" she kept repeating.
+
+"Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?"
+
+Natasha flared up. "I don't want to marry anyone. And I'll tell
+him so when I see him!"
+
+"Dear me!" said Rostov.
+
+"But that's all rubbish," Natasha chattered on. "And is Denisov
+nice?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, indeed!"
+
+"Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible,
+Denisov?"
+
+"Why terrible?" asked Nicholas. "No, Vaska is a splendid fellow."
+
+"You call him Vaska? That's funny! And is he very nice?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"Well then, be quick. We'll all have breakfast together."
+
+And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet
+dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When
+Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how
+to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of
+meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could
+not be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters,
+was looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave
+with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you-
+Sonya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender
+kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by
+Natasha's intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then thanked
+him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his freedom
+and told her that one way or another he would never cease to love her,
+for that would be impossible.
+
+"How strange it is," said Vera, selecting a moment when all were
+silent, "that Sonya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet
+like strangers."
+
+Vera's remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like
+most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not
+only Sonya, Nicholas, and Natasha, but even the old countess, who-
+dreading this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a
+brilliant match- blushed like a girl.
+
+Denisov, to Rostov's surprise, appeared in the drawing room with
+pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as
+he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the
+ladies and gentlemen than Rostov had ever expected to see him.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was
+welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their
+darling Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and
+polite young man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of
+hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.
+
+The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough
+that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,
+acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the
+latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the
+latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,
+passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself
+to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be
+at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His
+despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money
+from Gavril to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on the sly- he
+now recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind.
+Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and
+wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in
+action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected
+racing men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a
+lady on one of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led
+the mazurka at the Arkharovs' ball, talked about the war with Field
+Marshal Kamenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate
+terms with a colonel of forty to whom Denisov had introduced
+
+His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But
+still, as he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him,
+he often spoke about him and about his love for him, letting it be
+understood that he had not told all and that there was something in
+his feelings for the Emperor not everyone could understand, and with
+his whole soul he shared the adoration then common in Moscow for the
+Emperor, who was spoken of as the "angel incarnate."
+
+During Rostov's short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army,
+he did not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted away from her. She
+was very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him,
+but he was at the period of youth when there seems so much to do
+that there is no time for that sort of thing and a young man fears
+to bind himself and prizes his freedom which he needs for so many
+other things. When he thought of Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he
+said to himself, "Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such
+girls somewhere whom I do not yet know. There will be time enough to
+think about love when I want to, but now I have no time." Besides,
+it seemed to him that the society of women was rather derogatory to
+his manhood. He went to balls and into ladies' society with an
+affectation of doing so against his will. The races, the English Club,
+sprees with Denisov, and visits to a certain house- that was another
+matter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar!
+
+At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very busy
+arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English Club.
+
+The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving
+orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist, the Club's head
+cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish
+for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of
+the Club from the day it was founded. To him the Club entrusted the
+arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagration, for few men knew so
+well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and
+still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of
+their own resources what might be needed for the success of the
+fete. The club cook and the steward listened to the count's orders
+with pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could
+they so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner
+costing several thousand rubles.
+
+"Well then, mind and have cocks' comb in the turtle soup, you know!"
+
+"Shall we have three cold dishes then?" asked the cook.
+
+The count considered.
+
+"We can't have less- yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's one," said
+he, bending down a finger.
+
+"Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward.
+
+"Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah, dear me! I was
+forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness gracious!" he
+clutched at his head. "Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh,
+Dmitri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate," he said to the factotum
+who appeared at his call. "Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to
+set the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must
+be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred
+pots here on Friday."
+
+Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his
+"little countess" to have a rest, but remembering something else of
+importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club
+steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the
+clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count,
+handsome, rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made
+sleeker by his easy life in Moscow, entered the room.
+
+"Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old man with a smile,
+as if he felt a little confused before his son. "Now, if you would
+only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own
+orchestra, but shouldn't we get the gypsy singers as well? You
+military men like that sort of thing."
+
+"Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself less
+before the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now," said his son with
+a smile.
+
+The old count pretended to be angry.
+
+"Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!"
+
+And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and
+respectful expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the
+father and son.
+
+"What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said
+he. "Laughing at us old fellows!"
+
+"That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good
+dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their
+business!
+
+"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his
+son by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and
+pair at once, and go to Bezukhob's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has
+sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get
+them from anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in
+and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay- the
+coachman Ipatka knows- and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who
+danced at Count Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and
+bring him along to me."
+
+"And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked
+Nicholas, laughing. "Dear, dear!..."
+
+At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the
+businesslike, preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never
+left her face, Anna Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon
+the count in his dressing gown every day, he invariably became
+confused and begged her to excuse his costume.
+
+"No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly closing her
+eyes. "But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre has arrived, and now
+we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in
+any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is
+now on the staff."
+
+The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon herself
+one of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.
+
+"Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his wife with
+him?" he asked.
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was
+depicted on her face.
+
+"Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she said. "If what
+we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing
+when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul
+as young Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to
+give him what consolation I can."
+
+"Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and old Rostov.
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.
+
+"Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper,
+"has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him up, invited
+him to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here and
+that daredevil after her!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to show
+her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half
+smile betraying her sympathy for the "daredevil," as she called
+Dolokhov. "They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune."
+
+"Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Club- it will all
+blow over. It will be a tremendous banquet."
+
+Next day, the third of March, soon after one o'clock, two hundred
+and fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting
+the guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince
+Bagration, to dinner.
+
+On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow
+had been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to
+victories that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not
+believe it, while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so
+strange an event. In the English Club, where all who were
+distinguished, important, and well informed forgathered when the
+news began to arrive in December, nothing was said about the war and
+the last battle, as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The
+men who set the tone in conversation- Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri
+Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemski- did not show
+themselves at the Club, but met in private houses in intimate circles,
+and the Moscovites who took their opinions from others- Ilya Rostov
+among them- remained for a while without any definite opinion on the
+subject of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that
+something was wrong and that to discuss the bad news was difficult,
+and so it was best to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury
+comes out of its room, the bigwigs who guided the Club's opinion
+reappeared, and everybody began speaking clearly and definitely.
+Reasons were found for the incredible, unheard-of, and impossible
+event of a Russian defeat, everything became clear, and in all corners
+of Moscow the same things began to be said. These reasons were the
+treachery of the Austrians, a defective commissariat, the treachery of
+the Pole Przebyszewski and of the Frenchman Langeron, Kutuzov's
+incapacity, and (it was whispered) the youth and inexperience of the
+sovereign, who had trusted worthless and insignificant people. But the
+army, the Russian army, everyone declared, was extraordinary and had
+achieved miracles of valor.The soldiers, officers, and generals were
+heroes. But the hero of heroes was Prince Bagration, distinguished
+by his Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat from Austerlitz,
+where he alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and had all day
+beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous as his own. What also
+conduced to Bagration's being selected as Moscow's hero was the fact
+that he had no connections in the city and was a stranger there. In
+his person, honor was shown to a simple fighting Russian soldier
+without connections and intrigues, and to one who was associated by
+memories of the Italian campaign with the name of Suvorov. Moreover,
+paying such honor to Bagration was the best way of expressing
+disapproval and dislike of Kutuzov.
+
+"Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent
+him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire.
+Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers,
+calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.
+
+All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you go on
+modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay," suggesting
+consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and
+the words of Rostopchin, that French soldiers have to be incited to
+battle by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to
+show them that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but
+that Russian soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all
+sides, new and fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of
+heroism shown by our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a
+standard, another had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five
+cannon singlehanded. Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know
+him, as having, when wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the
+left, and gone forward. Of Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those
+who knew him intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a
+pregnant wife with his eccentric father.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were
+filled with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in
+springtime. The members and guests of the Club wandered hither and
+thither, sat, stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in
+evening dress, and a few here and there with powdered hair and in
+Russian kaftans. Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and
+smart stockings, stood at every door anxiously noting visitors'
+every movement in order to offer their services. Most of those present
+were elderly, respected men with broad, self-confident faces, fat
+fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. This class of guests and
+members sat in certain habitual places and met in certain habitual
+groups. A minority of those present were casual guests- chiefly
+young men, among whom were Denisov, Rostov, and Dolokhov- who was
+now again an officer in the Semenov regiment. The faces of these young
+people, especially those who were militarymen, bore that expression of
+condescending respect for their elders which seems to say to the older
+generation, "We are prepared to respect and honor you, but all the
+same remember that the future belongs to us."
+
+Nesvitski was there as an old member of the Club. Pierre, who at his
+wife's command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles,
+went about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull.
+Here, as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience
+to his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people,
+he treated them with absent-minded contempt.
+
+By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his
+wealth and connections he belonged to the groups old and honored
+guests, and so he went from one group to another. Some of the most
+important old men were the center of groups which even strangers
+approached respectfully to hear the voices of well-known men. The
+largest circles formed round Count Rostopchin, Valuev, and
+Naryshkin. Rostopchin was describing how the Russians had been
+overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to force their way through
+them with bayonets.
+
+Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been sent from
+Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.
+
+In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the meeting of the
+Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov crowed like a cock in reply
+to the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshin, standing
+close by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had evidently
+failed to learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of
+crowing like a cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the
+wit, making him feel that in that place and on that day, it was
+improper to speak so of Kutuzov.
+
+Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft
+boots between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the
+important and unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all
+equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up
+young son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostov
+stood at a window with Dolokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately made
+and highly valued. The old count came up to them and pressed
+Dolokhov's hand.
+
+"Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been
+together out there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasili
+Ignatovich... How d'ye do, old fellow?" he said, turning to an old man
+who was passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a
+general stir, and a footman who had run in announced, with a
+frightened face: "He's arrived!"
+
+Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and- like rye shaken
+together in a shovel- the guests who had been scattered about in
+different rooms came together and crowded in the large drawing room by
+the door of the ballroom.
+
+Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or
+sword, which, in accord with the Club custom, he had given up to the
+hall porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded
+whip over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of
+the battle of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian
+and foreign Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast.
+Evidently just before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and
+whiskers trimmed, which changed his appearance for the worse. There
+was something naively festive in his air, which, in conjunction with
+his firm and virile features, gave him a rather comical expression.
+Bekleshev and Theodore Uvarov, who had arrived with him, paused at the
+doorway to allow him, as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration
+was embarrassed, not wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and
+this caused some delay at the doors, but after all he did at last
+enter first. He walked shyly and awkwardly over the parquet floor of
+the reception room, not knowing what to do with his hands; he was more
+accustomed to walk over a plowed field under fire, as he had done at
+the head of the Kursk regiment at Schon Grabern- and he would have
+found that easier. The committeemen met him at the first door and,
+expressing their delight at seeing such a highly honored guest, took
+possession of him as it were, without waiting for his reply,
+surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room. It was at first
+impossible to enter the drawing-room door for the crowd of members and
+guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look at Bagration
+over each other's shoulders, as if he were some rare animal. Count
+Ilya Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, "Make way, dear boy!
+Make way, make way!" pushed through the crowd more energetically
+than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and seated them
+on the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members of the
+Club, beset the new arrivals. Count Ilya, again thrusting his way
+through the crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a
+minute later with another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver
+which he presented to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some
+verses composed and printed in the hero's honor. Bagration, on
+seeing the salver, glanced around in dismay, as though seeking help.
+But all eyes demanded that he should submit. Feeling himself in
+their power, he resolutely took the salver with both hands and
+looked sternly and reproachfully at the count who had presented it
+to him. Someone obligingly took the dish from Bagration (or he
+would, it seemed, have held it till evening and have gone in to dinner
+with it) and drew his attention to the verses.
+
+"Well, I will read them, then!" Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing
+his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and
+serious expression. But the author himself took the verses and began
+reading them aloud. Bagration bowed his bead and listened:
+
+_1 Bring glory then to Alexander's reign<br>
+And on the throne our Titus shield.
+A dreaded foe be thou, kindhearted as a man,
+A Rhipheus at home, a Caesar in the field!
+E'en fortunate Napoleon
+Knows by experience, now, Bagration,
+And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...
+
+But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo
+announced that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the
+dining room came the resounding strains of the polonaise:
+
+_1 Conquest's joyful thunder waken,<br>
+Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...
+
+and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading
+his verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was
+more important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the
+rest, went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between
+two Alexanders- Bekleshev and Naryshkin- which was a significant
+allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took
+their seats in the dining room, according to their rank and
+importance: the more important nearer to the honored guest, as
+naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest.
+
+Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son to
+Bagration, who recognized him and said a few words to him,
+disjointed and awkward, as were all the words he spoke that day, and
+Count Ilya looked joyfully and proudly around while Bagration spoke to
+his son.
+
+Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance, Dolokhov,
+sat almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre,
+beside Prince Nesvitski. Count Ilya Rostov with the other members of
+the committee sat facing Bagration and, as the very personification of
+Moscow hospitality, did the honors to the prince.
+
+His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and
+the other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till
+the end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions
+to the footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety.
+Everything was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet
+(at sight of which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious
+pleasure), the footmen began popping corks and filling the champagne
+glasses. After the fish, which made a certain sensation, the count
+exchanged glances with the other committeemen. "There will be many
+toasts, it's time to begin," he whispered, and taking up his glass, he
+rose. All were silent, waiting for what he would say.
+
+"To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he cried, and at
+the same moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and
+enthusiasm. The band immediately struck up "Conquest's joyful
+thunder waken..." All rose and cried "Hurrah!" Bagration also rose and
+shouted "Hurrah!" in exactly the same voice in which he had shouted it
+on the field at Schon Grabern. Young Rostov's ecstatic voice could
+be heard above the three hundred others. He nearly wept. "To the
+health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he roared, "Hurrah!" and
+emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many
+followed his example, and the loud shouting continued for a long time.
+When the voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass
+and everybody sat down again, smiling at the noise they had made and
+exchanging remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced at a note
+lying beside his plate, and proposed a toast, "To the health of the
+hero of our last campaign, Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration!" and
+again his blue eyes grew moist. "Hurrah!" cried the three hundred
+voices again, but instead of the band a choir began singing a
+cantata composed by Paul Ivanovich Kutuzov:
+
+_1 Russians! O'er all barriers on!<br>
+Courage conquest guarantees;
+Have we not Bagration?
+He brings foe men to their knees,... etc.
+
+As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was
+proposed and Count Ilya Rostov became more and more moved, more
+glass was smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to
+Bekleshev, Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the
+committee, to all the Club members and to all the Club guests, and
+finally to Count Ilya Rostov separately, as the organizer of the
+banquet. At that toast, the count took out his handkerchief and,
+covering his face, wept outright.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As usual, he ate
+and drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed
+that some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all
+through dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed
+eyes and a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge
+of his nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and
+hear nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by
+some depressing and unsolved problem.
+
+The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by
+the princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dolokhov's intimacy
+with his wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that
+morning, which in the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters
+said that he saw badly through his spectacles, but that his wife's
+connection with Dolokhov was a secret to no one but himself. Pierre
+absolutely disbelieved both the princess' hints and the letter, but he
+feared now to look at Dolokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every
+time he chanced to meet Dolokhov's handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt
+something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly
+away. Involuntarily recalling his wife's past and her relations with
+Dolokhov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be
+true, or might at least seem to be true had it not referred to his
+wife. He involuntarily remembered how Dolokhov, who had fully
+recovered his former position after the campaign, had returned to
+Petersburg and come to him. Availing himself of his friendly relations
+with Pierre as a boon companion, Dolokhov had come straight to his
+house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled
+how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of Dolokhov's living at
+their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife's
+beauty to him and from that time till they came to Moscow had not left
+them for a day.
+
+"Yes, he is very handsome," thought Pierre, "and I know him. It
+would be particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule
+me, just because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended
+him, and helped him. I know and understand what a spice that would add
+to the pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it
+were true, but I do not believe it. I have no right to, and can't,
+believe it." He remembered the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in
+his moments of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and
+dropping them into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel
+without any reason, or shot a post-boy's horse with a pistol. That
+expression was often on Dolokhov's face when looking at him. "Yes,
+he is a bully," thought Pierre, "to kill a man means nothing to him.
+It must seem to him that everyone is afraid of him, and that must
+please him. He must think that I, too, am afraid of him- and in fact I
+am afraid of him," he thought, and again he felt something terrible
+and monstrous rising in his soul. Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov were
+now sitting opposite Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostov was talking
+merrily to his two friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the
+other a notorious duelist and rake, and every now and then he
+glanced ironically at Pierre, whose preoccupied, absent-minded, and
+massive figure was a very noticeable one at the dinner. Rostov
+looked inimically at Pierre, first because Pierre appeared to his
+hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, and in a
+word- an old woman; and secondly because Pierre in his preoccupation
+and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and had not
+responded to his greeting. When the Emperor's health was drunk,
+Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass.
+
+"What are you about?" shouted Rostov, looking at him in an ecstasy
+of exasperation. "Don't you hear it's His Majesty the Emperor's
+health?"
+
+Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting
+till all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostov.
+
+"Why, I didn't recognize you!" he said. But Rostov was otherwise
+engaged; he was shouting "Hurrah!"
+
+"Why don't you renew the acquaintance?" said Dolokhov to Rostov.
+
+"Confound him, he's a fool!" said Rostov.
+
+"One should make up to the husbands of pretty women," said Denisov.
+
+Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were
+talking about him. He reddened and turned away.
+
+"Well, now to the health of handsome women!" said Dolokhov, and with
+a serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of his
+mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre.
+
+"Here's to the health of lovely women, Peterkin- and their
+lovers!" he added.
+
+Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking
+at Dolokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing
+leaflets with Kutuzov's cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of
+the principal guests. He was just going to take it when Dolokhov,
+leaning across, snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre
+looked at Dolokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and
+monstrous that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took
+possession of him. He leaned his whole massive body across the table.
+
+"How dare you take it?" he shouted.
+
+Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitski
+and the neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezukhov.
+
+"Don't! Don't! What are you about?" whispered their frightened
+voices.
+
+Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that
+smile of his which seemed to say, "Ah! This is what I like!"
+
+"You shan't have it!" he said distinctly.
+
+Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.
+
+"You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!" he ejaculated, and,
+pushing back his chair, he rose from the table.
+
+At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt
+that the question of his wife's guilt which had been tormenting him
+the whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative.
+He hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov's
+request that he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to
+be Dolokhov's second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements
+for the duel with Nesvitski, Bezukhov's second. Pierre went home,
+but Rostov with Dolokhov and Denisov stayed on at the Club till
+late, listening to the gypsies and other singers.
+
+"Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki,"said Dolokhov, as he took
+leave of Rostov in the Club porch.
+
+"And do you feel quite calm?" Rostov asked.
+
+Dolokhov paused.
+
+"Well, you see, I'll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two
+words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write
+affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be
+killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the
+firm intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as
+possible, and then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostroma
+used to tell me. 'Everyone fears a bear,' he says, 'but when you see
+one your fear's all gone, and your only thought is not to let him
+get away!' And that's how it is with me. A demain, mon cher."~^
+
+^~ Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.
+
+Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski drove to the
+Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov already
+there. Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations
+which had no connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face
+was yellow. He had evidently not slept that night. He looked about
+distractedly and screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He
+was entirely absorbed by two considerations: his wife's guilt, of
+which after his sleepless night he had not the slightest doubt, and
+the guiltlessness of Dolokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor
+of a man who was nothing to him.... "I should perhaps have done the
+same thing in his place," thought Pierre. "It's even certain that I
+should have done the same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I
+shall kill him, or he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee.
+Can't I go away from here, run away, bury myself somewhere?" passed
+through his mind. But just at moments when such thoughts occurred to
+him, he would ask in a particularly calm and absent-minded way,
+which inspired the respect of the onlookers, "Will it be long? Are
+things ready?"
+
+When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the
+barriers, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went up to Pierre.
+
+"I should not be doing my duty, Count," he said in timid tones, "and
+should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in
+choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment
+I did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no sufficient
+ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it.... You were
+not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous..."
+
+"Oh yes, it is horribly stupid," said Pierre.
+
+"Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your
+opponent will accept them," said Nesvitski (who like the others
+concerned in the affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not
+yet believe that the affair had come to an actual duel). "You know,
+Count, it is much more honorable to admit one's mistake than to let
+matters become irreparable. There was no insult on either side.
+Allow me to convey...."
+
+"No! What is there to talk about?" said Pierre. "It's all the
+same.... Is everything ready?" he added. "Only tell me where to go and
+where to shoot," he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.
+
+He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of
+the trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand- a fact
+that he did not to confess.
+
+"Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot," said he.
+
+"No apologies, none whatever," said Dolokhov to Denisov (who on
+his side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to
+the appointed place.
+
+The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road,
+where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine
+forest covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up
+during the last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at
+the farther edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces,
+left tracks in the deep wet snow between the place where they had been
+standing and Nesvitski's and Dolokhov's sabers, which were stuck
+intothe ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and
+misty; at forty paces' distance nothing could be seen. For three
+minutes all had been ready, but they still delayed and all were
+silent.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"Well begin!" said Dolokhov.
+
+"All right," said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling
+of dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly
+begun could no longer be averted but was taking its course
+independently of men's will.
+
+Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: "As the adve'sawies
+have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols,
+and at the word thwee begin to advance.
+
+"O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!" he shouted angrily and stepped aside.
+
+The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and
+nearer to one another, beginning to see one another through the
+mist. They had the right to fire when they liked as they approached
+the barrier. Dolokhov walked slowly without raising his pistol,
+looking intently with his bright, sparkling blue eyes into his
+antagonist's face. His mouth wore its usual semblance of a smile.
+
+"So I can fire when I like!" said Pierre, and at the word "three,"
+he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and stepping into
+the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at arm's length,
+apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left hand he held
+carefully back, because he wished to support his right hand with it
+and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed
+off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then
+quickly glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he had been
+shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre
+shuddered at the sound and then, smiling at his own sensations,
+stood still. The smoke, rendered denser by the mist, prevented him
+from seeing anything for an instant, but there was no second report as
+he had expected. He only heard Dolokhov's hurried steps, and his
+figure came in view through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his
+left side, while the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face
+was pale. Rostov ran toward him and said something.
+
+"No-o-o!" muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, "no, it's not
+over." And after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the
+saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he
+wiped it on his coat and supported himself with it. His frowning
+face was pallid and quivered.
+
+"Plea..." began Dolokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word.
+
+"Please," he uttered with an effort.
+
+Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov
+and was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dolokhov
+cried:
+
+"To your barrier!" and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by
+his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to
+the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself,
+drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He
+sucked and sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but
+his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as
+he mustered his remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.
+
+"Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!" ejaculated Nesvitski.
+
+"Cover yourself!" even Denisov cried to his adversary.
+
+Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs
+helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing
+Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitski
+closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report and
+Dolokhov's angry cry.
+
+"Missed!" shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards on
+the snow.
+
+Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,
+trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:
+
+"Folly... folly! Death... lies..." he repeated, puckering his face.
+
+Nesvitski stopped him and took him home.
+
+Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.
+
+The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not
+answer a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering
+Moscow he suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort,
+took Rostov, who was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostov was
+struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender
+expression on Dolokhov's face.
+
+"Well? How do you feel?" he asked.
+
+"Bad! But it's not that, my friend-" said Dolokhov with a gasping
+voice. "Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have
+killed her, killed... She won't get over it! She won't survive...."
+
+"Who?" asked Rostov.
+
+"My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother," and
+Dolokhov pressed Rostov's hand and burst into tears.
+
+When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostov that
+he was living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not
+survive it. He implored Rostov to go on and prepare her.
+
+Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise
+learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow
+with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most
+affectionate of sons and brothers.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg
+and in Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after
+the duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained
+in his father's room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.
+
+He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that
+had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,
+thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not
+fall asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace
+the room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early
+days of their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid,
+passionate look on her face, and then immediately he saw beside her
+Dolokhov's handsome, insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen
+it at the banquet, and then that same face pale, quivering, and
+suffering, as it had been when he reeled and sank on the snow.
+
+"What has happened?" he asked himself. "I have killed her lover,
+yes, killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come
+to do it?"- "Because you married her," answered an inner voice.
+
+"But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her without
+loving her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalled
+that moment after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those words
+he had found so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes from
+that! Even then I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was not
+so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out."
+
+He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.
+Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection
+of how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into
+his study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his
+head steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and
+at his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing
+respectful understanding of his employer's happiness.
+
+"But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic
+beauty and social tact," thought he; "been proud of my house, in which
+she received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and
+beauty. So this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I did
+not understand her. How often when considering her character I have
+told myself that I was to blame for not understanding her, for not
+understanding that constant composure and complacency and lack of
+all interests or desires, and the whole secret lies in the terrible
+truth that she is a depraved woman. Now I have spoken that terrible
+word to myself all has become clear.
+
+"Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss
+her naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself
+be kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she
+replied with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous:
+'Let him do what he pleases,' she used to say of me. One day I asked
+her if she felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed
+contemptuously and said she was not a fool to want to have children,
+and that she was not going to have any children by me."
+
+Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and
+the vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though
+she had been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.
+
+"I'm not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous
+promener,"~^ she used to say. Often seeing the success she had with
+young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not
+love her.
+
+^~ "You clear out of this."
+
+"Yes, I never loved her," said he to himself; "I knew she was a
+depraved woman," he repeated, "but dared not admit it to myself. And
+now there's Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and
+perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!"
+
+Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of
+what is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their
+troubles. He digested his sufferings alone.
+
+"It is all, all her fault," he said to himself; "but what of that?
+Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say 'Je vous aime'~^ to her,
+which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must
+endure... what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that's
+nonsense," he thought. "The slur on my name and honor- that's all
+apart from myself.
+
+^~ I love you.
+
+"Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and
+a criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view
+they were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a
+martyr's death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a
+despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive-
+live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is
+it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in
+comparison with eternity?"
+
+But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such
+reflections, she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments
+when he had most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he
+felt the blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move
+about and break and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tell
+her that 'Je vous aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when he
+had said it for the tenth time, Molibre's words: "Mais que diable
+alloit-il faire dans cette galere?" occurred to him, and he began to
+laugh at himself.
+
+In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to
+Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He
+resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his
+intention to part from her forever.
+
+Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee,
+Pierre was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.
+
+He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled
+expression, unable to realize where he was.
+
+"The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at
+home," said the valet.
+
+But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the
+countess herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with
+silver and with simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round
+her lovely head like a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic,
+except that there was a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent
+marble brow. With her imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in
+front of the valet. She knew of the duel and had come to speak about
+it. She waited till the valet had set down the coffee things and
+left the room. Pierre looked at her timidly over his spectacles, and
+like a hare surrounded by hounds who lays back her ears and
+continues to crouch motionless before her enemies, he tried to
+continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless and impossible,
+he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down but looked at
+him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to go.
+
+"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should
+like to know?" she asked sternly.
+
+"I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre.
+
+"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel
+about? What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."
+
+Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth,
+but could not reply.
+
+"If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe
+everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that
+Dolokhov was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness
+of speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and
+you believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel
+prove? That you're a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew
+that. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock of
+all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowing
+what you were about, challenged a man you are jealous of without
+cause." Helene raised her voice and became more and more excited, "A
+man who's a better man than you in every way..."
+
+"Hm... Hm...!" growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her,
+and not moving a muscle.
+
+"And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like
+his company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should
+prefer yours."
+
+"Don't speak to me... I beg you," muttered Pierre hoarsely.
+
+"Why shouldn't I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you
+plainly that there are not many wives with husbands such as you who
+would not have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so,"
+said she.
+
+Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose
+strange expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He
+was suffering physically at that moment, there was a weight on his
+chest and he could not breathe. He knew that he must do something to
+put an end to this suffering, but what he wanted to do was too
+terrible.
+
+"We had better separate," he muttered in a broken voice.
+
+"Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," said
+Helene. "Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!"
+
+Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.
+
+"I'll kill you!" he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table
+with a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her
+brandishing the slab.
+
+Helene's face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His
+father's nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and
+delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down
+on her with outstretched hands shouted, "Get out!" in such a
+terrible voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows
+what he would have done at that moment had Helene not fled from the
+room.
+
+A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his
+estates in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property,
+and left for Petersburg alone.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz
+and the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite
+of the letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his
+body had not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What
+was worst of all for his relations was the fact that there was still a
+possibility of his having been picked up on the battlefield by the
+people of the place and that he might now be lying, recovering or
+dying, alone among strangers and unable to send news of himself. The
+gazettes from which the old prince first heard of the defeat at
+Austerlitz stated, as usual very briefly and vaguely, that after
+brilliant engagements the Russians had had to retreat and had made
+their withdrawal in perfect order. The old prince understood from this
+official report that our army had been defeated. A week after the
+gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz came a letter from
+Kutuzov informing the prince of the fate that had befallen his son.
+
+"Your son," wrote Kutuzov, "fell before my eyes, a standard in his
+hand and at the head of a regiment- he fell as a hero, worthy of his
+father and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the
+whole army it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort
+myself and you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise
+he would have been mentioned among the officers found on the field
+of battle, a list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce."
+
+After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone
+in his study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next
+morning, but he was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the
+architect, and though he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone.
+
+When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at
+his lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her.
+
+"Ah, Princess Mary!" he said suddenly in an unnatural voice,
+throwing down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own
+impetus, and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that
+wheel, which merged in her memory with what followed.)
+
+She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her.
+Her eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father's face, not sad,
+not crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging
+over her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the
+worst in life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and
+incomprehensible- the death of one she loved.
+
+"Father! Andrew!"- said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such
+an indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her
+father could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.
+
+"Bad news! He's not among the prisoners nor among the killed!
+Kutuzov writes..." and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to
+drive the princess away by that scream... "Killed!"
+
+The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but
+on hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in
+her beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy- a supreme joy apart
+from the joys and sorrows of this world- overflowed the great grief
+within her. She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took
+his hand, and drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy
+neck.
+
+"Father" she said, "do not turn away from me, let us weep together."
+
+"Scoundrels! Blackguards!" shrieked the old man, turning his face
+away from her. "Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why?
+Go, go and tell Lise."
+
+The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father
+and wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he
+took leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw
+him tender and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. "Did
+he believe? Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There
+in the realms of eternal peace and blessedness?" she thought.
+
+"Father, tell me how it happened," she asked through her tears.
+
+"Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and
+Russia's glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell
+Lise. I will follow."
+
+When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat
+working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy
+calm peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did
+not see Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at
+something joyful and mysterious taking place within her.
+
+"Mary," she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying
+back, "give me your hand." She took her sister-in-law's hand and
+held it below her waist.
+
+Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained
+lifted in childlike happiness.
+
+Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of
+her sister-in-law's dress.
+
+"There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know,
+Mary, I am going to love him very much," said Lise, looking with
+bright and happy eyes at her sister-in-law.
+
+Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.
+
+"What is the matter, Mary?"
+
+"Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew," she said, wiping
+away her tears on her sister-in-law's knee.
+
+Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began
+trying to prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry.
+Unobservant as was the little princess, these tears, the cause of
+which she did not understand, agitated her. She said nothing but
+looked about uneasily as if in search of something. Before dinner
+the old prince, of whom she was always afraid, came into her room with
+a peculiarly restless and malign expression and went out again without
+saying a word. She looked at Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a
+while with that expression of attention to something within her that
+is only seen in pregnant women, and suddenly began to cry.
+
+"Has anything come from Andrew?" she asked.
+
+"No, you know it's too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I
+feel afraid."
+
+"So there's nothing?"
+
+"Nothing," answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant
+eyes at her sister-in-law.
+
+She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to
+hide the terrible news from her till after her confinement, which
+was expected within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince
+each bore and hid their grief in their own way. The old prince would
+not cherish any hope: he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had
+been killed, and though he sent an official to Austria to seek for
+traces of his son, he ordered a monument from Moscow which he intended
+to erect in his own garden to his memory, and he told everybody that
+his son had been killed. He tried not to change his former way of
+life, but his strength failed him. He walked less, ate less, slept
+less, and became weaker every day. Princess Mary hoped. She prayed for
+her brother as living and was always awaiting news of his return.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"Dearest," said the little princess after breakfast on the morning
+of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit,
+but as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word,
+and even every footstep in that house since the terrible news had
+come, so now the smile of the little princess- influenced by the
+general mood though without knowing its cause- was such as to remind
+one still more of the general sorrow.
+
+"Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique~^ as Foka the cook
+calls it- has disagreed with me."
+
+^~ Fruhstuck: breakfast.
+
+"What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you are
+very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft,
+ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.
+
+"Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said
+one of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife
+from the neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last
+fortnight.)
+
+"Oh yes," assented Princess Mary, "perhaps that's it. I'll go.
+Courage, my angel." She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.
+
+"Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on
+the little princess' face, an expression of childish fear of
+inevitable pain showed itself.
+
+"No, it's only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion, say so,
+Mary! Say..." And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a
+suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some
+affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary
+Bogdanovna.
+
+"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left the room.
+
+The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small,
+plump white hands with an air of calm importance.
+
+"Mary Bogdanovna, I think it's beginning!" said Princess Mary
+looking at the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.
+
+"Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary Bogdanovna, not
+hastening her steps. "You young ladies should not know anything
+about it."
+
+"But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?" said the
+princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's wishes they
+had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at
+any moment.)
+
+"No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary Bogdanovna.
+"We'll manage very well without a doctor."
+
+Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy
+being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the
+large leather sofa from Prince Andrew's study into the bedroom. On
+their faces was a quiet and solemn look.
+
+Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the
+house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and
+watching what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with
+quiet steps in and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and
+turned away. She did not venture to ask any questions, and shut the
+door again, now sitting down in her easy chair, now taking her
+prayer book, now kneeling before the icon stand. To her surprise and
+distress she found that her prayers did not calm her excitement.
+Suddenly her door opened softly and her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna,
+who hardly ever came to that room as the old prince had forbidden
+it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round her head.
+
+"I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the nurse, "and
+here I've brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his
+saint, my angel," she said with a sigh.
+
+"Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!"
+
+"God is merciful, birdie."
+
+The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by
+the door with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began
+reading. Only when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one
+another, the princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging.
+Everyone in the house was dominated by the same feeling that
+Princess Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But owing to the
+superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the less a woman
+in travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend not to know; no one
+spoke of it, but apart from the ordinary staid and respectful good
+manners habitual in the prince's household, a common anxiety, a
+softening of the heart, and a consciousness that something great and
+mysterious was being accomplished at that moment made itself felt.
+
+There was no laughter in the maids' large hall. In the men servants'
+hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs'
+quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old
+prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent
+Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.- "Say only that 'the prince
+told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer."
+
+"Inform the prince that labor has begun," said Mary Bogdanovna,
+giving the messenger a significant look.
+
+Tikhon went and told the prince.
+
+"Very good!" said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tikhon
+did not hear the slightest sound from the study after that.
+
+After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and,
+seeing the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his
+perturbed face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed
+him on the shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles
+or saying why he had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world
+continued its course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of
+suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable
+did not lessen but increased. No one slept.
+
+It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume
+its sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A
+relay of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German
+doctor from Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback
+with lanterns were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the
+country road with its hollows and snow-covered pools of water.
+
+Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her
+luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line of
+which she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from
+under the kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.
+
+Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely
+hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds
+of times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess
+Mary in Kishenev with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead
+of a midwife.
+
+"God is merciful, doctors are never needed," she said.
+
+Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the
+window, from which the double frame had been removed (by order of
+the prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the
+larks returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the
+damask curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its chill,
+snowy draft. Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the
+stocking she was knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to
+catch the open casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her
+kerchief and her loose locks of gray hair.
+
+"Princess, my dear, there's someone driving up the avenue! " she
+said, holding the casement and not closing it. "With lanterns. Most
+likely the doctor."
+
+"Oh, my God! thank God!" said Princess Mary. "I must go and meet
+him, he does not know Russian."
+
+Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the
+newcomer. As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the
+window a carriage with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went
+out on the stairs. On a banister post stood a tallow candle which
+guttered in the draft. On the landing below, Philip, the footman,
+stood looking scared and holding another candle. Still lower, beyond
+the turn of the staircase, one could hear the footstep of someone in
+thick felt boots, and a voice that seemed familiar to Princess Mary
+was saying something.
+
+"Thank God!" said the voice. "And Father?"
+
+"Gone to bed," replied the voice of Demyan the house steward, who
+was downstairs.
+
+Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied, and the steps in
+the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more
+rapidly.
+
+"It's Andrew!" thought Princess Mary. "No it can't be, that would be
+too extraordinary," and at the very moment she thought this, the
+face and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of
+which covered with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman
+stood with the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed
+and strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up
+the stairs and embraced his sister.
+
+"You did not get my letter?" he asked, and not waiting for a
+reply- which he would not have received, for the princess was unable
+to speak- he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the
+doctor who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last
+post station), and again embraced his sister.
+
+"What a strange fate, Masha darling!" And having taken off his cloak
+and felt boots, he went to the little princess' apartment.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on
+her head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair
+lay round her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy
+mouth with its downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince
+Andrew entered and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on
+which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear
+and excitement, rested on him without changing their expression. "I
+love you all and have done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so?
+Help me!" her look seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not
+realize the significance of his appearance before her now. Prince
+Andrew went round the sofa and kissed her forehead.
+
+"My darling!" he said- a word he had never used to her before.
+"God is merciful...."
+
+She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.
+
+"I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!"
+said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not
+realize that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with her
+sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary
+Bogdanovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the room.
+
+The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess
+Mary, again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk
+broke off at every moment. They waited and listened.
+
+"Go, dear," said Princess Mary.
+
+Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room
+next to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and
+became confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with
+his hands and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless,
+animal moans came through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to
+the door, and tried to open it. Someone was holding it shut.
+
+"You can't come in! You can't!" said a terrified voice from within.
+
+He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more
+seconds went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek- it could not be
+hers, she could not scream like that- came from the bedroom. Prince
+Andrew ran to the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of
+an infant.
+
+"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought Prince Andrew in
+the first second. "A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or
+is the baby born?"
+
+Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail;
+tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill be began
+to cry, sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his
+shirt sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling
+jaw, came out of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor
+gave him a bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman
+rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the
+threshold. He went into his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the
+same position he had seen her in five minutes before and, despite
+the fixed eyes and the pallor of the cheeks, the same expression was
+on her charming childlike face with its upper lip covered with tiny
+black hair.
+
+"I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have
+you done to me?"- said her charming, pathetic, dead face.
+
+In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and
+squealed in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands.
+
+Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his
+father's room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing
+close to the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed
+like a vise round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob
+like a child.
+
+Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew
+went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the
+farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though
+with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to
+say, and Prince Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and
+that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He
+could not weep. The old man too came up and kissed the waxen little
+hands that lay quietly crossed one on the other on her breast, and
+to him, too, her face seemed to say: "Ah, what have you done to me,
+and why?" And at the sight the old man turned angrily away.
+
+Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas
+Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her
+while the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's little red
+and wrinkled soles and palms.
+
+His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of
+dropping him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and
+handed him over to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat
+in another room, faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in
+the font, and awaited the termination of the ceremony. He looked up
+joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought it to him and nodded
+approval when she told him that the wax with the baby's hair had not
+sunk in the font but had floated.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Rostov's share in Dolokhov's duel with Bezukhov was hushed up by the
+efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks
+as he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of
+Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of
+the family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties.
+Dolokhov recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with him during
+his convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother's who loved him
+passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond
+of Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him about
+her son.
+
+"Yes, Count," she would say, "he is too noble and pure-souled for
+our present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like
+a reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it
+honorable, of Bezukhov? And Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him
+and even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg
+when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn't they do it
+together? And there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while Fedya had to
+bear the whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go
+through! It's true he has been reinstated, but how could they fail
+to do that? I think there were not many such gallant sons of the
+fatherland out there as he. And now- this duel! Have these people no
+feeling, or honor? Knowing him to be an only son, to challenge him and
+shoot so straight! It's well God had mercy on us. And what was it for?
+Who doesn't have intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I
+see things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for
+months. And then to call him out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting
+because he owed him money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you
+understand Fedya, my dear count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond
+of you. Few people do understand him. He is such a lofty, heavenly
+soul!"
+
+Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostov in a way
+no one would have expected of him.
+
+"I know people consider me a bad man!" he said. "Let them! I don't
+care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love
+so that I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle
+if they stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two
+or three friends- you among them- and as for the rest I only care
+about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them
+are harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I
+have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any
+women- countesses or cooks- who were not venal. I have not yet met
+that divine purity and devotion I look for in women. If I found such a
+one I'd give my life for her! But those!... and he made a gesture of
+contempt. "And believe me, if I still value my life it is only because
+I still hope to meet such a divine creature, who will regenerate,
+purify, and elevate me. But you don't understand it."
+
+"Oh, yes, I quite understand, "answered Rostov, who was under his
+new friend's influence.
+
+In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter
+Denisov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the
+winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of
+the happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas
+brought many young men to his parents' house. Vera was a handsome girl
+of twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening
+flower; Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly
+amusing, now girlishly enchanting.
+
+At that time in the Rostovs' house there prevailed an amorous
+atmosphere characteristic of homes where there are very young and very
+charming girls. Every young man who came to the house- seeing those
+impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own
+happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the
+fitful bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly
+prattle of young girls ready for anything and full of hope-
+experienced the same feeling; sharing with the young folk of the
+Rostovs' household a readiness to fall in love and an expectation of
+happiness.
+
+Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of the first was
+Dolokhov, whom everyone in the house liked except Natasha. She
+almost quarreled with her brother about him. She insisted that he
+was a bad man, and that in the duel with Bezukhov, Pierre was right
+and Dolokhov wrong, and further that he was disagreeable and
+unnatural.
+
+"There's nothing for me to understand," cried out with resolute
+self-will, "he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denisov
+though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so you see I do
+understand. I don't know how to put it... with this one everything
+is calculated, and I don't like that. But Denisov..."
+
+"Oh, Denisov is quite different," replied Nicholas, implying that
+even Denisov was nothing compared to Dolokhov- "you must understand
+what a soul there is in Dolokhov, you should see him with his
+mother. What a heart!"
+
+"Well, I don't know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And
+do you know he has fallen in love with Sonya?"
+
+"What nonsense..."
+
+"I'm certain of it; you'll see."
+
+Natasha's prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did not usually care
+for the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the
+question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon
+settled. He came because of Sonya. And Sonya, though she would never
+have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time
+Dolokhov appeared.
+
+Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs', never missed a performance
+at which they were present, and went to Iogel's balls for young people
+which the Rostovs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sonya
+and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his
+glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natasha
+blushed when they saw his looks.
+
+It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the
+irresistible influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.
+
+Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov's relations with Sonya, but
+he did not explain to himself what these new relations were.
+"They're always in love with someone," he thought of Sonya and
+Natasha. But he was not as much at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as
+before and was less frequently at home.
+
+In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war
+with Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders
+were given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the
+regular army, and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the
+militia. Everywhere Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow
+nothing but the coming war was talked of. For the Rostov family the
+whole interest of these preparations for war lay in the fact that
+Nicholas would not hear of remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the
+termination of Denisov's furlough after Christmas to return with him
+to their regiment. His approaching departure did not prevent his
+amusing himself, but rather gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the
+greater part of his time away from home, at dinners, parties, and
+balls.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing
+he had rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he
+and Denisov were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany.
+About twenty people were present, including Dolokhov and Denisov.
+
+Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous
+atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as at
+this holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved!
+That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the
+one thing we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place.
+
+Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without
+visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been
+invited, returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he
+noticed and felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also
+noticed a curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sonya,
+Dolokhov, and the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a
+lesser degree Natasha. Nicholas understood that something must have
+happened between Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly
+sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both
+at dinner. On that same evening there was to be one of the balls
+that Iogel (the dancing master) gave for his pupils durings the
+holidays.
+
+"Nicholas, will you come to Iogel's? Please do!" said Natasha. "He
+asked you, and Vasili Dmitrich~^ is also going."
+
+^~ Denisov.
+
+"Where would I not go at the countess' command!" said Denisov, who
+at the Rostovs' had jocularly assumed the role of Natasha's knight.
+"I'm even weady to dance the pas de chale."
+
+"If I have time," answered Nicholas. "But I promised the
+Arkharovs; they have a party."
+
+"And you?" he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had asked the
+question he noticed that it should not have been put.
+
+"Perhaps," coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov, glancing at Sonya,
+and, scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given
+Pierre at the Club dinner.
+
+"There is something up," thought Nicholas, and he was further
+confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that Dolokhov left
+immediately after dinner. He called Natasha and asked her what was the
+matter.
+
+"And I was looking for you," said Natasha running out to him. "I
+told you, but you would not believe it," she said triumphantly. "He
+has proposed to Sonya!"
+
+Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of late,
+something seemed to give way within him at this news. Dolokhov was a
+suitable and in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless,
+orphan girl. From the point of view of the old countess and of society
+it was out of the question for her to refuse him. And therefore
+Nicholas' first feeling on hearing the news was one of anger with
+Sonya.... He tried to say, "That's capital; of course she'll forget
+her childish promises and accept the offer," but before he had time to
+say it Natasha began again.
+
+"And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!" adding, after a
+pause, "she told him she loved another."
+
+"Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!" thought Nicholas.
+
+"Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won't change
+once she has said..."
+
+"And Mamma pressed her!" said Nicholas reproachfully.
+
+"Yes," said Natasha. "Do you know, Nicholas- don't be angry- but I
+know you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but I know
+for certain that you won't marry her."
+
+"Now don't know that at all!" said Nicholas. "But I must talk to
+her. What a darling Sonya is!" he added with a smile.
+
+"Ah, she is indeed a darling! I'll send her to you."
+
+And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away.
+
+A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared
+look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the
+first time since his return that they had talked alone and about their
+love.
+
+"Sophie," he began, timidly at first and then more and more
+boldly, "if you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and
+advantageous match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend..."
+
+Sonya interrupted him.
+
+"I have already refused," she said hurriedly.
+
+"If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..."
+
+Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.
+
+"Nicholas, don't tell me that!" she said.
+
+"No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to
+say it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole
+truth. I love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else...."
+
+"That is enough for me," said Sonya, blushing.
+
+"No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in love
+again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship,
+confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does
+not wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider
+Dolokhov's offer," he said, articulating his friend's name with
+difficulty.
+
+"Don't say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and
+always shall, and I want nothing more."
+
+"You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of
+misleading you."
+
+And Nicholas again kissed her hand.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Iogel's were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers
+as they watched their young people executing their newly learned
+steps, and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced
+till they were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and
+women who came to these balls with an air of condescension and found
+them most enjoyable. That year two marriages had come of these
+balls. The two pretty young Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and
+were married and so further increased the fame of these dances. What
+distinguished them from others was the absence of host or hostess
+and the presence of the good-natured Iogel, flying about like a
+feather and bowing according to the rules of his art, as he
+collected the tickets from all his visitors. There was the fact that
+only those came who wished to dance and amuse themselves as girls of
+thirteen and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for the first
+time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were, or seemed to be,
+pretty- so rapturous were their smiles and so sparkling their eyes.
+Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom Natasha, who was
+exceptionally graceful, was first, even danced the pas de chale, but
+at this last ball only the ecossaise, the anglaise, and the mazurka,
+which was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a
+ballroom in Bezukhov's house, and the ball, as everyone said, was a
+great success. There were many pretty girls and the Rostov girls
+were among the prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay.
+That evening, proud of Dolokhov's proposal, her refusal, and her
+explanation with Nicholas, Sonya twirled about before she left home so
+that the maid could hardly get her hair plaited, and she was
+transparently radiant with impulsive joy.
+
+Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real
+ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with
+pink ribbons.
+
+Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She
+was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever
+person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.
+
+"Oh, how delightful it is!" she kept saying, running up to Sonya.
+
+Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down, looking with kindly
+patronage at the dancers.
+
+"How sweet she is- she will be a weal beauty!" said Denisov.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Countess Natasha," answered Denisov.
+
+"And how she dances! What gwace!" he said again after a pause.
+
+"Who are you talking about?"
+
+"About your sister," ejaculated Denisov testily.
+
+Rostov smiled.
+
+"My dear count, you were one of my best pupils- you must dance,"
+said little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. "Look how many charming young
+ladies-" He turned with the same request to Denisov who was also a
+former pupil of his.
+
+"No, my dear fellow, I'll be a wallflower," said Denisov. "Don't you
+wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?"
+
+"Oh no!" said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. "You were only
+inattentive, but you had talent- oh yes, you had talent!"
+
+The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not
+refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance. Denisov sat down by the old
+ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot,
+told them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the
+young people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best
+pupil, were the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with
+his little feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with
+Natasha, who, though shy, went on carefully executing her steps.
+Denisov did not take his eyes off her and beat time with his saber
+in a way that clearly indicated that if he was not dancing it was
+because he would not and not because he could not. In the middle of
+a figure he beckoned to Rostov who was passing:
+
+"This is not at all the thing," he said. "What sort of Polish
+mazuwka is this? But she does dance splendidly."
+
+Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland for the
+masterly way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to
+Natasha:
+
+"Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!" he said.
+
+When it came to Natasha's turn to choose a partner, she rose and,
+tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran
+timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was
+looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing
+though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.
+
+"Please, Vasili Dmitrich," Natasha was saying, "do come!"
+
+"Oh no, let me off, Countess," Denisov replied.
+
+"Now then, Vaska," said Nicholas.
+
+"They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!" said Denisov jokingly.
+
+"I'll sing for you a whole evening," said Natasha.
+
+"Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!" said Denisov, and he
+unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his
+partner's hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot,
+waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was
+Denisov's short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow
+he felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked
+sideways at his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly
+stamped with one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew
+round the room taking his partner with him. He glided silently on
+one foot half across the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs
+was dashing straight at them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and
+spreading out his legs, he stopped short on his heels, stood so a
+second, stamped on the spot clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round,
+and, striking his left heel against his right, flew round again in a
+circle. Natasha guessed what he meant to do, and abandoning herself to
+him followed his lead hardly knowing how. First he spun her round,
+holding her now with his left, now with his right hand, then falling
+on one knee he twirled her round him, and again jumping up, dashed
+so impetuously forward that it seemed as if he would rush through
+the whole suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then he
+suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When
+at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her chair,
+he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not
+even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement,
+smiling as if she did not recognize him.
+
+"What does this mean?" she brought out.
+
+Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka,
+everyone was delighted with Denisov's skill, he was asked again and
+again as a partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about
+Poland and the good old days. Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and
+mopping himself with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and did not
+leave her for the rest of the evening.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at his own or at
+Dolokhov's home: on the third day he received a note from him:
+
+As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know
+of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell
+supper tonight to my friends- come to the English Hotel.
+
+About ten o'clock Rostov went to the English Hotel straight from the
+theater, where he had been with his family and Denisov. He was at once
+shown to the best room, which Dolokhov had taken for that evening.
+Some twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dolokhov sat
+between two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper
+money, and he was keeping the bank. Rostov had not seen him since
+his proposal and Sonya's refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought
+of how they would meet.
+
+Dolokhov's clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as he entered the
+door, as though he had long expected him.
+
+"It's a long time since we met," he said. "Thanks for coming. I'll
+just finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will come with his chorus."
+
+"I called once or twice at your house," said Rostov, reddening.
+
+Dolokhov made no reply.
+
+"You may punt," he said.
+
+Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once
+had with Dolokhov. "None but fools trust to luck in play," Dolokhov
+had then said.
+
+"Or are you afraid to play with me?" Dolokhov now asked as if
+guessing Rostov's thought.
+
+Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had shown at the
+Club dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he
+had felt a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually
+cruel, action.
+
+Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke
+with which to reply to Dolokhov's words. But before he had thought
+of anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and
+deliberately so that everyone could hear:
+
+"Do you remember we had a talk about cards... 'He's a fool who
+trusts to luck, one should make certain,' and I want to try."
+
+"To try his luck or the certainty?" Rostov asked himself.
+
+"Well, you'd better not play," Dolokhov added, and springing a new
+pack of cards said: "Bank, gentlemen!"
+
+Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostov sat down by his
+side and at first did not play. Dolokhov kept glancing at him.
+
+"Why don't you play?" he asked.
+
+And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up
+a card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.
+
+"I have no money with me," he said.
+
+"I'll trust you."
+
+Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and
+again lost. Dolokhov "killed," that is, beat, ten cards of Rostov's
+running.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Dolokhov after he had dealt for some time. "Please
+place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the reckoning."
+
+One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.
+
+"Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I
+ask you to put the money on your cards," replied Dolokhov. "Don't
+stint yourself, we'll settle afterwards," he added, turning to Rostov.
+
+The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.
+
+All Rostov's cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles
+scored up against him. He wrote "800 rubles" on a card, but while
+the waiter filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to
+his usual stake of twenty rubles.
+
+"Leave it," said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking
+at Rostov, "you'll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the others
+but win from you. Or are you afraid of me?" he asked again.
+
+Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a
+seven of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the
+floor. He well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the
+seven of hearts, on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written
+"800 rubles" in clear upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm
+champagne that was handed him, smiled at Dolokhov's words, and with
+a sinking heart, waiting for a seven to turn up, gazed at Dolokhov's
+hands which held the pack. Much depended on Rostov's winning or losing
+on that seven of hearts. On the previous Sunday the old count had
+given his son two thousand rubles, and though he always disliked
+speaking of money difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all
+he could let him have till May, and asked him to be more economical
+this time. Nicholas had replied that it would be more than enough
+for him and that he gave his word of honor not to take anything more
+till the spring. Now only twelve hundred rubles was left of that
+money, so that this seven of hearts meant for him not only the loss of
+sixteen hundred rubles, but the necessity of going back on his word.
+With a sinking heart he watched Dolokhov's hands and thought, "Now
+then, make haste and let me have this card and I'll take my cap and
+drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will
+certainly never touch a card again." At that moment his home life,
+jokes with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with
+his father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the
+Povarskaya rose before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm
+that it seemed as if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss,
+long past. He could not conceive that a stupid chance, letting the
+seven be dealt to the right rather than to the left, might deprive him
+of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly illumined, and
+plunge him into the depths of unknown and undefined misery. That could
+not be, yet he awaited with a sinking heart the movement of Dolokhov's
+hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy wrists visible from
+under the shirt cuffs, laid down the pack and took up a glass and a
+pipe that were handed him.
+
+"So you are not afraid to play with me?" repeated Dolokhov, and as
+if about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in
+his chair, and began deliberately with a smile:
+
+"Yes, gentlemen, I've been told there's a rumor going about Moscow
+that I'm a sharper, so I advise you to be careful."
+
+"Come now, deal!" exclaimed Rostov.
+
+"Oh, those Moscow gossips!" said Dolokhov, and he took up the
+cards with a smile.
+
+"Aah!" Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The
+seven he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He
+had lost more than he could pay.
+
+"Still, don't ruin yourself!" said Dolokhov with a side glance at
+Rostov as he continued to deal.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+An hour and a half later most of the players were but little
+interested in their own play.
+
+The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen
+hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him,
+which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he
+vaguely supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it
+already exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer
+listening to stories or telling them, but followed every movement of
+Rostov's hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against
+him. He had decided to play until that score reached forty-three
+thousand. He had fixed on that number because forty-three was the
+sum of his and Sonya's joint ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both
+hands, sat at the table which was scrawled over with figures, wet with
+spilled wine, and littered with cards. One tormenting impression did
+not leave him: that those broad-boned reddish hands with hairy
+wrists visible from under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he
+loved and hated, held him in their power.
+
+"Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's
+impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or
+quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov
+pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to
+accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him,
+and at one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at
+the bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came
+first to hand from the crumpled heap under the table would save him,
+now counted the cords on his coat and took a card with that number and
+tried staking the total of his losses on it, then he looked round
+for aid from the other players, or peered at the now cold face of
+Dolokhov and tried to read what was passing in his mind.
+
+"He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can't want my
+ruin. Wasn't he my friend? Wasn't I fond of him? But it's not his
+fault. What's he to do if he has such luck?... And it's not my fault
+either," he thought to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Have I
+killed anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a
+terrible misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little while ago
+I came to this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to
+buy that casket for Mamma's name day and then going home. I was so
+happy, so free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I
+was! When did that end and when did this new, terrible state of things
+begin? What marked the change? I sat all the time in this same place
+at this table, chose and placed cards, and watched those broad-boned
+agile hands in the same way. When did it happen and what has happened?
+I am well and strong and still the same and in the same place. No,
+it can't be! Surely it will all end in nothing!"
+
+He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not
+hot. His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its
+helpless efforts to seem calm.
+
+The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three
+thousand. Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of
+which he meant to double the three thousand just put down to his
+score, when Dolokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside
+and began rapidly adding up the total of Rostov's debt, breaking the
+chalk as he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.
+
+"Supper, it's time for supper! And here are the gypsies!"
+
+Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold
+outside and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas
+understood that it was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:
+
+"Well, won't you go on? I had a splendid card all ready," as if it
+were the fun of the game which interested him most.
+
+"It's all up! I'm lost!" thought he. "Now a bullet through my brain-
+that's all that's left me! " And at the same time he said in a
+cheerful voice:
+
+"Come now, just this one more little card!"
+
+"All right!" said Dolokhov, having finished the addition. "All
+right! Twenty-one rubles," he said, pointing to the figure
+twenty-one by which the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three
+thousand; and taking up a pack he prepared to deal. Rostov
+submissively unbent the corner of his card and, instead of the six
+thousand he had intended, carefully wrote twenty-one.
+
+"It's all the same to me," he said. "I only want to see whether
+you will let me win this ten, or beat it."
+
+Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov detested at that
+moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy
+wrists, which held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.
+
+"You owe forty-three thousand, Count," said Dolokhov, and stretching
+himself he rose from the table. "One does get tired sitting so
+long," he added.
+
+"Yes, I'm tired too," said Rostov.
+
+Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for
+him to jest.
+
+"When am I to receive the money, Count?"
+
+Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room.
+
+"I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?" he said.
+
+"I say, Rostov," said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas
+straight in the eyes, "you know the saying, 'Lucky in love, unlucky at
+cards.' Your cousin is in love with you, I know."
+
+"Oh, it's terrible to feel oneself so in this man's power,"
+thought Rostov. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father
+and mother by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be
+to escape it all, and felt that Dolokhov knew that he could save him
+from all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a
+cat does with a mouse.
+
+"Your cousin..." Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted
+him.
+
+"My cousin has nothing to do with this and it's not necessary to
+mention her!" he exclaimed fiercely.
+
+"Then when am I to have it?"
+
+"Tomorrow," replied Rostov and left the room.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult,
+but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father,
+confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word
+of honor, was terrible.
+
+At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after
+returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round
+the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that
+poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household that
+winter and, now after Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed
+to have grown thicker round Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a
+thunderstorm. Sonya and Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had
+worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing
+by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera was playing chess with
+Shinshin in the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return
+of her husband and son, sat playing patience with the old
+gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and
+ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short
+fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with
+his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called "Enchantress,"
+which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit music:
+
+_1 Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre<br>
+What magic power is this recalls me still?<br>
+What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,<br>
+What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?
+
+He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with gazing with his
+sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha.
+
+"Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another verse, she
+said, without noticing Nicholas.
+
+"Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas,
+glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother
+with the old lady.
+
+"Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running up to him.
+
+"Is Papa at home?" he asked.
+
+"I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without answering him. "We
+are enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my
+sake! Did you know?"
+
+"No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya.
+
+"Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called the old
+countess from the drawing room.
+
+Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently
+at her table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the
+dancing room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to
+persuade Natasha to sing.
+
+"All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's no good making
+excuses now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla- I entweat you!"
+
+The countess glanced at her silent son.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually asked the
+same question. "Will Papa be back soon?"
+
+"I expect so."
+
+"Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it!
+Where am I to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing
+room where the clavichord stood.
+
+Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to
+Denisov's favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing.
+Denisov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.
+
+Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
+
+"Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's
+nothing to be happy about!" thought he.
+
+Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.
+
+"My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my
+brain is the only thing left me- not singing! " his thoughts ran on.
+"Go away? But where to? It's one- let them sing!"
+
+He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov and the
+girls and avoiding their eyes.
+
+"Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed on him seemed to
+ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.
+
+Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick instinct,
+had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed
+it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from
+sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself
+as young people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my
+enjoyment by sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to
+herself: "No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as
+I am."
+
+"Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle of the room,
+where she considered the resonance was best.
+
+Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as
+ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her
+toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.
+
+"Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with
+which Denisov followed her.
+
+"And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas, looking at his
+sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?"
+
+Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her
+eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her
+surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may
+produce at the same intervals hold for the same time, but which
+leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill
+you and make you weep.
+
+Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing
+seriously, mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She
+no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in her singing that
+comical, childish, painstaking effect that had been in it before;
+but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her
+said: "It is not trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be
+trained." Only they generally said this some time after she had
+finished singing. While that untrained voice, with its incorrect
+breathing and labored transitions, was sounding, even the connoisseurs
+said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished to hear it again. In
+her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her
+own powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so mingled
+with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that
+voice could be altered without spoiling it.
+
+"What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely
+opened eyes. "What has happened to her? How she is singing today!" And
+suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the
+next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided
+into three beats: "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one,
+two, three... One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three...
+One. "Oh, this senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas. "All this
+misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor- it's all
+nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest!
+Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She's taken it! Thank
+God!" And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si
+he sung a second, a third below the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did
+I really take it? How fortunate!" he thought.
+
+Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was
+finest in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from
+everything else in the world and above everything in the world.
+"What were losses, and Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All
+nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy..."
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from music as he
+did that day. But no sooner had Natasha finished her barcarolle than
+reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and
+went downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old
+count came in from his Club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing
+him drive up, went to meet him.
+
+"Well- had a good time?" said the old count, smiling gaily and
+proudly at his son.
+
+Nicholas tried to say "Yes," but could not: and he nearly burst into
+sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son's
+condition.
+
+"Ah, it can't be avoided!" thought Nicholas, for the first and
+last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him
+feel ashamed feel of himself, he said, as if merely asking his
+father to let him have the carriage to drive to town:
+
+"Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting.
+I need some money."
+
+"Dear me!" said his father, who was in a specially good humor. "I
+told you it would not be enough. How much?"
+
+"Very much," said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless
+smile, for which he was long unable to forgive himself, "I have lost a
+little, I mean a good deal, a great deal- forty three thousand."
+
+"What! To whom?... Nonsense!" cried the count, suddenly reddening
+with an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.
+
+"I promised to pay tomorrow," said Nicholas.
+
+"Well!..." said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking
+helplessly on the sofa.
+
+"It can't be helped It happens to everyone!" said the son, with a
+bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as
+a worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his
+crime. He longed to kiss his father's hands and kneel to beg his
+forgiveness, but said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it
+happens to everyone!
+
+The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son's words and
+began bustlingly searching for something.
+
+"Yes, yes," he muttered, "it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to
+raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?"
+
+And with a furtive glance at his son's face, the count went out of
+the room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at
+all expected this.
+
+"Papa! Pa-pa!" he called after him, sobbing, "forgive me!" And
+seizing his father's hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into
+tears.
+
+While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and
+daughter were having one not less important. Natasha came running to
+her mother, quite excited.
+
+"Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..."
+
+"Made what?"
+
+"Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!" she exclaimed.
+
+The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To
+whom? To this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so long ago was playing
+with dolls and who was still having lessons.
+
+"Don't, Natasha! What nonsense!" she said, hoping it was a joke.
+
+"Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact," said Natasha
+indignantly. "I come to ask you what to do, and you call it
+'nonsense!'"
+
+The countess shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"If it true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a proposal, tell
+him he is a fool, that's all!"
+
+"No, he's not a fool!" replied Natasha indignantly and seriously.
+
+"Well then, what do you want? You're all in love nowadays. Well,
+if you are in love, marry him!" said the countess, with a laugh of
+annoyance. "Good luck to you!"
+
+"No, Mamma, I'm not in love with him, I suppose I'm not in love with
+him."
+
+"Well then, tell him so."
+
+"Mamma, are you cross? Don't be cross, dear! Is it my fault?"
+
+"No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?"
+said the countess smiling.
+
+"No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It's all very
+well for you," said Natasha, with a responsive smile. "You should have
+seen how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came out
+accidently."
+
+"Well, all the same, you must refuse him."
+
+"No, I mustn't. I am so sorry for him! He's so nice."
+
+"Well then, accept his offer. It's high time for you to be married,"
+answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.
+
+"No, Mamma, but I'm so sorry for him. I don't know how I'm to say
+it."
+
+"And there's nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself,"
+said the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this
+little Natasha as grown up.
+
+"No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you'll listen
+at the door," and Natasha ran across the drawing room to the dancing
+hall, where Denisov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord
+with his face in his hands.
+
+He jumped up at the sound of her light step.
+
+"Nataly," he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, "decide my
+fate. It is in your hands."
+
+"Vasili Dmitrich, I'm so sorry for you!... No, but you are so
+nice... but it won't do...not that... but as a friend, I shall
+always love you."
+
+Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did
+not understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this
+instant, they heard the quick rustle of the countess' dress. She
+came up to them.
+
+"Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor," she said, with an
+embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denisov- "but my
+daughter is so young, and I thought that, as my son's friend, you
+would have addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would
+not have obliged me to give this refusal."
+
+"Countess..." said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He
+tried to say more, but faltered.
+
+Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She
+began to sob aloud.
+
+"Countess, I have done w'ong," Denisov went on in an unsteady voice,
+"but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I
+would give my life twice over..." He looked at the countess, and
+seeing her severe face said: "Well, good-by, Countess," and kissing
+her hand, he left the room with quick resolute strides, without
+looking at Natasha.
+
+Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He not wish to stay another day
+in Moscow. All Denisov's Moscow friends gave him a farewell
+entertainment at the gypsies', with the result that he had no
+recollection of how he was put in the sleigh or of the first three
+stages of his journey.
+
+After Denisov's departure, Rostov spent another fortnight in Moscow,
+without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could
+not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls' room.
+
+Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she
+wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her
+love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of
+her.
+
+He filled the girls' albums with verses and music, and having at
+last sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and
+received his receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking
+leave of any of his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which
+was already in Poland.
+
+BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the
+Torzhok post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster
+would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,
+he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big
+feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.
+
+"Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and
+tea?" asked his valet.
+
+Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had
+begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same
+question- one so important that he took no notice of what went on
+around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to
+Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at
+this station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it
+was a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours
+or for the rest of his life.
+
+The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling
+Torzhok embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without
+changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his
+spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could
+go on living without having solved the problems that so absorbed
+him. He had been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day
+he returned from Sokolniki after the duel and had spent that first
+agonizing, sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of the journey,
+they seized him with special force. No matter what he thought about,
+he always returned to these same questions which he could not solve
+and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the
+chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that the
+screw could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the
+same place.
+
+The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his
+excellency to wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let
+his excellency have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying
+and only wanted to get more money from the traveler.
+
+"Is this good or bad?" Pierre asked himself. "It is good for me, bad
+for another traveler, and for himself it's unavoidable, because he
+needs money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a
+thrashing for letting a private traveler have the courier horses.
+But the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as
+possible. And I," continued Pierre, "shot Dolokhov because I
+considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they
+considered him a criminal, and a year later they executed those who
+executed him- also for some reason. What is bad? What is good? What
+should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am
+I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?"
+
+There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and
+that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer
+was: "You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease
+asking." But dying was also dreadful.
+
+The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering
+her wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of
+rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered
+cloak looking timidly at me," he thought. "And what does she want
+the money for? As if that money could add a hair's breadth to
+happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me
+less a prey to evil and death?- death which ends all and must come
+today or tomorrow- at any rate, in an instant as compared with
+eternity." And again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread,
+and again it turned uselessly in the same place.
+
+His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters,
+by Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous
+struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. "And why did she resist her
+seducer when she loved him?" he thought. "God could not have put
+into her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife- as she
+once was- did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has
+been found out, nothing discovered," Pierre again said to himself.
+"All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of
+human wisdom."
+
+Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and
+repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre
+found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.
+
+"I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this
+gentleman," said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another
+traveler, also detained for lack of horses.
+
+The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old
+man, with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite
+grayish color.
+
+Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a
+bed that had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the
+newcomer, who, with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off
+his wraps with the aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With
+a pair of felt boots on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn,
+nankeen-covered, sheepskin coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa,
+leaned back his big head with its broad temples and close-cropped
+hair, and looked at Bezukhov. The stern, shrewd, and penetrating
+expression of that look struck Pierre. He felt a wish to speak to
+the stranger, but by the time he had made up his mind to ask him a
+question about the roads, the traveler had closed his eyes. His
+shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of them
+Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a
+death's head. The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as
+it seemed to Pierre, sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant
+was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache,
+evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never
+grown. This active old servant was unpacking the traveler's canteen
+and preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything
+was ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled
+a tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to
+whom he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the
+need, even the inevitability, of entering into conversation with
+this stranger.
+
+The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down,~^ with an
+unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be
+wanted.
+
+^~ To indicate he did not want more tea.
+
+"No. Give me the book," said the stranger.
+
+The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional
+work, and the traveler became absorbed in it. Pierre looked at him.
+All at once the stranger closed the book, putting in a marker, and
+again, leaning with his arms on the back of the sofa, sat in his
+former position with his eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not
+time to turn away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady
+and severe gaze straight on Pierre's face.
+
+Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but the bright
+old eyes attracted him irresistibly.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I am not
+mistaken," said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice.
+
+Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles.
+
+"I have heard of you, my dear sir, "continued the stranger, "and
+of your misfortune." He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to
+say- "Yes, misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what
+happened to you in Moscow was a misfortune."- "I regret it very
+much, my dear sir."
+
+Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed,
+bent forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile.
+
+"I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but
+for greater reasons."
+
+He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa
+by way of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt
+reluctant to enter into conversation with this old man, but,
+submitting to him involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him.
+
+"You are unhappy, my dear sir," the stranger continued. "You are
+young and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my
+power."
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Pierre, with a forced smile. "I am very grateful
+to you. Where are you traveling from?"
+
+The stranger's face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but
+in spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were
+irresistibly attractive to Pierre.
+
+"But if for reason you don't feel inclined to talk to me," said
+the old man, "say so, my dear sir." And he suddenly smiled, in an
+unexpected and tenderly paternal way.
+
+"Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to make your
+acquaintance," said Pierre. And again, glancing at the stranger's
+hands, he looked more closely at the ring, with its skull- a Masonic
+sign.
+
+"Allow me to ask," he said, "are you a Mason?"
+
+"Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons," said the
+stranger, looking deeper and deeper into Pierre's eyes. "And in
+their name and my own I hold out a brotherly hand to you."
+
+"I am afraid," said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between the
+confidence the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his
+own habit of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs- "I am afraid I am very
+far from understanding- how am I to put it?- I am afraid my way of
+looking at the world is so opposed to yours that we shall not
+understand one another."
+
+"I know your outlook," said the Mason, "and the view of life you
+mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts,
+is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit
+of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if
+I had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of
+life is a regrettable delusion."
+
+"Just as I may suppose you to be deluded," said Pierre, with a faint
+smile.
+
+"I should never dare to say that I know the truth," said the
+Mason, whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision
+and firmness. "No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying
+stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of
+generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that
+temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great
+God," he added, and closed his eyes.
+
+"I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe in God,
+said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it essential to
+speak the whole truth.
+
+The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with
+millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he,
+poor man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy.
+
+"Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir," said the Mason. "You cannot
+know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy."
+
+"Yes, yes, I am unhappy," assented Pierre. "But what am I to do?"
+
+"You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You
+do not know Him, but He is here, He is in me, He is in my words, He is
+in thee, and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just
+uttered!" pronounced the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice.
+
+He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself.
+
+"If He were not," he said quietly, "you and I would not be
+speaking of Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we speaking?
+Whom hast thou denied?" he suddenly asked with exulting austerity
+and authority in his voice. "Who invented Him, if He did not exist?
+Whence came thy conception of the existence of such an
+incomprehensible Being? didst thou, and why did the whole world,
+conceive the idea of the existence of such an incomprehensible
+Being, a Being all-powerful, eternal, and infinite in all His
+attributes?..."
+
+He stopped and remained silent for a long time.
+
+Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.
+
+"He exists, but to understand Him is hard," the Mason began again,
+looking not at Pierre but straight before him, and turning the
+leaves of his book with his old hands which from excitement he could
+not keep still. "If it were a man whose existence thou didst doubt I
+could bring him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to
+thee. But how can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence,
+His infinity, and all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts
+his eyes that he may not see or understand Him and may not see or
+understand his own vileness and sinfulness?" He paused again. "Who art
+thou? Thou dreamest that thou art wise because thou couldst utter
+those blasphemous words," he went on, with a somber and scornful
+smile. "And thou art more foolish and unreasonable than a little
+child, who, playing with the parts of a skillfully made watch, dares
+to say that, as he does not understand its use, he does not believe in
+the master who made it. To know Him is hard.... For ages, from our
+forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to attain that knowledge
+and are still infinitely far from our aim; but in our lack of
+understanding we see only our weakness and His greatness...."
+
+Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason's face
+with shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning him, but
+believing with his whole soul what the stranger said. Whether he
+accepted the wise reasoning contained in the Mason's words, or
+believed as a child believes, in the speaker's tone of conviction
+and earnestness, or the tremor of the speaker's voice- which sometimes
+almost broke- or those brilliant aged eyes grown old in this
+conviction, or the calm firmness and certainty of his vocation,
+which radiated from his whole being (and which struck Pierre
+especially by contrast with his own dejection and hopelessness)- at
+any rate, Pierre longed with his whole soul to believe and he did
+believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort, regeneration, and
+return to life.
+
+"He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life," said the
+Mason.
+
+"I do not understand," said Pierre, feeling with dismay doubts
+reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness,
+in the Mason's arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him.
+"I don't understand," he said, "how it is that the mind of man
+cannot attain the knowledge of which you speak."
+
+The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile.
+
+"The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish
+to imbibe," he said. "Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure
+vessel and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of
+myself can I retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive."
+
+"Yes, yes, that is so," said Pierre joyfully.
+
+"The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those
+worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into
+which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one.
+The highest wisdom has but one science- the science of the whole-
+the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it. To
+receive that science it is necessary to purify and renew one's inner
+self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to
+perfect one's self. And to attain this end, we have the light called
+conscience that God has implanted in our souls."
+
+"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.
+
+"Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask
+thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained
+relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich,
+you are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all
+these good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?"
+
+"No, I hate my life," Pierre muttered, wincing.
+
+"Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as thou art
+purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir. How
+have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving
+everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have
+become the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you
+done for your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of
+thousands of slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally?
+No! You have profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is
+what you have done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of
+service to your neighbor? No! You have spent your life in idleness.
+Then you married, my dear sir- took on yourself responsibility for the
+guidance of a young woman; and what have you done? You have not helped
+her to find the way of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an
+abyss of deceit and misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and
+you say you do not know God and hate your life. There is nothing
+strange in that, my dear sir!"
+
+After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse,
+again leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes.
+Pierre looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face
+and moved his lips without uttering a sound. He wished to say, "Yes, a
+vile, idle, vicious life!" but dared not break the silence.
+
+The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called
+his servant.
+
+"How about the horses?" he asked, without looking at Pierre.
+
+"The exchange horses have just come," answered the servant. "Will
+you not rest here?"
+
+"No, tell them to harness."
+
+"Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me
+all, and without promising to help me?" thought Pierre, rising with
+downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at
+the Mason. "Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a
+contemptible and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not
+want to," thought Pierre. "But this man knows the truth and, if he
+wished to, could disclose it to me."
+
+Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The
+traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began
+fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezukhov, and
+said in a tone of indifferent politeness:
+
+"Where are you going to now, my dear sir?"
+
+"I?... I'm going to Petersburg," answered Pierre, in a childlike,
+hesitating voice. "I thank you. I agree with all you have said. But do
+not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole soul I wish to be what
+you would have me be, but I have never had help from anyone.... But it
+is I, above all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me,
+and perhaps I may..."
+
+Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.
+
+The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently considering.
+
+"Help comes from God alone," he said, "but such measure of help as
+our Order can bestow it will render you, my dear sir. You are going to
+Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski" (he took out his notebook
+and wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four).
+"Allow me to give you a piece of advice. When you reach the capital,
+first of all devote some time to solitude and self-examination and
+do not resume your former way of life. And now I wish you a good
+journey, my dear sir," he added, seeing that his servant had
+entered... "and success."
+
+The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre saw from the
+postmaster's book. Bazdeev had been one of the best-known Freemasons
+and Martinists, even in Novikov's time. For a long while after he
+had gone, Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and
+down the room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous
+sense of beginning anew pictured to himself the blissful,
+irreproachable, virtuous future that seemed to him so easy. It
+seemed to him that he had been vicious only because he had somehow
+forgotten how good it is to be virtuous. Not a trace of his former
+doubts remained in his soul. He firmly believed in the possibility
+of the brotherhood of men united in the aim of supporting one
+another in the path of virtue, and that is how Freemasonry presented
+itself to him.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his
+arrival, he went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas a
+Kempis, whose book had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing
+he continually realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto
+unknown to him, of believing in the possibility of attaining
+perfection, and in the possibility of active brotherly love among men,
+which Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to him. A week after his arrival,
+the young Polish count, Willarski, whom Pierre had known slightly in
+Petersburg society, came into his room one evening in the official and
+ceremonious manner in which Dolokhov's second had called on him,
+and, having closed the door behind him and satisfied himself that
+there was nobody else in the room, addressed Pierre.
+
+"I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count," he said
+without sitting down. "A person of very high standing in our
+Brotherhood has made application for you to be received into our Order
+before the usual term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I
+consider it a sacred duty to fulfill that person's wishes. Do you wish
+to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?"
+
+The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always
+before met at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most
+brilliant women, surprised Pierre.
+
+"Yes, I do wish it," said he.
+
+Willarski bowed his head.
+
+"One more question, Count," he said, "which beg you to answer in all
+sincerity- not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you
+renounced your former convictions- do you believe in God?"
+
+Pierre considered.
+
+"Yes... yes, I believe in God," he said.
+
+"In that case..." began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him.
+
+"Yes, I do believe in God," he repeated.
+
+"In that case we can go," said Willarski. "My carriage is at your
+service."
+
+Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre's inquiries
+as to what he must do and how he should answer, Willarski only replied
+that brothers more worthy than he would test him and that Pierre had
+only to tell the truth.
+
+Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the Lodge had
+its headquarters, and having ascended a dark staircase, they entered a
+small well-lit anteroom where they took off their cloaks without the
+aid of a servant. From there they passed into another room. A man in
+strange attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him,
+said something to him in French in an undertone and then went up to
+a small wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments such as he had never
+seen before. Having taken a kerchief from the cupboard, Willarski
+bound Pierre's eyes with it and tied it in a knot behind, catching
+some hairs painfully in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed
+him, and taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in the
+knot hurt Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face and a
+shamefaced smile. His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a
+puckered, though smiling face, moved after Willarski with uncertain,
+timid steps.
+
+Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped.
+
+"Whatever happens to you," he said, "you must bear it all manfully
+if you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood." (Pierre nodded
+affirmatively.) "When you hear a knock at the door, you will uncover
+your eyes," added Willarski. "I wish you courage and success," and,
+pressing Pierre's hand, he went out.
+
+Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice he
+shrugged his and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if wishing to
+take it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent with his
+eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb, his legs
+almost gave way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He
+experienced a variety of most complex sensations. He felt afraid of
+what would happen to him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He
+felt curious to know what was going to happen and what would be
+revealed to him; but most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had
+come when he would at last start on that path of regeneration and on
+the actively virtuous life of which he had been dreaming since he
+met Joseph Alexeevich. Loud knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took
+the bandage off his eyes and glanced around him. The room was in black
+darkness, only a small lamp was burning inside something white. Pierre
+went nearer and saw that the lamp stood on a black table on which
+lay an open book. The book was the Gospel, and the white thing with
+the lamp inside was a human skull with its cavities and teeth. After
+reading the first words of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the
+Word and the Word was with God," Pierre went round the table and saw a
+large open box filled with something. It was a coffin with bones
+inside. He was not at all surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter on
+an entirely new life quite unlike the old one, he expected
+everything to be unusual, even more unusual than what he was seeing. A
+skull, a coffin, the Gospel- it seemed to him that he had expected all
+this and even more. Trying to stimulate his emotions he looked around.
+"God, death, love, the brotherhood of man," he kept saying to himself,
+associating these words with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened
+and someone came in.
+
+By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed,
+he saw rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the
+darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the
+table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.
+
+This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his
+chest and part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which
+rose a high white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit
+up from below.
+
+"For what have you come hither?" asked the newcomer, turning in
+Pierre's direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. "Why have
+you, who do not believe in the truth of the light and who have not
+seen the light, come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue,
+enlightenment?"
+
+At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre
+felt a sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his
+boyhood at confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially
+a complete stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man.
+With bated breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by
+which name the brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the
+Brotherhood was known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor
+a man he knew, Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think that the
+newcomer was an acquaintance- he wished him simply a brother and a
+virtuous instructor. For a long time he could not utter a word, so
+that the Rhetor had to repeat his question.
+
+"Yes... I... I... desire regeneration," Pierre uttered with
+difficulty.
+
+"Very well," said Smolyaninov, and went on at once: "Have you any
+idea of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach
+your aim?" said he quietly and quickly.
+
+"I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration," said Pierre,
+with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his
+excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in
+Russian.
+
+"What is your conception of Freemasonry?"
+
+"I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men
+who have virtuous aims," said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the
+inadequacy of his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he
+spoke. "I imagine..."
+
+"Good!" said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with this
+answer. "Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in religion?"
+
+"No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it," said
+Pierre, so softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him
+what he was saying. "I have been an atheist," answered Pierre.
+
+"You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in your life,
+therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not so?" said the
+Rhetor, after a moment's pause.
+
+"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.
+
+The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his
+breast, and began to speak.
+
+"Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order," he said,
+"and if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood
+with profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation
+on which it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the
+preservation and handing on to posterity of a certain important
+mystery... which has come down to us from the remotest ages, even from
+the first man- a mystery on which perhaps the fate of mankind depends.
+But since this mystery is of such a nature that nobody can know or use
+it unless he be prepared by long and diligent self-purification, not
+everyone can hope to attain it quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim,
+that of preparing our members as much as possible to reform their
+hearts, to purify and enlighten their minds, by means handed on to
+us by tradition from those who have striven to attain this mystery,
+and thereby to render them capable of receiving it.
+
+"By purifying and regenerating our members we try, thirdly, to
+improve the whole human race, offering it in our members an example of
+piety and virtue, and thereby try with all our might to combat the
+evil which sways the world. Think this over and I will come to you
+again."
+
+"To combat the evil which sways the world..." Pierre repeated, and a
+mental image of his future activity in this direction rose in his
+mind. He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and
+he addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself
+vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and
+deed, imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the
+three objects mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving
+mankind, especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery
+mentioned by the Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem
+to him essential, and the second aim, that of purifying and
+regenerating himself, did not much interest him because at that moment
+he felt with delight that he was already perfectly cured of his former
+faults and was ready for all that was good.
+
+Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of
+the seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon's
+temple, which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These
+virtues were: 1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order.
+2. Obedience to those of higher ranks in the Order. 3. Morality. 4.
+Love of mankind. 5. Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death.
+
+"In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death," the
+Rhetor said, "to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but
+as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue
+from this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense
+and peace."
+
+"Yes, that must be so," thought Pierre, when after these words the
+Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. "It must be
+so, but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which
+is only now gradually opening before me." But five of the other
+virtues which Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt
+already in his soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind,
+and especially obedience- which did not even seem to him a virtue, but
+a joy. (He now felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to
+submit his will to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot
+what the seventh virtue was and could not recall it.
+
+The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and asked Pierre
+whether he was still firm in his intention and determined to submit to
+all that would be required of him.
+
+"I am ready for everything," said Pierre.
+
+"I must also inform you," said the Rhetor, "that our Order
+delivers its teaching not in words only but also by other means, which
+may perhaps have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after
+wisdom and virtue than mere words. This chamber with what you see
+therein should already have suggested to your heart, if it is sincere,
+more than words could do. You will perhaps also see in your further
+initiation a like method of enlightenment. Our Order imitates the
+ancient societies that explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A
+hieroglyph," said the Rhetor, "is an emblem of something not
+cognizable by the senses but which possesses qualities resembling
+those of the symbol."
+
+Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared not speak. He
+listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from all he said that his
+ordeal was about to begin.
+
+"If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation," said the Rhetor
+coming closer to Pierre. "In token of generosity I ask you to give
+me all your valuables."
+
+"But I have nothing here," replied Pierre, supposing that he was
+asked to give up all he possessed.
+
+"What you have with you: watch, money, rings...."
+
+Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could not manage
+for some time to get the wedding ring off his fat finger. When that
+had been done, the Rhetor said:
+
+"In token of obedience, I ask you to undress."
+
+Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to
+the Rhetor's instructions. The Mason drew the shirt back from Pierre's
+left breast, and stooping down pulled up the left leg of his
+trousers to above the knee. Pierre hurriedly began taking off his
+right boot also and was going to tuck up the other trouser leg to save
+this stranger the trouble, but the Mason told him that was not
+necessary and gave him a slipper for his left foot. With a childlike
+smile of embarrassment, doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on
+his face against his will, Pierre stood with his arms hanging down and
+legs apart, before his brother Rhetor, and awaited his further
+commands.
+
+"And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me your chief
+passion," said the latter.
+
+"My passion! I have had so many," replied Pierre.
+
+"That passion which more than all others caused you to waver on
+the path of virtue," said the Mason.
+
+Pierre paused, seeking a reply.
+
+"Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger? Women?" He
+went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to
+give the pre-eminence.
+
+"Women," he said in a low, scarcely audible voice.
+
+The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing after this
+answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking the kerchief that
+lay on the table, again bound his eyes.
+
+"For the last time I say to you- turn all your attention upon
+yourself, put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness, not in
+passion but in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not
+without us but within...."
+
+Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing
+source of blessedness which now flooded his heart with glad emotion.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre,
+not the Rhetor but Pierre's sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized
+by his voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his
+resolution Pierre replied: "Yes, yes, I agree," and with a beaming,
+childlike smile, his fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and
+timidly in one slippered and one booted foot, he advanced, while
+Willarski held a sword to his bare chest. He was conducted from that
+room along passages that turned backwards and forwards and was at last
+brought to the doors of the Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was
+answered by the Masonic knock with mallets, the doors opened before
+them. A bass voice (Pierre was still blindfold) questioned him as to
+who he was, when and where he was born, and so on. Then he was again
+led somewhere still blindfold, and as they went along he was told
+allegories of the toils of his pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of
+the Eternal Architect of the universe, and of the courage with which
+he should endure toils and dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre
+noticed that he was spoken of now as the "Seeker," now as the
+"Sufferer," and now as the "Postulant," to the accompaniment of
+various knockings with mallets and swords. As he was being led up to
+some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty among his
+conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers and one of
+them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet. After
+that they took his right hand, placed it on something, and told him to
+hold a pair of compasses to his left breast with the other hand and to
+repeat after someone who read aloud an oath of fidelity to the laws of
+the Order. The candles were then extinguished and some spirit lighted,
+as Pierre knew by the smell, and he was told that he would now see the
+lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes and, by the faint
+light of the burning spirit, Pierre, as in a dream, saw several men
+standing before him, wearing aprons like the Rhetor's and holding
+swords in their hands pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man
+whose white shirt was stained with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved
+forward with his breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce
+it. But the swords were drawn back from him and he was at once
+blindfolded again.
+
+"Now thou hast seen the lesser light," uttered a voice. Then the
+candles were relit and he was told that he would see the full light;
+the bandage was again removed and more than ten voices said
+together: "Sic transit gloria mundi."
+
+Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the
+room and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black
+sat some twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some
+of them Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President's chair
+sat a young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from
+his neck. On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had met at
+Anna Pavlovna's two years before. There were also present a very
+distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the
+Kuragins'. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to the words
+of the President, who held a mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was
+a star-shaped light. At one side of the table was a small carpet
+with various figures worked upon it, at the other was something
+resembling an altar on which lay a Testament and a skull. Round it
+stood seven large candlesticks like those used in churches. Two of the
+brothers led Pierre up to the altar, placed his feet at right
+angles, and bade him lie down, saying that he must prostrate himself
+at the Gates of the Temple.
+
+"He must first receive the trowel," whispered one of the brothers.
+
+"Oh, hush, please!" said another.
+
+Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted eyes without
+obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his mind. "Where am I? What am I
+doing? Aren't they laughing at me? Shan't I be ashamed to remember
+this?" But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at the
+serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone
+through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast at
+his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling,
+prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the
+feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before.
+When he had lain there some time, he was told to get up, and a white
+leather apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a
+trowel and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand Master
+addressed him. He told him that he should try to do nothing to stain
+the whiteness of that apron, which symbolized strength and purity;
+then of the unexplained trowel, he told him to toil with it to cleanse
+his own heart from vice, and indulgently to smooth with it the heart
+of his neighbor. As to the first pair of gloves, a man's, he said that
+Pierre could not know their meaning but must keep them. The second
+pair of man's gloves he was to wear at the meetings, and finally of
+the third, a pair of women's gloves, he said: "Dear brother, these
+woman's gloves are intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom
+you shall honor most of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity
+of heart to her whom you select to be your worthy helpmeet in
+Masonry." And after a pause, he added: "But beware, dear brother, that
+these gloves do not deck hands that are unclean." While the Grand
+Master said these last words it seemed to Pierre that he grew
+embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still more confused, blushed like a
+child till tears came to his eyes, began looking about him uneasily,
+and an awkward pause followed.
+
+This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to
+the rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation
+of all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a
+trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows,
+and so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs
+of the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit
+down. The Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very
+long, and Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a
+state to understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the
+last words of the statutes and these remained in his mind.
+
+"In our temples we recognize no other distinctions," read the
+Grand Master, "but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any
+distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother's aid
+whoever he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that
+falleth, never bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and
+courteous. Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy
+happiness with thy neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that
+bliss. Forgive thy enemy, do not avenge thyself except by doing him
+good. Thus fulfilling the highest law thou shalt regain traces of
+the ancient dignity which thou hast lost."
+
+He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre, who, with
+tears of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not knowing how to
+answer the congratulations and greetings from acquaintances that met
+him on all sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all
+these men only brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work
+with them.
+
+The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down
+in their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the
+necessity of humility.
+
+The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be performed,
+and the distinguished dignitary who bore the title of "Collector of
+Alms" went round to all the brothers. Pierre would have liked to
+subscribe all he had, but fearing that it might look like pride
+subscribed the same amount as the others.
+
+The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre felt as if he
+had returned from a long journey on which he had spent dozens of
+years, had become completely changed, and had quite left behind his
+former habits and way of life.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was
+sitting at home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance
+of the Square, one side of which symbolized God, another moral things,
+a third physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now
+and then his attention wandered from the book and the Square and he
+formed in imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at
+the Lodge, he had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the
+Emperor and that it would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre
+proposed going to his estates in the south and there attending to
+the welfare of his serfs. He was joyfully planning this new life, when
+Prince Vasili suddenly entered the room.
+
+"My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you
+quarreled with Helene, mon cher? You are under a delusion," said
+Prince Vasili, as he entered. "I know all about it, and I can tell you
+positively that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was
+before the Jews."
+
+Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted him.
+
+"And why didn't you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I
+know all about it and understand it all," he said. "You behaved as
+becomes a man values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won't go
+into that. But consider the position in which you are placing her
+and me in the eyes of society, and even of the court," he added,
+lowering his voice. "She is living in Moscow and you are here.
+Remember, dear boy," and he drew Pierre's arm downwards, "it is simply
+a misunderstanding. I expect you feel it so yourself. Let us write her
+a letter at once, and she'll come here and all will be explained, or
+else, my dear boy, let me tell you it's quite likely you'll have to
+suffer for it."
+
+Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look.
+
+"I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a
+keen interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to
+Helene."
+
+Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasili
+did not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to
+speak in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he
+had firmly resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words
+of the Masonic statutes, "be kindly and courteous," recurred to him.
+He blinked, went red, got up and sat down again, struggling with
+himself to do what was for him the most difficult thing in life- to
+say an unpleasant thing to a man's face, to say what the other,
+whoever he might be, did not expect. He was so used to submitting to
+Prince Vasili's tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he
+would be unable to withstand it now, but he also felt that on what
+he said now his future depended- whether he would follow the same
+old road, or that new path so attractively shown him by the Masons, on
+which he firmly believed he would be reborn to a new life.
+
+"Now, dear boy," said Prince Vasili playfully, "say 'yes,' and
+I'll write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf."
+
+But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful speech, Pierre,
+without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his
+father, muttered in a whisper:
+
+"Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!" And he jumped up
+and opened the door for him.
+
+"Go!" he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of
+confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasili's face.
+
+"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"
+
+"Go!" the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili had to go
+without receiving any explanation.
+
+A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the
+Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went
+away to his estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and
+Odessa Masons and promised to write to him and guide him in his new
+activity.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and, in spite
+of the Emperor's severity regarding duels at that time, neither the
+principals nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the
+duel, confirmed by Pierre's rupture with his wife, was the talk of
+society. Pierre who had been regarded with patronizing condescension
+when he was an illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was
+the best match in Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society
+after his marriage- when the marriageable daughters and their
+mothers had nothing to hope from him- especially as he did not know
+how, and did not wish, to court society's favor. Now he alone was
+blamed for what had happened, he was said to be insanely jealous and
+subject like his father to fits of bloodthirsty rage. And when after
+Pierre's departure Helene returned to Petersburg, she was received
+by all her acquaintances not only cordially, but even with a shade
+of deference due to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her
+husband Helene assumed a dignified expression, which with
+characteristic tact she had acquired though she did not understand its
+significance. This expression suggested that she had resolved to
+endure her troubles uncomplainingly and that her husband was a cross
+laid upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his opinion more openly.
+He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was mentioned and, pointing to
+his forehead, remarked:
+
+"A bit touched- I always said so."
+
+"I said from the first," declared Anna Pavlovna referring to Pierre,
+"I said at the time and before anyone else" (she insisted on her
+priority) "that that senseless young man was spoiled by the depraved
+ideas of these days. I said so even at the time when everybody was
+in raptures about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and
+when, if you remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my
+soirees. And how has it ended? I was against this marriage even then
+and foretold all that has happened."
+
+Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of
+soirees as before- such as she alone had the gift of arranging- at
+which was to be found "the cream of really good society, the bloom
+of the intellectual essence of Petersburg," as she herself put it.
+Besides this refined selection of society Anna Pavlovna's receptions
+were also distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new
+and interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the
+state of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court
+society so dearly and distinctly indicated.
+
+Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon's
+destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstadt and the
+surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when
+our troops had already entered Prussia and our second war with
+Napoleon was beginning, Anna Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The
+"cream of really good society" consisted of the fascinating Helene,
+forsaken by her husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte
+who had just returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a
+young man referred to in that drawing room as "a man of great merit"
+(un homme de beaucoup de merite), a newly appointed maid of honor
+and her mother, and several other less noteworthy persons.
+
+The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her guests that evening
+was Boris Drubetskoy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from
+the Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.
+
+The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company
+that evening was this:
+
+"Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to
+countenance Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance
+and mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not
+cease to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say
+to the King Prussia and others: 'So much the worse for you. Tu l'as
+voulu, George Dandin,' that's all we have to say about it!"
+
+When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the
+drawing room, almost all the company had assembled, and the
+conversation, guided by Anna Pavlovna, was about our diplomatic
+relations with Austria and the hope of an alliance with her.
+
+Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and
+self-possessed, entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the
+uniform of an aide-de-camp and was duly conducted to pay his
+respects to the aunt and then brought back to the general circle.
+
+Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him
+to several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered
+description of each.
+charge d'affaires from Copenhagen- a profound intellect," and
+simply, "Mr. Shitov- a man of great merit"- this of the man usually so
+described.
+
+Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna's efforts, his own tastes, and the
+peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had managed during his
+service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a
+very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to
+Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He
+had become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which
+he had been so pleased at Olmutz and according to which an ensign
+might rank incomparably higher than a general, and according to
+which what was needed for success in the service was not effort or
+work, or courage, or perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to
+get on with those who can grant rewards, and he was himself often
+surprised at the rapidity of his success and at the inability of
+others to understand these things. In consequence of this discovery
+his whole manner of life, all his relations with old friends, all
+his plans for his future, were completely altered. He was not rich,
+but would spend his last groat to be better dressed than others, and
+would rather deprive himself of many pleasures than allow himself to
+be seen in a shabby equipage or appear in the streets of Petersburg in
+an old uniform. He made friends with and sought the acquaintance of
+only those above him in position and who could therefore be of use
+to him. He liked Petersburg and despised Moscow. The remembrance of
+the Rostovs' house and of his childish love for Natasha was unpleasant
+to him and he had not once been to see the Rostovs since the day of
+his departure for the army. To be in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room he
+considered an important step up in the service, and he at once
+understood his role, letting his hostess make use of whatever interest
+he had to offer. He himself carefully scanned each face, appraising
+the possibilities of establishing intimacy with each of those present,
+and the advantages that might accrue. He took the seat indicated to
+him beside the fair Helene and listened to the general conversation.
+
+"Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable
+that not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure
+them, and she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the
+actual phrase used by the Vienna cabinet," said the Danish charge
+d'affaires.
+
+"The doubt is flattering," said "the man of profound intellect,"
+with a subtle smile.
+
+"We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of
+Austria," said Mortemart. "The Emperor of Austria can never have
+thought of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it."
+
+"Ah, my dear vicomte," put in Anna Pavlovna, "L'Urope" (for some
+reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined
+French pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing
+with a Frenchman), "L'Urope ne sera jamais notre alliee sincere."~^
+
+^~ "Europe will never be our sincere ally."
+
+After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the
+King of Prussia, in order to draw Boris into the conversation.
+
+Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his
+turn, but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his
+neighbor, the beautiful Helene, whose eyes several times met those
+of the handsome young aide-de-camp with a smile.
+
+Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna very naturally
+asked Boris to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state
+he found the Prussian army. Boris, speaking with deliberation, told
+them in pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies
+and the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of
+his own about the facts he was recounting. For some time he
+engrossed the general attention, and Anna Pavlovna felt that the
+novelty she had served up was received with pleasure by all her
+visitors. The greatest attention of all to Boris' narrative was
+shown by Helene. She asked him several questions about his journey and
+seemed greatly interested in the state of the Prussian army. As soon
+as he had finished she turned to him with her usual smile.
+
+"You absolutely must come and see me," she said in a tone that
+implied that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this
+was absolutely necessary.
+
+"On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure."
+
+Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a
+conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him away on the
+pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.
+
+"You know her husband, of course?" said Anna Pavlovna, closing her
+eyes and indicating Helene with a sorrowful gesture. "Ah, she is
+such an unfortunate and charming woman! Don't mention him before
+her- please don't! It is too painful for her!"
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte
+had the ear of the company.
+
+Bending forward in his armchair he said: "Le Roi de Prusse!" and
+having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.
+
+"Le Roi de Prusse?" Hippolyte said interrogatively, again
+laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna
+Pavlovna waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to
+say no more she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious
+Bonaparte had stolen the sword of Frederick the Great.
+
+"It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I..." she began, but
+Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: "Le Roi de Prusse..." and
+again, as soon as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and
+said no more.
+
+Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte's friend, addressed
+him firmly.
+
+"Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?"
+
+Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing. I only wished to say..." (he wanted to repeat a
+joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that
+evening to get in) "I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight
+pour le Roi de Prusse!"
+
+Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or
+appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody
+laughed.
+
+"Your joke is too bad, it's witty but unjust," said Anna Pavlovna,
+shaking her little shriveled finger at him.
+
+"We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right
+principles. Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!" she said.
+
+The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on
+the political news. It became particularly animated toward the end
+of the evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were
+mentioned.
+
+"You know N- N- received a snuffbox with the portrait last year?"
+said "the man of profound intellect." "Why shouldn't S- S- get the
+same distinction?"
+
+"Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor's portrait is a reward but
+not a distinction," said the diplomatist- "a gift, rather."
+
+"There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg."
+
+"It's impossible," replied another.
+
+"Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter...."
+
+When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken very little all the
+evening again turned to Boris, asking him in a tone of caressing
+significant command to come to her on Tuesday.
+
+"It is of great importance to me," she said, turning with a smile
+toward Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the same sad smile
+with which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Helene's
+wish.
+
+It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that evening
+about the Prussian army, Helene had suddenly found it necessary to see
+him. She seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he
+came on Tuesday.
+
+But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene's splendid salon,
+Boris received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for
+him to come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to
+him, and only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said
+unexpectedly and in a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face:
+"Come to dinner tomorrow... in the evening. You must come.... Come!"
+
+During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate in the
+countess' house.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier.
+Everywhere one heard curses on Bonaparte, "the enemy of mankind."
+Militiamen and recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and
+from the seat of war came contradictory news, false as usual and
+therefore variously interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski,
+Prince Andrew, and Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.
+
+In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief
+then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout
+Russia. Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly
+noticeable since the time when he thought his son had been killed,
+he did not think it right to refuse a duty to which he had been
+appointed by the Emperor himself, and this fresh opportunity for
+action gave him new energy and strength. He was continually
+traveling through the three provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic
+in the fulfillment of his duties, severe to cruelty with his
+subordinates, and went into everything down to the minutest details
+himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in mathematics from
+her father, and when the old prince was at home went to his study with
+the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his grandfather called
+him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet nurse and nurse
+Savishna in the late princess' rooms and Princess Mary spent most of
+the day in the nursery, taking a mother's place to her little nephew
+as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed passionately
+fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often deprived herself to give
+her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel- as she called
+her nephew- and playing with him.
+
+Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over
+the tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble
+monument brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread
+wings ready to fly upwards. The angel's upper lip was slightly
+raised as though about to smile, and once on coming out of the
+chapel Prince Andrew and Princess Mary admitted to one another that
+the angel's face reminded them strangely of the little princess. But
+what was still stranger, though of this Prince Andrew said nothing
+to his sister, was that in the expression the sculptor had happened to
+give the angel's face, Prince Andrew read the same mild reproach he
+had read on the face of his dead wife: "Ah, why have you done this
+to me?"
+
+Soon after Prince Andrew's return the old prince made over to him
+a large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald
+Hills. Partly because of the depressing memories associated with
+Bald Hills, partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal
+to bearing with his father's peculiarities, and partly because he
+needed solitude, Prince Andrew made use of Bogucharovo, began building
+and spent most of his time there.
+
+After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved
+not to continue his military service, and when the war recommenced and
+everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the
+recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his
+son seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old
+man, roused by activity, expected the best results from the new
+campaign, while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the
+war and secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.
+
+On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.
+Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father's
+absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman
+who had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and
+letters for Prince Andrew.
+
+Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the
+letters to Princess Mary's apartments, but did not find him there.
+He was told that the prince had gone to the nursery.
+
+"If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought some
+papers," said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting
+on a child's little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he
+poured drops from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of
+water.
+
+"What is it?" he said crossly, and, his hand shaking
+unintentionally, he poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the
+mixture onto the floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought
+it.
+
+There were in the room a child's cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a
+table, a child's table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew
+was sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was
+burning on the table, screened by a bound music book so that the light
+did not fall on the cot.
+
+"My dear," said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside
+the cot where she was standing, "better wait a bit... later..."
+
+"Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things
+off- and this is what comes of it!" said Prince Andrew in an
+exasperated whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.
+
+"My dear, really... it's better not to wake him... he's asleep,"
+said the princess in a tone of entreaty.
+
+Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed,
+wineglass in hand.
+
+"Perhaps we'd really better not wake him," he said hesitating.
+
+"As you please... really... I think so... but as you please," said
+Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had
+prevailed. She drew her brother's attention to the maid who was
+calling him in a whisper.
+
+It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the
+boy who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their
+household doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town,
+they had been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by
+sleeplessness and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one
+another and reproached and disputed with each other.
+
+"Petrusha has come with papers from your father," whispered the
+maid.
+
+Prince Andrew went out.
+
+"Devil take them!" he muttered, and after listening to the verbal
+instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his
+father's letter, he returned to the nursery.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+"Still the same. Wait, for heaven's sake. Karl Ivanich always says
+that sleep is more important than anything," whispered Princess Mary
+with a sigh.
+
+Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.
+
+"Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!" He took the glass with the
+drops and again went up to the cot.
+
+"Andrew, don't!" said Princess Mary.
+
+But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his
+eyes, and stooped glass in hand over the infant.
+
+"But I wish it," he said. "I beg you- give it him!"
+
+Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively
+and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed
+hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and
+sat down on a sofa in the next room.
+
+He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them
+mechanically he began reading. The old prince, now and then using
+abbreviations, wrote in his large elongated hand on blue paper as
+follows:
+
+Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful
+news- if it's not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete
+victory over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing,
+and the rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a
+German- I congratulate him! I can't make out what the commander at
+Korchevo- a certain Khandrikov- is up to; till now the additional
+men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say
+I'll have his head off if everything is not here in a week. Have
+received another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from
+Petenka- he took part in it- and it's all true. When mischief-makers
+don't meddle even a German beats Buonaparte. He is said to be
+fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop off to Korchevo without
+delay and carry out instructions!
+
+Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It
+was a closely written letter of two sheets from Bilibin. He folded
+it up without reading it and reread his father's letter, ending with
+the words: "Gallop off to Korchevo and carry out instructions!"
+
+"No, pardon me, I won't go now till the child is better," thought
+he, going to the door and looking into the nursery.
+
+Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the
+baby.
+
+"Ah yes, and what else did he say that's unpleasant?" thought Prince
+Andrew, recalling his father's letter. "Yes, we have gained a
+victory over Bonaparte, just when I'm not serving. Yes, yes, he's
+always poking fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!" And he began reading
+Bilibin's letter which was written in French. He read without
+understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment,
+what he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of
+all else.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and
+though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms,
+he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and
+self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation
+of diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in
+Prince Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the
+bile he had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the
+army. The letter was old, having been written before the battle at
+Preussisch-Eylau.
+
+"Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz," wrote
+Bilibin, "as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I
+have certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for
+me; what I have seen during these last three months is incredible.
+
+"I begin ab ovo. 'The enemy of the human race,' as you know, attacks
+the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only
+betrayed us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but it
+turns out that 'the enemy of the human race' pays no heed to our
+fine speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the
+Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had
+begun, and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and
+installs himself in the palace at Potsdam.
+
+"'I most ardently desire,' writes the King of Prussia to
+Bonaparte, 'that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my
+palace in a manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as
+circumstances allowed, I have hastened to take all steps to that
+end. May I have succeeded!' The Prussian generals pride themselves
+on being polite to the French and lay down their arms at the first
+demand.
+
+"The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the
+King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender....
+All this is absolutely true.
+
+"In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude,
+it turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more,
+in war on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have
+everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely,
+a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success
+might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so
+young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozorovski and
+Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us,
+Suvorov-like, in a kibitka, and is received with acclamations of joy
+and triumph.
+
+"On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails
+are taken to the field marshal's room, for he likes to do everything
+himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those
+meant for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters
+addressed to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field
+marshal grows impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters
+from the Emperor to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts
+into one of his wild furies and rages at everyone and everything,
+seizes the letters, opens them, and reads those from the Emperor
+addressed to others. 'Ah! So that's the way they treat me! No
+confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep an eye on me! Very well then!
+Get along with you!' So he writes the famous order of the day to
+General Bennigsen:
+
+'I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the
+army. You have brought your army corps to Pultusk, routed: here it
+is exposed, and without fuel or forage, so something must be done,
+and, as you yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must
+think of retreating to our frontier- which do today.'
+
+"'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a
+saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite
+prevents my riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on
+the command to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden,
+having sent him my whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising
+him if there is a lack of bread, to move farther into the interior
+of Prussia, for only one day's ration of bread remains, and in some
+regiments none at all, as reported by the division commanders,
+Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all that the peasants had has been
+eaten up. I myself will remain in hospital at Ostrolenka till I
+recover. In regard to which I humbly submit my report, with the
+information that if the army remains in its present bivouac another
+fortnight there will not be a healthy man left in it by spring.
+
+"'Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is
+already in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great
+and glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most
+gracious permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play
+the part of a secretary rather than commander in the army. My
+removal from the army does not produce the slightest stir- a blind man
+has left it. There are thousands such as I in Russia.'
+
+"The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all,
+isn't it logical?
+
+"This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly
+interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal's departure it
+appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle.
+Buxhowden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen
+does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who
+are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the
+opportunity to fight a battle 'on his own hand' as the Germans say. He
+does so. This is the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great
+victory but in my opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as
+you know, have a very bad way of deciding whether a battle was won
+or lost. Those who retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say;
+and according to that it is we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In
+short, we retreat after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg
+with news of a victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive
+from Petersburg the post of commander in chief as a reward for his
+victory, does not give up the command of the army to General
+Buxhowden. During this interregnum we begin a very original and
+interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as it should
+be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to avoid General
+Buxhowden who by right of seniority should be our chief. So
+energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an
+unfordable river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our
+enemy, who at the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden. General
+Buxhowden was all but attacked and captured by a superior enemy
+force as a result of one of these maneuvers that enabled us to
+escape him. Buxhowden pursues us- we scuttle. He hardly crosses the
+river to our side before we recross to the other. At last our enemy.
+Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are angry, and the
+result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part and an epileptic fit on
+Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the courier who carried the
+news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our
+appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is
+vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. But
+as it turns out, just at that moment a third enemy rises before us-
+namely the Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat,
+biscuits, fodder, and whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads
+impassable. The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of which our last
+campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form bands and scour
+the countryside and put everything to fire and sword. The
+inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with sick,
+and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our
+headquarters, and the commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to
+disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off my empty
+portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give all
+commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much
+fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other."
+
+At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while,
+in spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust
+Bilibin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When
+he had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away.
+It was not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life
+out there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his
+eyes, rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what
+he had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly
+he thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized
+with alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he
+was reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and
+opened it.
+
+Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from
+him with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the
+cot.
+
+"My dear," he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind
+him.
+
+As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was
+seized by an unreasoning panic- it occurred to him that the child
+was dead. All that he saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror.
+
+"All is over," he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his
+forehead. He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find
+it empty and that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the
+curtain aside and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could
+not find the baby. At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about
+till he lay across the bed with his head lower than the pillow, and
+was smacking his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly.
+
+Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had
+already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught
+him, tried with his lips whether the child was still feverish. The
+soft forehead was moist. Prince Andrew touched the head with his hand;
+even the hair was wet, so profusely had the child perspired. He was
+not dead, but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent.
+Prince Andrew longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his heart,
+this helpless little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him,
+gazing at his head and at the little arms and legs which showed
+under the blanket. He heard a rustle behind him and a shadow
+appeared under the curtain of the cot. He did not look round, but
+still gazing at the infant's face listened to his regular breathing.
+The dark shadow was Princess Mary, who had come up to the cot with
+noiseless steps, lifted the curtain, and dropped it again behind
+her. Prince Andrew recognized her without looking and held out his
+hand to her. She pressed it.
+
+"He has perspired," said Prince Andrew.
+
+"I was coming to tell you so."
+
+The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his
+forehead against the pillow.
+
+Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain
+her luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy
+that were in them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him,
+slightly catching the curtain of the cot. Each made the other a
+warning gesture and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain
+as if not wishing to leave that seclusion where they three were shut
+off from all the world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away,
+ruffling his hair against the muslin of the curtain.
+
+"Yes, this is the one thing left me now," he said with a sigh.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went
+to the Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs,
+taking with him full directions which he had written down for his
+own guidance as to what he should do on his estates.
+
+When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office
+and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that
+steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs- and that till then
+they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their
+babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to
+the serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and
+hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the
+estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among
+them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the
+young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of
+money, some after their first fright were amused by Pierre's lisp
+and the new words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed
+hearing how the master talked, while the cleverest among them,
+including the chief steward, understood from this speech how they
+could best handle the master for their own ends.
+
+The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre's intentions,
+but remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go
+into the general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.
+
+Despite Count Bezukhov's enormous wealth, since he had come into
+an income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a
+year, Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him
+an allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the
+following budget:
+
+About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank,
+about 30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town
+house, and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was
+given in pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was
+sent to the countess; about 70,00 went for interest on debts. The
+building of a new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in
+each of the last two years, and he did not know how the rest, about
+100,000 rubles, was spent, and almost every year he was obliged to
+borrow. Besides this the chief steward wrote every year telling him of
+fires and bad harvests, or of the necessity of rebuilding factories
+and workshops. So the first task Pierre had to face was one for
+which he had very little aptitude or inclination- practical business.
+
+He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he
+felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these
+consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with
+them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the
+state of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the
+necessity of paying off the debts and undertaking new activities
+with serf labor, to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand,
+Pierre demanded that steps should be taken to liberate the serfs,
+which the steward met by showing the necessity of first paying off the
+loans from the Land Bank, and the consequent impossibility of a speedy
+emancipation.
+
+The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested
+selling the forests in the province of Kostroma, the land lower down
+the river, and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all
+of which operations according to him were connected with such
+complicated measures- the removal of injunctions, petitions,
+permits, and so on- that Pierre became quite bewildered and only
+replied:
+
+"Yes, yes, do so."
+
+Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled
+him to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only
+tried to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The
+steward for his part tried to pretend to the count that he
+considered these consultations very valuable for the proprietor and
+troublesome to himself.
+
+In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened
+to make his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer,
+the largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre's
+greatest weakness- the one to which he had confessed when admitted
+to the Lodge- were so strong that he could not resist them. Again
+whole days, weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a rush
+and were as much occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches,
+and balls, giving him no time for reflection, as in Petersburg.
+Instead of the new life he had hoped to lead he still lived the old
+life, only in new surroundings.
+
+Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not
+fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of
+moral life, and that of the seven virtues he lacked two- morality
+and the love of death. He consoled himself with the thought that he
+fulfilled another of the precepts- that of reforming the human race-
+and had other virtues- love of his neighbor, and especially
+generosity.
+
+In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way
+he intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his
+orders had been carried out and in what state were the serfs whom
+God had entrusted to his care and whom he intended to benefit.
+
+The chief steward, who considered the young count's attempts
+almost insane- unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the
+serfs- made some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation
+of the serfs as impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large
+buildings- schools, hospitals, and asylums- on all the estates
+before the master arrived. Everywhere preparations were made not for
+ceremonious welcomes (which he knew Pierre would not like), but for
+just such gratefully religious ones, with offerings of icons and the
+bread and salt of hospitality, as, according to his understanding of
+his master, would touch and delude him.
+
+The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna
+carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on
+Pierre. The estates he had not before visited were each more
+picturesque than the other; the serfs everywhere seemed thriving and
+touchingly grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere
+were receptions, which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a
+joyful feeling in the depth of his heart. In one place the peasants
+presented him with bread and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint
+Paul, asking permission, as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits
+he had conferred on them, to build a new chantry to the church at
+their own expense in honor of Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In
+another place the women with infants in arms met him to thank him
+for releasing them from hard work. On a third estate the priest,
+bearing a cross, came to meet him surrounded by children whom, by
+the count's generosity, he was instructing in reading, writing, and
+religion. On all his estates Pierre saw with his own eyes brick
+buildings erected or in course of erection, all on one plan, for
+hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were soon to be opened.
+Everywhere he saw the stewards' accounts, according to which the
+serfs' manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the touching
+thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue coats.
+
+What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him
+with bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter
+and Paul was a market village where a fair was held on St. Peter's
+day, and that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had
+begun the chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in
+that villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did not know
+that since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his
+land, they did still harder work on their own land. He did not know
+that the priest who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by
+his exactions, and that the pupils' parents wept at having to let
+him take their children and secured their release by heavy payments.
+He did not know that the brick buildings, built to plan, were being
+built by serfs whose manorial labor was thus increased, though
+lessened on paper. He did not know that where the steward had shown
+him in the accounts that the serfs' payments had been diminished by
+a third, their obligatory manorial work had been increased by a
+half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit to his estates and
+quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which he had left
+Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic letters to his "brother-instructor"
+as he called the Grand Master.
+
+"How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,"
+thought Pierre, "and how little attention we pay to it!"
+
+He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at
+receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do
+for these simple, kindly people.
+
+The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly
+through the naive and intelligent count and played with him as with
+a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre,
+pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above
+all the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it
+was.
+
+Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be
+difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would
+happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though
+reluctantly, on what he thought right. The steward promised to do
+all in his power to carry out the count's wishes, seeing clearly
+that not only would the count never be able to find out whether all
+measures had been taken for the sale of the land and forests and to
+release them from the Land Bank, but would probably never even inquire
+and would never know that the newly erected buildings were standing
+empty and that the serfs continued to give in money and work all
+that other people's serfs gave- that is to say, all that could be
+got out of them.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest
+state of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of
+visiting his friend Bolkonski, whom he had not seen for two years.
+
+Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among
+fields and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The
+house lay behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and
+with banks still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that
+stretched along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which
+were a few fir trees.
+
+The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables,
+a bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular facade
+still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly
+laid out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps
+and a water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were
+straight, the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore
+an impress of tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre
+met, in reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a
+small newly built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man who had looked
+after Prince Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage,
+said that the prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little
+anteroom.
+
+Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house
+after the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend
+in Petersburg.
+
+He quickly entered the small reception room with its
+still-unplastered wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone
+farther, but Anton ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.
+
+"Well, what is it?" came a sharp, unpleasant voice.
+
+"A visitor," answered Anton.
+
+"Ask him to wait," and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed
+back.
+
+Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to
+face with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre
+embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek
+and looked at him closely.
+
+"Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad," said Prince Andrew.
+
+Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with
+surprise. He was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly
+and there was a smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and
+lifeless and in spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give
+them a joyous and glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner,
+paler, and more manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre
+till he got used to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow
+indicating prolonged concentration on some one thought.
+
+As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged
+separation, it was long before their conversation could settle on
+anything. They put questions and gave brief replies about things
+they knew ought to be talked over at length. At last the
+conversation gradually settled on some of the topics at first
+lightly touched on: their past life, plans for the future, Pierre's
+journeys and occupations, the war, and so on. The preoccupation and
+despondency which Pierre had noticed in his friend's look was now
+still more clearly expressed in the smile with which he listened to
+Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful animation of the past
+or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would have liked to
+sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The latter
+began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms,
+dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince Andrew's
+presence. He was ashamed to express his new Masonic views, which had
+been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour. He
+checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible
+desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a
+quite different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.
+
+"I can't tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly
+know myself again."
+
+"Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then," said Prince
+Andrew.
+
+"Well, and you? What are your plans?"
+
+"Plans!" repeated Prince Andrew ironically. "My plans?" he said,
+as if astonished at the word. "Well, you see, I'm building. I mean
+to settle here altogether next year...."
+
+Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew's face,
+which had grown much older.
+
+"No, I meant to ask..." Pierre began, but Prince Andrew
+interrupted him.
+
+"But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your
+travels and all you have been doing on your estates."
+
+Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as
+far as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had
+been made. Prince Andrew several times prompted Pierre's story of what
+he had been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he
+listened not only without interest but even as if ashamed of what
+Pierre was telling him.
+
+Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend's company
+and at last became silent.
+
+"I'll tell you what, my dear fellow," said Prince Andrew, who
+evidently also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, "I
+am only bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am
+going back to my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of
+course you know her already," he said, evidently trying to entertain a
+visitor with whom he now found nothing in common. "We will go after
+dinner. And would you now like to look round my place?"
+
+They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the
+political news and common acquaintances like people who do not know
+each other intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and
+interest only of the new homestead he was constructing and its
+buildings, but even here, while on the scaffolding, in the midst of
+a talk explaining the future arrangements of the house, he interrupted
+himself:
+
+"However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and
+then we'll set off."
+
+At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre's marriage.
+
+"I was very much surprised when I heard of it," said Prince Andrew.
+
+Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said
+hurriedly: "I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you
+know it is all over, and forever."
+
+"Forever?" said Prince Andrew. "Nothing's forever."
+
+"But you know how it all ended, don't you? You heard of the duel?"
+
+"And so you had to go through that too!"
+
+"One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man," said
+Pierre.
+
+"Why so?" asked Prince Andrew. "To kill a vicious dog is a very good
+thing really."
+
+"No, to kill a man is bad- wrong."
+
+"Why is it wrong?" urged Prince Andrew. "It is not given to man to
+know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will
+err, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong."
+
+"What does harm to another is wrong," said Pierre, feeling with
+pleasure that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was
+roused, had begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought
+him to his present state.
+
+"And who has told you what is bad for another man?" he asked.
+
+"Bad! Bad!" exclaimed Pierre. "We all know what is bad for
+ourselves."
+
+"Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is
+something I cannot inflict on others," said Prince Andrew, growing
+more and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new
+outlook to Pierre. He spoke in French. "I only know two very real
+evils in life: remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of
+those evils. To live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole
+philosophy now."
+
+"And love of one's neighbor, and self-sacrifice?" began Pierre. "No,
+I can't agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and not to
+have to repent is not enough. I lived like that, I lived for myself
+and ruined my life. And only now when I am living, or at least trying"
+(Pierre's modesty made him correct himself) "to live for others,
+only now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I shall
+not agree with you, and you do not really believe what you are
+saying." Prince Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile.
+
+"When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you'll get on with her,"
+he said. "Perhaps you are right for yourself," he added after a
+short pause, "but everyone lives in his own way. You lived for
+yourself and say you nearly ruined your life and only found
+happiness when you began living for others. I experienced just the
+reverse. I lived for glory.- And after all what is glory? The same
+love of others, a desire to do something for them, a desire for
+their approval.- So I lived for others, and not almost, but quite,
+ruined my life. And I have become calmer since I began to live only
+for myself."
+
+"But what do you mean by living only for yourself?" asked Pierre,
+growing excited. "What about your son, your sister, and your father?"
+
+"But that's just the same as myself- they are not others," explained
+Prince Andrew. "The others, one's neighbors, le prochain, as you and
+Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and evil.
+Le prochain- your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good."
+
+And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He
+evidently wished to draw him on.
+
+"You are joking," replied Pierre, growing more and more excited.
+"What error or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even
+doing a little- though I did very little and did it very badly? What
+evil can there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people
+like ourselves, were growing up and dying with no idea of God and
+truth beyond ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed
+in a comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and
+consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying
+of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be
+rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum
+for the aged? And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a
+peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give
+them rest and leisure?" said Pierre, hurrying and lisping. "And I have
+done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have done
+something toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a
+good action, and more than that, you can't make me believe that you do
+not think so yourself. And the main thing is," he continued, "that I
+know, and know for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is
+the only sure happiness in life."
+
+"Yes, if you put it like that it's quite a different matter," said
+Prince Andrew. "I build a house and lay out a garden, and you build
+hospitals. The one and the other may serve as a pastime. But what's
+right and what's good must be judged by one who knows all, but not
+by us. Well, you want an argument," he added, come on then."
+
+They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which
+served as a veranda.
+
+"Come, let's argue then," said Prince Andrew, "You talk of schools,"
+he went on, crooking a finger, "education and so forth; that is, you
+want to raise him" (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking
+off his cap) "from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual
+needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only
+happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him
+of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him
+my means. Then you say, 'lighten his toil.' But as I see it,
+physical labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his
+existence, as mental activity is to you or me. You can't help
+thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning, thoughts come and I
+can't sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can't help
+thinking, just as he can't help plowing and mowing; if he didn't, he
+would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand
+his terrible physical labor but should die of it in a week, so he
+could not stand my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die.
+The third thing- what else was it you talked about?" and Prince Andrew
+crooked a third finger. "Ah, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit,
+he is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him up. He will drag
+about as a cripple, a burden to everybody, for another ten years. It
+would be far easier and simpler for him to die. Others are being
+born and there are plenty of them as it is. It would be different if
+you grudged losing a laborer- that's how I regard him- but you want to
+cure him from love of him. And he does not want that. And besides,
+what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone! Killed them, yes!" said
+he, frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre.
+
+Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that
+it was evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he
+spoke readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long
+time. His glance became more animated as his conclusions became more
+hopeless.
+
+"Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!" said Pierre. "I don't understand
+how one can live with such ideas. I had such moments myself not long
+ago, in Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I collapsed so
+that I don't live at all- everything seems hateful to me... myself
+
+most of all. Then I don't eat, don't wash... and how is it with
+you?..."
+
+"Why not wash? That is not cleanly," said Prince Andrew; "on the
+contrary one must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible.
+I'm alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best
+I can without hurting others."
+
+"But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would
+sit without moving, undertaking nothing...."
+
+"Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do
+nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me
+the honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to
+get out of it. They could not understand that I have not the necessary
+qualifications for it- the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness
+necessary for the position. Then there's this house, which must be
+built in order to have a nook of one's own in which to be quiet. And
+now there's this recruiting."
+
+"Why aren't you serving in the army?"
+
+"After Austerlitz!" said Prince Andrew gloomily. "No, thank you very
+much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active
+Russian army. And I won't- not even if Bonaparte were here at Smolensk
+threatening Bald Hills- even then I wouldn't serve in the Russian
+army! Well, as I was saying," he continued, recovering his
+composure, "now there's this recruiting. My father is chief in command
+of the Third District, and my only way of avoiding active service is
+to serve under him."
+
+"Then you are serving?"
+
+"I am."
+
+He paused a little while.
+
+"And why do you serve?"
+
+"Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men
+of his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he
+has too energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited
+power that he is terrible, and now he has this authority of a
+commander in chief of the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had
+been two hours late a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster's
+clerk at Yukhnovna hanged," said Prince Andrew with a smile. "So I
+am serving because I alone have any influence with my father, and
+now and then can save him from actions which would torment him
+afterwards."
+
+"Well, there you see!"
+
+"Yes, but it is not as you imagine," Prince Andrew continued. "I did
+not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk who
+had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been
+very glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father- that again
+is for myself."
+
+Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered
+feverishly while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there
+was no desire to do good to his neighbor.
+
+"There now, you wish to liberate your serfs," he continued; "that is
+a very good thing, but not for you- I don't suppose you ever had
+anyone flogged or sent to Siberia- and still less for your serfs. If
+they are beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don't suppose they are
+any the worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and
+the stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it
+is a good thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon
+themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being
+able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people
+I pity, and for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You
+may not have seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those
+traditions of unlimited power, in time when they grow more
+irritable, become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot
+restrain themselves and grow more and more miserable."
+
+Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking
+that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his
+father's case.
+
+He did not reply.
+
+"So that's what I'm sorry for- human dignity, peace of mind, purity,
+and not the serfs' backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave as you
+may, always remain the same backs and foreheads."
+
+"No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you," said
+Pierre.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and
+drove to Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the
+silence now and then with remarks which showed that he was in a good
+temper.
+
+Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making
+in his husbandry.
+
+Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and
+apparently immersed in his own thoughts.
+
+He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did
+not see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid,
+enlighten, and raise him. But as soon as he thought of what he
+should say, he felt that Prince Andrew with one word, one argument,
+would upset all his teaching, and he shrank from beginning, afraid
+of exposing to possible ridicule what to him was precious and sacred.
+
+"No, but why do you think so?" Pierre suddenly began, lowering his
+head and looking like a bull about to charge, "why do you think so?
+You should not think so."
+
+"Think? What about?" asked Prince Andrew with surprise.
+
+"About life, about man's destiny. It can't be so. I myself thought
+like that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don't
+smile. Freemasonry is not a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought it
+was: Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal,
+aspects of humanity."
+
+And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince
+Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed
+from the bonds of State and Church, a teaching of equality,
+brotherhood, and love.
+
+"Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the
+rest is a dream," said Pierre. "Understand, my dear fellow, that
+outside this union all is filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree
+with you that nothing is left for an intelligent and good man but to
+live out his life, like you, merely trying not to harm others. But
+make our fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood,
+give yourself up to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once
+feel yourself, as I have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible
+chain the beginning of which is hidden in heaven," said Pierre.
+
+Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence
+to Pierre's words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels
+prevented his catching what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it,
+and by the peculiar glow that came into Prince Andrew's eyes and by
+his silence, Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and that
+Prince Andrew would not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.
+
+They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they
+had to cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed
+on it, they also stepped on the raft.
+
+Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed
+silently at the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.
+
+"Well, what do you think about it?" Pierre asked. "Why are you
+silent?"
+
+"What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It's all very
+well.... You say: join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of
+life, the destiny of man, and the laws which govern the world. But who
+are we? Men. How is it you know everything? Why do I alone not see
+what you see? You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I
+don't see it."
+
+Pierre interrupted him.
+
+"Do you believe in a future life?" he asked.
+
+"A future life?" Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no
+time to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as
+he knew Prince Andrew's former atheistic convictions.
+
+"You say you can't see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor
+could I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the
+end of everything. On earth, here on this earth" (Pierre pointed to
+the fields), "there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the
+universe, in the whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we
+who are now the children of earth are- eternally- children of the
+whole universe. Don't I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast
+harmonious whole? Don't I feel that I form one link, one step, between
+the lower and higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of
+beings in whom the Deity- the Supreme Power if you prefer the term- is
+manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to
+man, why should I suppose it breaks off at me and does not go
+farther and farther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since nothing
+vanishes in this world, but that I shall always exist and always
+have existed. I feel that beyond me and above me there are spirits,
+and that in this world there is truth."
+
+"Yes, that is Herder's theory," said Prince Andrew, "but it is not
+that which can convince me, dear friend- life and death are what
+convince. What convinces is when one sees a being dear to one, bound
+up with one's own life, before whom one was to blame and had hoped
+to make it right" (Prince Andrew's voice trembled and he turned away),
+"and suddenly that being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to
+exist.... Why? It cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe
+there is.... That's what convinces, that is what has convinced me,"
+said Prince Andrew.
+
+"Yes, yes, of course," said Pierre, "isn't that what I'm saying?"
+
+"No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the
+necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with
+someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere,
+and you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have
+looked in...."
+
+"Well, that's it then! You know that there is a there and there is a
+Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is- God."
+
+Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long
+since been taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The
+sun had sunk half below the horizon and an evening frost was
+starring the puddles near the ferry, but Pierre and Andrew, to the
+astonishment of the footmen, coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on
+the raft and talked.
+
+"If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and
+man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must
+live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on
+this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live forever, there,
+in the Whole," said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.
+
+Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening
+to Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of
+the sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was perfect stillness.
+Pierre became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the
+waves of the current beat softly against it below. Prince Andrew
+felt as if the sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre's words,
+whispering:
+
+"It is true, believe it."
+
+He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at
+Pierre's face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his
+superior friend.
+
+"Yes, if it only were so!" said Prince Andrew. "However, it is
+time to get on," he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at
+the sky to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since
+Austerlitz saw that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on
+that battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering,
+something that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and
+youthful, in his soul. It vanished as soon as he returned to the
+customary conditions of his life, but he knew that this feeling
+which he did not know how to develop existed within him. His meeting
+with Pierre formed an epoch in Prince Andrew's life. Though
+outwardly he continued to live in the same old way, inwardly he
+began a new life.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the
+front entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the
+house, Prince Andrew with asmile drew Pierre's attention to a
+commotion going on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a
+wallet on her back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black
+garment had rushed back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up.
+Two women ran out after them, and all four, looking round at the
+carriage, ran in dismay up the steps of the back porch.
+
+"Those are Mary's 'God's folk,'" said Prince Andrew. "They have
+mistaken us for my father. This is the one matter in which she
+disobeys him. He orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she
+receives them."
+
+"But what are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.
+
+Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet
+them, and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was
+expected back soon.
+
+The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any
+minute.
+
+Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always
+kept in perfect order and readiness for him in his father's house;
+he himself went to the nursery.
+
+"Let us go and see my sister," he said to Pierre when he returned.
+"I have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her
+'God's folk.' It will serve her right, she will be confused, but you
+will see her 'God's folk.' It's really very curious."
+
+"What are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.
+
+"Come, and you'll see for yourself."
+
+Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her
+face when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before
+the icon stand, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing
+a monk's cassock, sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near
+them, in an armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek
+expression on her childlike face.
+
+"Andrew, why didn't you warn me?" said the princess, with mild
+reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her
+chickens.
+
+"Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous voir,"~^ she
+said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child,
+and now his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife,
+and above all his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward
+him. She looked at him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to
+say, "I like you very much, but please don't laugh at my people."
+After exchanging the first greetings, they sat down.
+
+^~ "Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you."
+
+"Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!" said Prince Andrew, glancing with a
+smile at the young pilgrim.
+
+"Andrew!" said Princess Mary, imploringly. "Il faut que vous sachiez
+que c'est une femme,"~^ said Prince Andrew to Pierre.
+
+"Andrew, au nom de Dieu!"~^ Princess Mary repeated.
+
+^~ "You must know that this is a woman."
+
+^~ "For heaven's sake."
+
+It was evident that Prince Andrew's ironical tone toward the
+pilgrims and Princess Mary's helpless attempts to protect them were
+their customary long-established relations on the matter.
+
+"Mais, ma bonne amie," said Prince Andrew, "vous devriez au
+contraire m'etre reconnaissante de ce que j'explique a Pierre votre
+intimite avec ce jeune homme."~^
+
+^~ "But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to me for
+explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young man."
+
+"Really?" said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and
+seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him)
+into Ivanushka's face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about,
+looked round at them all with crafty eyes.
+
+Princess Mary's embarrassment on her people's account was quite
+unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman,
+lowering her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had
+turned her cup upside down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside
+it, and sat quietly in her armchair, though hoping to be offered
+another cup of tea. Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked
+with sly womanish eyes from under her brows at the young men.
+
+"Where have you been? To Kiev?" Prince Andrew asked the old woman.
+
+"I have, good sir," she answered garrulously. "Just at Christmastime
+I was deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly sacrament at
+the shrine of the saint. And now I'm from Kolyazin, master, where a
+great and wonderful blessing has been revealed."
+
+"And was Ivanushka with you?"
+
+"I go by myself, benefactor," said Ivanushka, trying to speak in a
+bass voice. "I only came across Pelageya in Yukhnovo..."
+
+Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell
+what she had seen.
+
+"In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed."
+
+"What is it? Some new relics?" asked Prince Andrew.
+
+"Andrew, do leave off," said Princess Mary. "Don't tell him,
+Pelageya."
+
+"No... why not, my dear, why shouldn't I? I like him. He is kind, he
+is one of God's chosen, he's a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles,
+I remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he's one of
+God's own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, 'Why are
+you not going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a
+wonder-working icon of the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.' On
+hearing those words I said good-by to the holy folk and went."
+
+All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones,
+drawing in her breath.
+
+"So I come, master, and the people say to me: 'A great blessing
+has been revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed
+Mother, the Holy Virgin Mother of God'...."
+
+"All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards," said Princess
+Mary, flushing.
+
+"Let me ask her," said Pierre. "Did you see it yourselves?" he
+inquired.
+
+"Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the
+face like the light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother's cheek
+it drops and drops...."
+
+"But, dear me, that must be a fraud!" said Pierre, naively, who
+had listened attentively to the pilgrim.
+
+"Oh, master, what are you saying?" exclaimed the horrified Pelageya,
+turning to Princess Mary for support.
+
+"They impose on the people," he repeated.
+
+"Lord Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing
+herself. "Oh, don't speak so, master! There was a general who did
+not believe, and said, 'The monks cheat,' and as soon as he'd said
+it he went blind. And he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the
+Kiev catacombs came to him and said, 'Believe in me and I will make
+you whole.' So he begged: 'Take me to her, take me to her.' It's the
+real truth I'm telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought,
+quite blind, straight to her, and he goes up to her and falls down and
+says, 'Make me whole,' says he, 'and I'll give thee what the Tsar
+bestowed on me.' I saw it myself, master, the star is fixed into the
+icon. Well, and what do you think? He received his sight! It's a sin
+to speak so. God will punish you," she said admonishingly, turning
+to Pierre.
+
+"How did the star get into the icon?" Pierre asked.
+
+"And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?" said
+Prince Andrew, with a smile.
+
+Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands.
+
+"Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!" she began,
+her pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. "Master, what have you
+said? God forgive you!" And she crossed herself. "Lord forgive him! My
+dear, what does it mean?..." she asked, turning to Princess Mary.
+She got up and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She
+evidently felt frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a
+house where such things could be said, and was at the same time
+sorry to have now to forgo the charity of this house.
+
+"Now, why need you do it?" said Princess Mary. "Why did you come
+to me?..."
+
+"Come, Pelageya, I was joking," said Pierre. "Princesse, ma
+parole, je n'ai pas voulu l'offenser.~^ I did not mean anything, I
+was only joking," he said, smiling shyly and trying to efface his
+offense. "It was all my fault, and Andrew was only joking."
+
+^~ "Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her."
+
+Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre's face there was such a
+look of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now
+at her and now at Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a
+long account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his
+hands smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks
+she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking
+some dried bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with
+the saints. "I'd pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to
+another. I'd sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and
+there was such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don't want
+to come out, even into the light of heaven again."
+
+Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince Andrew went
+out of the room, and then, leaving "God's folk" to finish their tea,
+Princess Mary took Pierre into the drawing room.
+
+"You are very kind," she said to him.
+
+"Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them
+so well and have the greatest respect for them."
+
+Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately.
+
+"I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of you as
+of a brother," she said. "How do you find Andrew?" she added
+hurriedly, not giving him time to reply to her affectionate words.
+"I am very anxious about him. His health was better in the winter, but
+last spring his wound reopened and the doctor said he ought to go away
+for a cure. And I am also very much afraid for him spiritually. He has
+not a character like us women who, when we suffer, can weep away our
+sorrows. He keeps it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in
+good spirits, but that is the effect of your visit- he is not often
+like that. If you could persuade him to go abroad. He needs
+activity, and this quiet regular life is very bad for him. Others
+don't notice it, but I see it."
+
+Toward ten o'clock the men servants rushed to the front door,
+hearing the bells of the old prince's carriage approaching. Prince
+Andrew and Pierre also went out into the porch.
+
+"Who's that?" asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he got out
+of, the carriage.
+
+"Ah! Very glad! Kiss me," he said, having learned who the young
+stranger was.
+
+The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious to Pierre.
+
+Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father's study,
+found him disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining
+that a time would come when there would be no more wars. The old
+prince disputed it chaffingly, but without getting angry.
+
+"Drain the blood from men's veins and put in water instead, then
+there will be no more war! Old women's nonsense- old women's
+nonsense!" he repeated, but still he patted Pierre affectionately on
+the shoulder, and then went up to the table where Prince Andrew,
+evidently not wishing to join in the conversation, was looking over
+the papers his father had brought from town. The old prince went up to
+him and began to talk business.
+
+"The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn't sent half his contingent. He
+came to town and wanted to invite me to dinner- I gave him a pretty
+dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well, my boy," the old prince
+went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. "A
+fine fellow- your friend- I like him! He stirs me up. Another says
+clever things and one doesn't care to listen, but this one talks
+rubbish yet stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps
+I'll come and sit with you at supper. We'll have another dispute. Make
+friends with my little fool, Princess Mary," he shouted after
+Pierre, through the door.
+
+Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the
+strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm
+was not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his
+family and with the household. With the stern old prince and the
+gentle, timid Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre
+at once felt like an old friend. They were all fond of him already.
+Not only Princess Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the
+pilgrims, gave him her most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old
+"Prince Nicholas" (as his grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and
+let himself be taken in his arms, and Michael Ivanovich and
+Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at him with pleasant smiles when he
+talked to the old prince.
+
+The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre's
+account. And during the two days of the young man's visit he was
+extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again.
+
+When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met
+together, they began to express their opinions of him as people always
+do after a new acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one
+said anything but what was good of him.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first time,
+how close was the bond that united him to Denisov and and the whole
+regiment.
+
+On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when approaching his
+home in Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned
+uniform of his regiment, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and
+saw the picket ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully
+shouted to his master, "The count has come!" and Denisov, who had been
+asleep on his bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace
+him, and the officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostov
+experienced the same feeling his mother, his father, and his sister
+had embraced him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could not
+speak. The regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and
+precious as his parents' house.
+
+When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and
+had been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had
+gone out foraging, when he had again entered into all the little
+interests of the regiment and felt himself deprived of liberty and
+bound in one narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense
+of peace, of moral support, and the same sense being at home here in
+his own place, as he had felt under the parental roof. But here was
+none of all that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not
+know his right place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya
+with whom he ought, or ought not, to have an explanation; here was
+no possibility of going there or not going there; here there were
+not twenty-four hours in the day which could be spent in such a
+variety of ways; there was not that innumerable crowd of people of
+whom not one was nearer to him or farther from him than another; there
+were none of those uncertain and undefined money relations with his
+father, and nothing to recall that terrible loss to Dolokhov. Here, in
+the regiment, all was clear and simple. The whole world was divided
+into two unequal parts: one, our Pavlograd regiment; the other, all
+the rest. And the rest was no concern of his. In the regiment,
+everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who captain, who was a
+good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was a comrade. The
+canteenkeeper gave one credit, one's pay came every four months, there
+was nothing to think out or decide, you had only to do nothing that
+was considered bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when given an order,
+to do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely ordered- and all
+would be well.
+
+Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this
+regimental life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on
+lying down to rest. Life in the regiment, during this campaign, was
+all the pleasanter for him, because, after his loss to Dolokhov (for
+which, in spite of all his family's efforts to console him, he could
+not forgive himself), he had made up his mind to atone for his fault
+by serving, not as he had done before, but really well, and by being a
+perfectly first-rate comrade and officer- in a word, a splendid man
+altogether, a thing which seemed so difficult out in the world, but so
+possible in the regiment.
+
+After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his
+parents in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now
+resolved to take only two thousand and leave the rest to repay the
+debt to his parents.
+
+Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at
+Pultusk and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It
+was awaiting the Emperor's arrival and the beginning of a new
+campaign.
+
+The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had
+served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in
+Russia, and arrived too late to take part in the first actions of
+the campaign. It had been neither at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau
+and, when it joined the army in the field in the second half of the
+campaign, was attached to Platov's division.
+
+Platov's division was acting independently of the main army. Several
+times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the
+enemy, had taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal
+Oudinot's carriages. In April the Pavlograds were stationed
+immovably for some weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German
+village.
+
+A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river
+broke, and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions
+for the men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no
+transports could arrive, the men dispersed about the abandoned and
+deserted villages, searching for potatoes, but found few even of
+these.
+
+Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled- if
+any remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be
+taken from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead
+of taking anything from them, often gave them the last of their
+rations.
+
+The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but
+had lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the
+hospitals, death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or
+the swelling that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and
+hardly able to drag their legs went to the front rather than to the
+hospitals. When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just
+showing out of the ground that looked like asparagus, which, for
+some reason, they called "Mashka's sweet root." It was very bitter,
+but they wandered about the fields seeking it and dug it out with
+their sabers and ate it, though they were ordered not to do so, as
+it was a noxious plant. That spring a new disease broke out broke
+out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs, and face,
+which the doctors attributed to eating this root. But in spite of
+all this, the soldiers of Denisov's squadron fed chiefly on
+"Mashka's sweet root," because it was the second week that the last of
+the biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a pound a man
+and the last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.
+
+The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the
+thatched roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with
+tufts of felty winter hair.
+
+Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living
+just as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms,
+the hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed
+their horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the
+thatched roofs in place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the
+caldrons from which they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food
+and their hunger. As usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires,
+steamed themselves before them naked; smoked, picked out and baked
+sprouting rotten potatoes, told and listened to stories of
+Potemkin's and Suvorov's campaigns, or to legends of Alesha the Sly,
+or the priest's laborer Mikolka.
+
+The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless,
+half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes
+and, in general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied
+themselves as before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money,
+though there was no food), some with more innocent games, such as
+quoits and skittles. The general trend of the campaign was rarely
+spoken of, partly because nothing certain was known about it, partly
+because there was a vague feeling that in the main it was going badly.
+
+Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their furlough they
+had become more friendly than ever. Denisov never spoke of Rostov's
+family, but by the tender friendship his commander showed him,
+Rostov felt that the elder hussar's luckless love for Natasha played a
+part in strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried to
+expose Rostov to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action
+greeted his safe return with evident joy. On one of his foraging
+expeditions, in a deserted and ruined village to which he had come
+in search of provisions, Rostov found a family consisting of an old
+Pole and his daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad,
+hungry, too weak to get away on foot and had no means of obtaining a
+conveyance. Rostov brought them to his quarters, placed them in his
+own lodging, and kept them for some weeks while the old man was
+recovering. One of his comrades, talking of women, began chaffing
+Rostov, saying that he was more wily than any of them and that it
+would not be a bad thing if he introduced to them the pretty Polish
+girl he had saved. Rostov took the joke as an insult, flared up, and
+said such unpleasant things to the officer that it was all Denisov
+could do to prevent a duel. When the officer had gone away, Denisov,
+who did not himself know what Rostov's relations with the Polish
+girl might be, began to upbraid him for his quickness of temper, and
+Rostov replied:
+
+"Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can't
+tell you how it offended me... because... well, for that reason...."
+
+Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room
+without looking at Rostov, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.
+
+"Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!" he muttered, and Rostov
+noticed tears in his eyes.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor's arrival,
+but Rostov had no chance of being present at the review he held at
+Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that
+place.
+
+They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were living in an earth
+hut, dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and
+turf. The hut was made in the following manner, which had then come
+into vogue. A trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet
+eight inches deep, and eight feet long. At one end of the trench,
+steps were cut out and these formed the entrance and vestibule. The
+trench itself was the room, in which the lucky ones, such as the
+squadron commander, had a board, lying on piles at the end opposite
+the entrance, to serve as a table. On each side of the trench, the
+earth was cut out to a breadth of about two and a half feet, and
+this did duty for bedsteads and couches. The roof was so constructed
+that one could stand up in the middle of the trench and could even sit
+up on the beds if one drew close to the table. Denisov, who was living
+luxuriously because the soldiers of his squadron liked him, had also a
+board in the roof at the farther end, with a piece of (broken but
+mended) glass in it for a window. When it was very cold, embers from
+the soldiers' campfire were placed on a bent sheet of iron on the
+steps in the "reception room"- as Denisov called that part of the hut-
+and it was then so warm that the officers, of whom there were always
+some with Denisov and Rostov, sat in their shirt sleeves.
+
+In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and
+eight, returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers,
+changed his rain-soaked underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got
+warm, then tidied up the things on the table and in his own corner,
+and, his face glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on
+but his shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under his
+head. He was pleasantly considering the probability of being
+promoted in a few days for his last reconnoitering expedition, and was
+awaiting Denisov, who had gone out somewhere and with whom he wanted a
+talk.
+
+Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the
+hut, evidently much excited. Rostov moved to the window to see whom he
+was speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topcheenko.
+
+"I ordered you not to let them that Mashka woot stuff!" Denisov
+was shouting. "And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchuk bwought some
+fwom the fields."
+
+"I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they
+don't obey," answered the quartermaster.
+
+Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: "Let
+him fuss and bustle now, my job's done and I'm lying down- capitally!"
+He could hear that Lavrushka- that sly, bold orderly of Denisov's- was
+talking, as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was saying
+something about loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when
+he had gone out for provisions.
+
+Then Denisov's voice was heard shouting farther and farther away.
+"Saddle! Second platoon!"
+
+"Where are they off to now?" thought Rostov.
+
+Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed with muddy
+boots on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things
+about, took his leaded whip, buckled on his saber, and went out again.
+In answer to Rostov's inquiry where he was going, he answered
+vaguely and crossly that he had some business.
+
+"Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!" said Denisov
+going out, and Rostov heard the hoofs of several horses splashing
+through the mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denisov had
+gone. Having got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not
+leave the hut till toward evening. Denisov had not yet returned. The
+weather had cleared up, and near the next hut two officers and a cadet
+were playing svayka, laughing as they threw their missiles which
+buried themselves in the soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle
+of the game, the officers saw some wagons approaching with fifteen
+hussars on their skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the
+hussars drew up to the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars
+surrounded them.
+
+"There now, Denisov has been worrying," said Rostov, "and here are
+the provisions."
+
+"So they are!" said the officers. "Won't the soldiers be glad!"
+
+A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied by two
+infantry officers with whom he was talking.
+
+Rostov went to meet them.
+
+"I warn you, Captain," one of the officers, a short thin man,
+evidently very angry, was saying.
+
+"Haven't I told you I won't give them up?" replied Denisov.
+
+"You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny- seizing the
+transport of one's own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two
+days."
+
+"And mine have had nothing for two weeks," said Denisov.
+
+"It is robbery! You'll answer for it, sir!" said the infantry
+officer, raising his voice.
+
+"Now, what are you pestewing me for?" cried Denisov, suddenly losing
+his temper. "I shall answer for it and not you, and you'd better not
+buzz about here till you get hurt. Be off! Go!" he shouted at the
+officers.
+
+"Very well, then!" shouted the little officer, undaunted and not
+riding away. "If you are determined to rob, I'll..."
+
+"Go to the devil! quick ma'ch, while you're safe and sound!" and
+Denisov turned his horse on the officer.
+
+"Very well, very well!" muttered the officer, threateningly, and
+turning his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.
+
+"A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!" shouted Denisov
+after him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a
+mounted infantryman) and riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing.
+
+"I've taken twansports from the infantwy by force!" he said.
+"After all, can't let our men starve."
+
+The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an
+infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrushka that the transport
+was unescorted, Denisov with his hussars had seized it by force. The
+soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared
+them with the other squadrons.
+
+The next day the regimental commander sent for Denisov, and
+holding his fingers spread out before his eyes said:
+
+"This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and
+won't begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff
+and settle the business there in the commissariat department and if
+possible sign a receipt for such and such stores received. If not,
+as the demand was booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a
+row and the affair may end badly."
+
+From the regimental commander's, Denisov rode straight to the
+staff with a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he
+came back to his dugout in a state such as Rostov had never yet seen
+him in. Denisov could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostov
+asked what was the matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and
+threats in a hoarse, feeble voice.
+
+Alarmed at Denisov's condition, Rostov suggested that he should
+undress, drink some water, and send for the doctor.
+
+"Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but
+I'll always thwash scoundwels... and I'll tell the Empewo'...
+Ice..." he muttered.
+
+The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely
+necessary to bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken
+from his hairy arm and only then was he able to relate what had
+happened to him.
+
+"I get there," began Denisov. "'Now then, where's your chief's
+quarters?' They were pointed out. 'Please to wait.' 'I've widden
+twenty miles and have duties to attend to and no time to wait.
+Announce me.' Vewy well, so out comes their head chief- also took it
+into his head to lecture me: 'It's wobbewy!'- 'Wobbewy,' I say, 'is
+not done by man who seizes pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him
+who takes them to fill his own pockets!' 'Will you please be
+silent?' 'Vewy good!' Then he says: 'Go and give a weceipt to the
+commissioner, but your affair will be passed on to headquarters.' I go
+to the commissioner. I enter, and at the table... who do you think?
+No, but wait a bit!... Who is it that's starving us?" shouted Denisov,
+hitting the table with the fist of his newly bled arm so violently
+that the table nearly broke down and the tumblers on it jumped
+about. "Telyanin! 'What? So it's you who's starving us to death! Is
+it? Take this and this!' and I hit him so pat, stwaight on his
+snout... 'Ah, what a... what...!' and I sta'ted fwashing him...
+Well, I've had a bit of fun I can tell you!" cried Denisov, gleeful
+and yet angry, his showing under his black mustache. "I'd have
+killed him if they hadn't taken him away!"
+
+"But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself," said Rostov. "You've
+set your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again."
+
+Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke
+calm and cheerful.
+
+But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov's and
+Denisov's dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully
+showed them a paper addressed to Major Denisov from the regimental
+commander in which inquiries were made about yesterday's occurrence.
+The adjutant told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad
+turn: that a court-martial had been appointed, and that in view of the
+severity with which marauding and insubordination were now regarded,
+degradation to the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.
+
+The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after
+seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being drunk, went to the
+chief quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief,
+threatened to strike him, and on being led out had rushed into the
+office and given two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm
+of one of them.
+
+In answer to Rostov's renewed questions, Denisov said, laughing,
+that he thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed
+up in it, but that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not
+in the least fear any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels
+dared attack him he would give them an answer that they would not
+easily forget.
+
+Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostov knew
+him too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart
+he feared a court-martial and was worried over the affair, which was
+evidently taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices
+
+from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov was ordered
+to hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and appear before
+the staff of his division to explain his violence at the
+commissariat office. On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two
+Cossack regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denisov, as was his
+wont, rode out in front of the outposts, parading his courage. A
+bullet fired by a French sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of
+his leg. Perhaps at another time Denisov would not have left the
+regiment for so slight a wound, but now he took advantage of it to
+excuse himself from appearing at the staff and went into hospital.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the
+Pavlograds did not take part, and after that an armistice was
+proclaimed. Rostov, who felt his friend's absence very much, having no
+news of him since he left and feeling very anxious about his wound and
+the progress of his affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get
+leave to visit Denisov in hospital.
+
+The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice
+devastated by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when
+it is so beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented a
+particularly dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its
+foul streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken
+soldiers wandering about.
+
+The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window
+frames and panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a
+wooden fence that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged
+soldiers, with pale swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in
+the sunshine in the yard.
+
+Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of
+putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army
+doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian
+assistant.
+
+"I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was saying. "Come to
+Makar Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there."
+
+The assistant asked some further questions.
+
+"Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?" The doctor noticed
+Rostov coming upstairs.
+
+"What do you want, sir?" said the doctor. "What do you want? The
+bullets having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a
+pesthouse, sir."
+
+"How so?" asked Rostov.
+
+"Typhus, sir. It's death to go in. Only we two, Makeev and I" (he
+pointed to the assistant), "keep on here. Some five of us doctors have
+died in this place.... When a new one comes he is done for in a week,"
+said the doctor with evident satisfaction. "Prussian doctors have been
+invited here, but our allies don't like it at all."
+
+Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars,
+who was wounded.
+
+"I don't know. I can't tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in
+charge of three hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It's
+well that the charitable Prussian ladies send us two pounds of
+coffee and some lint each month or we should be lost!" he laughed.
+"Four hundred, sir, and they're always sending me fresh ones. There
+are four hundred? Eh?" he asked, turning to the assistant.
+
+The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and
+impatient for the talkative doctor to go.
+
+"Major Denisov," Rostov said again. "He was wounded at Molliten."
+
+"Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?" queried the doctor, in a tone of
+indifference.
+
+The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor's words.
+
+"Is he tall and with reddish hair?" asked the doctor.
+
+Rostov described Denisov's appearance.
+
+"There was one like that," said the doctor, as if pleased. "That one
+is dead, I fancy. However, I'll look up our list. We had a list.
+Have you got it, Makeev?"
+
+"Makar Alexeevich has the list," answered the assistant. "But if
+you'll step into the officers' wards you'll see for yourself," he
+added, turning to Rostov.
+
+"Ah, you'd better not go, sir," said the doctor, "or you may have to
+stay here yourself."
+
+But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the
+assistant to show him the way.
+
+"Only don't blame me!" the doctor shouted up after him.
+
+Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell
+was so strong there that Rostov held his nose and had to pause and
+collect his strength before he could go on. A door opened to the
+right, and an emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in
+underclothing, limped out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked
+with glittering envious eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at
+the door, Rostov saw that the sick and wounded were lying on the floor
+on straw and overcoats.
+
+"May I go in and look?"
+
+"What is there to see?" said the assistant.
+
+But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in,
+Rostov entered the soldiers' ward. The foul air, to which he had
+already begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It
+was a little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where
+it originated.
+
+In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large
+windows, the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to
+the walls, and leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were
+unconscious and paid no attention to the newcomers. Those who were
+conscious raised themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all
+looked intently at Rostov with the same expression of hope, of relief,
+reproach, and envy of another's health. Rostov went to the middle of
+the room and looking through the open doors into the two adjoining
+rooms saw the same thing there. He stood still, looking silently
+around. He had not at all expected such a sight. Just before him,
+almost across the middle of the passage on the bare floor, lay a
+sick man, probably a Cossack to judge by the cut of his hair. The
+man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was
+purple, his eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were seen,
+and on his bare legs and arms which were still red, the veins stood
+out like cords. He was knocking the back of his head against the
+floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he kept repeating. Rostov
+listened and made out the word. It was "drink, drink, a drink!" Rostov
+glanced round, looking for someone who would put this man back in
+his place and bring him water.
+
+"Who looks after the sick here?" he asked the assistant.
+
+Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from
+the next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostov.
+
+"Good day, your honor!" he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostov and
+evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.
+
+"Get him to his place and give him some water," said Rostov,
+pointing to the Cossack.
+
+"Yes, your honor," the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his
+eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not
+move.
+
+"No, it's impossible to do anything here," thought Rostov,
+lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an
+intense look fixed on him on his right, and he turned. Close to the
+corner, on an overcoat, sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier
+as thin as a skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes intently
+fixed on Rostov. The man's neighbor on one side whispered something to
+him, pointing at Rostov, who noticed that the old man wanted to
+speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the old man had only one leg
+bent under him, the other had been amputated above the knee. His
+neighbor on the other side, who lay motionless some distance from
+him with his head thrown back, was a young soldier with a snub nose.
+His pale waxen face was still freckled and his eyes were rolled
+back. Rostov looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran down his
+back.
+
+"Why, this one seems..." he began, turning to the assistant.
+
+"And how we've been begging, your honor," said the old soldier,
+his jaw quivering. "He's been dead since morning. After all we're men,
+not dogs."
+
+"I'll send someone at once. He shall be taken away- taken away at
+once," said the assistant hurriedly. "Let us go, your honor."
+
+"Yes, yes, let us go," said Rostov hastily, and lowering his eyes
+and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of
+reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the
+room.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to the
+officers' wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood
+open. There were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers
+were lying or sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in
+hospital dressing gowns. The first person Rostov met in the
+officers' ward was a thin little man with one arm, who was walking
+about the first room in a nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with
+a pipe between his teeth. Rostov looked at him, trying to remember
+where he had seen him before.
+
+"See where we've met again!" said the little man. "Tushin, Tushin,
+don't you remember, who gave you a lift at Schon Grabern? And I've had
+a bit cut off, you see..." he went on with a smile, pointing to the
+empty sleeve of his dressing gown. "Looking for Vasili Dmitrich
+Denisov? My neighbor," he added, when he heard who Rostov wanted.
+"Here, here," and Tushin led him into the next room, from whence
+came sounds of several laughing voices.
+
+"How can they laugh, or even live at all here?" thought Rostov,
+still aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong
+in the soldiers' ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those
+envious looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face
+of that young soldier with eyes rolled back.
+
+Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket,
+though it was nearly noon.
+
+"Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?" he called out, still in
+the same voice as in the regiment, but Rostov noticed sadly that under
+this habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling
+showed itself in the expression of Denisov's face and the
+intonations of his voice.
+
+His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six
+weeks after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as
+the faces of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that
+struck Rostov. What struck him was that Denisov did not seem glad to
+see him, and smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the
+regiment, nor about the general state of affairs, and when Rostov
+spoke of these matters did not listen.
+
+Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be reminded of
+the regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on
+outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and was
+only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On
+Rostov's inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced
+from under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission
+and the rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he
+began reading his paper and specially drew Rostov's attention to the
+stinging rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions,
+who had gathered round Rostov- a fresh arrival from the world outside-
+gradually began to disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his
+answer. Rostov noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had
+already heard that story more than once and were tired of it. Only the
+man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his
+bed, gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tushin
+still listened, shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of
+the reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denisov.
+
+"But what I say is," he said, turning to Rostov, "it would be best
+simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards will
+now be distributed, and surely a pardon would be granted...."
+
+"Me petition the Empewo'!" exclaimed Denisov, in a voice to which he
+tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like
+an expression of irritable impotence. "What for? If I were a wobber
+I would ask mercy, but I'm being court-martialed for bwinging
+wobbers to book. Let them twy me, I'm not afwaid of anyone. I've
+served the Tsar and my countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I
+to be degwaded?... Listen, I'm w'iting to them stwaight. This is
+what I say: 'If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy...'"
+
+"It's certainly well written," said Tushin, "but that's not the
+point, Vasili Dmitrich," and he also turned to Rostov. "One has to
+submit, and Vasili Dmitrich doesn't want to. You know the auditor told
+you it was a bad business.
+
+"Well, let it be bad," said Denisov.
+
+"The auditor wrote out a petition for you," continued Tushin, "and
+you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he"
+(indicating Rostov) "has connections on the staff. You won't find a
+better opportunity."
+
+"Haven't I said I'm not going to gwovel?" Denisov interrupted him,
+went on reading his paper.
+
+Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov, though he
+instinctively felt that the way advised by Tushin and the other
+officers was the safest, and though he would have been glad to be of
+service to Denisov. He knew his stubborn will and straightforward
+hasty temper.
+
+When the reading of Denisov's virulent reply, which took more than
+an hour, was over, Rostov said nothing, and he spent the rest of the
+day in a most dejected state of mind amid Denisov's hospital comrades,
+who had round him, telling them what he knew and listening to their
+stories. Denisov was moodily silent all the evening.
+
+Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave, he asked
+Denisov whether he had no commission for him.
+
+"Yes, wait a bit," said Denisov, glancing round at the officers, and
+taking his papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where
+he had an inkpot, and sat down to write.
+
+"It seems it's no use knocking one's head against a wall!" he
+said, coming from the window and giving Rostov a large envelope. In it
+was the petition to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which
+Denisov, without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat
+officials, simply asked for pardon.
+
+"Hand it in. It seems..."
+
+He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state
+of Denisov's affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit with the letter to the
+Emperor.
+
+On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in
+Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the important personage on whom
+he was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the
+stay at Tilsit.
+
+"I should like to see the great man," he said, alluding to Napoleon,
+whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte.
+
+"You are speaking of Buonaparte?" asked the general, smiling.
+
+Boris looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that
+he was being tested.
+
+"I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon," he replied. The
+general patted him on the shoulder, with a smile.
+
+"You will go far," he said, and took him to Tilsit with him.
+
+Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two
+Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw
+Napoleon pass before the French Guards on the farther bank of the
+river, saw the pensive face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in
+silence in a tavern on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon's
+arrival, saw both Emperors get into boats, and saw how Napoleon-
+reaching the raft first- stepped quickly forward to meet Alexander and
+held out his hand to him, and how they both retired into the pavilion.
+Since he had begun to move in the highest circles Boris had made it
+his habit to watch attentively all that went on around him and to note
+it down. At the time of the meeting at Tilsit he asked the names of
+those who had come with Napoleon and about the uniforms they wore, and
+listened attentively to words spoken by important personages. At the
+moment the Emperors went into the pavilion he looked at his watch, and
+did not forget to look at it again when Alexander came out. The
+interview had lasted an hour and fifty-three minutes. He noted this
+down that same evening, among other facts he felt to be of historic
+importance. As the Emperor's suite was a very small one, it was a
+matter of great importance, for a man who valued his success in the
+service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of this interview between the
+two Emperors, and having succeeded in this, Boris felt that henceforth
+his position was fully assured. He had not only become known, but
+people had grown accustomed to him and accepted him. Twice he had
+executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so that the latter knew
+his face, and all those at court, far from cold-shouldering him as
+at first when they considered him a newcomer, would now have been
+surprised had he been absent.
+
+Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilinski.
+Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately fond
+of the French, and almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French
+officers of the Guard and from French headquarters were dining and
+lunching with him and Boris.
+
+On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilinski
+arranged a supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an
+aide-de-camp of Napoleon's, there were also several French officers of
+the Guard, and a page of Napoleon's, a young lad of an old
+aristocratic French family. That same day, Rostov, profiting by the
+darkness to avoid being recognized in civilian dress. came to Tilsit
+and went to the lodging occupied by Boris and Zhilinski.
+
+Rostov, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far
+from having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and
+the French- who from being foes had suddenly become friends- that
+had taken place at headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte
+and the French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger,
+contempt, and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Platov's
+Cossack officers, Rostov had argued that if Napoleon were taken
+prisoner he would be treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal.
+Quite lately, happening to meet a wounded French colonel on the
+road, Rostov had maintained with heat that peace was impossible
+between a legitimate sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostov
+was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of French officers
+in Boris' lodging, dressed in uniforms he had been accustomed to see
+from quite a different point of view from the outposts of the flank.
+As soon as he noticed a French officer, who thrust his head out of the
+door, that warlike feeling of hostility which he always experienced at
+the sight of the enemy suddenly seized him. He stopped at the
+threshold and asked in Russian whether Drubetskoy lived there.
+Boris, hearing a strange voice in the anteroom, came out to meet
+him. An expression of annoyance showed itself for a moment on his face
+on first recognizing Rostov.
+
+"Ah, it's you? Very glad, very glad to see you," he said, however,
+coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov had noticed his first
+impulse.
+
+"I've come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have
+business," he said coldly.
+
+"No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment.
+Dans un moment je suis a vous,"~^ he said, answering someone who called
+him.
+
+^~ "In a minute I shall be at your disposal."
+
+"I see I'm intruding," Rostov repeated.
+
+The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Boris' face:
+having evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly
+took both Rostov's hands and led him into the next room. His eyes,
+looking serenely and steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by
+something, as if screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it
+seemed to Rostov.
+
+"Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!" said Boris,
+and he led him into the room where the supper table was laid and
+introduced him to his guests, explaining that he was not a civilian,
+but an hussar officer, and an old friend of his.
+
+"Count Zhilinski- le Comte N. N.- le Capitaine S. S.," said he,
+naming his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed
+reluctantly, and remained silent.
+
+Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very
+willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostov. Boris did not
+appear to notice the constraint the newcomer produced and, with the
+same pleasant composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with
+which he had met Rostov, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the
+Frenchmen, with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen,
+addressed the obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter
+had probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor.
+
+"No, I came on business," replied Rostov, briefly.
+
+Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look
+of dissatisfaction on Boris' face, and as always happens to those in a
+bad humor, it seemed to him that everyone regarded him with aversion
+and that he was in everybody's way. He really was in their way, for he
+alone took no part in the conversation which again became general. The
+looks the visitors cast on him seemed to say: "And what is he
+sitting here for?" He rose and went up to Boris.
+
+"Anyhow, I'm in your way," he said in a low tone. "Come and talk
+over my business and I'll go away."
+
+"Oh, no, not at all," said Boris. "But if you are tired, come and
+lie down in my room and have a rest."
+
+"Yes, really..."
+
+They went into the little room where Boris slept. Rostov, without
+sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Boris were to blame in
+some way) telling him about Denisov's affair, asking him whether,
+through his general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor
+on Denisov's behalf and get Denisov's petition handed in. When he
+and Boris were alone, Rostov felt for the first time that he could not
+look Boris in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one
+leg crossed over the other and stroking his left hand with the slender
+fingers of his right, listened to Rostov as a general listens to the
+report of a subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight
+into Rostov's eyes with the same veiled look. Each time this
+happened Rostov felt uncomfortable and cast down his eyes.
+
+"I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty is very severe
+in such affairs. I think it would be best not to bring it before the
+Emperor, but to apply to the commander of the corps.... But in
+general, I think..."
+
+"So you don't want to do anything? Well then, say so!" Rostov almost
+shouted, not looking Boris in the face.
+
+Boris smiled.
+
+"On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..."
+
+At that moment Zhilinski's voice was heard calling Boris.
+
+"Well then, go, go, go..." said Rostov, and refusing supper and
+remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and down for a long
+time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room.
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on
+Denisov's behalf. He could not himself go to the general in attendance
+as he was in mufti and had come to Tilsit without permission to do so,
+and Boris, even had he wished to, could not have done so on the
+following day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were
+signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received the
+Cross of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order of St. Andrew of
+the First Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening,
+given by a battalion of the French Guards to the Preobrazhensk
+battalion. The Emperors were to be present at that banquet.
+
+Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris that, when
+the latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and
+early next morning went away, avoiding Boris. In his civilian
+clothes and a round hat, he wandered about the town, staring at the
+French and their uniforms and at the streets and houses where the
+Russian and French Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables
+being set up and preparations made for the dinner; he saw the
+Russian and French colors draped from side to side of the streets,
+with hugh monograms A and N. In the windows of the houses also flags
+and bunting were displayed.
+
+"Boris doesn't want to help me and I don't want to ask him. That's
+settled," thought Nicholas. "All is over between us, but I won't leave
+here without having done all I can for Denisov and certainly not
+without getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is
+here!" thought Rostov, who had unconsciously returned to the house
+where Alexander lodged.
+
+Saddled horses were standing before the house and the suite were
+assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor to come out.
+
+"I may see him at any moment," thought Rostov. "If only I were to
+hand the letter direct to him and tell him all... could they really
+arrest me for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He would understand
+on whose side justice lies. He understands everything, knows
+everything. Who can be more just, more magnanimous than he? And even
+if they did arrest me for being here, what would it matter?" thought
+he, looking at an officer who was entering the house the Emperor
+occupied. "After all, people do go in.... It's all nonsense! I'll go
+in and hand the letter to the Emperor myself so much the worse for
+Drubetskoy who drives me to it!" And suddenly with a determination
+he himself did not expect, Rostov felt for the letter in his pocket
+and went straight to the house.
+
+"No, I won't miss my opportunity now, as I did after Austerlitz," he
+thought, expecting every moment to meet the monarch, and conscious
+of the blood that rushed to his heart at the thought. "I will fall
+at his feet and beseech him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will
+even thank me. 'I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice
+is the greatest happiness,'" Rostov fancied the sovereign saying.
+And passing people who looked after him with curiosity, he entered the
+porch of the Emperor's house.
+
+A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to the right
+he saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase, was a door leading
+to the lower floor.
+
+"Whom do you want?" someone inquired.
+
+"To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty," said Nicholas,
+with a tremor in his voice.
+
+"A petition? This way, to the officer the officer on duty" (he was
+shown the door leading downstairs), "only it won't be accepted."
+
+On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew frightened at what he
+was doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so
+fascinating and consequently so alarming that he was ready to run
+away, but the official who had questioned him opened the door, and
+Rostov entered.
+
+A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and high
+boots and a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just put on,
+standing in that room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of
+his breeches a new pair of handsome silk-embroidered braces that,
+for some reason, attracted Rostov's attention. This man was was
+speaking to someone in the adjoining room.
+
+"A good figure and in her first bloom," he was saying, but on seeing
+Rostov, he stopped short and frowned.
+
+"What is it? A petition?"
+
+"What is it?" asked the person in the other room.
+
+"Another petitioner," answered the man with the braces.
+
+"Tell him to come later. He'll be coming out directly, we must go."
+
+"Later... later! Tomorrow. It's too late..."
+
+Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the braces stopped
+him.
+
+"Whom have you come from? Who are you?"
+
+"I come from Major Denisov," answered Rostov.
+
+"Are you an officer?"
+
+"Lieutenant Count Rostov."
+
+"What audacity! Hand it in through your commander. And go along with
+you... go," and he continued to put on the uniform the valet handed
+him.
+
+Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the porch there
+were many officers and generals in full parade uniform, whom he had to
+pass.
+
+Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of finding
+himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to
+shame and arrested in his presence, fully alive now to the impropriety
+of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes, was
+making his way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a
+familiar voice called him and a hand detained him.
+
+"What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?" asked a deep
+voice.
+
+It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor's special
+favor during this campaign, and who had formerly commanded the
+division in which Rostov was serving.
+
+Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing the
+kindly, jocular face of the general, he took him aside and in an
+excited voice told him the whole affair, asking him to intercede for
+Denisov, whom the general knew. Having heard Rostov to the end, the
+general shook his head gravely.
+
+"I'm sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter."
+
+Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished explaining
+Denisov's case, when hasty steps and the jingling of spurs were
+heard on the stairs, and the general, leaving him, went to the
+porch. The gentlemen of the Emperor's suite ran down the stairs and
+went to their horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at
+Austerlitz, led up the Emperor's horse, and the faint creak of a
+footstep Rostov knew at once was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the
+danger of being recognized, Rostov went close to the porch, together
+with some inquisitive civilians, and again, after two years, saw those
+features he adored: that same face and same look and step, and the
+same union of majesty and mildness.... And the feeling of enthusiasm
+and love for his sovereign rose again in Rostov's soul in all its
+old force. In the uniform of the Preobrazhensk regiment- white
+chamois-leather breeches and high boots- and wearing a star Rostov did
+not know (it was that of the Legion d'honneur), the monarch came out
+into the porch, putting on his gloves and carrying his hat under his
+arm. He stopped and looked about him, brightening everything around by
+his glance. He spoke a few words to some of the generals, and,
+recognizing the former commander of Rostov's division, smiled and
+beckoned to him.
+
+All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general talking for
+some time to the Emperor.
+
+The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step toward his
+horse. Again the crowd of members of the suite and street gazers
+(among whom was Rostov) moved nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside
+his horse, with his hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the
+cavalry general and said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be
+heard by all:
+
+"I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is stronger than
+I," and he raised his foot to the stirrup.
+
+The general bowed his head respectfully, and the monarch mounted and
+rode down the street at a gallop. Beside himself with enthusiasm,
+Rostov ran after him with the crowd.
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a
+battalion of the Preobrazhensk regiment stood on the right and a
+battalion of the French Guards in their bearskin caps on the left.
+
+As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which
+presented arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the
+opposite flank, and at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon. It
+could be no one else. He came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue
+uniform open over a white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over his
+shoulder. He was riding a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse
+with a crimson gold-embroidered saddlecloth. On approaching
+Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did so, Rostov, with his
+cavalryman's eye, could not help noticing that Napoleon did not sit
+well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions shouted "Hurrah!" and
+"Vive l'Empereur!" Napoleon said something to Alexander, and both
+Emperors dismounted and took each other's hands. Napoleon's face
+wore an unpleasant and artificial smile. Alexander was saying
+something affable to him.
+
+In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes' horses, which
+were pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept his eyes on every movement of
+Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck him as a surprise that Alexander
+treated Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease
+with the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday
+matter to him.
+
+Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their suites,
+approached the right flank of the Preobrazhensk battalion and came
+straight up to the crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly
+found itself so close to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in the
+front row, was afraid he might be recognized.
+
+"Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the
+bravest of your soldiers," said a sharp, precise voice, articulating
+every letter.
+
+This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into
+Alexander's eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to
+him and, bending his head, smiled pleasantly.
+
+"To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last war,"
+added Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with a composure and
+assurance exasperating to Rostov, he ran his eyes over the Russian
+ranks drawn up before him, who all presented arms with their eyes
+fixed on their Emperor.
+
+"Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?" said
+Alexander and took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlovski, the
+commander of the battalion.
+
+Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his small white hand,
+tore it in doing so, and threw it away. An aide-de-camp behind him
+rushed forward and picked it up.
+
+"To whom shall it be given?" the Emperor Alexander asked
+Koslovski, in Russian in a low voice.
+
+"To whomever Your Majesty commands."
+
+The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and, glancing
+back, remarked:
+
+"But we must give him an answer."
+
+Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostov in his
+scrutiny.
+
+"Can it be me?" thought Rostov.
+
+"Lazarev!" the colonel called, with a frown, and Lazarev, the
+first soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.
+
+"Where are you off to? Stop here!" voices whispered to Lazarev who
+did not know where to go. Lazarev stopped, casting a sidelong look
+at his colonel in alarm. His face twitched, as often happens to
+soldiers called before the ranks.
+
+Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump little hand out
+behind him as if to take something. The members of his suite, guessing
+at once what he wanted, moved about and whispered as they passed
+something from one to another, and a page- the same one Rostov had
+seen the previous evening at Boris'- ran forward and, bowing
+respectfully over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a
+moment, laid in it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without
+looking, pressed two fingers together and the badge was between
+them. Then he approached Lazarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently
+gazed at his own monarch), looked round at the Emperor Alexander to
+imply that what he was now doing was done for the sake of his ally,
+and the small white hand holding the Order touched one of Lazarev's
+buttons. It was as if Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his
+hand to deign to touch that soldier's breast for the soldier to be
+forever happy, rewarded, and distinguished from everyone else in the
+world. Napoleon merely laid the cross on Lazarev's breast and,
+dropping his hand, turned toward Alexander as though sure that the
+cross would adhere there. And it really did.
+
+Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized the cross
+and fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced morosely at the little
+man with white hands who was doing something to him and, still
+standing motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into
+Alexander's eyes, as if asking whether he should stand there, or go
+away, or do something else. But receiving no orders, he remained for
+some time in that rigid position.
+
+The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensk battalion,
+breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the
+tables prepared for them.
+
+Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers
+embraced him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of
+officers and civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of
+Russian and French voices and laughter filled the air round the tables
+in the square. Two officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and
+happy, passed by Rostov.
+
+"What d'you think of the treat? All on silver plate," one of them
+was saying. "Have you seen Lazarev?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them a dinner."
+
+"Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs' pension
+for life."
+
+"Here's a cap, lads!" shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier, donning a
+shaggy French cap.
+
+"It's a fine thing! First-rate!"
+
+"Have you heard the password?" asked one Guards' officer of another.
+"The day before yesterday it was 'Napoleon, France, bravoure';
+yesterday, 'Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.' One day our Emperor gives it
+and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George's
+Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He
+must respond in kind."
+
+Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the Preobrazhensk
+banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostov standing by the corner
+of a house.
+
+"Rostov! How d'you do? We missed one another," he said, and could
+not refrain from asking what was the matter, so strangely dismal and
+troubled was Rostov's face.
+
+"Nothing, nothing," replied Rostov.
+
+"You'll call round?"
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from
+a distance. a distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on
+which he could not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in
+his soul. Now he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his
+submission, and the whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and
+its dirt and disease. So vividly did he recall that hospital stench of
+dead flesh that he looked round to see where the smell came from. Next
+he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white
+hand, who was now an Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then
+why those severed arms and legs and those dead men?... Then again he
+thought of Lazarev rewarded and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He
+caught himself harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened.
+
+The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating and a sense of
+hunger recalled him from these reflections; he had to get something to
+eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had noticed that morning.
+There he found so many people, among them officers who, like
+himself, had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in
+getting a dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The
+conversation naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his
+comrades, like most of the army, were dissatisfied with the peace
+concluded after the battle of Friedland. They said that had we held
+out a little longer Napoleon would have been done for, as his troops
+had neither provisions nor ammunition. Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly
+the latter) in silence. He finished a couple of bottles of wine by
+himself. The process in his mind went on tormenting him without
+reaching a conclusion. He feared to give way to his thoughts, yet
+could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the officers' saying
+that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov began shouting
+with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore much to the surprise of the
+officers:
+
+"How can you judge what's best?" he cried, the blood suddenly
+rushing to his face. "How can you judge the Emperor's actions? What
+right have we to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor's or
+his actions!"
+
+"But I never said a word about the Emperor!" said the officer,
+justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostov's outburst, except
+on the supposition that he was drunk.
+
+But Rostov did not listen to him.
+
+"We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more,"
+he went on. "If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we're punished,
+it means that we have deserved it, it's not for us to judge. If the
+Emperor pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an
+alliance with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If
+once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred
+will be left! That way we shall be saying there is no God- nothing!"
+shouted Nicholas, banging the table- very little to the point as it
+seemed to his listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own
+thoughts.
+
+"Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That's
+all...." said he.
+
+"And to drink," said one of the officers, not wishing to quarrel.
+
+"Yes, and to drink," assented Nicholas. "Hullo there! Another
+bottle!" he shouted.
+
+In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a fresh interview
+with the Emperor Napoleon, and in the upper circles of Petersburg
+there was much talk of the grandeur of this important meeting.
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+In 1809 the intimacy between "the world's two arbiters," as Napoleon
+and Alexander were called, was such that when Napoleon declared war on
+Austria a Russian corps crossed the frontier to co-operate with our
+old enemy Bonaparte against our old ally the Emperor of Austria, and
+in court circles the possibility of marriage between Napoleon and
+one of Alexander's sisters was spoken of. But besides considerations
+of foreign policy, the attention of Russian society was at that time
+keenly directed on the internal changes that were being undertaken
+in all the departments of government.
+
+Life meanwhile- real life, with its essential interests of health
+and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in
+thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and
+passions- went on as usual, independently of and apart from
+political friendship or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all
+the schemes of reconstruction.
+
+BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country.
+
+All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates- and constantly
+changing from one thing to another had never accomplished- were
+carried out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible
+difficulty.
+
+He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre
+lacked, and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going.
+
+On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and
+became free agricultural laborers- this being one of the first
+examples of the kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs' compulsory
+labor was commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for
+Bogucharovo at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and
+writing to the children of the peasants and household serfs.
+
+Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father
+and his son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he
+spent in "Bogucharovo Cloister," as his father called Prince
+Andrew's estate. Despite the indifference to the affairs of the
+world he had expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went
+on, received many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or
+his father had visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life,
+these people lagged behind himself- who never left the country- in
+knowledge of what was happening in home and foreign affairs.
+
+Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great
+variety of books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a
+critical of survey our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with
+drawing up a proposal for a reform of the army rules and regulations.
+
+In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan estates which
+had been inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.
+
+Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche looking at the
+new grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of
+white spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not
+thinking of anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from
+side to side.
+
+They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year
+before. They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and
+green fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near
+the bridge, uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past
+strips of stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there,
+and into a birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the
+forest it was almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with
+their sticky green leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers
+and the first blades of green grass were pushing up and lifting last
+year's leaves. The coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees
+scattered here and there among the birches was an unpleasant
+reminder of winter. On entering the forest the horses began to snort
+and sweated visibly.
+
+Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter
+assented. But apparently the coachman's sympathy was not enough for
+Peter, and he turned on the box toward his master.
+
+"How pleasant it is, your excellency!" he said with a respectful
+smile.
+
+"What?"
+
+"It's pleasant, your excellency!"
+
+"What is he talking about?" thought Prince Andrew. "Oh, the
+spring, I suppose," he thought as he turned round. "Yes, really
+everything is green already.... How early! The birches and cherry
+and alders too are coming out.... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah,
+here is one oak!"
+
+At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of
+the birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and
+twice as tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as
+great as a man could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its
+branches had been broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge
+ungainly limbs sprawling unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and
+fingers, it stood an aged, stern, and scornful monster among the
+smiling birch trees. Only the dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about
+in the forest, and this oak, refused to yield to the charm of spring
+or notice either the spring or the sunshine.
+
+"Spring, love, happiness!" this oak seemed to say. "Are you not
+weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always
+the same and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness!
+Look at those cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too,
+sticking out my broken and barked fingers just where they have
+grown, whether from my back or my sides: as they have grown so I
+stand, and I do not believe in your hopes and your lies."
+
+As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times
+to look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak,
+too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling,
+rigid, misshapen, and grim as ever.
+
+"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince
+Andrew. "Let others- the young- yield afresh to that fraud, but we
+know life, our life is finished!"
+
+A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully
+pleasant, rose in his soul in connection with that tree. During this
+journey he, as it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at
+his old conclusion, restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for
+him to begin anything anew- but that he must live out his life,
+content to do no harm, and not disturbing himself or desiring
+anything.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the
+district in connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of
+which he was trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya Rostov, and in the
+middle of May Prince Andrew went to visit him.
+
+It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already
+clothed in green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water
+one longed to bathe.
+
+Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about
+which he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the
+grounds of the Rostovs' house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish
+cries behind some trees on the right and saw group of girls running to
+cross the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran
+a dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz
+dress, with a white handkerchief on her head from under which loose
+locks of hair escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing
+that he was a stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.
+
+Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so
+beautiful, the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that
+slim pretty girl did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and
+was contented and cheerful in her own separate- probably foolish-
+but bright and happy life. "What is she so glad about? What is she
+thinking of? Not of the military regulations or of the arrangement
+of the Ryazan serfs' quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so
+happy?" Prince Andrew asked himself with instinctive curiosity.
+
+In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just as he had done
+in former years, that is, entertaining almost the whole province
+with hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. He was glad to see Prince
+Andrew, as he was to see any new visitor, and insisted on his
+staying the night.
+
+During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by
+his elderly hosts and by the more important of the visitors (the old
+count's house was crowded on account of an approaching name day),
+Prince Andrew repeatedly glanced at Natasha, gay and laughing among
+the younger members of the company, and asked himself each time, "What
+is she thinking about? Why is she so glad?"
+
+That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to
+sleep. He read awhile and then put out his candle, but relit it. It
+was hot in the room, the inside shutters of which were closed. He
+was cross with the stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had
+made him stay by assuring him that some necessary documents had not
+yet arrived from town, and he was vexed with himself for having
+stayed.
+
+He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened
+the shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been watching for
+this, burst into the room. He opened the casement. The night was
+fresh, bright, and very still. Just before the window was a row of
+pollard trees, looking black on one side and with a silvery light on
+the other. Beneath the trees grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy
+vegetation with silver-lit leaves and stems here and there. Farther
+back beyond the dark trees a roof glittered with dew, to the right was
+a leafy tree with brilliantly white trunk and branches, and above it
+shone the moon, nearly at its full, in a pale, almost starless, spring
+sky. Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the window ledge and his
+eyes rested on that sky.
+
+His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were
+also awake. He heard female voices overhead.
+
+"Just once more," said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew
+recognized at once.
+
+"But when are you coming to bed?" replied another voice.
+
+"I won't, I can't sleep, what's the use? Come now for the last
+time."
+
+Two girlish voices sang a musical passage- the end of some song.
+
+"Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there's an end of it."
+
+"You go to sleep, but I can't," said the first voice, coming
+nearer to the window. She was evidently leaning right out, for the
+rustle of her dress and even her breathing could be heard.
+Everything was stone-still, like the moon and its light and the
+shadows. Prince Andrew, too, dared not stir, for fear of betraying his
+unintentional presence.
+
+"Sonya! Sonya!" he again heard the first speaker. "Oh, how can you
+sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up,
+Sonya!" she said almost with tears in her voice. "There never, never
+was such a lovely night before!"
+
+Sonya made some reluctant reply.
+
+"Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely! Come
+here.... Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like
+sitting down on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this,
+straining tight, as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this...."
+
+"Take care, you'll fall out."
+
+He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya's disapproving voice:
+"It's past one o'clock."
+
+"Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!"
+
+Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was still sitting
+there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle and at times a sigh.
+
+"O God, O God! What does it mean?" she suddenly exclaimed. "To bed
+then, if it must be!" and she slammed the casement.
+
+"For her I might as well not exist!" thought Prince Andrew while
+he listened to her voice, for some reason expecting yet fearing that
+she might say something about him. "There she is again! As if it
+were on purpose," thought he.
+
+In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of
+youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his
+life, that unable to explain his condition to himself he lay down
+and fell asleep at once.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the count, and not
+waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home.
+
+It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey he
+drove into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made so
+strange and memorable an impression on him. In the forest the
+harness bells sounded yet more muffled than they had done six weeks
+before, for now all was thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs
+dotted about in the forest did not jar on the general beauty but,
+lending themselves to the mood around, were delicately green with
+fluffy young shoots.
+
+The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering, but
+only a small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling
+the road and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in
+the shade, the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and
+scarcely swayed by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the
+nightingales trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now
+far away.
+
+"Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed," thought
+Prince Andrew. "But where is it?" he again wondered, gazing at the
+left side of the road, and without recognizing it he looked with
+admiration at the very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured,
+spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and
+slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled
+fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in
+evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were
+no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old
+veteran could have produced.
+
+"Yes, it is the same oak," thought Prince Andrew, and all at once he
+was seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal.
+All the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory.
+Austerlitz with the lofty heavens, his wife's dead reproachful face,
+Pierre at the ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night,
+and that night itself and the moon, and.... all this rushed suddenly
+to his mind.
+
+"No, life is not over at thirty-one!" Prince Andrew suddenly decided
+finally and decisively. "It is not enough for me to know what I have
+in me- everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted
+to fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may
+not be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it,
+but so that it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live
+in harmony!"
+
+On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that
+autumn and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole
+serics of sensible and logical considerations showing it to be
+essential for him to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the
+service, kept springing up in his mind. He could not now understand
+how he could ever even have doubted the necessity of taking an
+active share in life, just as a month before he had not understood how
+the idea of leaving the quiet country could ever enter his head. It
+now seemed clear to him that all his experience of life must be
+senselessly wasted unless he applied it to some kind of work and again
+played an active part in life. He did not even remember how
+formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical arguments, it
+had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if he now, after
+the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe in the
+possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness or
+love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey to
+Ryazan he found the country dull; his former pursuits no longer
+interested him, and often when sitting alone in his study he got up,
+went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then he
+would turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who with hair curled
+a la grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame.
+She did not now say those former terrible words to him, but looked
+simply, merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing
+his arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling,
+as he reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as
+a crime, which altered his whole life and were connected with
+Pierre, with fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman's
+beauty and love. And if anyone came into his room at such moments he
+was particularly cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.
+
+"My dear," Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say,
+"little Nicholas can't go out today, it's very cold."
+
+"If it were hot," Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly
+to his sister, "he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he
+must wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That
+is what follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child
+who needs fresh air should remain at home," he would add with
+extreme logic, as if punishing someone for those secret illogical
+emotions that stirred within him.
+
+At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work
+dries men up.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809. It was the time
+when the youthful Speranski was at the zenith of his fame and his
+reforms were being pushed forward with the greatest energy. That
+same August the Emperor was thrown from his caleche, injured his
+leg, and remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speranski every
+day and no one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being
+prepared that so agitated society- abolishing court ranks and
+introducing examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate
+Assessor and State Councilor- and not merely these but a whole state
+constitution, intended to change the existing order of government in
+Russia: legal, administrative, and financial, from the Council of
+State down to the district tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams
+with which the Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which he
+had tried to put into effect with the aid of his associates,
+Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and Strogonov- whom he himself
+in jest had called his Comite de salut public- were taking shape and
+being realized.
+
+Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the civil side,
+and Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his arrival Prince Andrew,
+as a gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a
+levee. The Emperor, though he met him twice, did not favor him with
+a single word. It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he
+was antipathetic to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his
+face and personality generally, and in the cold, repellent glance
+the Emperor gave him, he now found further confirmation of this
+surmise. The courtiers explained the Emperor's neglect of him by His
+Majesty's displeasure at Bolkonski's not having served since 1805.
+
+"I know myself that one cannot help one's sympathies and
+antipathies," thought Prince Andrew, "so it will not do to present
+my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor
+personally, but the project will speak for itself."
+
+He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend
+of his father's. The field marshal made an appointment to see him,
+received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few
+days later Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see
+the Minister of War, Count Arakcheev.
+
+On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakcheev's waiting
+room at nine in the morning.
+
+He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen him, and all he
+had heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.
+
+"He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not
+concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been
+commissioned to consider my project, so he alone can get it
+adopted," thought Prince Andrew as he waited among a number of
+important and unimportant people in Count Arakcheev's waiting room.
+
+During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen
+the anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such
+rooms were well known to him. Count Arakcheev's anteroom had quite a
+special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting
+their turn for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the
+faces of those of higher rank expressed a common feeling of
+awkwardness, covered by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of
+themselves, their situation, and the person for whom they were
+waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down, others whispered and
+laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname "Sila Andreevich" and the
+words, "Uncle will give it to us hot," in reference to Count
+Arakcheev. One general (an important personage), evidently feeling
+offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and uncrossing his
+legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.
+
+But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all
+faces- that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the
+adjutant on duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look
+and was told that his turn would come in due course. After some others
+had been shown in and out of the minister's room by the adjutant on
+duty, an officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and
+frightened air was admitted at that terrible door. This officer's
+audience lasted a long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a
+harsh voice was heard from the other side of the door, and the
+officer- with pale face and trembling lips- came out and passed
+through the waiting room, clutching his head.
+
+After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer
+on duty said in a whisper, "To the right, at the window."
+
+Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man
+of forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep
+wrinkles, scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an
+overhanging red nose. Arakcheev turned his head toward him without
+looking at him.
+
+"What is your petition?" asked Arakcheev.
+
+"I am not petitioning, your excellency," returned Prince Andrew
+quietly.
+
+Arakcheev's eyes turned toward him.
+
+"Sit down," said he. "Prince Bolkonski?"
+
+"I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has
+deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me..."
+
+"You see, my dear sir, I have read your project," interrupted
+Arakcheev, uttering only the first words amiably and then- again
+without looking at Prince Andrew- relapsing gradually into a tone of
+grumbling contempt. "You are proposing new military laws? There are
+many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody
+designs laws, it is easier writing than doing."
+
+"I came at His Majesty the Emperor's wish to learn from your
+excellency how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have
+presented," said Prince Andrew politely.
+
+"I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to
+the committee. I do not approve of it," said Arakcheev, rising and
+taking a paper from his writing table. "Here!" and he handed it to
+Prince Andrew.
+
+Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters,
+misspelled, and without punctuation: "Unsoundly constructed because
+resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the
+Articles of War needlessly deviating."
+
+"To what committee has the memorandum been referred?" inquired
+Prince Andrew.
+
+"To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that
+your honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary."
+
+Prince Andrew smiled.
+
+"I don't want one."
+
+"A member without salary," repeated Arakcheev. "I have the
+honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?" he shouted, bowing
+to Prince Andrew.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the
+committee Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances,
+particularly those he knew to be in power and whose aid he might need.
+In Petersburg he now experienced the same feeling he had had on the
+eve of a battle, when troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly
+attracted to the ruling circles where the future, on which the fate of
+millions depended, was being shaped. From the irritation of the
+older men, the curiosity of the uninitiated. the reserve of the
+initiated, the hurry and preoccupation of everyone, and the
+innumerable committees and commissions of whose existence he learned
+every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in Petersburg a vast
+civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in chief of which was
+a mysterious person he did not know, but who was supposed to be a
+man of genius- Speranski. And this movement of reconstruction of which
+Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski its chief promoter,
+began to interest him so keenly that the question of the army
+regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his consciousness.
+
+Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception
+in the highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The
+reforming party cordially welcomed and courted him, the first place
+because he was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly
+because by liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of
+being a liberal. The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured
+the innovations, turned to him expecting his sympathy in their
+disapproval of the reforms, simply because he was the son of his
+father. The feminine society world welcomed him gladly, because he was
+rich, distinguished, a good match, and almost a newcomer, with a
+halo of romance on account of his supposed death and the tragic loss
+of his wife. Besides this the general opinion of all who had known him
+previously was that he had greatly improved during these last five
+years, having softened and grown more manly, lost his former
+affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony, and acquired the
+serenity that comes with years. People talked about him, were
+interested in him, and wanted to meet him.
+
+The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrew
+spent the evening at Count Kochubey's. He told the count of his
+interview with Sila Andreevich (Kochubey spoke of Arakcheev by that
+nickname with the same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the
+Minister of War's anteroom).
+
+"Mon cher, even in this case you can't do without Michael
+Mikhaylovich Speranski. He manages everything. I'll speak to him. He
+has promised to come this evening."
+
+"What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?" asked Prince
+Andrew.
+
+Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkonski's
+simplicity.
+
+"We were talking to him about you a few days ago," Kochubey
+continued, "and about your freed plowmen."
+
+"Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?" said an old
+man of Catherine's day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkonski.
+
+"It was a small estate that brought in no profit," replied Prince
+Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old
+man uselessly.
+
+"Afraid of being late..." said the old man, looking at Kochubey.
+
+"There's one thing I don't understand," he continued. "Who will plow
+the land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but difficult
+to rule.... Just the same as now- I ask you, Count- who will be
+heads of the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?"
+
+"Those who pass the examinations, I suppose," replied Kochubey,
+crossing his legs and glancing round.
+
+"Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a
+priceless man, but he's sixty. Is he to go up for examination?"
+
+"Yes, that's a difficulty, as education is not at all general,
+but..."
+
+Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the
+arm, and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a
+large open forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness,
+who was just entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with
+a cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It
+was Speranski. Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a
+throb within him, as happens at critical moments of life. Whether it
+was from respect, envy, or anticipation, he did not know.
+Speranski's whole figure was of a peculiar type that made him easily
+recognizable. In the society in which Prince Andrew lived he had never
+seen anyone who together with awkward and clumsy gestures possessed
+such calmness and self-assurance; he had never seen so resolute yet
+gentle an expression as that in those half-closed, rather humid
+eyes, or so firm a smile that expressed nothing; nor had he heard such
+a refined, smooth, soft voice; above all he had never seen such
+delicate whiteness of face or hands- hands which were broad, but
+very plump, soft, and white. Such whiteness and softness Prince Andrew
+had only seen on the faces of soldiers who had been long in
+hospital. This was Speranski, Secretary of State, reporter to the
+Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he had more than once met
+and talked with Napoleon.
+
+Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as
+people involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no
+hurry to speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be
+listened to, and he looked only at the person with whom he was
+conversing.
+
+Prince Andrew followed Speranski's every word and movement with
+particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men who
+judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting anyone new-
+especially anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputation-
+expected to discover in him the perfection of human qualities.
+
+Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been unable to come
+sooner as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that
+the Emperor had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation
+of modesty. When Kochubey introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly
+turned his eyes to Bolkonski with his customary smile and looked at
+him in silence.
+
+"I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as
+everyone has," he said after a pause.
+
+Kochubey said a few words about the reception Arakcheev had given
+Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more markedly.
+
+"The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend
+Monsieur Magnitski," he said, fully articulating every word and
+syllable, "and if you like I can put you in touch with him." He paused
+at the full stop. "I hope you will find him sympathetic and ready to
+co-operate in promoting all that is reasonable."
+
+A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man who had talked
+about his subordinate Pryanichnikov addressed a question to him.
+
+Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every
+movement of Speranski's: this man, not long since an insignificant
+divinity student, who now, Bolkonski thought, held in his hands- those
+plump white hands- the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the
+extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speranski answered the
+old man. He appeared to address condescending words to him from an
+immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud,
+Speranski smiled and said he could not judge of the advantage or
+disadvantage of what pleased the sovereign.
+
+Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speranski
+rose and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along to the other end of
+the room. It was clear that he thought it necessary to interest
+himself in Bolkonski.
+
+"I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the animated
+conversation in which that venerable gentleman involved me," he said
+with a mildly contemptuous smile, as if intimating by that smile
+that he and Prince Andrew understood the insignificance of the
+people with whom he had just been talking. This flattered Prince
+Andrew. "I have known of you for a long time: first from your action
+with regard to your serfs, a first example, of which it is very
+desirable that there should be more imitators; and secondly because
+you are one of those gentlemen of the chamber who have not
+considered themselves offended by the new decree concerning the
+ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing so much gossip and
+tittle-tattle."
+
+"No," said Prince Andrew, "my father did not wish me to take
+advantage of the privilege. I began the service from the lower grade."
+
+"Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands above
+our contemporaries who so condemn this measure which merely
+reestablishes natural justice."
+
+"I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground,"
+returned Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speranski's influence, of
+which he began to be conscious. He did not like to agree with him in
+everything and felt a wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke
+easily and well, he felt a difficulty in expressing himself now
+while talking with Speranski. He was too much absorbed in observing
+the famous man's personality.
+
+"Grounds of personal ambition maybe," Speranski put in quietly.
+
+"And of state interest to some extent," said Prince Andrew.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Speranski quietly, lowering his eyes.
+
+"I am an admirer of Montesquieu," replied Prince Andrew, "and his
+idea that le principe des monarchies est l'honneur me parait
+incontestable. Certains droits et privileges de la noblesse me
+paraissent etre des moyens de soutenir ce sentiment."~^
+
+^~ "The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me incontestable.
+Certain rights and privileges for the aristocracy appear to me a means
+of maintaining that sentiment."
+
+The smile vanished from Speranski's white face, which was much
+improved by the change. Probably Prince Andrew's thought interested
+him.
+
+"Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,"~^ he began,
+pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and speaking even slower
+than in Russian but quite calmly.
+
+^~ "If you regard the question from that point of view."
+
+Speranski went on to say that honor, l'honeur, cannot be upheld by
+privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l'honneur, is either
+a negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a
+source of emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which
+recognize it. His arguments were concise, simple, and clear.
+
+"An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one
+similar to the Legion d'honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not
+harmful but helpful to the success of the service, but not a class
+or court privilege."
+
+"I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court
+privileges have attained the same end," returned Prince Andrew. "Every
+courtier considers himself bound to maintain his position worthily."
+
+"Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege, Prince,"
+said Speranski, indicating by a smile that he wished to finish amiably
+an argument which was embarrassing for his companion. "If you will
+
+do me the honor of calling on me on Wednesday," he added, "I will,
+after talking with Magnitski, let you know what may interest you,
+and shall also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you."
+
+Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without taking leave, and
+trying to attract as little attention as possible, he left the room.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew
+felt the whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of
+seclusion quite overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed
+him in that city.
+
+On returning home in the evening he would jot down in his notebook
+four or five necessary calls or appointments for certain hours. The
+mechanism of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be in time
+everywhere, absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did
+nothing, did not even think or find time to think, but only talked,
+and talked successfully, of what he had thought while in the country.
+
+He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the
+same remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy
+for whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was
+thinking of nothing.
+
+As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey's, Speranski
+produced a strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when
+he received him tete-a-tate at his own house and talked to him long
+and confidentially.
+
+To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and
+insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the
+living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove, that he
+readily believed that in Speranski he had found this ideal of a
+perfectly rational and virtuous man. Had Speranski sprung from the
+same class as himself and possessed the same breeding and
+traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered his weak, human,
+unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and logical turn of
+mind inspired him with respect all the more because he did not quite
+understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either because he appreciated the
+other's capacity or because he considered it necessary to win him to
+his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness before
+Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which goes
+hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption
+that one's companion is the only man besides oneself capable of
+understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the
+reasonableness and profundity of one's own ideas.
+
+During their long conversation on Wednesday evening, Speranski
+more than once remarked: "We regard everything that is above the
+common level of rooted custom..." or, with a smile: "But we want the
+wolves to be fed and the sheep to be safe..." or: "They cannot
+understand this..." and all in a way that seemed to say: "We, you
+and I, understand what they are and who we are."
+
+This first long conversation with Speranski only strengthened in
+Prince Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first
+meeting. He saw in him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast
+intellect who by his energy and persistence had attained power,
+which he was using solely for the welfare of Russia. In Prince
+Andrew's eyes Speranski was the man he would himself have wished to
+be- one who explained all the facts of life reasonably, considered
+important only what was rational, and was capable of applying the
+standard of reason to everything. Everything seemed so simple and
+clear in Speranski's exposition that Prince Andrew involuntarily
+agreed with him about everything. If he replied and argued, it was
+only because he wished to maintain his independence and not submit
+to Speranski's opinions entirely. Everything was right and
+everything was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince
+Andrew. This was Speranski's cold, mirrorlike look, which did not
+allow one to penetrate to his soul, and his delicate white hands,
+which Prince Andrew involuntarily watched as one does watch the
+hands of those who possess power. This mirrorlike gaze and those
+delicate hands irritated Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was
+unpleasantly struck, too, by the excessive contempt for others that he
+observed in Speranski, and by the diversity of lines of argument he
+used to support his opinions. He made use of every kind of mental
+device, except analogy, and passed too boldly, it seemed to Prince
+Andrew, from one to another. Now he would take up the position of a
+practical man and condemn dreamers; now that of a satirist, and
+laugh ironically at his opponents; now grow severely logical, or
+suddenly rise to the realm of metaphysics. (This last resource was one
+he very frequently employed.) He would transfer a question to
+metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space, time, and
+thought, and, having deduced the refutation he needed, would again
+descend to the level of the original discussion.
+
+In general the trait of Speranski's mentality which struck Prince
+Andrew most was his absolute and unshakable belief in the power and
+authority of reason. It was evident that the thought could never occur
+to him which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that it is
+after all impossible to express all one thinks; and that he had
+never felt the doubt, "Is not all I think and believe nonsense?" And
+it was just this peculiarity of Speranski's mind that particularly
+attracted Prince Andrew.
+
+During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a
+passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt
+for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village
+priest, and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account
+of his humble origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to
+cherish his sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to
+strengthen it.
+
+On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having mentioned the
+Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speranski told him
+sarcastically that the Commission had existed for a hundred and
+fifty years, had cost millions, and had done nothing except that
+Rosenkampf had stuck labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the
+different codes.
+
+"And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent,"
+said he. "We want to give the Senate new juridical powers, but we have
+no laws. That is why it is a sin for men like you, Prince, not to
+serve in these times!"
+
+Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in
+jurisprudence was needed which he did not possess.
+
+"But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a vicious
+circle from which we must break a way out."
+
+A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army
+Regulations and- what he had not at all expected- was chairman of a
+section of the committee for the revision of the laws. At
+Speranski's request he took the first part of the Civil Code that
+was being drawn up and, with the aid of the Code Napoleon and the
+Institutes of Justinian, he worked at formulating the section on
+Personal Rights.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to
+Petersburg after visiting his estates had involuntarily found
+himself in a leading position among the Petersburg Freemasons. He
+arranged dining and funeral lodge meetings, enrolled new members,
+and busied himself uniting various lodges and acquiring authentic
+charters. He gave money for the erection of temples and supplemented
+as far as he could the collection of alms, in regard to which the
+majority of members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost
+singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded in Petersburg.
+
+His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations
+and dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he
+considered it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations
+of the bachelor circles in which he moved.
+
+Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre
+at the end of a year began to feel that the more firmly he tried to
+rest upon it, the more Masonic ground on which he stood gave way under
+him. At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under
+him the closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had
+joined the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who
+confidently steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his
+foot down it sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness the ground,
+he put his other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in
+it, and involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog.
+
+Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg- he had of late stood
+aside from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost
+entirely in Moscow. All the members of the lodges were men Pierre knew
+in ordinary life, and it was difficult for him to regard them merely
+as Brothers in Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D.,
+whom he knew in society mostly as weak and insignificant men. Under
+the Masonic aprons and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at
+which they aimed in ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and
+reckoning up twenty to thirty rubles received for the most part in
+promises from a dozen members, of whom half were as well able to pay
+as himself, Pierre remembered the Masonic vow in which each Brother
+promised to devote all his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on
+which he tried not to dwell arose in his soul.
+
+He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In the first
+he put those who did not take an active part in the affairs of the
+lodges or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the
+mystical science of the order: with questions of the threefold
+designation of God, the three primordial elements- sulphur, mercury,
+and salt- or the meaning of the square and all the various figures
+of the temple of Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to
+which the elder ones chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought,
+Joseph Alexeevich himself, but he did not share their interests. His
+heart was not in the mystical aspect of Freemasonry.
+
+In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like
+him, seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a
+straight and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so.
+
+In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority)
+who saw nothing in Freemasonry but the external forms and
+ceremonies, and prized the strict performance of these forms without
+troubling about their purport or significance. Such were Willarski and
+even the Grand Master of the principal lodge.
+
+Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged,
+particularly those who had lately joined. These according to
+Pierre's observations were men who had no belief in anything, nor
+desire for anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate
+with the wealthy young Brothers who were influential through their
+connections or rank, and of whom there were very many in the lodge.
+
+Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing.
+Freemasonry, at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes seemed to him
+based merely on externals. He did not think of doubting Freemasonry
+itself, but suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path
+and deviated from its original principles. And so toward the end of
+the year he went abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the
+order.
+
+In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. Our
+Freemasons knew from correspondence with those abroad that Bezukhov
+had obtained the confidence of many highly placed persons, had been
+initiated into many mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade,
+and was bringing back with him much that might conduce to the
+advantage of the Masonic cause in Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons
+all came to see him, tried to ingratiate themselves with him, and it
+seemed to them all that he was preparing something for them and
+concealing it.
+
+A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was convened,
+at which Pierre promised to communicate to the Petersburg Brothers
+what he had to deliver to them from the highest leaders of their
+order. The meeting was a full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre
+rose and began his address.
+
+"Dear Brothers," he began, blushing and stammering, with a written
+speech in his hand, "it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries
+in the seclusion of our lodge- we must act- act! We are drowsing,
+but we must act." Pierre raised his notebook and began to read.
+
+"For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the triumph of
+virtue," he read, "we must cleanse men from prejudice, diffuse
+principles in harmony with the spirit of the times, undertake the
+education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the
+wisest men, boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity,
+and folly, and form of those devoted to us a body linked together by
+unity of purpose and possessed of authority and power.
+
+"To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of virtue over
+vice and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this
+world, receive a lasting reward for his virtue. But in these great
+endeavors we are gravely hampered by the political institutions of
+today. What is to be done in these circumstances? To favor
+revolutions, overthrow everything, repel force by force?... No! We are
+very far from that. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it
+quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also
+because wisdom needs no violence.
+
+"The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of
+preparing men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of
+conviction- aiming at the punishment of vice and folly, and
+patronizing talent and virtue: raising worthy men from the dust and
+attaching them to our Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the
+power unobtrusively to bind the hands of the protectors of disorder
+and to control them without their being aware of it. In a word, we
+must found a form of government holding universal sway, which should
+be diffused over the whole world without destroying the bonds of
+citizenship, and beside which all other governments can continue in
+their customary course and do everything except what impedes the great
+aim of our order, which is to obtain for virtue the victory over vice.
+This aim was that of Christianity itself. It taught men to be wise and
+good and for their own benefit to follow the example and instruction
+of the best and wisest men.
+
+"At that time, when everything was plunged in darkness, preaching
+alone was of course sufficient. The novelty of Truth endowed her
+with special strength, but now we need much more powerful methods.
+It is now necessary that man, governed by his senses, should find in
+virtue a charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to eradicate
+the passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble aim, and it
+is therefore necessary that everyone should be able to satisfy his
+passions within the limits of virtue. Our order should provide means
+to that end.
+
+"As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in every state,
+each of them again training two others and all being closely united,
+everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret
+accomplished much for the welfare of mankind."
+
+This speech not only made a strong impression, but created
+excitement in the lodge. The majority of the Brothers, seeing in it
+dangerous designs of Illuminism,~^ met it with a coldness that
+surprised Pierre. The Grand Master began answering him, and Pierre
+began developing his views with more and more warmth. It was long
+since there had been so stormy a meeting. Parties were formed, some
+accusing Pierre of Illuminism, others supporting him. At that
+meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of
+men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself
+identically to two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on his
+side understood him in their own way with limitations and
+alterations he could not agree to, as what he always wanted most was
+to convey his thought to others just as he himself understood it.
+
+^~ The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for monarchical
+institutions.
+
+At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will
+reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue
+alone, but also a love of strife that had moved him in the dispute.
+Pierre did not answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would
+be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without waiting for
+the usual formalities he left the lodge and went home.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For
+three days after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a
+sofa at home receiving no one and going nowhere.
+
+It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who
+implored him to see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and
+how she wished to devote her whole life to him.
+
+At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she
+would return to Petersburg from abroad.
+
+Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre
+respected less than the others forced his way in to see him and,
+turning the conversation upon Pierre's matrimonial affairs, by way
+of fraternal advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his
+wife was wrong and that he was neglecting one of the first rules of
+Freemasonry by not forgiving the penitent.
+
+At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili's wife, sent to
+him imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a
+most important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy
+against him and that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and
+in the mood he then was, this was not even unpleasant to him.
+Nothing mattered to him. Nothing in life seemed to him of much
+importance, and under the influence of the depression that possessed
+him he valued neither his liberty nor his resolution to punish his
+wife.
+
+"No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to
+blame," he thought.
+
+If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife,
+it was only because in his state of depression he did not feel able to
+take any step. Had his wife come to him, he would not have turned
+her away. Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of
+indifference whether he lived with his wife or not?
+
+Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre
+late one night prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see
+Joseph Alexeevich. This is what he noted in his diary:
+
+Moscow, 17th November
+
+I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down
+what I have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich is living poorly and has
+for three years been suffering from a painful disease of the
+bladder. No one has ever heard him utter a groan or a word of
+complaint. From morning till late at night, except when he eats his
+very plain food, he is working at science. He received me graciously
+and made me sit down on the bed on which he lay. I made the sign of
+the Knights of the East and of Jerusalem, and he responded in the same
+manner, asking me with a mild smile what I had learned and gained in
+the Prussian and Scottish lodges. I told him everything as best I
+could, and told him what I had proposed to our Petersburg lodge, of
+the bad reception I had encountered, and of my rupture with the
+Brothers. Joseph Alexeevich, having remained silent and thoughtful for
+a good while, told me his view of the matter, which at once lit up for
+me my whole past and the future path I should follow. He surprised
+me by asking whether I remembered the threefold aim of the order:
+(1) The preservation and study of the mystery. (2) The purification
+and reformation of oneself for its reception, and (3) The
+improvement of the human race by striving for such purification. Which
+is the principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation and
+self-purification. Only to this aim can we always strive independently
+of circumstances. But at the same time just this aim demands the
+greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by pride, losing sight of
+this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the mystery which in our
+impurity we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of the
+human race while ourselves setting an example of baseness and
+profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine, just because it is
+attracted by social activity and puffed up by pride. On this ground
+Joseph Alexeevich condemned my speech and my whole activity, and in
+the depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of my family affairs
+he said to me, "the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told you,
+lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the
+difficulties of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on
+the contrary, my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares
+that we can attain our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge- for man
+can only know himself by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can
+only be attained by conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief
+virtue- love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its
+vanity and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new
+life." These words are all the more remarkable because, in spite of
+his great physical sufferings, Joseph Alexeevich is never weary of
+life though he loves death, for which- in spite of the purity and
+loftiness of his inner man- he does not yet feel himself
+sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained to me fully the
+meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out to me that the
+numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He advised me not
+to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to take up only
+second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while diverting the
+Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the true path
+self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for
+myself personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that
+end he gave me a notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which
+I will in future note down all my actions.
+
+Petersburg, 23rd November
+
+I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears
+and said that Helene was here and that she implored me to hear her;
+that she was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I
+knew that if I once let myself see her I should not have strength to
+go on refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know
+whose aid and advice to seek. Had my benefactor been here he would
+have told me what to do. I went to my room and reread Joseph
+Alexeevich's letters and recalled my conversations with him, and
+deduced from it all that I ought not to refuse a suppliant, and
+ought to reach a helping hand to everyone- especially to one so
+closely bound to me- and that I must bear my cross. But if I forgive
+her for the sake of doing right, then let union with her have only a
+spiritual aim. That is what I decided, and what I wrote to Joseph
+Alexeevich. I told my wife that I begged her to forget the past, to
+forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her, and that I had
+nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She need not know
+how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled on the upper
+floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy feeling of
+regeneration.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at
+court and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each
+with its own particular tone. The largest of these was the French
+circle of the Napoleonic alliance, the circle of Count Rumyantsev
+and Caulaincourt. In this group Helene, as soon as she had settled
+in Petersburg with her husband, took a very prominent place. She was
+visited by the members of the French embassy and by many belonging
+to that circle and noted for their intellect and polished manners.
+
+Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the
+Emperors and had brought from there these connections with the
+Napoleonic notabilities. At Erfurt her success had been brilliant.
+Napoleon himself had noticed her in the theater and said of her:
+"C'est un superbe animal."~^ Her success as a beautiful and elegant
+woman did not surprise Pierre, for she had become even handsomer
+than before. What did surprise him was that during these last two
+years his wife had succeeded in gaining the reputation "d' une femme
+charmante, aussi spirituelle que belle."~^ The distinguished
+Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page letters. Bilibin saved up his
+epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezukhova's presence. To be
+received in the Countess Bezukhova's salon was regarded as a diploma
+of intellect. Young men read books before attending Helene's evenings,
+to have something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the embassy,
+and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a
+way Helene was a power. Pierre, who knew she was very stupid,
+sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her
+evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy
+were discussed. At these parties his feelings were like those of a
+conjuror who always expects his trick to be found out at any moment.
+But whether because stupidity was just what was needed to run such a
+salon, or because those who were deceived found pleasure in the
+deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Helene Bezukhova's
+reputation as a lovely and clever woman became so firmly established
+that she could say the emptiest and stupidest things and everybody
+would go into raptures over every word of hers and look for a profound
+meaning in it of which she herself had no conception.
+
+^~ "That's a superb animal."
+
+^~ "Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely."
+
+Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He
+was that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no
+one's way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general
+impression of the drawing room, he served, by the contrast he
+presented to her, as an advantageous background to his elegant and
+tactful wife. Pierre during the last two years, as a result of his
+continual absorption in abstract interests and his sincere contempt
+for all else, had acquired in his wife's circle, which did not
+interest him, that air of unconcern, indifference, and benevolence
+toward all, which cannot be acquired artificially and therefore
+inspires involuntary respect. He entered his wife's drawing room as
+one enters a theater, was acquainted with everybody, equally pleased
+to see everyone, and equally indifferent to them all. Sometimes he
+joined in a conversation which interested him and, regardless of
+whether any "gentlemen of the embassy" were present or not,
+lispingly expressed his views, which were sometimes not at all in
+accord with the accepted tone of the moment. But the general opinion
+concerning the queer husband of "the most distinguished woman in
+Petersburg" was so well established that no one took his freaks
+seriously.
+
+Among the many young men who frequented her house every day, Boris
+Drubetskoy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was
+the most intimate friend of the Bezukhov household since Helene's
+return from Erfurt. Helene spoke of him as "mon page" and treated
+him like a child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody, but
+sometimes that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Boris
+behaved with a particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade of
+deference also disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so painfully three
+years before from the mortification to which his wife had subjected
+him that he now protected himself from the danger of its repetition,
+first by not being a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing
+himself to suspect.
+
+"No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally
+renounced her former infatuations," he told himself. "There has
+never been an instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs
+of the heart"- a statement which, though gathered from an unknown
+source, he believed implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris' presence
+in his wife's drawing room (and he was almost always there) had a
+physical effect upon Pierre; it constricted his limbs and destroyed
+the unconsciousness and freedom of his movements.
+
+"What a strange antipathy," thought Pierre, "yet I used to like
+him very much."
+
+In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the rather
+blind and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a clever crank who
+did nothing but harmed nobody and was a first-rate, good-natured
+fellow. But a complex and difficult process of internal development
+was taking place all this time in Pierre's soul, revealing much to him
+and causing him many spiritual doubts and joys.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote in it
+during that time:
+
+24th November
+
+Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. [By
+Joseph Alexeevich's advice Pierre had entered the service of the state
+and served on one of the committees.] Returned home for dinner and
+dined alone- the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and
+drank moderately and after dinner copied out some passages for the
+Brothers. In the evening I went down to the countess and told a
+funny story about B., and only remembered that I ought not to have
+done so when everybody laughed loudly at it.
+
+I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me
+to walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and
+deliberation, (2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion,
+(3) to withdraw from worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the
+state, (b) family duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the
+management of my affairs.
+
+27th November
+
+I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God,
+help and strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the
+Scriptures, but without proper feeling. Brother Urusov came and we
+talked about worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor's new
+projects. I began to criticize them, but remembered my rules and my
+benefactor's words- that a true Freemason should be a zealous worker
+for the state when his aid is required and a quiet onlooker when not
+called on to assist. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O.
+visited me and we had a preliminary talk about the reception of a
+new Brother. They laid on me the duty of Rhetor. I feel myself weak
+and unworthy. Then our talk turned to the interpretation of the
+seven pillars and steps of the Temple, the seven sciences, the seven
+virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
+Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the admission took place.
+The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the
+magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy who was
+admitted. I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A strange feeling
+agitated me all the time I was alone with him in the dark chamber. I
+caught myself harboring a feeling of hatred toward him which I
+vainly tried to overcome. That is why I should really like to save him
+from evil and lead him into the path of truth, but evil thoughts of
+him did not leave me. It seemed to me that his object in entering
+the Brotherhood was merely to be intimate and in favor with members of
+our lodge. Apart from the fact that he had asked me several times
+whether N. and S. were members of our lodge (a question to which I
+could not reply) and that according to my observation he is
+incapable of feeling respect for our holy order and is too preoccupied
+and satisfied with the outer man to desire spiritual improvement, I
+had no cause to doubt him, but he seemed to me insincere, and all
+the time I stood alone with him in the dark temple it seemed to me
+that he was smiling contemptuously at my words, and I wished really to
+stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it. I could not be
+eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to the Brothers and to
+the Grand Master. Great Architect of Nature, help me to find the
+true path out of the labyrinth of lies!
+
+After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then
+the following was written:
+
+I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who
+advised me to hold fast by brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was
+revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim
+is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name
+unutterable which means the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen,
+refresh, and support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt
+has no place. The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane
+science and our sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human
+sciences dissect everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to
+examine it. In the holy science of our order all is one, all is
+known in its entirety and life. The Trinity- the three elements of
+matter- are sulphur, mercury, and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and
+fiery nature; in combination with salt by its fiery nature it
+arouses a desire in the latter by means of which it attracts
+mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination produces other
+bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence. Christ, the
+Holy Spirit, Him!...
+
+3rd December
+
+Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went
+and paced up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but
+instead my imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago,
+when Dolokhov, meeting me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I
+was enjoying perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife's absence. At
+the time I gave him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that
+meeting and in my mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter
+replies. I recollected myself and drove away that thought only when
+I found myself glowing with anger, but I did not sufficiently
+repent. Afterwards Boris Drubetskoy came and began relating various
+adventures. His coming vexed me from the first, and I said something
+disagreeable to him. He replied. I flared up and said much that was
+unpleasant and even rude to him. He became silent, and I recollected
+myself only when it was too late. My God, I cannot get on with him
+at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set myself above him and so
+become much worse than he, for he is lenient to my rudeness while I on
+the contrary nourish contempt for him. O God, grant that in his
+presence I may rather see my own vileness, and behave so that he too
+may benefit. After dinner I fell asleep and as I was drowsing off I
+clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear, "Thy day!"
+
+I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded
+by dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my
+left thigh with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it
+with my hands. Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger
+one, began biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the
+bigger and heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking
+my arm, led me to a building to enter which we had to pass along a
+narrow plank. I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to
+clamber up a fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After
+much effort I dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one
+side and my body on the other. I looked round and saw Brother A.
+standing on the fence and pointing me to a broad avenue and garden,
+and in the garden was a large and beautiful building. I woke up. O
+Lord, great Architect of Nature, help me to tear from myself these
+dogs- my passions especially the last, which unites in itself the
+strength of all the former ones, and aid me to enter that temple of
+virtue to a vision of which I attained in my dream.
+
+7th December
+
+I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my house, and that I
+was very glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered
+incessantly with other people and suddenly remembered that this
+could not please him, and I wished to come close to him and embrace
+him. But as soon as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and
+grown young, and he was quietly telling me something about the
+teaching of our order, but so softly that I could not hear it. Then it
+seemed that we all left the room and something strange happened. We
+were sitting or lying on the floor. He was telling me something, and I
+wished to show him my sensibility, and not listening to what he was
+saying I began picturing to myself the condition of my inner man and
+the grace of God sanctifying me. And tears came into my eyes, and I
+was glad he noticed this. But be looked at me with vexation and jumped
+up, breaking off his remarks. I felt abashed and asked whether what he
+had been saying did not concern me; but he did not reply, gave me a
+kind look, and then we suddenly found ourselves in my bedroom where
+there is a double bed. He lay down on the edge of it and I burned with
+longing to caress him and lie down too. And he said, "Tell me
+frankly what is your chief temptation? Do you know it? I think you
+know it already." Abashed by this question, I replied that sloth was
+my chief temptation. He shook his head incredulously; and even more
+abashed, I said that though I was living with my wife as he advised, I
+was not living with her as her husband. To this he replied that one
+should not deprive a wife of one's embraces and gave me to
+understand that that was my duty. But I replied that I should be
+ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I awoke and
+found in my mind the text from the Gospel: "The life was the light
+of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness
+comprehended it not." Joseph Alexeevich's face had looked young and
+bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in which he
+wrote about "conjugal duties."
+
+9th December
+
+I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw
+that I was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and
+Joseph Alexeevich came in from the drawing room. I seemed to know at
+once that the process of regeneration had already taken place in
+him, and I rushed to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands,
+and he said, "Hast thou noticed that my face is different?" I looked
+at him, still holding him in my arms, and saw that his face was young,
+but that he had no hair on his head and his features were quite
+changed. And I said, "I should have known you had I met you by
+chance," and I thought to myself, "Am I telling the truth?" And
+suddenly I saw him lying like a dead body; then he gradually recovered
+and went with me into my study carrying a large book of sheets of
+drawing paper; I said, "I drew that," and he answered by bowing his
+head. I opened the book, and on all the pages there were excellent
+drawings. And in my dream I knew that these drawings represented the
+love adventures of the soul with its beloved. And on its pages I saw a
+beautiful representation of a maiden in transparent garments and
+with a transparent body, flying up to the clouds. And I seemed to know
+that this maiden was nothing else than a representation of the Song of
+Songs. And looking at those drawings I dreamed I felt that I was doing
+wrong, but could not tear myself away from them. Lord, help me! My
+God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing, Thy will be done; but if I am
+myself the cause, teach me what I should do! I shall perish of my
+debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me!
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+The Rostovs' monetary affairs had not improved during the two
+years they had spent in the country.
+
+Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was
+still serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending
+comparatively little, the way of life at Otradnoe- Mitenka's
+management of affairs, in particular- was such that the debts
+inevitably increased every year. The only resource obviously
+presenting itself to the old count was to apply for an official
+post, so he had come to Petersburg to look for one and also, as he
+said, to let the lassies enjoy themselves for the last time.
+
+Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Vera and was
+accepted.
+
+Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best society without
+themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of
+acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they
+were provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow
+without inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on them.
+
+The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in
+Moscow, and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country
+neighbors from Otradnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters,
+Peronskaya a maid of honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their
+district postmaster who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the
+men who very soon became frequent visitors at the Rostovs' house in
+Petersburg were Boris, Pierre whom the count had met in the street and
+dragged home with him, and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostovs'
+and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Vera, the attentions a young
+man pays when he intends to propose.
+
+Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at
+Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He
+narrated that episode so persistently and with so important an air
+that everyone believed in the merit and usefulness of his deed, and he
+had obtained two decorations for Austerlitz.
+
+In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had
+picked up the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp
+standing near the commander in chief and had taken it to his
+commander. Just as he had done after Austerlitz, he related this
+occurrence at such length and so insistently that everyone again
+believed it had been necessary to do this, and he received two
+decorations for the Finnish war also. In 1809 he was a captain in
+the Guards, wore medals, and held some special lucrative posts in
+Petersburg.
+
+Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg's merits, it could not
+be denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent
+terms with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant
+career before him and an assured position in society.
+
+Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a
+Moscow theater, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostova to him and had
+said in German, "das soll mein Weib werden,"~^ and from that moment had
+made up his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered
+the Rostovs' position and his own, he decided that the time had come
+to propose.
+
+^~ "That girl shall be my wife."
+
+Berg's proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not
+flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an
+obscure Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess
+Rostova; but Berg's chief characteristic was such a naive and good
+natured egotism that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it
+would be a good thing, since he himself was so firmly convinced that
+it was good, indeed excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs' affairs were
+seriously embarrassed, as the suitor could not but know; and above
+all, Vera was twenty-four, had been taken out everywhere, and though
+she was certainly good-looking and sensible, no one up to now had
+proposed to her. So they gave their consent.
+
+"You see," said Berg to his comrade, whom he called "friend" only
+because he knew that everyone has friends, "you see, I have considered
+it all, and should not marry if I had not thought it all out or if
+it were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and
+mamma are now provided for- I have arranged that rent for them in
+the Baltic Provinces- and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with
+her fortune and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not
+marrying for money- I consider that dishonorable- but a wife should
+bring her share and a husband his. I have my position in the
+service, she has connections and some means. In our times that is
+worth something, isn't it? But above all, she is a handsome, estimable
+girl, and she loves me..."
+
+Berg blushed and smiled.
+
+"And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good.
+Now the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite
+different- an unpleasant character and has not the same
+intelligence. She is so... you know?... Unpleasant... But my
+fiancee!... Well, you will be coming," he was going to say, "to dine,"
+but changed his mind and said "to take tea with us," and quickly
+doubling up his tongue he blew a small round ring of tobacco smoke,
+perfectly embodying his dream of happiness.
+
+After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by
+Berg's proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times
+took possession of the family, but the rejoicing was external and
+insincere. In the family's feeling toward this wedding a certain
+awkwardness and constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not
+having loved Vera sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off
+their hands. The old count felt this most. He would probably have been
+unable to state the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from
+the state of his affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what
+his debts amounted to, or what dowry he could give Vera. When his
+daughters were born he had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an
+estate with three hundred serfs; but one of these estates had
+already been sold, and the other was mortgaged and the interest so
+much in arrears that it would have to be sold, so that it was
+impossible to give it to Vera. Nor had he any money.
+
+Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained
+before the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own
+mind the question of the dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At
+one time the count thought of giving her the Ryazan estate or of
+selling a forest, at another time of borrowing money on a note of
+hand. A few days before the wedding Berg entered the count's study
+early one morning and, with a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his
+future father-in-law to let him know what Vera's dowry would be. The
+count was so disconcerted by this long-foreseen inquiry that without
+consideration he gave the first reply that came into his head. "I like
+your being businesslike about it.... I like it. You shall be
+satisfied...."
+
+And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the
+conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did
+not know for certain how much Vera would have and did not receive at
+least part of the dowry in advance, he would have to break matters
+off.
+
+"Because, consider, Count- if I allowed myself to marry now
+without having definite means to maintain my wife, I should be
+acting badly...."
+
+The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be generous and
+to avoid further importunity, saying that he would give a note of hand
+for eighty thousand rubles. Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on
+the shoulder, and said that he was very grateful, but that it was
+impossible for him to arrange his new life without receiving thirty
+thousand in ready money. "Or at least twenty thousand, Count," he
+added, "and then a note of hand for only sixty thousand."
+
+"Yes, yes, all right!" said the count hurriedly. "Only excuse me, my
+dear fellow, I'll give you twenty thousand and a note of hand for
+eighty thousand as well. Yes, yes! Kiss me."
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which
+she had counted on her fingers with Boris after they had kissed four
+years ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sonya and her
+mother, if Boris happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of
+that episode as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not
+worth mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question
+whether her engagement to Boris was a jest or an important, binding
+promise tormented her.
+
+Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had had not seen
+the Rostovs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed
+near Otradnoe, but had never been to see them.
+
+Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he not wish to see her, and
+this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders
+spoke of him.
+
+"Nowadays old friends are not remembered," the countess would say
+when Boris was mentioned.
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently,
+seemed to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke
+rapturously and gratefully of the merits of her son and the
+brilliant career on which he had entered. When the Rostovs came to
+Petersburg Boris called on them.
+
+He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natasha was
+his most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of
+letting her and her parents feel that the childish relations between
+himself and Natasha could not be binding either on her or on him. He
+had a brilliant position in society thanks to his intimacy with
+Countess Bezukhova, a brilliant position in the service thanks to
+the patronage of an important personage whose complete confidence he
+enjoyed, and he was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the
+richest heiresses in Petersburg, plans which might very easily be
+realized. When he entered the Rostovs' drawing room Natasha was in her
+own room. When she heard of his arrival she almost ran into the
+drawing room, flushed and beaming with a more than cordial smile.
+
+Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining
+from under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had
+known her four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a
+different Natasha entered, and his face expressed rapturous
+astonishment. This expression on his face pleased Natasha.
+
+"Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?" asked the
+countess.
+
+Boris kissed Natasha's hand and said that he was astonished at the
+change in her.
+
+"How handsome you have grown!"
+
+"I should think so!" replied Natasha's laughing eyes.
+
+"And is Papa older?" she asked.
+
+Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris' conversation with
+the countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood's suitor. He
+felt the weight of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced
+at her occasionally.
+
+Boris' uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were
+all comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natasha noticed at
+once. He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess,
+arranging with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his
+left hand like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined
+compression of his lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg
+society, recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow
+acquaintances. It was not accidentally, Natasha felt, that he alluded,
+when speaking of the highest aristocracy, to an ambassador's ball he
+had attended, and to invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.
+
+All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him from under
+her brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Boris more and more. He
+looked round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he
+was saying. He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and
+took his leave. The same inquisitive, challenging, and rather
+mocking eyes still looked at him. After his first visit Boris said
+to himself that Natasha attracted him just as much as ever, but that
+he must not yield to that feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost
+without fortune, would mean ruin to his career, while to renew their
+former relations without intending to marry her would be dishonorable.
+Boris made up his mind to avoid meeting Natasha, but despite that
+resolution he called again a few days later and began calling often
+and spending whole days at the Rostovs'. It seemed to him that he
+ought to have an explanation with Natasha and tell her that the old
+times must be forgotten, that in spite of everything... she could
+not be his wife, that he had no means, and they would never let her
+marry him. But he failed to do so and felt awkward about entering on
+such an explanation. From day to day he became more and more
+entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya that Natasha was in
+love with Boris as of old. She sang him his favorite songs, showed him
+her album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to
+the past, letting it be understood how was the present; and every
+day he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant to, and
+not knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how it would all end.
+He left off visiting Helene and received reproachful notes from her
+every day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with the Rostovs.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket,
+without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing
+under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and
+bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also
+in a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in
+curlpapers, ran in. The countess- her prayerful mood dispelled- looked
+round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be
+that this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager,
+seeing her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down,
+and unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing
+that her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and,
+rapidly slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her
+slippers and jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might
+become her grave. This couch was high, with a feather bed and five
+pillows each smaller than the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank
+into the feather bed, rolled over to the wall, and began snuggling
+up the bedclothes as she settled down, raising her knees to her
+chin, kicking out and laughing almost inaudibly, now covering
+herself up head and all, and now peeping at her mother. The countess
+finished her prayers and came to the bed with a stern face, but
+seeing, that Natasha's head was covered, she smiled in her kind,
+weak way.
+
+"Now then, now then!" said she.
+
+"Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?" said Natasha. "Now, just one on
+your throat and another... that'll do!" And seizing her mother round
+the neck, she kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her
+mother Natasha seemed rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that
+however she clasped her mother she always managed to do it without
+hurting her or making her feel uncomfortable or displeased.
+
+"Well, what is it tonight?" said the mother, having arranged her
+pillows and waited until Natasha, after turning over a couple of
+times, had settled down beside her under the quilt, spread out her
+arms, and assumed a serious expression.
+
+These visits of Natasha's at night before the count returned from
+his club were one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and
+daughter.
+
+"What is it tonight?- But I have to tell you..."
+
+Natasha put her hand on her mother's mouth.
+
+"About Boris... I know," she said seriously; "that's what I have
+come about. Don't say it- I know. No, do tell me!" and she removed her
+hand. "Tell me, Mamma! He's nice?"
+
+"Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say
+Boris is nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what
+then?... What are you thinking about? You have quite turned his
+head, I can see that...."
+
+As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter.
+Natasha was lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the
+mahogany sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the
+countess only saw her daughter's face in profile. That face struck her
+by its peculiarly serious and concentrated expression.
+
+Natasha was listening and considering.
+
+"Well, what then?" said she.
+
+"You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him?
+You know you can't marry him."
+
+"Why not?" said Natasha, without changing her position.
+
+"Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a
+relation... and because you yourself don't love him."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I know. It is not right, darling!"
+
+"But if I want to..." said Natasha.
+
+"Leave off talking nonsense," said the countess.
+
+"But if I want to..."
+
+"Natasha, I am in earnest..."
+
+Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess' large hand to
+her, kissed it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned
+it over and began kissing first one knuckle, then the space between
+the knuckles, then the next knuckle, whispering, "January, February,
+March, April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don't you say anything? Speak!"
+said she, turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at her
+daughter and in that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she
+had wished to say.
+
+"It won't do, my love! Not everyone will understand this
+friendship dating from your childish days, and to see him so
+intimate with you may injure you in the eyes of other young men who
+visit us, and above all it torments him for nothing. He may already
+have found a suitable and wealthy match, and now he's half crazy."
+
+"Crazy?" repeated Natasha.
+
+"I'll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin..."
+
+"I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old."
+
+"He was not always old. But this is what I'll do, Natasha, I'll have
+a talk with Boris. He need not come so often...."
+
+"Why not, if he likes to?"
+
+"Because I know it will end in nothing...."
+
+"How can you know? No, Mamma, don't speak to him! What nonsense!"
+said Natasha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. "Well,
+I won't marry, but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it."
+Natasha smiled and looked at her mother. "Not to marry, but just
+so," she added.
+
+"How so, my pet?"
+
+"Just so. There's no need for me to marry him. But... just so."
+
+"Just so, just so," repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she
+went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh.
+
+"Don't laugh, stop!" cried Natasha. "You're shaking the whole bed!
+You're awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait..." and she
+seized the countess' hands and kissed a knuckle of the little
+finger, saying, "June," and continued, kissing, "July, August," on the
+other hand. "But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think?
+Was anybody ever so much in love with you? And he's very nice, very,
+very nice. Only not quite my taste- he is so narrow, like the
+dining-room clock.... Don't you understand? Narrow, you know- gray,
+light gray..."
+
+"What rubbish you're talking!" said the countess.
+
+Natasha continued: "Don't you really understand? Nicholas would
+understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is
+square."
+
+"You flirt with him too," said the countess, laughing.
+
+"No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue
+and red.... How can I explain it to you?"
+
+"Little countess!" the count's voice called from behind the door.
+"You're not asleep?" Natasha jumped up, snatched up her slippers,
+and ran barefoot to her own room.
+
+It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no
+one could understand all that she understood and all there was in her.
+
+"Sonya?" she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little
+kitten with her enormous plait of hair. "No, how could she? She's
+virtuous. She fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know
+anything more. Even Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how
+clever I am and how... charming she is," she went on, speaking of
+herself in the third person, and imagining it was some very wise
+man- the wisest and best of men- who was saying it of her. "There is
+everything, everything in her," continued this man. "She is
+unusually intelligent, charming... and then she is pretty,
+uncommonly pretty, and agile- she swims and rides splendidly... and
+her voice! One can really say it's a wonderful voice!"
+
+She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw
+herself on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would
+immediately fall asleep, called Dunyasha the maid to put out the
+candle, and before Dunyasha had left the room had already passed
+into yet another happier world of dreams, where everything was as
+light and beautiful as in reality, and even more so because it was
+different.
+
+Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk with him,
+after which he ceased coming to the Rostovs'.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+On the thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, 1809 - 10 an old
+grandee of Catherine's day was giving a ball and midnight supper.
+The diplomatic corps and the Emperor himself were to be present.
+
+The grandee's well-known mansion on the English Quay glittered
+with innumerable lights. Police were stationed at the brightly lit
+entrance which was carpeted with red baize, and not only gendarmes but
+dozens of police officers and even the police master himself stood
+at the porch. Carriages kept driving away and fresh ones arriving,
+with red-liveried footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the
+carriages emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while
+ladies in satin and ermine cautiously descended the carriage steps
+which were let down for them with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly
+and noiselessly over the baize at the entrance.
+
+Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran through
+the crowd and caps were doffed.
+
+"The Emperor?... No, a minister.... prince... ambassador. Don't
+you see the plumes?..." was whispered among the crowd.
+
+One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know everyone
+and mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of the day.
+
+A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostovs, who
+were to be present, were still hurrying to get dressed.
+
+There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in
+the Rostov family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive,
+that the dresses would not be ready, or that something would not be
+arranged as it should be.
+
+Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at
+the court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the
+countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high
+society, was to accompany them to the ball.
+
+They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten
+o'clock, but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were
+not yet dressed.
+
+Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight
+that morning and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all
+day. All her powers since morning had been concentrated on ensuring
+that they all- she herself, Mamma, and Sonya- should be as well
+dressed as possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in
+her hands. The countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and
+the two girls white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their
+bodices and their hair dressed a la grecque.
+
+Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks,
+and ears washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the
+openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were
+already on; the hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing
+dressing and so was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about
+helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting before a
+looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over her slender
+shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and,
+pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her dainty finger, was
+fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went through it.
+
+"That's not the way, that's not the way, Sonya!" cried Natasha
+turning her head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the
+maid who was dressing it had not time to release. "That bow is not
+right. Come here!"
+
+Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on differently.
+
+"Allow me, Miss! I can't do it like that," said the maid who was
+holding Natasha's hair.
+
+"Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That's right, Sonya."
+
+"Aren't you ready? It is nearly ten," came the countess' voice.
+
+"Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?"
+
+"I have only my cap to pin on."
+
+"Don't do it without me!" called Natasha. "You won't do it right."
+
+"But it's already ten."
+
+They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and Natasha had
+still to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.
+
+When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat from under
+which her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother's dressing jacket,
+ran up to Sonya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother.
+Turning her mother's head this way and that, she fastened on the cap
+and, hurriedly kissing her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were
+turning up the hem of her skirt.
+
+The cause of the delay was Natasha's skirt, which was too long.
+Two maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of
+thread. A third with pins in her mouth was running about between the
+countess and Sonya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer
+garment up high on one uplifted hand.
+
+"Mavra, quicker, darling!"
+
+"Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..."
+
+"Whenever will you be ready?" asked the count coming to the door.
+"Here is here is some scent. Peronskaya must be tired of waiting."
+
+"It's ready, Miss," said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze
+dress with two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as
+if by this to express a consciousness of the airiness and purity of
+what she held.
+
+Natasha began putting on the dress.
+
+"In a minute! In a minute! Don't come in, Papa!" she cried to her
+father as he opened the door- speaking from under the filmy skirt
+which still covered her whole face.
+
+Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in.
+He was wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and
+was perfumed and his hair pomaded.
+
+"Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!" cried Natasha, as she stood
+in the middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze.
+
+"If you please, Miss! allow me," said the maid, who on her knees was
+pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of
+her mouth to the other with her tongue.
+
+"Say what you like," exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing voice as she
+looked at Natasha, "say what you like, it's still too long."
+
+Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress
+was too long.
+
+"Really, madam, it is not at all too long," said Mavra, crawling
+on her knees after her young lady.
+
+"Well, if it's too long we'll take it up... we'll tack it up in
+one minute," said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle that was stuck
+on the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling on the floor, set
+to work once more.
+
+At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in
+her cap and velvet gown.
+
+"Oo-oo, my beauty!" exclaimed the count, "she looks better than
+any of you!"
+
+He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside
+fearing to be rumpled.
+
+"Mamma, your cap, more to this side," said Natasha. "I'll arrange
+it," and she rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking up
+her skirt could not move fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn
+off.
+
+"Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!"
+
+"Never mind, I'll run it up, it won't show," said Dunyasha.
+
+"What a beauty- a very queen!" said the nurse as she came to the
+door. "And Sonya! They are lovely!"
+
+At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and
+started. But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.
+
+Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she
+had gone through the same process as the Rostovs, but with less
+flurry- for to her it was a matter of routine. Her ugly old body was
+washed, perfumed, and powdered in just the same way. She had washed
+behind her ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing
+room in her yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her
+old lady's maid was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostovs'
+servants had been.
+
+She praised the Rostovs' toilets. They praised her taste and toilet,
+and at eleven o'clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they
+settled themselves in their carriages and drove off.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not
+once had time to think of what lay before her.
+
+In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage,
+she for the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her
+there at the ball, in those brightly lighted rooms- with music,
+flowers, dances, the Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of
+Petersburg. The prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it
+would come true, so out of keeping was it with the chill darkness
+and closeness of the carriage. She understood all that awaited her
+only when, after stepping over the red baize at the entrance, she
+entered the hall, took off her fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in
+front of her mother, mounted the brightly illuminated stairs between
+the flowers. Only then did she remember how she must behave at a ball,
+and tried to assume the majestic air she considered indispensable
+for a girl on such an occasion. But, fortunately for her, she felt her
+eyes growing misty, she saw nothing clearly, her pulse beat a
+hundred to the minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She
+could not assume that pose, which would have made her ridiculous,
+and she moved on almost fainting from excitement and trying with all
+her might to conceal it. And this was the very attitude that became
+her best. Before and behind them other visitors were entering, also
+talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the
+landing reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with
+diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms.
+
+Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her
+reflection from the others. All was blended into one brilliant
+procession. On entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices,
+footsteps, and greetings deafened Natasha, and the light and glitter
+dazzled her still more. The host and hostess, who had already been
+standing at the door for half an hour repeating the same words to
+the various arrivals, "Charme de vous voir,"~^ greeted the Rostovs
+and Peronskaya in the same manner.
+
+^~ "Delighted to see you."
+
+The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her
+black hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess' eye
+involuntarily rested longer on the slim Natasha. She looked at her and
+gave her alone a special smile in addition to her usual smile as
+hostess. Looking at her she may have recalled the golden,
+irrecoverable days of her own girlhood and her own first ball. The
+host also followed Natasha with his eyes and asked the count which was
+his daughter.
+
+"Charming!" said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.
+
+In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting
+the Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front
+rows of that crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several people were
+asking about her and looking at her. She realized that those
+noticing her liked her, and this observation helped to calm her.
+
+"There are some like ourselves and some worse," she thought.
+
+Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important
+people at the ball.
+
+"That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man,"
+she said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray
+curly hair, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he
+said.
+
+"Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhova," said
+Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had just entered. "How lovely! She
+is quite equal to Marya Antonovna. See how the men, young and old, pay
+court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince- is quite mad
+about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking, are even
+more run after."
+
+She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very
+plain daughter.
+
+"She is a splendid match, a millionairess," said Peronskaya. "And
+look, here come her suitors."
+
+"That is Bezukhova's brother, Anatole Kuragin," she said, indicating
+a handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head
+erect, looking at something over the heads of the ladies. "He's
+handsome, isn't he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl.
+But your cousin, Drubetskoy, is also very attentive to her. They say
+she has millions. Oh yes, that's the French ambassador himself!" she
+replied to the countess' inquiry about Caulaincourt. "Looks as if he
+were a king! All the same, the French are charming, very charming.
+No one more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still
+the most beautiful of them all, our Marya Antonovna! And how simply
+she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the
+universal Freemason," she went on, indicating Pierre. "Put him
+beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!"
+
+Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the
+crowd and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly
+as if he were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through,
+evidently looking for someone.
+
+Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, "the
+buffoon," as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for
+them, and for her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and
+introduce partners to her.
+
+But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome,
+dark man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a
+window talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natasha at
+once recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it
+was Bolkonski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger,
+happier, and better-looking.
+
+"There's someone else we know- Bolkonski, do you see, Mamma?" said
+Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew. "You remember, he stayed a
+night with us at Otradnoe."
+
+"Oh, you know him?" said Peronskaya. "I can't bear him. Il fait a
+present la pluie et le beau temps."~^ He's too proud for anything.
+Takes after his father. And he's hand in glove with Speranski, writing
+some project or other. Just look how he treats the ladies! There's one
+talking to him and he has turned away," she said, pointing at him.
+"I'd give it to him if he treated me as he does those ladies."
+
+^~ "He is all the rage just now.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and
+then back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor
+entered to the sounds of music that had immediately struck up.
+Behind him walked his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing
+to right and left as if anxious to get the first moments of the
+reception over. The band played the polonaise in vogue at that time on
+account of the words that had been set to it, beginning: "Alexander,
+Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish quite..." The Emperor passed on
+to the drawing room, the crowd made a rush for the doors, and
+several persons with excited faces hurried there and back again.
+Then the crowd hastily retired from the drawing-room door, at which
+the Emperor reappeared talking to the hostess. A young man, looking
+distraught, pounced down on the ladies, asking them to move aside.
+Some ladies, with faces betraying complete forgetfulness of all the
+rules of decorum, pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets.
+The men began to choose partners and take their places for the
+polonaise.
+
+Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing
+room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the
+music. The host followed with Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came
+ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya
+diligently named. More than half the ladies already had partners and
+were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the
+polonaise. Natasha felt that she would be left with her mother and
+Sonya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall, not
+having been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms
+hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly,
+and with bated breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight
+before her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She
+was not concerned about the Emperor or any of those great people
+whom Peronskaya was pointing out- she had but one thought: "Is it
+possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to
+dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will notice me?
+They do not even seem to see me, or if they do they look as if they
+were saying, 'Ah, she's not the one I'm after, so it's not worth
+looking at her!' No, it's impossible," she thought. "They must know
+how I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would
+enjoy dancing with me."
+
+The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable
+time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha's ears.
+She wanted to cry. Peronskaya had left them. The count was at the
+other end of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were standing by
+themselves as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of
+strangers, with no one interested in them and not wanted by anyone.
+Prince Andrew with a lady passed by, evidently not recognizing them.
+The handsome Anatole was smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and
+looked at Natasha as one looks at a wall. Boris passed them twice
+and each time turned away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing,
+came up to them.
+
+This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha- as if there
+were nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did
+not listen to or look at Vera, who was telling her something about her
+own green dress.
+
+At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced
+with three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the
+Rostovs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they
+were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the
+distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The
+Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had
+yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went
+up to Countess Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly
+raised her hand and laid it on his shoulder without looking at him.
+The aide-de-camp, an adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly
+round her waist, with confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding
+first round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the room
+he caught Helene's left hand and turned her, the only sound audible,
+apart from the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of
+the spurs on his rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his
+partner's velvet dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled
+round. Natasha gazed at them and was ready to cry because it was not
+she who was dancing that first turn of the waltz.
+
+Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing
+stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in
+the front row of the circle not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff
+was talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State
+to be held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with
+Speranski and participating in the work of the legislative commission,
+could give reliable information about that sitting, concerning which
+various rumors were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was
+saying, he was gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men
+intending to dance who had not yet gathered courage to enter the
+circle.
+
+Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor's
+presence, and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to
+dance.
+
+Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.
+
+"You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova, here. Ask
+her," he said.
+
+"Where is she?" asked Bolkonski. "Excuse me!" he added, turning to
+the baron, "we will finish this conversation elsewhere- at a ball
+one must dance." He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated.
+The despairing, dejected expression of Natasha's face caught his
+eye. He recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her
+debut, remembered her conversation at the window, and with an
+expression of pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostova.
+
+"Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said the countess,
+with heightened color.
+
+"I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess
+remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite
+belying Peronskaya's remarks about his rudeness, and approaching
+Natasha he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed
+his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on
+Natasha's face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly
+brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.
+
+"I have long been waiting for you," that frightened happy little
+girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as
+she raised her hand to Prince Andrew's shoulder. They were the
+second couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best
+dancers of his day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet
+in their white satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly,
+and independently of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic
+happiness. Her slender bare arms and neck were not beautiful- compared
+to Helene's her shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But
+Helene seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands
+of looks that had scanned her person, while Natasha was like a girl
+exposed for the first time, who would have felt very much ashamed
+had she not been assured that this was absolutely necessary.
+
+Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as
+possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed
+to him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he
+disliked, caused by the Emperor's presence, he danced, and had
+chosen Natasha because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she
+was the first pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he
+embraced that slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close
+to him and smiling so near him than the wine of her charm rose to
+his head, and he felt himself revived and rejuvenated when after
+leaving her he stood breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for dance, and
+then the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young
+men, so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous
+partners to Sonya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She
+noticed and saw nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did
+she fail to notice that the Emperor talked a long time with the French
+ambassador, and how particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or
+that Prince So-and-so and So-and-so did and said this and that, and
+that Helene had great success and was honored was by the special
+attention of So-and-so, but she did not even see the Emperor, and only
+noticed that he had gone because the ball became livelier after his
+departure. For one of the merry cotillions before supper Prince Andrew
+was again her partner. He reminded her of their first encounter in the
+Otradnoe avenue, and how she had been unable to sleep that moonlight
+night, and told her how he had involuntarily overheard her. Natasha
+blushed at that recollection and tried to excuse herself, as if
+there had been something to be ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had
+overheard.
+
+Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked
+meeting someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And
+such was Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and
+even her mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special
+care and tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest
+and most unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the
+middle of the cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natasha,
+still out of breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer
+chose her. She was tired and panting and evidently thought of
+declining, but immediately put her hand gaily on the man's shoulder,
+smiling at Prince Andrew.
+
+"I'd be glad to sit beside you and rest: I'm tired; but you see
+how they keep asking me, and I'm glad of it, I'm happy and I love
+everybody, and you and I understand it all," and much, much more was
+said in her smile. When her partner left her Natasha ran across the
+room to choose two ladies for the figure.
+
+"If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she
+will be my wife," said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own
+surprise, as he watched her. She did go first to her cousin.
+
+"What rubbish sometimes enters one's head!" thought Prince Andrew,
+"but what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original,
+that she won't be dancing here a month before she will be
+married.... Such as she are rare here," he thought, as Natasha,
+readjusting a rose that was slipping on her bodice, settled herself
+beside him.
+
+When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up
+to the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and
+asked his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natasha did not
+answer at once but only looked up with a smile that said
+reproachfully: "How can you ask such a question?"
+
+"I have never enjoyed myself so much before!" she said, and Prince
+Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her
+father and instantly dropped again. Natasha was happier than she had
+ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one
+becomes completely kind and good and does not believe in the
+possibility of evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.
+
+At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the
+position his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and
+absent-minded. A deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing
+by a window he stared over his spectacles seeing no one.
+
+On her way to supper Natasha passed him.
+
+Pierre's gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of
+him. She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of
+her own happiness.
+
+"How delightful it is, Count!" said she. "Isn't it?"
+
+Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.
+
+"Yes, I am very glad," he said.
+
+"How can people be dissatisfied with anything?" thought Natasha.
+"Especially such a capital fellow as Bezukhov!" In Natasha's eyes
+all the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid people,
+loving one another; none of them capable of injuring another- and so
+they ought all to be happy.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not
+dwell on it long. "Yes, it was a very brilliant ball," and then...
+"Yes, that little Rostova is very charming. There's something fresh,
+original, un-Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her." That
+was all he thought about yesterday's ball, and after his morning tea
+he set to work.
+
+But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for
+work and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work,
+as he often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming.
+
+The visitor was Bitski, who served on various committees, frequented
+all the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new
+ideas and of Speranski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger- one of
+those men who choose their opinions like their clothes according to
+the fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest
+partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat before he ran into
+Prince Andrew's room with a preoccupied air and at once began talking.
+He had just heard particulars of that morning's sitting of the Council
+of State opened by the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically.
+The Emperor's speech had been extraordinary. It had been a speech such
+as only constitutional monarchs deliver. "The Sovereign plainly said
+that the Council and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the
+government must rest not on authority but on secure bases. The Emperor
+said that the fiscal system must be reorganized and the accounts
+published," recounted Bitski, emphasizing certain words and opening
+his eyes significantly.
+
+"Ah, yes! Today's events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our
+history," he concluded.
+
+Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the
+Council of State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which
+he had attached such importance, and was surprised that this event,
+now that it had taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite
+insignificant. He listened with quiet irony to Bitski's enthusiastic
+account of it. A very simple thought occurred to him: "What does it
+matter to me or to Bitski what the Emperor was pleased to say at the
+Council? Can all that make me any happier or better?"
+
+And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest
+Prince Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to
+dine that evening at Speranski's, "with only a few friends," as the
+host had said when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the
+intimate home circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested
+Prince Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen Speranski in his
+domestic surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.
+
+At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house
+Speranski owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room
+this small house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting
+that of a monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the
+friendly gathering of Speranski's intimate acquaintances already
+assembled at five o'clock. There were no ladies present except
+Speranski's little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her
+governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin.
+While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a
+ringing staccato laugh- a laugh such as one hears on the stage.
+Someone- it sounded like Speranski- was distinctly ejaculating
+ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard Speranski's famous
+laugh, and this ringing, high pitched laughter from a statesman made a
+strange impression on him.
+
+He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing
+between two windows at a small table laid with hors-d'oeuvres.
+Speranski, wearing a gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast,
+and evidently still the same waistcoat and high white stock he had
+worn at the meeting of the Council of State, stood at the table with a
+beaming countenance. His guests surrounded him. Magnitski,
+addressing himself to Speranski, was relating an anecdote, and
+Speranski was laughing in advance at what Magnitski was going to
+say. When Prince Andrew entered the room Magnitski's words were
+again crowned by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep bass guffaw as he
+munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed softly with a
+hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-pitched staccato manner.
+
+Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand to Prince
+Andrew.
+
+"Very pleased to see you, Prince," he said. "One moment..." he
+went on, turning to Magnitski and interrupting his story. "We have
+agreed that this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about
+business!" and turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.
+
+Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with astonishment,
+regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not
+Speranski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared
+
+mysterious and fascinating in Speranski suddenly became plain and
+unattractive.
+
+At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed
+to consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before
+Magnitski had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate
+something still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the
+state service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in
+this company the insignificance of those people was so definitely
+accepted that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good
+humored ridicule. Speranski related how at the Council that morning
+a deaf dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so
+too. Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable
+for the stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering,
+broke into the conversation and began excitedly talking of the
+abuses that existed under the former order of things- threatening to
+give a serious turn to the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing
+Stolypin about his vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and
+the talk reverted to its former lively tone.
+
+Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and find
+amusement in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his
+wish, tried to enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety
+seemed to Prince Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speranski's
+high-pitched voice struck him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter
+grated on him like a false note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and
+feared that he would be a damper on the spirits of the company, but no
+one took any notice of his being out of harmony with the general mood.
+They all seemed very gay.
+
+He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his
+remarks were tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the
+water, and he could not jest with them.
+
+There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was
+witty and might have been funny, but it lacked just that something
+which is the salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a
+thing existed.
+
+After dinner Speranski's daughter and her governess rose. He
+patted the little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that
+gesture, too, seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.
+
+The men remained at table over their port- English fashion. In the
+midst of a conversation that was started about Napoleon's Spanish
+affairs, which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to
+express a contrary opinion. Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish
+to prevent the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a
+story that had no connection with the previous conversation. For a few
+moments all were silent.
+
+Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a bottle of wine
+and, remarking, "Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair,"
+passed it to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk
+loudly went into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier
+were handed to Speranski and he took them to his study. As soon as
+he had left the room the general merriment stopped and the guests
+began to converse sensibly and quietly with one another.
+
+"Now for the recitation!" said Speranski on returning from his
+study. "A wonderful talent!" he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnitski
+immediately assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous verses
+in French which he had composed about various well-known Petersburg
+people. He was interrupted several times by applause. When the
+verses were finished Prince Andrew went up to Speranski and took his
+leave.
+
+"Where are you off to so early?" asked Speranski.
+
+"I promised to go to a reception."
+
+They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those
+mirrorlike, impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of
+him to have expected anything from Speranski and from any of his own
+activities connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance
+to what Speranski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang
+in Prince Andrew's ears long after he had left the house.
+
+When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in
+Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something
+new. He recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of
+his project of army reform, which had been accepted for
+consideration and which they were trying to pass over in silence
+simply because another, a very poor one, had already been prepared and
+submitted to the Emperor. He thought of the meetings of a committee of
+which Berg was a member. He remembered how carefully and at what
+length everything relating to form and procedure was discussed at
+those meetings, and how sedulously and promptly all that related to
+the gist of the business was evaded. He recalled his labors on the
+Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had translated the articles of
+the Roman and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of
+himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself Bogucharovo, his
+occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan; he remembered the
+peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally applying to them the
+Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished
+that he could have spent so much time on such useless work.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited
+before, and among them at the Rostovs' with whom he had renewed
+acquaintance at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness
+which demanded the call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl
+who had left such a pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.
+
+Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a
+dark-blue house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier
+than in her ball dress. She and all the Rostov family welcomed him
+as an old friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he
+had formerly judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of
+excellent, simple, and kindly people. The old count's hospitality
+and good nature, which struck one especially in Petersburg as a
+pleasant surprise, were such that Prince Andrew could not refuse to
+stay to dinner. "Yes," he thought, "they are capital people, who of
+course have not the slightest idea what a treasure they possess in
+Natasha; but they are kindly folk and form the best possible setting
+for this strikingly poetic, charming girl, overflowing with life!"
+
+In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely
+alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world,
+that in the Otradnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night had
+already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no
+longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered
+it found in it a new enjoyment.
+
+After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew's request, went to the
+clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window
+talking to the ladies and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he
+ceased speaking and suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had
+thought impossible for him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and
+something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the
+same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was
+ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His
+disillusionments?... His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The
+chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast
+between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and that
+limited and material something that he, and even she, was. This
+contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while she sang.
+
+As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him and asked how
+he liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling
+that she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and
+said he liked her singing as he liked everything she did.
+
+Prince Andrew left the Rostovs' late in the evening. He went to
+bed from habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having
+lit his candle he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again
+not at all troubled by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and
+joyful as if he had stepped out of a stuffy room into God's own
+fresh air. It did not enter his head that he was in love with Natasha;
+he was not thinking about her, but only picturing her to himself,
+and in consequence all life appeared in a new light. "Why do I strive,
+why do I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with
+all its joys, is open to me?" said he to himself. And for the first
+time for a very long while he began making happy plans for the future.
+He decided that he must attend to his son's education by finding a
+tutor and putting the boy in his charge, then he ought to retire
+from the service and go abroad, and see England, Switzerland and
+Italy. "I must use my freedom while I feel so much strength and
+youth in me," he said to himself. "Pierre was right when he said one
+must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and
+now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one
+has life one must live and be happy!" thought he.
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in
+Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an
+immaculate brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed
+forward over his temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.
+
+"I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately
+she could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more
+fortunate with you," he said with a smile.
+
+"What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service."
+
+"I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count" (Berg said this
+with perfect conviction that this information could not but be
+agreeable), "and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own
+and my wife's friends." (He smiled still more pleasantly.) "I wished
+to ask the countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea and to
+supper."
+
+Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such people as
+the Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an
+invitation. Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at
+his house a small but select company, and why this would give him
+pleasure, and why though he grudged spending money on cards or
+anything harmful, he was prepared to run into some expense for the
+sake of good society- that Pierre could not refuse, and promised to
+come.
+
+"But don't be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten
+minutes to eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is
+coming. He is very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you
+will do me the favor."
+
+Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at
+the Bergs' house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.
+
+Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were
+really for their guests' arrival.
+
+In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and
+pictures and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely
+buttoned up in his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to
+her that one always could and should be acquainted with people above
+one, because only then does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.
+
+"You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I
+managed from my first promotion." (Berg measured his life not by years
+but by promotions.) "My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only
+waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to
+be your husband." (He rose and kissed Vera's hand, and on the way to
+her straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) "And how
+have I obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my
+aquaintances. It goes without saying that one must be conscientious
+and methodical."
+
+Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and
+paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak
+woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man's dignity,
+what it was ein Mann zu sein.~^ Vera at the same time smiling with a
+sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the
+same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all men did.
+Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Vera,
+judging only by her husband and generalizing from that observation,
+supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are
+conceited and selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.
+
+^~ To be a man.
+
+Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her
+lace fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on
+the lips.
+
+"The only thing is, we mustn't have children too soon," he
+continued, following an unconscious sequence of ideas.
+
+"Yes," answered Vera, "I don't at all want that. We must live for
+society."
+
+"Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this," said Berg,
+pointing to the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.
+
+Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced
+at one another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally
+claiming the honor of this visit.
+
+"This is what what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,"
+thought Berg. "This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself."
+
+"But please don't interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests,"
+said Vera, "because I know what interests each of them and what to say
+to different people."
+
+Berg smiled again.
+
+"It can't be helped: men must sometimes have masculine
+conversation," said he.
+
+They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-room, where it
+was impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry,
+neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange
+that Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an
+armchair or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently
+painfully undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor
+to settle the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry
+by moving a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera immediately began
+their evening party, interrupting each other in their efforts to
+entertain their guest.
+
+Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be
+entertained with conversation about the French embassy, at once
+began accordingly. Berg, having decided that masculine conversation
+was required, interrupted his wife's remarks and touched on the
+question of the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the
+general subject to personal considerations as to the proposals made
+him to take part in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had
+declined them. Though the conversation was very incoherent and Vera
+was angry at the intrusion of the masculine element, both husband
+and wife felt with satisfaction that, even if only one guest was
+present, their evening had begun very well and was as like as two peas
+to every other evening party with its talk, tea, and lighted candles.
+
+Before long Boris, Berg's old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of
+condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Vera. After
+Boris came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the
+Rostovs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other
+evening parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of
+satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing
+room, at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of
+dresses, and the bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody
+always has it, especially so the general, who admired the apartment,
+patted Berg on the shoulder, and with parental authority superintended
+the setting out of the table for boston. The general sat down by Count
+Ilya Rostov, who was next to himself the most important guest. The old
+people sat with the old, the young with the young, and the hostess
+at the tea table, on which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a
+silver cake basket as the Panins had at their party. Everything was
+just as it was everywhere else.
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston
+with Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At the card table
+he happened to be directly facing Natasha, and was struck by a curious
+change that had come over her since the ball, She was silent, and
+not only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from
+plainness by her look of gentle indifference to everything around.
+
+"What's the matter with her?" thought Pierre, glancing at her. She
+was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without
+looking at him, made some reply to Boris who sat down beside her.
+After playing out a whole suit and to his partner's delight taking
+five tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who
+had entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again
+at Natasha.
+
+"What has happened to her?" he asked himself with still greater
+surprise.
+
+Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her
+with a look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was
+looking up at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid
+breathing. And the bright glow of some inner fire that had been
+suppressed was again alight in her. She was completely transformed and
+from a plain girl had again become what she had been at the ball.
+
+Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and
+youthful expression in his friend's face.
+
+Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now
+with his back to Natasha and now facing her, but during the whole of
+the six rubbers he watched her and his friend.
+
+"Something very important is happening between them," thought
+Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him
+and made him neglect the game.
+
+After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use
+playing like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on one side was
+talking with Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a subtle smile was
+saying something to Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and,
+asking whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them.
+Vera, having noticed Prince Andrew's attentions to Natasha, decided
+that at a party, a real evening party, subtle allusions to the
+tender passion were absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when
+Prince Andrew was alone, began a conversation with him about
+feelings in general and about her sister. With so intellectual a guest
+as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she felt that she had to employ
+her diplomatic tact.
+
+When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was being carried
+away by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed
+embarrassed, a thing that rarely happened with him.
+
+"What do you think?" Vera was saying with an arch smile. "You are so
+discerning, Prince, and understand people's characters so well at a
+glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her
+attachments? Could she, like other women" (Vera meant herself),
+"love a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is
+what I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?"
+
+"I know your sister too little," replied Prince Andrew, with a
+sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, "to
+be able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed
+that the less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to
+be," he added, and looked up Pierre who was just approaching them.
+
+"Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera- mentioning
+"our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing,
+imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of
+"our days" and that human characteristics change with the times- "in
+our days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted
+often stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that
+Natalie is very susceptible." This return to the subject of Natalie
+caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about
+to rise, but Vera continued with a still more subtle smile:
+
+"I think no one has been more courted than she," she went on, "but
+till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you
+know, Count," she said to Pierre, "even our dear cousin Boris, who,
+between ourselves, was very far gone in the land of tenderness..."
+(alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that time).
+
+Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.
+
+"You are friendly with Boris, aren't you?" asked Vera.
+
+"Yes, I know him..."
+
+"I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natasha?"
+
+"Oh, there was childish love?" suddenly asked Prince Andrew,
+blushing unexpectedly.
+
+"Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le
+cousinage est un dangereux voisinage.~^ Don't you think so?"
+
+^~ "Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood."
+
+"Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural
+liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very
+careful with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of
+these jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew
+him aside.
+
+"Well?" asked Pierre, seeing his friend's strange animation with
+surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natasha as he rose.
+
+"I must... I must have a talk with you," said Prince Andrew. "You
+know that pair of women's gloves?" (He referred to the Masonic
+gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he
+loved.) "I... but no, I will talk to you later on," and with a strange
+light in his eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrew
+approached Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince
+Andrew asked her something and how she flushed as she replied.
+
+But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he
+should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on
+the affairs in Spain.
+
+Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his
+face. The party was very successful and quite like other parties he
+had seen. Everything was similar: the ladies' subtle talk, the
+cards, the general raising his voice at the card table, and the
+samovar and the tea cakes; only one thing was lacking that he had
+always seen at the evening parties he wished to imitate. They had
+not yet had a loud conversation among the men and a dispute about
+something important and clever. Now the general had begun such a
+discussion and so Berg drew Pierre to it.
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with
+the Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there.
+
+Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came,
+and without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all day. Not
+only in the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha,
+but in the whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something
+important that was bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and
+sternly serious eyes at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha and
+timidly started some artificial conversation about trifles as soon
+as he looked her way. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraid
+of being in the way when she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in a
+panic of expectation, when she remained alone with him for a moment.
+Prince Andrew surprised her by his timidity. She felt that he wanted
+to say something to her but could not bring himself to do so.
+
+In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to
+Natasha and whispered: "Well, what?"
+
+"Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now! One can't
+talk about that," said Natasha.
+
+But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and now
+frightened, lay long time in her mother's bed gazing straight before
+her. She told her how he had complimented her, how he told her he
+was going abroad, asked her where they were going to spend the summer,
+and then how he had asked her about Boris.
+
+"But such a... such a... never happened to me before!" she said.
+"Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I'm
+with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it's the real
+thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?"
+
+"No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered her mother. "Now
+go!"
+
+"All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy!
+Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before," she said,
+surprised and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. "And
+could we ever have thought!..."
+
+It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince
+Andrew at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she
+feared this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very
+man she had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and
+of finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.
+
+"And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg
+while we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that
+ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this!
+Already then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar."
+
+"What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..."
+said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince
+Andrew had written in Natasha's album.
+
+"Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?"
+
+"Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven,'"
+said her mother.
+
+"Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!" cried Natasha,
+shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.
+
+At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and
+telling him of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make her
+his wife.
+
+That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The French
+ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of
+late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies
+and gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the
+rooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and
+morose air.
+
+Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous
+depression and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the
+intimacy of his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly
+been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had
+begun to feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark
+thoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him oftener than
+before. At the same time the feeling he had noticed between his
+protegee Natasha and Prince Andrew accentuated his gloom by the
+contrast between his own position and his friend's. He tried equally
+to avoid thinking about his wife, and about Natasha and Prince Andrew;
+and again everything seemed to him insignificant in comparison with
+eternity; again the question: for what? presented itself; and he
+forced himself to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to
+drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight, after
+he had left the countess' apartments, he was sitting upstairs in a
+shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction of the
+Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy with
+tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.
+
+"Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air.
+"And I, you see, am hard at it." He pointed to his manuscript book
+with that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy
+people look at their work.
+
+Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life
+on his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,
+smiled at him with the egotism of joy.
+
+"Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell you about it
+yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything
+like it before. I am in love, my friend!"
+
+Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person
+down on the sofa beside Prince Andrew.
+
+"With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he.
+
+"Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it,
+but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and
+suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in
+the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't live
+without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why
+don't you speak?"
+
+"I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly, rising and
+beginning to pace up and down the room. "I always thought it....
+That girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend,
+I entreat you, don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry,
+marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you."
+
+"But what of her?"
+
+"She loves you."
+
+"Don't talk rubbish..." said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into
+Pierre's eyes.
+
+"She does, I know," Pierre cried fiercely.
+
+"But do listen," returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. "Do
+you know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone."
+
+"Well, go on, go on. I am very glad," said Pierre, and his face
+really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to
+Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a
+different, quite a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for
+life, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he
+made up his mind to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in
+his soul. Now he boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future,
+said he could not sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice,
+and spoke of how he would either make his father consent to this
+marriage and love her, or would do without his consent; then he
+marveled at the feeling that had mastered him as at something strange,
+apart from and independent of himself.
+
+"I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of
+such love," said Prince Andrew. "It is not at all the same feeling
+that I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into
+two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the
+other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom
+and darkness...."
+
+"Darkness and gloom," reiterated Pierre: "yes, yes, I understand
+that."
+
+"I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very
+happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake."
+
+"Yes, yes," Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched
+and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew's lot
+appeared to him, the gloomier seemed his own.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Prince Andrew needed his father's consent to his marriage, and to
+obtain this he started for the country next day.
+
+His father received his son's communication with external composure,
+but inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to
+alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life
+was already ending. "If only they would let me end my days as I want
+to," thought the old man, "then they might do as they please." With
+his son, however, he employed the diplomacy he reserved for
+important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole
+matter.
+
+In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards
+birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young
+as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special
+stress on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son
+whom it would be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. "Fourthly
+and finally," the father said, looking ironically at his son, "I beg
+you to put it off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as
+you wanted to for a German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your
+love or passion or obstinacy- as you please- is still as great, marry!
+And that's my last word on it. Mind, the last..." concluded the
+prince, in a tone which showed that nothing would make him alter his
+decision.
+
+Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his
+feelings, or his fiancee's, would not stand a year's test, or that
+he (the old prince himself) would die before then, and he decided to
+conform to his father's wish- to propose, and postpone the wedding for
+a year.
+
+Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostovs,
+Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg.
+
+Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha expected Bolkonski
+all day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the
+same. Pierre did not come either and Natasha, not knowing that
+Prince Andrew had gone to see his father, could not explain his
+absence to herself.
+
+Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire to go out
+anywhere and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and
+listless; she wept secretly at night and did not go to her mother in
+the evenings. She blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed
+to her that everybody knew about her disappointment and was laughing
+at her and pitying her. Strong as was her inward grief, this wound
+to her vanity intensified her misery.
+
+Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly
+began to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not
+know why it is being punished.
+
+The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first listening to
+her mother's words, suddenly interrupted her:
+
+"Leave off, Mamma! I don't think, and don't want to think about
+it! He just came and then left off, left off..."
+
+Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and
+went on quietly:
+
+"And I don't at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I
+have now become quite calm, quite calm."
+
+The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old dress which
+she knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the
+mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she
+had abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went
+to the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud
+resonance, and began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished
+her first exercise she stood still in the middle of the room and
+sang a musical phrase that particularly pleased her. She listened
+joyfully (as though she had not expected it) to the charm of the notes
+reverberating, filling the whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying
+away; and all at once she felt cheerful. "What's the good of making so
+much of it? Things are nice as it is," she said to herself, and she
+began walking up and down the room, not stepping simply on the
+resounding parquet but treading with each step from the heel to the
+toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of shoes) and listening to the
+regular tap of the heel and creak of the toe as gladly as she had to
+the sounds of her own voice. Passing a mirror she glanced into it.
+"There, that's me!" the expression of her face seemed to say as she
+caught sight of herself. "Well, and very nice too! I need nobody."
+
+A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room
+but she would not let him, and having closed the door behind him
+continued her walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite
+mood- love of, and delight in, herself. "How charming that Natasha
+is!" she said again, speaking as some third, collective, male
+person. "Pretty, a good voice, young, and in nobody's way if only they
+leave her in peace." But however much they left her in peace she could
+not now be at peace, and immediately felt this.
+
+In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, "At home?" and
+then footsteps were heard. Natasha was looking at the mirror, but
+did not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When
+she saw herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for
+certain, though she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.
+
+Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.
+
+"Mamma! Bolkonski has come!" she said. "Mamma, it is awful, it is
+unbearable! I don't want... to be tormented? What am I to do?..."
+
+Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room
+with an agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natasha his
+face brightened. He kissed the countess' hand and Natasha's, and sat
+down beside the sofa.
+
+"It is long since we had the pleasure..." began the countess, but
+Prince Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question,
+obviously in haste to say what he had to.
+
+"I have not been to see all this time because I have been at my
+father's. I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I
+only got back last night," he said glancing at Natasha; "I want to
+have a talk with you, Countess," he added after a moment's pause.
+
+The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.
+
+"I am at your disposal," she murmured.
+
+Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so:
+something gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared
+straight at Prince Andrew with wide-open eyes.
+
+"At once? This instant!... No, it can't be!" she thought.
+
+Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she
+was not mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be
+decided.
+
+"Go, Natasha! I will call you," said the countess in a whisper.
+
+Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew
+and at her mother and went out.
+
+"I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter's hand," said
+Prince Andrew.
+
+The countess' face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.
+
+"Your offer..." she began at last sedately. He remained silent,
+looking into her eyes. "Your offer..." (she grew confused) "is
+agreeable to us, and I accept your offer. I am glad. And my husband...
+I hope... but it will depend on her...."
+
+"I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it
+to me?" said Prince Andrew.
+
+"Yes," replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and
+with a mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips
+to his forehead as he stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him
+as a son, but felt that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man.
+"I am sure my husband will consent," said the countess, "but your
+father..."
+
+"My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express
+condition of his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a
+year. And I wished to tell you of that," said Prince Andrew.
+
+"It is true that Natasha is still young, but- so long as that?..."
+
+"It is unavoidable," said Prince Andrew with a sigh.
+
+"I will send her to you," said the countess, and left the room.
+
+"Lord have mercy upon us!" she repeated while seeking her daughter.
+
+Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha was sitting on
+the bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering
+something as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped
+up and flew to her.
+
+"Well, Mamma?... Well?..."
+
+"Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand," said the countess,
+coldly it seemed to Natasha. "Go... go," said the mother, sadly and
+reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.
+
+Natasha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When
+she came in and saw him she paused. "Is it possible that this stranger
+has now become everything to me?" she asked herself, and immediately
+answered, "Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than
+everything in the world." Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast
+eyes.
+
+"I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?"
+
+He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned
+expression of her face. Her face said: "Why ask? Why doubt what you
+cannot but know? Why speak, when words cannot express what one feels?"
+
+She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.
+
+"Do you love me?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed
+loudly and, catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob.
+
+"What is it? What's the matter?"
+
+"Oh, I am so happy!" she replied, smiled through her tears, bent
+over closer to him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether
+she might, and then kissed him.
+
+Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find
+in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly
+changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of
+desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness,
+fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful
+sense of the duty that now bound him to her forever. The present
+feeling, though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger
+and more serious.
+
+"Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?" asked
+Prince Andrew, still looking into her eyes.
+
+"Is it possible that I- the 'chit of a girl,' as everybody called
+me," thought Natasha- "is it possible that I am now to be the wife and
+the equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom even my father
+looks up to? Can it be true? Can it be true that there can be no
+more playing with life, that now I am grown up, that on me now lies
+a responsibility for my every word and deed? Yes, but what did he
+ask me?"
+
+"No," she replied, but she had not understood his question.
+
+"Forgive me!" he said. "But you are so young, and I have already
+been through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know
+yourself."
+
+Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing
+to take in the meaning of his words.
+
+"Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be," continued
+Prince Andrew, "it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask
+you to make me happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall
+remain a secret, and should you find that you do not love me, or
+should you come to love..." said Prince Andrew with an unnatural
+smile.
+
+"Why do you say that?" Natasha interrupted him. "You know that
+from the very day you first came to Otradnoe I have loved you," she
+cried, quite convinced that she spoke the truth.
+
+"In a year you will learn to know yourself...."
+
+"A whole year!" Natasha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that
+the marriage was to be postponed for a year. "But why a year? Why a
+year?..."
+
+Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay.
+Natasha did not hear him.
+
+"And can't it be helped?" she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply,
+but his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.
+
+"It's awful! Oh, it's awful! awful!" Natasha suddenly cried, and
+again burst into sobs. "I shall die, waiting a year: it's
+impossible, it's awful!" She looked into her lover's face and saw in
+it a look of commiseration and perplexity.
+
+"No, no! I'll do anything!" she said, suddenly checking her tears.
+"I am so happy."
+
+The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed
+couple their blessing.
+
+From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostovs' as
+Natasha's affianced lover.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha's engagement to
+Bolkonski was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said
+that as he was responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole
+burden of it; that he had given his word and bound himself forever,
+but that he did not wish to bind Natasha and gave her perfect freedom.
+If after six months she felt that she did not love him she would
+have full right to reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor her
+parents wished to hear of this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came
+every day to the Rostovs', but did not behave to Natasha as an
+affianced lover: he did not use the familiar thou, but said you to
+her, and kissed only her hand. After their engagement, quite
+different, intimate, and natural relations sprang up between them.
+It was as if they had not known each other till now. Both liked to
+recall how they had regarded each other when as yet they were
+nothing to one another; they felt themselves now quite different
+beings: then they were artificial, now natural and sincere. At first
+the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince Andrew;
+he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time Natasha
+trained the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all
+that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of
+them, and that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to
+be. After a few days they grew accustomed to him, and without
+restraint in his presence pursued their usual way of life, in which he
+took his part. He could talk about rural economy with the count,
+fashions with the countess and Natasha, and about albums and fancywork
+with Sonya. Sometimes the household both among themselves and in his
+presence expressed their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the
+evident omens there had been of it: Prince Andrew's coming to Otradnoe
+and their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natasha and
+Prince Andrew which her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and
+Andrew's encounter with Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents
+betokening that it had to be.
+
+In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always
+accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting
+together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and
+go away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely
+spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to
+speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did all his feelings, which
+she constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his
+son. Prince Andrew blushed, as he often did now- Natasha
+particularly liked it in him- and said that his son would not live
+with them.
+
+"Why not?" asked Natasha in a frightened tone.
+
+"I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides..."
+
+"How I should have loved him!" said Natasha, immediately guessing
+his thought; "but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding
+fault with us."
+
+Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask
+his advice about Petya's education or Nicholas' service. The old
+countess sighed as she looked at them; Sonya was always getting
+frightened lest she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for
+leaving them alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew
+spoke (he could tell a story very well), Natasha listened to him
+with pride; when she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed
+attentively and scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in
+perplexity: "What does he look for in me? He is trying to discover
+something by looking at me! What if what he seeks in me is not there?"
+Sometimes she fell into one of the mad, merry moods characteristic
+of her, and then she particularly loved to hear and see how Prince
+Andrew laughed. He seldom laughed, but when he did he abandoned
+himself entirely to his laughter, and after such a laugh she always
+felt nearer to him. Natasha would have been completely happy if the
+thought of the separation awaiting her and drawing near had not
+terrified her, just as the mere thought of it made him turn pale and
+cold.
+
+On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought
+with him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostovs' once since the ball.
+Pierre seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the
+countess, and Natasha sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya,
+thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.
+
+"You have known Bezukhov a long time?" he asked. "Do you like him?"
+
+"Yes, he's a dear, but very absurd."
+
+And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of
+his absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.
+
+"Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known
+him from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie,"
+Prince Andrew said with sudden seriousness- "I am going away and
+heaven knows what may happen. You may cease to... all right, I know
+I am not to say that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to you when
+I am not here..."
+
+"What can happen?"
+
+"Whatever trouble may come," Prince Andrew continued, "I beg you,
+Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for
+advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but
+he has a heart of gold."
+
+Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor Prince Andrew
+himself could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would
+act on Natasha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that
+day, dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not
+understanding what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking
+leave, he kissed her hand for the last time. "Don't go!" she said in a
+tone that made him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and
+which he remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone;
+but for several days she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no
+interest in anything and only saying now and then, "Oh, why did he
+go away?"
+
+But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around
+her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and
+became her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy,
+as a child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of
+face.
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+During that year after his son's departure, Prince Nicholas
+Bolkonski's health and temper became much worse. He grew still more
+irritable, and it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of
+his frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out
+her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible.
+Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys- her
+nephew, little Nicholas, and religion- and these were the favorite
+subjects of the prince's attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken
+of he would bring round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or
+the petting and spoiling of children. "You want to make him"- little
+Nicholas- "into an old maid like yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants
+a son and not an old maid," he would say. Or, turning to
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in Princess Mary's presence
+how she liked our village priests and icons and would joke about them.
+
+He continually hurt Princess Mary's feelings and tormented her,
+but it cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame
+toward her, or could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of
+it all, be unjust? And what is justice? The princess never thought
+of that proud word "justice." All the complex laws of man centered for
+her in one clear and simple law- the law of love and self-sacrifice
+taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself
+was God. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other
+people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.
+
+During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had
+been gay, gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known
+him for a long time past. She felt that something had happened to him,
+but he said nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a
+long talk with his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed
+that before his departure they were dissatisfied with one another.
+
+Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend
+Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls
+dream) of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in
+mourning for her own brother, killed in Turkey.
+
+Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.
+
+Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a
+special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and
+your excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone,
+can- I will not say comfort us- but save us from despair. Religion
+alone can explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend:
+why, for what cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in
+life- not merely harming no one but necessary to the happiness of
+others- are called away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons,
+or such as are a burden to themselves and to others, are left
+living. The first death I saw, and one I shall never forget- that of
+my dear sister-in-law- left that impression on me. Just as you ask
+destiny why your splendid brother had to die, so I asked why that
+angel Lise, who not only never wronged anyone, but in whose soul there
+were never any unkind thoughts, had to die. And what do you think,
+dear friend? Five years have passed since then, and already I, with my
+petty understanding, begin to see clearly why she had to die, and in
+what way that death was but an expression of the infinite goodness
+of the Creator, whose every action, though generally
+incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite love
+for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically
+innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother's duties. As a
+young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been
+so as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly
+Prince Andrew, with the purest regrets and memories, but probably
+she will there receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not
+to speak of her alone, that early and terrible death has had the
+most beneficent influence on me and on my brother in spite of all
+our grief. Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not
+occur to me; I should then have dismissed them with horror, but now
+they are very clear and certain. I write all this to you, dear friend,
+only to convince you of the Gospel truth which has become for me a
+principle of life: not a single hair of our heads will fall without
+His will. And His will is governed only by infinite love for us, and
+so whatever befalls us is for our good.
+
+You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my
+wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You
+will be surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte!
+The case is this: my father's health is growing noticeably worse, he
+cannot stand any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This
+irritability is, as you know, chiefly directed to political questions.
+He cannot endure the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal
+terms with all the sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own,
+the grandson of the Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite
+indifferent to politics, but from my father's remarks and his talks
+with Michael Ivanovich I know all that goes on in the world and
+especially about the honors conferred on Buonaparte, who only at
+Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is not accepted as a great
+man, still less as Emperor of France. And my father cannot stand this.
+It seems to me that it is chiefly because of his political views
+that my father is reluctant to speak of going to Moscow; for he
+foresees the encounters that would result from his way of expressing
+his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might derive
+from a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the disputes
+about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In any case it will be
+decided very shortly.
+
+Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother
+Andrew's absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much
+of late. After his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his
+spirits. He has again become as I used to know him when a child: kind,
+affectionate, with that heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has
+realized, it seems to me, that life is not over for him. But
+together with this mental change he has grown physically much
+weaker. He has become thinner and more nervous. I am anxious about him
+and glad he is taking this trip abroad which the doctors recommended
+long ago. I hope it will cure him. You write that in Petersburg he
+is spoken of as one of the most active, cultivated, and capable of the
+young men. Forgive my vanity as a relation, but I never doubted it.
+The good he has done to everybody here, from his peasants up to the
+gentry, is incalculable. On his arrival in Petersburg he received only
+his due. I always wonder at the way rumors fly from Petersburg to
+Moscow, especially such false ones as that you write about- I mean the
+report of my brother's betrothal to the little Rostova. I do not think
+my brother will ever marry again, and certainly not her; and this is
+why: first, I know that though he rarely speaks about the wife he
+has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too deep in his heart for
+him ever to decide to give her a successor and our little angel a
+stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl is not the
+kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew. I do not think he would
+choose her for a wife, and frankly I do not wish it. But I am
+running on too long and am at the end of my second sheet. Good-by,
+my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and mighty care. My
+dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.
+
+MARY
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected
+letter from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her
+strange and surprising news. He informed her of his engagement to
+Natasha Rostova. The whole letter breathed loving rapture for his
+betrothed and tender and confiding affection for his sister. He
+wrote that he had never loved as he did now and that only now did he
+understand and know what life was. He asked his sister to forgive
+him for not having told her of his resolve when he had last visited
+Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it to his father. He had not
+done so for fear Princess Mary should ask her father to give his
+consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt of his
+displeasure without attaining her object. "Besides," he wrote, "the
+matter was not then so definitely settled as it is now. My father then
+insisted on a delay of a year and now already six months, half of that
+period, have passed, and my resolution is firmer than ever. If the
+doctors did not keep me here at the spas I should be back in Russia,
+but as it is I have to postpone my return for three months. You know
+me and my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have
+been and always shall be independent; but to go against his will and
+arouse his anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such a
+short time, would destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him
+about the same question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand
+him the letter and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and
+whether there is hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four
+months."
+
+After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave
+the letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her
+quietly:
+
+"Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won't
+be long- I shall soon set him free."
+
+The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her
+speak and, raising his voice more and more, cried:
+
+"Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich,
+eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell
+him that he may marry tomorrow if he likes. She will be little
+Nicholas' stepmother and I'll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He
+mustn't be without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more
+women are wanted in my house- let him marry and live by himself.
+Perhaps you will go and live with him too?" he added, turning to
+Princess Mary. "Go in heavens name! Go out into the frost... the
+frost... the frost!
+
+After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the
+matter. But repressed vexation at his son's poor-spirited behavior
+found expression in his treatment of his daughter. To his former
+pretexts for irony a fresh one was now added- allusions to stepmothers
+and amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.
+
+"Why shouldn't I marry her?" he asked his daughter. "She'll make a
+splendid princess!"
+
+And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary
+noticed that her father was really associating more and more with
+the Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his
+letter, but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father to
+the idea.
+
+Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and
+religion were Princess Mary's joys and consolations; but besides that,
+since everyone must have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the
+profoundest depths of her heart had a hidden dream and hope that
+supplied the chief consolation of her life. This comforting dream
+and hope were given her by God's folk- the half-witted and other
+pilgrims who visited her without the prince's knowledge. The longer
+she lived, the more experience and observation she had of life, the
+greater was her wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek
+enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling,
+and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary,
+sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved his wife, she died, but that
+was not enough: he wanted to bind his happiness to another woman.
+Her father objected to this because he wanted a more distinguished and
+wealthier match for Andrew. And they all struggled and suffered and
+tormented one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls,
+for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an instant. Not
+only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the Son of God, came
+down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment and is
+a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it.
+"How is it that no one realizes this?" thought Princess Mary. "No
+one except these despised God's folk who, wallet on back, come to me
+by the back door, afraid of being seen by the prince, not for fear
+of ill-usage by him but for fear of causing him to sin. To leave
+family, home, and all the cares of worldly welfare, in order without
+clinging to anything to wander in hempen rags from place to place
+under an assumed name, doing no one any harm but praying for all-
+for those who drive one away as well as for those who protect one:
+higher than that life and truth there is no life or truth!"
+
+There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty
+called Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot
+and worn heavy chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her.
+Once, when in a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia
+was talking of her life, the thought that Theodosia alone had found
+the true path of life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force
+that she resolved to become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone
+to sleep Princess Mary thought about this for a long time, and at last
+made up her mind that, strange as it might seem, she must go on a
+pilgrimage. She disclosed this thought to no one but to her confessor,
+Father Akinfi, the monk, and he approved of her intention. Under guise
+of a present for the pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim's
+complete costume for herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough
+coat, and a black kerchief. Often, approaching the chest of drawers
+containing this secret treasure, Princess Mary paused, uncertain
+whether the time had not already come to put her project into
+execution.
+
+Often, listening to the pilgrims' tales, she was so stimulated by
+their simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep
+meaning, that several times she was on the point of abandoning
+everything and running away from home. In imagination she already
+pictured herself by Theodosia's side, dressed in coarse rags,
+walking with a staff, a wallet on her back, along the dusty road,
+directing her wanderings from one saint's shrine to another, free from
+envy, earthly love, or desire, and reaching at last the place where
+there is no more sorrow or sighing, but eternal joy and bliss.
+
+"I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having time to
+get used to it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on
+till my legs fail, and I'll lie down and die somewhere, and shall at
+last reach that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sorrow
+nor sighing..." thought Princess Mary.
+
+But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially little Koko
+(Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that
+she was a sinner who loved her father and little nephew more than God.
+
+BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor- idleness- was a
+condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man
+has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race
+not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our
+brows, but because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both
+idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we
+are idle. If man could find a state in which he felt that though
+idle he was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the
+conditions of man's primitive blessedness. And such a state of
+obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class-
+the military. The chief attraction of military service has consisted
+and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.
+
+Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to the full
+when, after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pavlograd regiment,
+in which he already commanded the squadron he had taken over from
+Denisov.
+
+Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow
+acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked
+and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was
+well contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters
+from home more frequent complaints from his mother that their
+affairs were falling into greater and greater disorder, and that it
+was time for him to come back to gladden and comfort his old parents.
+
+Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to
+take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the
+entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt
+that sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life,
+with its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its
+accounts with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society,
+and with Sonya's love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully
+difficult and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold,
+formal letters in French, beginning: "My dear Mamma," and ending:
+"Your obedient son," which said nothing of when he would return. In
+1810 he received letters from his parents, in which they told him of
+Natasha's engagement to Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in
+a year's time because the old prince made difficulties. This letter
+grieved and mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that
+Natasha, for whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family,
+should be lost to the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of
+view, he regretted not to have been there to show that fellow
+Bolkonski that connection with him was no such great honor after
+all, and that if he loved Natasha he might dispense with permission
+from his dotard father. For a moment he hesitated whether he should
+not apply for leave in order to see Natasha before she was married,
+but then came the maneuvers, and considerations about Sonya and
+about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas again put it off.
+But in the spring of that year, he received a letter from his
+mother, written without his father's knowledge, and that letter
+persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and take
+matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and
+they would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and
+trusted Mitenka so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody
+took advantage of him and things were going from bad to worse. "For
+God's sake, I implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make
+me and the whole family wretched," wrote the countess.
+
+This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a
+matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.
+
+The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any
+rate to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but
+after his after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely
+vicious gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and
+when he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka
+(Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who
+turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was
+going home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he
+would go away without having heard from the staff- and this interested
+him extremely- whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive
+the Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to
+think that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the
+Polish Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had
+betted he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it
+seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish
+Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had
+given one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would
+take place without him- he knew he must go away from this good, bright
+world to somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week
+later he obtained his leave. His hussar comrades- not only those of
+his own regiment, but the whole brigade- gave Rostov a dinner to which
+the subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were
+two bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with
+Major Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped
+Rostov; the soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted
+"hurrah!" and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as
+far as the first post station.
+
+During the first half of the journey- from Kremenchug to Kiev- all
+Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with
+the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to
+forget his three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to
+wonder anxiously how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would
+find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached
+it- far stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law
+by which the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the
+square of the distance. At the last post station before Otradnoe he
+gave the driver a three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran
+breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home.
+
+After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of
+unsatisfied expectation- the feeling that "everything is just the
+same, so why did I hurry?"- Nicholas began to settle down in his old
+home world. His father and mother were much the same, only a little
+older. What was new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional
+discord, which there used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found
+out, was due to the bad state of their affairs. Sonya was nearly
+twenty; she had stopped growing prettier and promised nothing more
+than she was already, but that was enough. She exhaled happiness and
+love from the time Nicholas returned, and the faithful, unalterable
+love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Petya and Natasha
+surprised Nicholas most. Petya was a big handsome boy of thirteen,
+merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking.
+As for Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed
+whenever he looked at her.
+
+"You're not the same at all," he said.
+
+"How? Am I uglier?"
+
+"On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!" he whispered to
+her.
+
+"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natasha, joyfully.
+
+She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit
+to Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.
+
+"Well, are you glad?" Natasha asked. "I am so tranquil and happy
+now."
+
+"Very glad," answered Nicholas. "He is an excellent fellow.... And
+are you very much in love?"
+
+"How shall I put it?" replied Natasha. "I was in love with Boris,
+with my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is quite different. I feel
+at peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists, and
+I am calm and contented now. Not at all as before."
+
+Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the
+marriage for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with
+exasperation, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, and
+that it would be a bad thing to enter a family against the father's
+will, and that she herself wished it so.
+
+"You don't at all understand," she said.
+
+Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.
+
+Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem
+at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband.
+She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This
+amazed Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship
+skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially
+as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him
+that there was something not quite right about this intended marriage.
+
+"Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought. Once, when he had
+touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his
+surprise and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her
+soul she too had doubts about this marriage.
+
+"You see he writes," said she, showing her son a letter of Prince
+Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a
+daughter's future married happiness, "he writes that he won't come
+before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His
+health is very delicate. Don't tell Natasha. And don't attach
+importance to her being so bright: that's because she's living through
+the last days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every
+time we receive a letter from him! However, God grant that
+everything turns out well!" (She always ended with these words.) "He
+is an excellent man!"
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull.
+He was worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid
+business matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw
+off this burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his
+arrival he went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as
+to where he was going, to Mitenka's lodge and demanded an account of
+everything. But what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew
+even less than the frightened and bewildered Mitenka. The conversation
+and the examination of the accounts with Mitenka did not last long.
+The village elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were
+waiting in the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young
+count's voice roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and
+then words of abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.
+
+"Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I'll hack the dog to pieces! I'm
+not my father!... Robbing us!..." and so on.
+
+Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red
+in the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mitenka out by the scruff
+of the neck and applied his foot and knee to him behind with great
+agility at convenient moments between the words, shouting, "Be off!
+Never let me see your face here again, you villain!"
+
+Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the
+shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for
+culprits at Otradnoe. Mitenka himself, returning tipsy from the
+town, used to hide there, and many of the residents at Otradnoe,
+hiding from Mitenka, knew of its protective qualities.)
+
+Mitenka's wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and
+frightened faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar
+was boiling and where the steward's high bedstead stood with its
+patchwork quilt.
+
+The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by
+with resolute strides and went into the house.
+
+The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened
+at the lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would
+certainly improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect
+this excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his
+door on tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.
+
+Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed
+smile, said to him:
+
+"But you know, my dear boy, it's a pity you got excited! Mitenka has
+told me all about it."
+
+"I knew," thought Nicholas, "that I should never understand anything
+in this crazy world."
+
+"You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they
+were carried forward- and you did not look at the other page."
+
+"Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have
+done, I have done; but, if you like, I won't speak to him again."
+
+"No, my dear boy" (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he
+had mismanaged his wife's property and was to blame toward his
+children, but he did not know how to remedy it). "No, I beg you to
+attend to the business. I am old. I..."
+
+"No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I
+understand it all less than you do."
+
+"Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings
+forward from page to page," he thought. "I used to understand what a
+'corner' and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to
+another page I don't understand at all," said he to himself, and after
+that he did not meddle in business affairs. But once the countess
+called her son and informed him that she had a promissory note from
+Anna Mikhaylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what he
+thought of doing with it.
+
+"This," answered Nicholas. "You say it rests with me. Well, I
+don't like Anna Mikhaylovna and I don't like Boris, but they were
+our friends and poor. Well then, this!" and he tore up the note, and
+by so doing caused the old countess to weep tears of joy. After
+that, young Rostov took no further part in any business affairs, but
+devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new
+pursuit- the chase- for which his father kept a large establishment.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts
+congealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had
+thickened and its bright green stood out sharply against the
+brownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the cattle, and
+against the pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The wooded
+ravines and the copses, which at the end of August had still been
+green islands amid black fields and stubble, had become golden and
+bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The hares had already
+half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were beginning to
+scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the best
+time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young
+sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but
+were so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give
+them a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go
+on a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was
+an undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.
+
+All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the
+air was sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began
+to thaw. On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown,
+looked out of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for
+hunting: it was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth
+without any wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping,
+microscopic particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the
+garden were hung with transparent drops which fell on the freshly
+fallen leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and black
+and glistened like poppy seed and at a short distance merged into
+the dull, moist veil of mist. Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy
+porch. There was a smell of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a
+black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch with prominent black eyes, got
+up on seeing her master, stretched her hind legs, lay down like a
+hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose and
+mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching sight of his master from the
+garden path, arched his back and, rushing headlong toward the porch
+with lifted tail, began rubbing himself against his legs.
+
+"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's call
+which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round
+the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray,
+wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian
+fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence
+and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his
+Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This
+scorn was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel,
+disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all
+the same his serf and huntsman.
+
+"Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the
+weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away
+by that irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget all
+his previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his
+mistress.
+
+"What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman in his deep
+bass, deep as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing- and two
+flashing black eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who
+was silent. "Can you resist it?" those eyes seemed to be asking.
+
+"It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?" asked
+Nicholas, scratching Milka behind the ears.
+
+Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.
+
+"I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed out after a
+minute's pause. "He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure.
+They were howling there." (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom
+they both knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small
+place a mile and a half from the house.)
+
+"We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas. "Come to me
+with Uvarka."
+
+"As you please."
+
+"Then put off feeding them."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas'
+big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was
+like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and
+surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual
+stood just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for
+fear of breaking something in the master's apartment, and he
+hastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from under that
+ceiling, out into the open under the sky once more.
+
+Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion
+that the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting),
+Nicholas ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was
+about to go Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her
+hair or finished dressing and with her old nurse's big shawl wrapped
+round her. Petya ran in at the same time.
+
+"You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you would! Sonya said you
+wouldn't go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you
+couldn't help going."
+
+"Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as
+he intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha and
+Petya. "We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for
+you."
+
+"You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha. "It's not fair;
+you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said
+nothing to us about it."
+
+"'No barrier bars a Russian's path'- we'll go!" shouted Petya.
+
+"But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas to Natasha.
+
+"Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha decisively.
+"Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my
+dogs," she added to the huntsman.
+
+It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but
+to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible.
+He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his
+business, careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on
+the young lady.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting
+establishment but had now handed it all completely over to his son's
+care, being in very good spirits on this fifteenth of September,
+prepared to go out with the others.
+
+In an hour's time the whole hunting party was at the porch.
+Nicholas, with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no
+time for attending to trifles, went past Natasha and Petya who were
+trying to tell him something. He had a look at all the details of
+the hunt, sent a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the
+quarry, mounted his chestnut Donets, and whistling to his own leash of
+borzois, set off across the threshing ground to a field leading to the
+Otradnoe wood. The old count's horse, a sorrel gelding called
+Viflyanka, was led by the groom in attendance on him, while the
+count himself was to drive in a small trap straight to a spot reserved
+for him.
+
+They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and
+whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen and
+more than forty borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash
+belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and
+thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.
+
+Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his
+business. his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the
+fence they all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk,
+along the road and field leading to the Otradnoe covert.
+
+The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and
+then splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky
+still seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the
+air was still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a
+huntsman, the snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the whine of a
+straggling hound could be heard.
+
+When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders
+with dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostovs. In
+front rode a fresh-looking, handsome old man with a large gray
+mustache.
+
+"Good morning, Uncle!" said Nicholas, when the old man drew near.
+
+"That's it. Come on!... I was sure of it," began "Uncle." (He was
+a distant relative of the Rostovs', a man of small means, and their
+neighbor.) "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist it and it's a good
+thing you're going. That's it! Come on! (This was "Uncle's" favorite
+expression.) "Take the covert at once, for my Girchik says the Ilagins
+are at Korniki with their hounds. That's it. Come on!... They'll
+take the cubs from under your very nose."
+
+"That's where I'm going. Shall we join up our packs?" asked
+Nicholas.
+
+The hounds were joined into one pack, and "Uncle" and Nicholas
+rode on side by side. Natasha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide
+her eager face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed
+by Petya who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and
+by a groom appointed to look after her. Petya, who was laughing,
+whipped and pulled at his horse. Natasha sat easily and confidently on
+her black Arabchik and reined him in without effort with a firm hand.
+
+"Uncle" looked round disapprovingly at Petya and Natasha. He did not
+like to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.
+
+"Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!" shouted Petya.
+
+"Good morning, good morning! But don't go overriding the hounds,"
+said "Uncle" sternly.
+
+"Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me," said Natasha,
+referring to her favorite hound.
+
+"In the first place, Trunila is not a 'dog,' but a harrier," thought
+Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel
+the distance that ought to separate them at that moment. Natasha
+understood it.
+
+"You mustn't think we'll be in anyone's way, Uncle," she said.
+"We'll go to our places and won't budge."
+
+"A good thing too, little countess," said "Uncle," "only mind you
+don't fall off your horse," he added, "because- that's it, come on!-
+you've nothing to hold on to."
+
+The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards
+off, the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov, having finally
+settled with "Uncle" where they should set on the hounds, and having
+shown Natasha where she was to stand- a spot where nothing could
+possibly run out- went round above the ravine.
+
+"Well, nephew, you're going for a big wolf," said "Uncle." "Mind and
+don't let her slip!"
+
+"That's as may happen," answered Rostov. "Karay, here!" he
+shouted, answering "Uncle's" remark by this call to his borzoi.
+Karay was a shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having
+tackled a big wolf unaided. They all took up their places.
+
+The old count, knowing his son's ardor in the hunt, hurried so as
+not to be late, and the hunstmen had not yet reached their places when
+Count Ilya Rostov, cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove
+up with his black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for
+him, where a wolf might come out. Having straightened his coat and
+fastened on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek,
+well-fed, and comfortable horse, Viflyanka, which was turning gray,
+like himself. His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilya Rostov,
+though not at heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well,
+and rode to the bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged
+his reins, settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was
+ready, looked about with a smile.
+
+Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal attendant, an old
+horseman now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmar held in leash three
+formidable wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master
+and his horse. Two wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred
+paces farther along the edge of the wood stood Mitka, the count's
+other groom, a daring horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the
+hunt, by old custom, the count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled
+brandy, taken a snack, and washed it down with half a bottle of his
+favorite Bordeaux.
+
+He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were
+rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his
+saddle, wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out
+for an outing.
+
+The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got everything ready,
+kept glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of
+terms for thirty years, and understanding the mood he was in
+expected a pleasant chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through
+the wood (it was plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped behind
+the count. This person was a gray-bearded old man in a woman's
+cloak, with a tall peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who
+went by a woman's name, Nastasya Ivanovna.
+
+"Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!" whispered the count, winking at him.
+"If you scare away the beast, Daniel'll give it you!"
+
+"I know a thing or two myself!" said Nastasya Ivanovna.
+
+"Hush!" whispered the count and turned to Simon. "Have you seen
+the young countess?" he asked. "Where is she?"
+
+"With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass," answered
+Simon, smiling. "Though she's a lady, she's very fond of hunting."
+
+"And you're surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?" said the
+count. "She's as good as many a man!"
+
+"Of course! It's marvelous. So bold, so easy!"
+
+"And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so
+well that Daniel and I are often quite astounded," said Simon, well
+knowing what would please his master.
+
+"Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?"
+
+"A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the
+Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight
+when they rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand
+rubles and the rider beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search
+far to find another as smart."
+
+"To search far..." repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not
+said more. "To search far," he said, turning back the skirt of his
+coat to get at his snuffbox.
+
+"The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael
+Sidorych..." Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had
+distinctly caught the music of the hunt with only two or three
+hounds giving tongue. He bent down his head and listened, shaking a
+warning finger at his master. "They are on the scent of the cubs...
+" he whispered, "straight to the Lyadov uplands."
+
+The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked
+into the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space,
+holding the snuffbox in his hand but not taking any. After the cry
+of the hounds came the deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel's
+hunting horn; the pack joined the first three hounds and they could be
+heard in full cry, with that peculiar lift in the note that
+indicates that they are after a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on
+the hounds, but changed to the cry of ulyulyu, and above the others
+rose Daniel's voice, now a deep bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice
+seemed to fill the whole wood and carried far beyond out into the open
+field.
+
+After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his
+attendant convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into
+two packs: the sound of the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue,
+began to die away in the distance, the other pack rushed by the wood
+past the count, and it was with this that Daniel's voice was heard
+calling ulyulyu. The sounds of both packs mingled and broke apart
+again, but both were becoming more distant.
+
+Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi
+had entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in
+his hand, opened it and took a pinch. "Back!" cried Simon to a
+borzoi that was pushing forward out of the wood. The count started and
+dropped the snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up.
+The count and Simon were looking at him.
+
+Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly
+approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were
+just in front of them.
+
+The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at him with eyes
+starting out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to
+the other side.
+
+"Look out!" he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had
+long fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he
+galloped toward the count.
+
+The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a
+wolf which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet
+lope farther to the left to the very place where they were standing.
+The angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the
+horses' feet at the wolf.
+
+The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs
+awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly
+swaying from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish
+of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same
+instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and
+then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the
+whole pack rushed across the field toward the very spot where the wolf
+had disappeared. The hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and
+Daniel's chestnut horse appeared, dark with sweat. On its long back
+sat Daniel, hunched forward, capless, his disheveled gray hair hanging
+over his flushed, perspiring face.
+
+"Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!..." he cried. When he caught sight of the
+count his eyes flashed lightning.
+
+"Blast you!" he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly at the
+count.
+
+"You've let the wolf go!... What sportsmen! and as if scorning to
+say more to the frightened and shamefaced count, he lashed the heaving
+flanks of his sweating chestnut gelding with all the anger the count
+had aroused and flew off after the hounds. The count, like a
+punished schoolboy, looked round, trying by a smile to win Simon's
+sympathy for his plight. But Simon was no longer there. He was
+galloping round by the bushes while the field was coming up on both
+sides, all trying to head the wolf, but it vanished into the wood
+before they could do so.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the
+wolf. By the way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of
+the dogs whose notes were familiar to him, by the way the voices of
+the huntsmen approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was
+happening at the copse. He knew that young and old wolves were
+there, that the hounds had separated into two packs, that somewhere
+a wolf was being chased, and that something had gone wrong. He
+expected the wolf to come his way any moment. He made thousands of
+different conjectures as to where and from what side the beast would
+come and how he would set upon it. Hope alternated with despair.
+Several times he addressed a prayer to God that the wolf should come
+his way. He prayed with that passionate and shame-faced feeling with
+which men pray at moments of great excitement arising from trivial
+causes. "What would it be to Thee to do this for me?" he said to
+God. "I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to ask this of Thee,
+but for God's sake do let the old wolf come my way and let Karay
+spring at it- in sight of 'Uncle' who is watching from over there- and
+seize it by the throat in a death grip!" A thousand times during
+that half-hour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over the edge of
+the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the aspen undergrowth
+and the gully with its water-worn side and "Uncle's" cap just
+visible above the bush on his right.
+
+"No, I shan't have such luck," thought Rostov, "yet what wouldn't it
+be worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in war, I am
+always unlucky." Memories of Austerlitz and of Dolokhov flashed
+rapidly and clearly through his mind. "Only once in my life to get
+an old wolf, I want only that!" thought he, straining eyes and ears
+and looking to the left and then to the right and listening to the
+slightest variation of note in the cries of the dogs.
+
+Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him
+across the deserted field. "No, it can't be!" thought Rostov, taking a
+deep breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped
+for. The height of happiness was reached- and so simply, without
+warning, or noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his
+eyes and remained in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and
+jumped heavily over a gully that lay in her path. She was an old
+animal with a gray back and big reddish belly. She ran without
+hurry, evidently feeling sure that no one saw her. Rostov, holding his
+breath, looked round at the borzois. They stood or lay not seeing
+the wolf or understanding the situation. Old Karay had turned his head
+and was angrily searching for fleas, baring his yellow teeth and
+snapping at his hind legs.
+
+"Ulyulyulyu!" whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped
+up, jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karay
+finished scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up
+with quivering tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down.
+
+"Shall I loose them or not?" Nicholas asked himself as the wolf
+approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf's whole
+physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never
+seen before- human eyes fixed upon her- and turning her head a
+little toward Rostov, she paused.
+
+"Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward..." the wolf seemed to
+say to herself, and she moved forward without again looking round
+and with a quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope.
+
+"Ulyulyu!" cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own
+accord his good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies
+to head off the wolf, and the borzois passed it, running faster still.
+Nicholas did not hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping,
+nor see the borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw only
+the wolf, who, increasing her speed, bounded on in the same
+direction along the hollow. The first to come into view was Milka,
+with her black markings and powerful quarters, gaining upon the
+wolf. Nearer and nearer... now she was ahead of it; but the wolf
+turned its head to face her, and instead of putting on speed as she
+usually did Milka suddenly raised her tail and stiffened her forelegs.
+
+"Ulyulyulyulyu!" shouted Nicholas.
+
+The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind Milka, sprang
+impetuously at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but
+immediately jumped aside in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her
+teeth, and again rose and bounded forward, followed at the distance of
+a couple of feet by all the borzois, who did not get any closer to
+her.
+
+"She'll get away! No, it's impossible!" thought Nicholas, still
+shouting with a hoarse voice.
+
+"Karay, ulyulyu!..." he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi
+who was now his only hope. Karay, with all the strength age had left
+him, stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf,
+galloped heavily aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the
+wolf's lope and the borzoi's slower pace made it plain that Karay
+had miscalculated. Nicholas could already see not far in front of
+him the wood where the wolf would certainly escape should she reach
+it. But, coming toward him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping
+almost straight at the wolf. There was still hope. A long, yellowish
+young borzoi, one Nicholas did not know, from another leash, rushed
+impetuously at the wolf from in front and almost knocked her over. But
+the wolf jumped up more quickly than anyone could have expected and,
+gnashing her teeth, flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a
+piercing yelp, fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a
+gash in its side.
+
+"Karay? Old fellow!..." wailed Nicholas.
+
+Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf's path,
+the old dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within
+five paces of it. As if aware of her danger, the wolf turned her
+eyes on Karay, tucked her tail yet further between her legs, and
+increased her speed. But here Nicholas only saw that something
+happened to Karay- the borzoi was suddenly on the wolf, and they
+rolled together down into a gully just in front of them.
+
+That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully
+with the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and
+outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears
+laid back (Karay was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest
+moment of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to
+dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head up
+from among that mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on the edge
+of the gully. She clicked her teeth (Karay no longer had her by the
+throat), leaped with a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and
+having disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again,
+went forward. Karay, his hair bristling, and probably bruised or
+wounded, climbed with difficulty out of the gully.
+
+"Oh my God! Why?" Nicholas cried in despair.
+
+"Uncle's" huntsman was galloping from the other side across the
+wolf's path and his borzois once more stopped the animal's advance.
+She was again hemmed in.
+
+Nicholas and his attendant, with "Uncle" and his huntsman, were
+all riding round the wolf, crying "ulyulyu!" shouting and preparing to
+dismount each moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward
+again every time she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she
+would be safe.
+
+Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the
+ulyulyuing, had rushed out from the wood. He saw Karay seize the wolf,
+and checked his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he
+saw that the horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself
+and ran for safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf
+but straight toward the wood, just as Karay had run to cut the
+animal off. As a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just
+when she had been stopped a second time by "Uncle's" borzois.
+
+Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand
+and thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip
+as if it were a flail.
+
+Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut,
+breathing heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body
+and saw Daniel lying on the wolf's back among the dogs, trying to
+seize her by the ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to
+the wolf herself that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed
+back her ears and tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her.
+Daniel rose a little, took a step, and with his whole weight, as if
+lying down to rest, fell on the wolf, seizing her by the ears.
+Nicholas was about to stab her, but Daniel whispered, "Don't! We'll
+gag her!" and, changing his position, set his foot on the wolf's neck.
+A stick was thrust between her jaws and she was fastened with a leash,
+as if bridled, her legs were bound together, and Daniel rolled her
+over once or twice from side to side.
+
+With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a
+shying and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her,
+took her to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had
+killed two of the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled
+with their booty and their stories, and all came to look at the
+wolf, which, with her broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten
+stick between her jaws, gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd
+of dogs and men surrounding her. When she was touched, she jerked
+her bound legs and looked wildly yet simply at everybody. Old Count
+Rostov also rode up and touched the wolf.
+
+"Oh, what a formidable one!" said he. "A formidable one, eh?" he
+asked Daniel, who was standing near.
+
+"Yes, your excellency," answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.
+
+The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with
+Daniel.
+
+"Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!" said the count.
+
+For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable
+smile.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to return
+very soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At
+midday they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with
+young trees. Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his
+whips.
+
+Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood
+alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been
+loosed before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at
+intervals; other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving
+tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a
+fox had been found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along
+the ravine toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.
+
+He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the
+ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself
+at any moment on the ryefield opposite.
+
+The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois,
+and Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going
+hard across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew
+close to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and
+sharper curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white
+borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and everything was in
+confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying
+their bodies and with tails turned away from the center of the
+group. Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap, the
+other, a stranger, in a green coat.
+
+"What's this?" thought Nicholas. "Where's that huntsman from? He
+is not 'Uncle's' man."
+
+The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without
+strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high
+saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs were lying. The
+huntsmen waved their arms and did something to the fox. Then from that
+spot came the sound of a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of
+a fight.
+
+"That's Ilagin's huntsman having a row with our Ivan," said
+Nicholas' groom.
+
+Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him, and rode
+at a footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds
+together. Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight
+was going on.
+
+Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden
+up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would
+end. Out of the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and
+rode toward his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper.
+While still at a distance he took off his cap and tried to speak
+respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face was angry.
+One of his eyes was black, but he probably was not even aware of it.
+
+"What has happened?" asked Nicholas.
+
+"A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my
+gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the
+fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want
+a taste of this?..." said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and
+probably imagining himself still speaking to his foe.
+
+Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and
+Petya to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy's,
+Ilagin's, hunting party was.
+
+The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,
+surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.
+
+The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a quarrel
+and were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the
+Rostovs, and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very
+woods the Rostovs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs
+had chased.
+
+Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual absence of
+moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his
+arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe.
+He rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and
+fully prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish
+his enemy.
+
+Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman
+in a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black
+horse, accompanied by two hunt servants.
+
+Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and
+courteous gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young
+count's acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised
+his beaver cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and
+would have the man punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox
+hunted by someone else's borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted
+with the count and invited him to draw his covert.
+
+Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had
+followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging
+friendly greetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver
+cap still higher to Natasha and said, with a pleasant smile, that
+the young countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as
+well as in her beauty, of which he had heard much.
+
+To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs to
+come to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for
+himself and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and
+the hunt, now doubled, moved on.
+
+The way to Iligin's upland was across the fields. The hunt
+servants fell into line. The masters rode together. "Uncle," Rostov,
+and Ilagin kept stealthily glancing at one another's dogs, trying
+not to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily for
+rivals to their own borzois.
+
+Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small,
+pure-bred, red-spotted bitch on Ilagin's leash, slender but with
+muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He
+had heard of the swiftness of Ilagin's borzois, and in that
+beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own Milka.
+
+In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin about the
+year's harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.
+
+"A fine little bitch, that!" said he in a careless tone. "Is she
+swift?"
+
+"That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after," answered
+Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza, for which, a year
+before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. "So
+in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?" he
+went on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering
+it polite to return the young count's compliment, Ilagin looked at his
+borzois and picked out Milka who attracted his attention by her
+breadth. "That black-spotted one of yours is fine- well shaped!"
+said he.
+
+"Yes, she's fast enough," replied Nicholas, and thought: "If only
+a full-grown hare would cross the field now I'd show you what sort
+of borzoi she is," and turning to his groom, he said he would give a
+ruble to anyone who found a hare.
+
+"I don't understand," continued Ilagin, "how some sportsmen can be
+so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I
+enjoy riding in company such as this... what could be better?" (he
+again raised his cap to Natasha) "but as for counting skins and what
+one takes, I don't care about that."
+
+"Of course not!"
+
+"Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not mine catches
+something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not
+so, Count? For I consider that..."
+
+"A-tu!" came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in,
+who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip
+aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, "A-tu!" (This call and
+the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)
+
+"Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly. "Yes, we
+must ride up.... Shall we both course it?" answered Nicholas, seeing
+in Erza and "Uncle's" red Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a
+chance of pitting against his own borzois. "And suppose they outdo
+my Milka at once!" he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin
+toward the hare.
+
+"A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached the whip who had
+sighted the hare- and not without agitation he looked round and
+whistled to Erza.
+
+"And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing "Uncle."
+
+The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.
+
+"How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each of your
+borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours
+against one another, you two, and I'll look on!"
+
+"Rugay, hey, hey!" he shouted. "Rugayushka!" he added, involuntarily
+by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on
+this red borzoi. Natasha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly
+men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by
+it.
+
+The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and
+the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were
+far off on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but
+not the gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and
+sedately.
+
+"How is it pointing?" asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces
+toward the whip who had sighted the hare.
+
+But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming
+next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash
+rushed downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the
+borzois that were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare.
+All the hunt, who had been moving slowly, shouted, "Stop!" calling
+in the hounds, while the borzoi whips, with a cry of "A-tu!"galloped
+across the field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin,
+Nicholas, Natasha, and "Uncle" flew, reckless of where and how they
+went, seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose
+sight even for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started
+was a strong and swift one. When he jumped up he did not run at
+once, but pricked his ears listening to the shouting and trampling
+that resounded from all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not
+very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him, and, finally having
+chosen his direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and
+rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but in front of
+him was the autumn sowing where the ground was soft. The two borzois
+of the huntsman who had sighted him, having been the nearest, were the
+first to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin's
+red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare
+with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had
+seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and
+bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed the
+broad-haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the
+hare.
+
+"Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry. It looked as if
+Milka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and
+flew past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached
+him, but when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the
+distance, so as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind
+leg.
+
+"Erza, darling! Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did
+not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have
+seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between
+the winter rye and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast,
+running like a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the
+hare, but it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the
+borzois did not overtake him so quickly.
+
+"Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a third voice just
+then, and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught
+up with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of
+the terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off
+the balk onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously,
+sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was
+how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of
+borzois surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the
+crowd of dogs. Only the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a
+pad, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously
+glancing round with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He
+spoke without himself knowing whom to or what about. "That's it,
+come on! That's a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the
+thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble borzois. That's it, come
+on!" said he, panting and looking wrathfully around as if he were
+abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies and had insulted him,
+and only now had he at last succeeded in justifying himself. "There
+are your thousand-ruble ones.... That's it, come on!..."
+
+"Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing down the hare's
+muddy pad. "You've deserved it, that's it, come on!"
+
+"She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times by herself,"
+said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of
+whether he were heard or not.
+
+"But what is there in running across it like that?" said Ilagin's
+groom.
+
+"Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take
+it," Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop
+and his excitement. At the same moment Natasha, without drawing
+breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set
+everyone's ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the
+others expressed by all talking at once, and it was so strange that
+she must herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone
+else would have been amazed at it at any other time. "Uncle" himself
+twisted up the hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse's
+back as if by that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with
+an air of not wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode
+off. The others all followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much
+later were they able to regain their former affectation of
+indifference. For a long time they continued to look at red Rugay who,
+his arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring of his leash,
+walked along just behind "Uncle's" horse with the serene air of a
+conqueror.
+
+"Well, I am like any other dog as long as it's not a question of
+coursing. But when it is, then look out!" his appearance seem to
+Nicholas to be saying.
+
+When, much later, "Uncle" rode up to Nicholas and began talking to
+him, he felt flattered that, after what had happened, "Uncle"
+deigned to speak to him.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they
+were so far from home that he accepted "Uncle's" offer that the
+hunting party should spend the night in his little village of
+Mikhaylovna.
+
+"And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That's it,
+come on!" said "Uncle." "You see it's damp weather, and you could
+rest, and the little countess could be driven home in a trap."
+
+"Uncle's" offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for
+a trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and Petya to "Uncle's" house.
+
+Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the
+front porch to meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and
+young, as well as children, popped out from the back entrance to
+have a look at the hunters who were arriving. The presence of Natasha-
+a woman, a lady, and on horseback- raised the curiosity of the serfs
+to such a degree that many of them came up to her, stared her in the
+face, and unabashed by her presence made remarks about her as though
+she were some prodigy on show and not a human being able to hear or
+understand what was said about her.
+
+"Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt
+dangles.... See, she's got a little hunting horn!"
+
+"Goodness gracious! See her knife?..."
+
+"Isn't she a Tartar!"
+
+"How is it you didn't go head over heels?" asked the boldest of all,
+addressing Natasha directly.
+
+"Uncle" dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which
+stood in the midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his
+retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should
+take themselves off and that all necessary preparations should be made
+to receive the guests and the visitors.
+
+The serfs all dispersed. "Uncle" lifted Natasha off her horse and
+taking her hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch.
+The house, with its bare, unplastered log walls, was not overclean- it
+did not seem that those living in it aimed at keeping it spotless- but
+neither was it noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of
+fresh apples, and wolf and fox skins hung about.
+
+"Uncle" led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with
+a folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a
+round birchwood table and a sofa, and finally into his private room
+where there was a tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of
+Suvorov, of the host's father and mother, and of himself in military
+uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. "Uncle" asked
+his visitors to sit down and make themselves at home, and then went
+out of the room. Rugay, his back still muddy, came into the room and
+lay down on the sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth.
+Leading from the study was a passage in which a partition with
+ragged curtains could be seen. From behind this came women's
+laughter and whispers. Natasha, Nicholas, and Petya took off their
+wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya, leaning on his elbow, fell
+asleep at once. Natasha and Nicholas were silent. Their faces
+glowed, they were hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one another
+(now that the hunt was over and they were in the house, Nicholas no
+longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority over
+his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long
+from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a
+pretext ready to account for it.
+
+After a while "Uncle" came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and
+small top boots. And Natasha felt that this costume, the very one
+she had regarded with surprise and amusement at Otradnoe, was just the
+right thing and not at all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat.
+"Uncle" too was in high spirits and far from being offended by the
+brother's and sister's laughter (it could never enter his head that
+they might be laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the
+merriment.
+
+"That's right, young countess, that's it, come on! I never saw
+anyone like her!" said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem
+and, with a practiced motion of three fingers, taking down another
+that had been cut short. "She's ridden all day like a man, and is as
+fresh as ever!
+
+Soon after "Uncle's" reappearance the door was opened, evidently
+from the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking
+woman of about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, entered
+carrying a large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality
+in her glance and in every motion, she looked at the visitors and,
+with a pleasant smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional
+stoutness, which caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and
+throw back her head, this woman (who was "Uncle's" housekeeper) trod
+very lightly. She went to the table, set down the tray, and with her
+plump white hands deftly took from it the bottles and various hors
+d'oeuvres and dishes and arranged them on the table. When she had
+finished, she stepped aside and stopped at the door with a smile on
+her face. "Here I am. I am she! Now do you understand 'Uncle'?" her
+expression said to Rostov. How could one help understanding? Not
+only Nicholas, but even Natasha understood the meaning of his puckered
+brow and the happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips
+when Anisya Fedorovna entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb
+wine, different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with
+buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead,
+apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards
+she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves made with honey,
+and preserves made with sugar.
+
+All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna's housekeeping,
+gathered and prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a
+smack of Anisya Fedorovna herself: a savor of juiciness,
+cleanliness, whiteness, and pleasant smiles.
+
+"Take this, little Lady-Countess!" she kept saying, as she offered
+Natasha first one thing and then another.
+
+Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten
+such buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets,
+or such a chicken anywhere. Anisya Fedorovna left the room.
+
+After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and "Uncle" talked of
+past and future hunts, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs, while Natasha sat
+upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried
+several times to wake Petya that he might eat something, but he only
+muttered incoherent words without waking up. Natasha felt so
+lighthearted and happy in these novel surroundings that she only
+feared the trap would come for her too soon. After a casual pause,
+such as often occurs when receiving friends for the first time in
+one's own house, "Uncle," answering a thought that was in his
+visitors' mind, said:
+
+"This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come.
+That's it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?"
+
+"Uncle's" face was very significant and even handsome as he said
+this. Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good he had heard about
+him from his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province
+"Uncle" had the reputation of being the most honorable and
+disinterested of cranks. They called him in to decide family disputes,
+chose him as executor, confided secrets to him, elected him to be a
+justice and to other posts; but he always persistently refused
+public appointments, passing the autumn and spring in the fields on
+his bay gelding, sitting at home in winter, and lying in his overgrown
+garden in summer.
+
+"Why don't you enter the service, Uncle?"
+
+"I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That's it, come
+on! I can't make head or tail of it. That's for you- I haven't
+brains enough. Now, hunting is another matter- that's it, come on!
+Open the door, there!" he shouted. "Why have you shut it?"
+
+The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen's room, as
+they called the room for the hunt servants.
+
+There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the
+door into the huntsmen's room, from which came the clear sounds of a
+balalayka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was
+playing. Natasha had been listening to those strains for some time and
+now went out into the passage to hear better.
+
+"That's Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balalayka.
+I'm fond of it," said "Uncle."
+
+It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the
+huntsmen's room when "Uncle" returned from the chase. "Uncle" was fond
+of such music.
+
+"How good! Really very good!" said Nicholas with some
+unintentional superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the
+sounds pleased him very much.
+
+"Very good?" said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her brother's
+tone. "Not 'very good' it's simply delicious!"
+
+Just as "Uncle's" pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had
+seemed to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that
+moment, seemed to her the acme of musical delight.
+
+"More, please, more!" cried Natasha at the door as soon as the
+balalayka ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the
+balalayka to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. "Uncle"
+sat listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air
+was repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several
+times and the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did
+not grow weary of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anisya
+Fedorovna came in and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.
+
+"You like listening?" she said to Natasha, with a smile extremely
+like "Uncle's." "That's a good player of ours," she added.
+
+"He doesn't play that part right!" said "Uncle" suddenly, with an
+energetic gesture. "Here he ought to burst out- that's it, come on!-
+ought to burst out."
+
+"Do you play then?" asked Natasha.
+
+"Uncle" did not answer, but smiled.
+
+"Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I
+haven't touched it for a long time. That's it- come on! I've given
+it up."
+
+Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her
+errand and brought back the guitar.
+
+Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping
+the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself
+in his armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard,
+arching his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a
+wink at Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous,
+and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow
+time, not My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the
+street. The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to
+thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the
+same kind of sober mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole
+being. Anisya Fedorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her
+face went laughing out of the room. "Uncle" continued to play
+correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness, looking with a
+changed and inspired expression at the spot where Anisya Fedorovna had
+just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a little on one side of
+his face under his gray mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker
+and the time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers
+over the strings, something seemed to snap.
+
+"Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!" shouted Natasha as soon as he
+had finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. "Nicholas,
+Nicholas!" she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: "What
+is it moves me so?"
+
+Nicholas too was greatly pleased by "Uncle's" playing, and "Uncle"
+played the piece over again. Anisya Fedorovna's smiling face
+reappeared in the doorway and behind hers other faces...
+
+_1 Fetching water clear and sweet,<br>
+Stop, dear maiden, I entreat-
+
+played "Uncle" once more, running his fingers skillfully over the
+strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders.
+
+"Go on, Uncle dear," Natasha wailed in an imploring tone as if her
+life depended on it.
+
+"Uncle" rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of
+them smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow
+struck a naive and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.
+
+"Now then, niece!" he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the hand that had
+just struck a chord.
+
+Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to
+face "Uncle," and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with
+her shoulders and struck an attitude.
+
+Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree
+French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that
+spirit and obtained that manner which the pas de chale~^ would, one
+would have supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the
+movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that
+"Uncle" had expected of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and
+smiled triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that
+had at first seized Nicholas and the others that she might not do
+the right thing was at an end, and they were already admiring her.
+
+^~ The French shawl dance.
+
+She did the right thing with such precision, such complete
+precision, that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once handed her the
+handkerchief she needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though
+she laughed as she watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in
+silks and velvets and so different from herself, who yet was able to
+understand all that was in Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother
+and aunt, and in every Russian man and woman.
+
+"Well, little countess; that's it- come on!" cried "Uncle," with a
+joyous laugh, having finished the dance. "Well done, niece! Now a fine
+young fellow must be found as husband for you. That's it- come on!"
+
+"He's chosen already," said Nicholas smiling.
+
+"Oh?" said "Uncle" in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha,
+who nodded her head with a happy smile.
+
+"And such a one!" she said. But as soon as she had said it a new
+train of thoughts and feelings arose in her. "What did Nicholas' smile
+mean when he said 'chosen already'? Is he glad of it or not? It is
+as if he thought my Bolkonski would not approve of or understand our
+gaiety. But he would understand it all. Where is he now?" she thought,
+and her face suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second.
+"Don't dare to think about it," she said to herself, and sat down
+again smilingly beside "Uncle," begging him to play something more.
+
+"Uncle" played another song and a valse; then after a pause he
+cleared his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:
+
+_1 As 'twas growing dark last night<br>
+Fell the snow so soft and light...
+
+"Uncle" sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that
+the whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune
+comes of itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which
+exists only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the
+unconsidered tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily
+good. Natasha was in ecstasies over "Uncle's" singing. She resolved to
+give up learning the harp and to play only the guitar. She asked
+"Uncle" for his guitar and at once found the chords of the song.
+
+After nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been
+sent to look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count
+and countess did not know where they were and were very anxious,
+said one of the men.
+
+Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two
+traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. "Uncle" wrapped
+Natasha up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness.
+He accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be
+crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent
+huntsmen to ride in front with lanterns.
+
+"Good-by, dear niece," his voice called out of the darkness- not the
+voice Natasha had known previously, but the one that had sung As 'twas
+growing dark last night.
+
+In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a
+cheerful smell of smoke.
+
+"What a darling Uncle is!" said Natasha, when they had come out onto
+the highroad.
+
+"Yes," returned Nicholas. "You're not cold?"
+
+"No. I'm quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!" answered
+Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long
+while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but
+only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.
+
+What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly
+caught and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did
+they all find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were
+nearing home she suddenly struck up the air of As 'twas growing dark
+last night- the tune of which she had all the way been trying to get
+and had at last caught.
+
+"Got it?" said Nicholas.
+
+"What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?" inquired Natasha.
+
+They were fond of asking one another that question.
+
+"I?" said Nicholas, trying to remember. "Well, you see, first I
+thought that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were
+a man he would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then
+for his manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?...
+Well, and you?"
+
+"I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving
+along and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows
+where we are really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive
+and suddenly find that we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And
+then I thought... No, nothing else."
+
+"I know, I expect you thought of him," said Nicholas, smiling as
+Natasha knew by the sound of his voice.
+
+"No," said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about
+Prince Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would
+have liked "Uncle." "And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How
+well Anisya carried herself, how well!'" And Nicholas heard her
+spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter. "And do you know," she
+suddenly said, "I know that I shall never again be as happy and
+tranquil as I am now."
+
+"Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!" exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought:
+"How charming this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her
+and never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive
+about together!
+
+"What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!" thought Natasha.
+
+"Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!" she said,
+pointing to the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the
+moist velvety darkness of the night.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the
+Nobility because it involved him in too much expense, but still his
+affairs did not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their
+parents conferring together anxiously and privately and heard
+suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near
+Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely as when the
+count had been Marshal, and life at Otradnoe was quieter than in
+former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of
+people and more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were
+all their own people who had settled down in the house almost as
+members of the family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live
+in the count's house. Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife,
+Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady,
+an inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya's tutors, the
+girls' former governess, and other people who simply found it
+preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house than
+at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old habits
+of life without which the count and countess could not conceive of
+existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting
+establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty
+horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive
+presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days;
+there were still the count's games of whist and boston, at which-
+spreading out his cards so that everybody could see them- he let
+himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors,
+who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostov as a
+most profitable source of income.
+
+The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to
+believe that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every
+step, and feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work
+carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her
+loving heart, felt that her children were being ruined, that it was
+not the count's fault for he could not help being what he was- that
+(though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the
+consciousness of his own and his children's ruin, and she tried to
+find means of remedying the position. From her feminine point of
+view she could see only one solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry
+a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last hope and that if
+Nicholas refused the match she had found for him, she would have to
+abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This match was with
+Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, a girl
+the Rostovs had known from childhood, and who had now become a wealthy
+heiress through the death of the last of her brothers.
+
+The countess had written direct to Julie's mother in Moscow
+suggesting a marriage between their children and had received a
+favorable answer from her. Karagina had replied that for her part
+she was agreeable, and everything depend on her daughter's
+inclination. She invited Nicholas to come to Moscow.
+
+Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son
+that now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him
+married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that
+were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid
+girl and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.
+
+At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to
+Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his
+mother's remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations
+induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of
+getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie
+Karagina.
+
+"But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you
+expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of
+money?" he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question
+and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.
+
+"No, you have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how
+to justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your
+happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an
+untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.
+
+"Mamma, don't cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I
+will give my life, anything, to put you at ease," said Nicholas. "I
+would sacrifice anything for you- even my feelings."
+
+But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did
+not want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a
+sacrifice for him.
+
+"No, you have not understood me, don't let us talk about it," she
+replied, wiping away her tears.
+
+"Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to
+sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
+speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he
+thought, "must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should
+certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can
+always sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to
+himself, "but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that
+feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else."
+
+Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
+conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and
+sometimes with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment
+between her son and the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself
+for it, she could not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya,
+often pulling her up without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my
+dear," and using the formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in
+speaking to her. The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with
+Sonya because that poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind,
+so devotedly grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully,
+unchangingly, and unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were
+no grounds for finding fault with her.
+
+Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter
+had come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he
+would have been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound
+unexpectedly reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to
+defer his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still
+as much in love with her betrothed, found the same comfort in that
+love, and was still as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures
+of life as before; but at the end of the fourth month of their
+separation she began to have fits of depression which she could not
+master. She felt sorry for herself: sorry that she was being wasted
+all this time and of no use to anyone- while she felt herself so
+capable of loving and being loved.
+
+Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and
+wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and
+the new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities,
+though the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine
+by day, and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some
+special celebration of the season.
+
+On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the
+inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest
+time of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that
+morning, was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was
+resting in his study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round
+table, copying a design for embroidery. The countess was playing
+patience. Nastasya Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the
+window with two old ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to
+Sonya, glanced at what she was doing, and then went up to her mother
+and stood without speaking.
+
+"Why are you wandering about like an outcast?" asked her mother.
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!" said Natasha,
+with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.
+
+The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.
+
+"Don't look at me, Mamma! Don't look; I shall cry directly."
+
+"Sit down with me a little," said the countess.
+
+"Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?"
+
+Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned
+quickly to hide them and left the room.
+
+She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and
+then went into the maids' room. There an old maidservant was grumbling
+at a young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold
+from the serfs' quarters.
+
+"Stop playing- there's a time for everything," said the old woman.
+
+"Let her alone, Kondratevna," said Natasha. "Go, Mavrushka, go."
+
+Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and went
+to the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing
+cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.
+
+"What can I do with them?" thought Natasha.
+
+"Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the
+yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some
+oats."
+
+"Just a few oats?" said Misha, cheerfully and readily.
+
+"Go, go quickly," the old man urged him.
+
+"And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk."
+
+On her way past the butler's pantry she told them to set a
+samovar, though it was not at all the time for tea.
+
+Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house.
+Natasha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order
+and asked whether the samovar was really wanted.
+
+"Oh dear, what a young lady!" said Foka, pretending to frown at
+Natasha.
+
+No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble
+as Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to
+send them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of
+them would get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no
+one's orders so readily as they did hers. "What can I do, where can
+I go?" thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.
+
+"Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she asked
+the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman's jacket.
+
+"Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers," answered the buffoon.
+
+"O Lord, O Lord, it's always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am
+I to do with myself?" And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly
+upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.
+
+Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which
+were plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were
+discussing whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha
+sat down, listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air,
+and then got up again.
+
+"The island of Madagascar," she said, "Ma-da-gas-car," she repeated,
+articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame
+Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.
+
+Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on
+him he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.
+
+"Petya! Petya!" she called to him. "Carry me downstairs."
+
+Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her
+arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.
+
+"No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping off
+his back she went downstairs.
+
+Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made
+sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was
+dull, Natasha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar,
+sat down in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her
+fingers over the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she
+recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew.
+What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning for other
+listeners, but in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences
+arose from those sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes
+fixed on a streak of light escaping from the pantry door and
+listened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for brooding on
+the past.
+
+Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced
+at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her
+that she remembered the light failing through that crack once before
+and Sonya passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly the
+same," thought Natasha.
+
+"Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string.
+
+"Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near and
+listened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid of
+being wrong.
+
+"There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smiling
+timidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and in
+just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her."
+
+"No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen! " and Natasha
+sang the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Where
+were you going?" she asked.
+
+"To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design."
+
+"You always find something to do, but I can't," said Natasha. "And
+where's Nicholas?"
+
+"Asleep, I think."
+
+"Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to come
+and sing."
+
+She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened
+before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all
+regretting not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time
+when she was with him and he was looking at her with a lover's eyes.
+
+"Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be!
+And, worst of all, I am growing old- that's the thing! There won't
+then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, will
+come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing
+room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it." She rose,
+put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.
+
+All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were
+already at the tea table. The servants stood round the table- but
+Prince Andrew was not there and life was going on as before.
+
+"Ah, here she is!" said the old count, when he saw Natasha enter.
+"Well, sit down by me." But Natasha stayed by her mother and glanced
+round as if looking for something.
+
+"Mamma!" she muttered, "give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,
+quickly!" and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.
+
+She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between
+the elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. "My God, my
+God! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing
+in the same way!" thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense of
+repulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because they
+were always the same.
+
+After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to
+their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Does it ever happen to you," said Natasha to her brother, when
+they settled down in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you
+to feel as if there were nothing more to come- nothing; that
+everything good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?"
+
+"I should think so!" he replied. "I have felt like that when
+everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has
+come into my mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must
+all die. Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where
+there was music... and suddenly I felt so depressed..."
+
+"Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!" Natasha interrupted him. "When I
+was quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I
+was punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat
+sobbing in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and
+sorry for everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was
+innocent- that was the chief thing," said Natasha. "Do you remember?"
+
+"I remember," answered Nicholas. "I remember that I came to you
+afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt
+ashamed to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and
+wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?"
+
+"And do you remember," Natasha asked with a pensive smile, "how
+once, long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us
+into the study- that was in the old house- and it was dark- we went in
+and suddenly there stood..."
+
+"A Negro," chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. "Of course
+I remember. Even now I don't know whether there really was a Negro, or
+if we only dreamed it or were told about him."
+
+"He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and
+looked at us..."
+
+"Sonya, do you remember?" asked Nicholas.
+
+"Yes, yes, I do remember something too," Sonya answered timidly.
+
+"You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro," said
+Natasha, "and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you
+remember!"
+
+"Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them."
+
+"How strange it is! It's as if it were a dream! I like that."
+
+"And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom,
+and suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was
+that real or not? Do you remember what fun it was?"
+
+"Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun
+in the porch?"
+
+So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not
+the sad memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones- those
+impressions of one's most distant past in which dreams and realities
+blend- and they laughed with quiet enjoyment.
+
+Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they
+shared the same reminiscences.
+
+Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she
+recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced.
+She simply enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.
+
+She only really took part when they recalled Sonya's first
+arrival. She told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because
+he had on a corded jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too,
+would be sewn up with cords.
+
+"And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a
+cabbage," said Natasha, and I remember that I dared not disbelieve
+it then, but knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable."
+
+While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other
+door of the sitting room.
+
+"They have brought the cock, Miss," she said in a whisper.
+
+"It isn't wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away," replied
+Natasha.
+
+In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and
+went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its
+cloth covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound.
+
+"Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field," came the
+old countess' voice from the drawing room.
+
+Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nicholas, and Sonya,
+remarked: "How quiet you young people are!"
+
+"Yes, we're philosophizing," said Natasha, glancing round for a
+moment and then continuing the conversation. They were now
+discussing dreams.
+
+Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the
+table, took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself
+quietly in her former place. It was dark in the room especially
+where they were sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the
+silvery light of the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished
+the piece but still sat softly running his fingers over the strings,
+evidently uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.
+
+"Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to
+Nicholas and Sonya, "that when one goes on and on recalling
+memories, one at last begins to remember what happened before one
+was in the world..."
+
+"That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well,
+and remembered everything. "The Egyptians believed that our souls have
+lived in animals, and will go back into animals again."
+
+"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still
+in a whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we
+were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we
+remember...."
+
+"May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat
+down by them.
+
+"If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas.
+"No, that can't be!"
+
+"Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was
+before?" Natasha rejoined with conviction. "The soul is immortal- well
+then, if I shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a
+whole eternity."
+
+"Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity," remarked
+Dimmler, who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending
+smile but now spoke as quietly and seriously as they.
+
+"Why is it hard to imagine eternity?" said Natasha. "It is now
+today, and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday,
+and the day before..."
+
+"Natasha! Now it's your turn. Sing me something," they heard the
+countess say. "Why are you sitting there like conspirators?"
+
+"Mamma, I don't at all want to," replied Natasha, but all the same
+she rose.
+
+None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break
+off their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but
+Natasha got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as
+usual in the middle of the hall and choosing the place where the
+resonance was best, Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song.
+
+She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had
+sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The
+count, from his study where he was talking to Mitenka, heard her
+and, like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in
+his talk while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped,
+while Mitenka stood in front of him also listening and smiling.
+Nicholas did not take his eyes off his sister and drew breath in
+time with her. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the immense
+difference there was between herself and her friend, and how
+impossible it was for her to be anything like as bewitching as her
+cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad smile and with
+tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She thought of
+Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something unnatural
+and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natasha and Prince Andrew.
+
+Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with
+closed eyes.
+
+"Ah, Countess," he said at last, "that's a European talent, she
+has nothing to learn- what softness, tenderness, and strength...."
+
+"Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!" said the countess,
+not realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her
+that Natasha had too much of something, and that because of this she
+would not be happy. Before Natasha had finished singing,
+fourteen-year-old Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some
+mummers had arrived.
+
+Natasha stopped abruptly.
+
+"Idiot!" she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair,
+threw herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop
+for a long time.
+
+"It's nothing, Mamma, really it's nothing; only Petya startled
+me," she said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs
+still choked her.
+
+The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,
+innkeepers, and ladies- frightening and funny- bringing in with them
+the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first
+timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed
+into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily
+and heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas
+games. The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their
+costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom,
+smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had
+disappeared.
+
+Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the
+ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt- this was Nicholas. A Turkish
+girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a
+Circassian was Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.
+
+After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from
+those who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided
+that their costumes were so good that they ought to be shown
+elsewhere.
+
+Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to
+take them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them
+about a dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's."
+
+"No, why disturb the old fellow?" said the countess. "Besides, you
+wouldn't have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the
+Melyukovs'"
+
+Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and
+governesses, lived three miles from the Rostovs.
+
+"That's right, my dear," chimed in the old count, thoroughly
+aroused. "I'll dress up at once and go with them. I'll make Pashette
+open her eyes."
+
+But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad
+leg all these last days. It was decided that the count must not go,
+but that if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the
+young ladies might go to the Melyukovs', Sonya, generally so timid and
+shy, more urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.
+
+Sonya's costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows
+were extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very
+handsome, and she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with
+her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be
+decided, and in her male attire she seemed quite a different person.
+Louisa Ivanovna consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka
+sleighs with large and small bells, their runners squeaking and
+whistling over the frozen snow, drove up to the porch.
+
+Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing
+from one to another, grew stronger and stronger and reached its climax
+when they all came out into the frost and got into the sleighs,
+talking, calling to one another, laughing, and shouting.
+
+Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was
+the old count's with a trotter from the Orlov stud as shaft horse, the
+fourth was Nicholas' own with a short shaggy black shaft horse.
+Nicholas, in his old lady's dress over which he had belted his
+hussar overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.
+
+It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the
+metal harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked
+round in alarm at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.
+
+Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas'
+sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the
+rest of the mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.
+
+"You go ahead, Zakhar!" shouted Nicholas to his father's coachman,
+wishing for a chance to race past him.
+
+The old count's troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,
+squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its
+deep-toned bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts
+of the middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered
+like sugar, and threw it up.
+
+Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the
+others moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove
+at a steady trot along the narrow road. While they drove past the
+garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and
+hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the
+fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out
+before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish
+shadows. Bang, bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle hole in the
+snow of the road, and each of the other sleighs jolted in the same
+way, and rudely breaking the frost-bound stillness, the troykas
+began to speed along the road, one after the other.
+
+"A hare's track, a lot of tracks!" rang out Natasha's voice
+through the frost-bound air.
+
+"How light it is, Nicholas!" came Sonya's voice.
+
+Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see her face
+closer. Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches
+peeped up at him from her sable furs- so close and yet so distant-
+in the moonlight.
+
+"That used to be Sonya," thought he, and looked at her closer and
+smiled.
+
+"What is it, Nicholas?"
+
+"Nothing," said he and turned again to the horses.
+
+When they came out onto the beaten highroad- polished by sleigh
+runners and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were
+visible in the moonlight- the horses began to tug at the reins of
+their own accord and increased their pace. The near side horse,
+arching his head and breaking into a short canter, tugged at his
+traces. The shaft horse swayed from side to side, moving his ears as
+if asking: "Isn't it time to begin now?" In front, already far ahead
+the deep bell of the sleigh ringing farther and farther off, the black
+horses driven by Zakhar could be clearly seen against the white
+snow. From that sleigh one could hear the shouts, laughter, and voices
+of the mummers.
+
+"Gee up, my darlings!" shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one
+side and flourishing the whip.
+
+It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given
+by the side horses who pulled harder- ever increasing their gallop-
+that one noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back.
+With screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft
+horses to gallop- the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung
+steadily beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of
+slackening pace and ready to put on speed when required.
+
+Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and
+coming out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.
+
+"Where are we?" thought he. "It's the Kosoy meadow, I suppose. But
+no- this is something new I've never seen before. This isn't the Kosoy
+meadow nor the Demkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is! It is
+something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be..." And shouting
+to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.
+
+Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which was already
+covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.
+
+Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar, stretching out his
+arms, clucked his tongue and let his horses go.
+
+"Now, look out, master!" he cried.
+
+Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the
+feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead.
+Zakhar, while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with
+the reins.
+
+"No you won't, master!" he shouted.
+
+Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhar. The
+horses showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh-
+beside them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused
+glimpses of swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they
+were passing. The whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the
+voices of girls shrieking were heard from different sides.
+
+Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were
+still surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled
+with stars.
+
+"Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the
+left?" thought Nicholas. "Are we getting to the Melyukovs'? Is this
+Melyukovka? Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows
+what is happening to us- but it is very strange and pleasant
+whatever it is." And he looked round in the sleigh.
+
+"Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!" said one of the
+strange, pretty, unfamiliar people- the one with fine eyebrows and
+mustache.
+
+"I think this used to be Natasha," thought Nicholas, "and that was
+Madame Schoss, but perhaps it's not, and this Circassian with the
+mustache I don't know, but I love her."
+
+"Aren't you cold?" he asked.
+
+They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh
+behind shouted something- probably something funny- but they could not
+make out what he said.
+
+"Yes, yes!" some voices answered, laughing.
+
+"But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a
+glitter of diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver
+roofs of fairy buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And
+if this is really Melyukovka, it is still stranger that we drove
+heaven knows where and have come to Melyukovka," thought Nicholas.
+
+It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with merry faces
+came running, out to the porch carrying candles.
+
+"Who is it?" asked someone in the porch.
+
+"The mummers from the count's. I know by the horses," replied some
+voices.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman
+wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress,
+surrounded by her daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling
+dull. They were quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at
+the shadows the wax figures would throw on the wall, when they heard
+the steps and voices of new arrivals in the vestibule.
+
+Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their
+throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule,
+came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The
+clown- Dimmler- and the lady- Nicholas- started a dance. Surrounded by
+the screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and
+disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged
+themselves about the room.
+
+"Dear me! there's no recognizing them! And Natasha! See whom she
+looks like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler- isn't
+he good! I didn't know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there's a
+Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonya. And who is that?
+Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and Vanya- clear away the tables!
+And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar!
+Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can't look at him..." different
+voices were saying.
+
+Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them into
+the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male
+garments were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish
+arms from behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young
+Melyukovs joined the mummers.
+
+Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the
+visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,
+went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles,
+peering into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to
+recognize any of them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she
+failed to recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters,
+or her late husband's, dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put
+on.
+
+"And who is is this?" she asked her governess, peering into the face
+of her own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar. "I suppose it is one
+of the Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve
+in?" she asked Natasha. "Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she
+ordered the butler who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden
+by his law."
+
+Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by
+the dancers, who- having decided once for all that being disguised, no
+one would recognize them- were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna
+hid her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook
+with irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.
+
+"My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said.
+
+After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna
+made the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a
+string, and a silver ruble were fetched and they all played games
+together.
+
+In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The
+corked eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring,
+flushed, and merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the
+mummers, admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly
+how they suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for
+having entertained her so well. The visitors were invited to supper in
+the drawing room, and the serfs had something served to them in the
+ballroom.
+
+"Now to tell one's fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!"
+said an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs, during supper.
+
+"Why?" said the eldest Melyukov girl.
+
+"You wouldn't go, it takes courage..."
+
+"I'll go," said Sonya.
+
+"Tell what happened to the young lady!" said the second Melyukov
+girl.
+
+"Well," began the old maid, "a young lady once went out, took a
+cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After
+sitting a while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh
+drives up with harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in,
+just in the shape of a man, like an officer- comes in and sits down to
+table with her."
+
+"Ah! ah!" screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.
+
+"Yes? And how... did he speak?"
+
+"Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began
+persuading her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow,
+but she got frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her
+hands. Then he caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just
+then..."
+
+"Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna.
+
+"Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself..." said her daughter.
+
+"And how does one do it in a barn?" inquired Sonya.
+
+"Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on
+what you hear; hammering and knocking- that's bad; but a sound of
+shifting grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too."
+
+"Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn."
+
+Pelageya Danilovna smiled.
+
+"Oh, I've forgotten..." she replied. "But none of you would go?"
+
+"Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I'll go," said Sonya.
+
+"Well, why not, if you're not afraid?"
+
+"Louisa Ivanovna, may I?" asked Sonya.
+
+Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game
+or talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya's side, and gazed at
+her with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today,
+thanks to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to
+know her. And really, that evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated,
+and prettier than Nicholas had ever seen her before.
+
+"So that's what she is like; what a fool I have been!" he thought
+gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous
+smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.
+
+"I'm not afraid of anything," said Sonya. "May I go at once?" She
+got up.
+
+They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and
+listen, and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her
+head and shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.
+
+"What a darling that girl is!" thought he. "And what have I been
+thinking of till now?"
+
+Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went
+hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of
+people really had made the house stuffy.
+
+Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but
+even brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow
+sparkled with so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the
+sky and the real stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary,
+while the earth was gay.
+
+"I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?" thought
+Nicholas. and running out from the porch he went round the corner of
+the house and along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sonya
+would pass that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood
+and across and along them a network of shadows from the bare old
+lime trees fell on the snow and on the path. This path led to the
+barn. The log walls of the barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked
+as if hewn out of some precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A
+tree in the garden snapped with the frost, and then all was again
+perfectly silent. His bosom seemed to inhale not air but the
+strength of eternal youth and gladness.
+
+From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the
+bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he
+heard the voice of an old maidservant saying, "Straight, straight,
+along the path, Miss. Only, don't look back."
+
+"I am not afraid," answered Sonya's voice, and along the path toward
+Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sonya's feet in her
+thin shoes.
+
+Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of
+paces away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas
+she had known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman's dress,
+with tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly
+toward him.
+
+"Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas, looking at her
+face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the
+cloak that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and
+kissed her on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt
+cork. Sonya kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little
+hands pressed them to his cheeks.
+
+"Sonya!... Nicholas!"... was all they said. They ran to the barn and
+then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back
+porch.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna's, Natasha, who
+always saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss
+should go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and
+the maids.
+
+On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing
+and kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sonya's
+face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former
+and his present Sonya from whom he had resolved never to be parted
+again. He looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new
+Sonya, and being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the
+sensation of her kiss, inhaled the frosty air with a full breast
+and, looking at the ground flying beneath him and at the sparkling
+sky, felt himself again in fairyland.
+
+"Sonya, is it well with thee?" he asked from time to time.
+
+"Yes!" she replied. "And with thee?"
+
+When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and
+ran for a moment to Natasha's sleigh and stood on its wing.
+
+"Natasha!" he whispered in French, "do you know I have made up my
+mind about Sonya?"
+
+"Have you told her?" asked Natasha, suddenly beaming all over with
+joy.
+
+"Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!...
+Natasha- are you glad?"
+
+"I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I
+did not tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart
+she has, Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be
+happy while Sonya was not," continued Natasha. "Now I am so glad!
+Well, run back to her."
+
+"No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!" cried Nicholas, peering
+into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual,
+and bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before.
+"Natasha, it's magical, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," she replied. "You have done splendidly."
+
+"Had I seen her before as she is now," thought Nicholas, "I should
+long ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me,
+and all would have been well."
+
+"So you are glad and I have done right?"
+
+"Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it.
+Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing!
+I nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of
+Sonya, for there is nothing but good in her."
+
+"Then it's all right?" said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the
+expression of his sister's face to see if she was in earnest. Then
+he jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his
+sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and
+beaming eyes looking up from under a sable hood, was still sitting
+there, and that Circassian was Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his
+future happy and loving wife.
+
+When they reached home and had told their mother how they had
+spent the evening at the Melyukovs', the girls went to their
+bedroom. When they had undressed, but without washing off the cork
+mustaches, they sat a long time talking of their happiness. They
+talked of how they would live when they were married, how their
+husbands would be friends, and how happy they would be. On Natasha's
+table stood two looking glasses which Dunyasha had prepared
+beforehand.
+
+"Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too
+good!" said Natasha, rising and going to the looking glasses.
+
+"Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you'll see him," said Sonya.
+
+Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking
+glasses, and sat down.
+
+"I see someone with a mustache," said Natasha, seeing her own face.
+
+"You mustn't laugh, Miss," said Dunyasha.
+
+With Sonya's help and the maid's, Natasha got the glass she held
+into the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious
+expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the
+receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting
+(from tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew,
+in that last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was
+to take the smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin,
+she saw nothing. She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the
+looking glasses.
+
+"Why is it others see things and I don't?" she said. "You sit down
+now, Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I
+feel so frightened!"
+
+Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began
+looking.
+
+"Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something," whispered Dunyasha;
+"while you do nothing but laugh."
+
+Sonya heard this and Natasha's whisper:
+
+"I know she will. She saw something last year."
+
+For about three minutes all were silent.
+
+"Of course she will!" whispered Natasha, but did not finish...
+suddenly Sonya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her
+eyes with her hand.
+
+"Oh, Natasha!" she cried.
+
+"Did you see? Did you? What was it?" exclaimed Natasha, holding up
+the looking glass.
+
+Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to
+get up when she heard Natasha say, "Of course she will!" She did not
+wish to disappoint either Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard to
+sit still. She did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped
+her when she covered her eyes.
+
+"You saw him?" urged Natasha, seizing her hand.
+
+"Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him," Sonya could not help saying,
+not yet knowing whom Natasha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.
+
+"But why shouldn't I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who
+can tell whether I saw anything or not?" flashed through Sonya's mind.
+
+"Yes, I saw him," she said.
+
+"How? Standing or lying?"
+
+"No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying
+down."
+
+"Andrew lying? Is he ill?" asked Natasha, her frightened eyes
+fixed on her friend.
+
+"No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he
+turned to me." And when saying this she herself fancied she had really
+seen what she described.
+
+"Well, and then, Sonya?..."
+
+"After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and
+red..."
+
+"Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how
+afraid I am for him and for myself and about everything!..." Natasha
+began, and without replying to Sonya's words of comfort she got into
+bed, and long after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless,
+gazing at the moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his
+love for Sonya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who
+had long noticed what was going on between them and was expecting this
+declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that
+he might marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father
+would give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for the
+first time, felt that his mother was displeased with him and that,
+despite her love for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without
+looking at her son, she sent for her husband and, when he came,
+tried briefly and coldly to inform him of the facts, in her son's
+presence, but unable to restrain herself she burst into tears of
+vexation and left the room. The old count began irresolutely to
+admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon his purpose. Nicholas replied
+that he could not go back on his word, and his father, sighing and
+evidently disconcerted, very soon became silent and went in to the
+countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count was always
+conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the family
+fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for refusing to marry
+an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sonya. On this occasion, he
+was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had
+not been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sonya could
+have been wished for, and that no one but himself with his Mitenka and
+his uncomfortable habits was to blame for the condition of the
+family finances.
+
+The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son
+again, but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya and, with a
+cruelty neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to
+catch Nicholas and for ingratitude. Sonya listened silently with
+downcast eyes to the countess' cruel words, without understanding what
+was required of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her
+benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this
+case she could not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She
+could not help loving the countess and the whole Rostov family, but
+neither could she help loving Nicholas and knowing that his
+happiness depended on that love. She was silent and sad and did not
+reply. Nicholas felt the situation to be intolerable and went to
+have an explanation with his mother. He first implored her to
+forgive him and Sonya and consent to their marriage, then he
+threatened that if she molested Sonya he would at once marry her
+secretly.
+
+The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her
+before, replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying
+without his father's consent, and he could do the same, but that she
+would never receive that intriguer as her daughter.
+
+Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told
+his mother he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his
+feelings, but if that were so, he would say for the last time....
+But he had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression
+of his face caused his mother to await with terror, and which would
+perhaps have forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He had
+not time to say it, for Natasha, with a pale and set face, entered the
+room from the door at which she had been listening.
+
+"Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I
+tell you!..." she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice.
+
+"Mamma darling, it's not at all so... my poor, sweet darling," she
+said to her mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of a
+rupture gazed at her son with terror, but in the obstinacy and
+excitement of the conflict could not and would not give way.
+
+"Nicholas, I'll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling,"
+said Natasha.
+
+Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which
+she was aiming.
+
+The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter's
+breast, while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.
+
+Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded
+that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not
+be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything
+without his parents' knowledge.
+
+Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment,
+to retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious,
+sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him,
+passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his
+regiment.
+
+After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household were more
+depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.
+
+Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more
+so on account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting
+toward her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of
+his affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house
+and estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they
+had to go to Moscow. But the countess' health obliged them to delay
+their departure from day to day.
+
+Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation from her
+betrothed lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and
+impatient every day. The thought that her best days, which she would
+have employed in loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no
+advantage to anyone, tormented her incessantly. His letters for the
+most part irritated her. It hurt her to think that while she lived
+only in the thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new
+places and new people that interested him. The more interesting his
+letters were the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him, far from
+giving her any comfort, seemed to her a wearisome and artificial
+obligation. She could not write, because she could not conceive the
+possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part
+of what she expressed by voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to him
+formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she attached no
+importance herself, and in the rough copies of which the countess
+corrected her mistakes in spelling.
+
+There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was
+impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's
+trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince
+Andrew was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending
+the winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.
+
+So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sonya
+and Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.
+
+BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any
+apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as
+before. Firmly convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by
+his benefactor, and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner
+man, to which he had devoted himself with such ardor- all the zest
+of such a life vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and
+the death of Joseph Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost
+at the same time. Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a
+brilliant wife who now enjoyed the favors of a very important
+personage, acquaintance with all Petersburg, and his court service
+with its dull formalities. And this life suddenly seemed to Pierre
+unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping a diary, avoided the company
+of the Brothers, began going to the Club again, drank a great deal,
+and came once more in touch with the bachelor sets, leading such a
+life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary to speak severely
+to him about it. Pierre felt that she right, and to avoid compromising
+her went away to Moscow.
+
+In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded
+and fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as
+soon as, driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with
+innumerable tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons,
+the Kremlin Square with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh
+drivers and hovels of the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who
+desired nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending their days
+leisurely; when he saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls,
+and the English Club, he felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In
+Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing
+gown.
+
+Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received
+Pierre like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready
+awaiting him. For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest,
+most intellectual, merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a
+heedless, genial nobleman of the old Russian type. His purse was
+always empty because it was open to everyone.
+
+Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent
+societies, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees,
+Freemasons, churches, and books- no one and nothing met with a refusal
+from him, and had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large
+sums from him and taken him under their protection, he would have
+given everything away. There was never a dinner or soiree at the
+Club without him. As soon as he sank into his place on the sofa
+after two bottles of Margaux he was surrounded, and talking,
+disputing, and joking began. When there were quarrels, his kindly
+smile and well-timed jests reconciled the antagonists. The Masonic
+dinners were dull and dreary when he was not there.
+
+When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly
+smile, yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive
+off somewhere with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the
+young men. At balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies,
+married and unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of
+them, he was equally amiable to all, especially after supper. "Il
+est charmant; il n'a pas de sexe,"~^ they said of him.
+
+^~ "He is charming; he has no sex."
+
+Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of whom there
+were hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow.
+
+How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first
+arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him
+to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally
+predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in
+his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one
+time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then
+himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a
+strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the
+possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the
+sinful human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of
+perfection? Had he not established schools and hospitals and liberated
+his serfs?
+
+But instead of all that- here he was, the wealthy husband of an
+unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and
+drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the
+government a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal
+favorite in Moscow society. For a long time he could not reconcile
+himself to the idea that he was one of those same retired Moscow
+gentlemen-in-waiting he had so despised seven years before.
+
+Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only
+living this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought
+of how many, like himself, had entered that life and that Club
+temporarily, with all their teeth and hair, and had only left it
+when not a single tooth or hair remained.
+
+In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it seemed to
+him that he was quite different and distinct from those other
+retired gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were
+empty, stupid, contented fellows, satisfied with their position,
+"while I am still discontented and want to do something for mankind.
+But perhaps all these comrades of mine struggled just like me and
+sought something new, a path in life of their own, and like me were
+brought by force of circumstances, society, and race- by that
+elemental force against which man is powerless- to the condition I
+am in," said he to himself in moments of humility; and after living
+some time in Moscow he no longer despised, but began to grow fond
+of, to respect, and to pity his comrades in destiny, as he pitied
+himself.
+
+Pierre longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust
+with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such
+acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment.
+"What for? Why? What is going on in the world?" he would ask himself
+in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to
+reflect anew on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by
+experience that there were no answers to these questions he made haste
+to turn away from them, and took up a book, or hurried of to the
+Club or to Apollon Nikolaevich's, to exchange the gossip of the town.
+
+"Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own body and is
+one of the stupidest women in the world," thought Pierre, "is regarded
+by people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay
+homage to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he
+was great, but now that he has become a wretched comedian the
+Emperor Francis wants to offer him his daughter in an illegal
+marriage. The Spaniards, through the Catholic clergy, offer praise
+to God for their victory over the French on the fourteenth of June,
+and the French, also through the Catholic clergy, offer praise because
+on that same fourteenth of June they defeated the Spaniards. My
+brother Masons swear by the blood that they are ready to sacrifice
+everything for their neighbor, but they do not give a ruble each to
+the collections for the poor, and they intrigue, the Astraea Lodge
+against the Manna Seekers, and fuss about an authentic Scotch carpet
+and a charter that nobody needs, and the meaning of which the very man
+who wrote it does not understand. We all profess the Christian law
+of forgiveness of injuries and love of our neighbors, the law in honor
+of which we have built in Moscow forty times forty churches- but
+yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and a minister of that
+same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a cross
+to kiss before his execution." So thought Pierre, and the whole of
+this general deception which everyone accepts, accustomed as he was to
+it, astonished him each time as if it were something new. "I
+understand the deception and confusion," he thought, "but how am I
+to tell them all that I see? I have tried, and have always found
+that they too in the depths of their souls understand it as I do,
+and only try not to see it. So it appears that it must be so! But I-
+what is to become of me?" thought he. He had the unfortunate
+capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing
+in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and
+falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it.
+Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and
+deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil
+and falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity.
+Yet he had to live and to find occupation. It was too dreadful to be
+under the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned
+himself to any distraction in order to forget them. He frequented
+every kind of society, drank much, bought pictures, engaged in
+building, and above all- read.
+
+He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home,
+while his valets were still taking off his things, he picked up a book
+and began to read. From reading he passed to sleeping, from sleeping
+to gossip in drawing rooms of the Club, from gossip to carousals and
+women; from carousals back to gossip, reading, and wine. Drinking
+became more and more a physical and also a moral necessity. Though the
+doctors warned him that with his corpulence wine was dangerous for
+him, he drank a great deal. He was only quite at ease when having
+poured several glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth he
+felt a pleasant warmth in his body, an amiability toward all his
+fellows, and a readiness to respond superficially to every idea
+without probing it deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did
+he feel dimly that the terribly tangled skein of life which previously
+had terrified him was not as dreadful as he had thought. He was always
+conscious of some aspect of that skein, as with a buzzing in his
+head after dinner or supper he chatted or listened to conversation
+or read. But under the influence of wine he said to himself: "It
+doesn't matter. I'll get it unraveled. I have a solution ready, but
+have no time now- I'll think it all out later on!" But the later on
+never came.
+
+In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old questions
+appeared as insoluble and terrible as ever, and Pierre hastily
+picked up a book, and if anyone came to see him he was glad.
+
+Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when
+entrenched under the enemy's fire, if they have nothing to do, try
+hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To
+Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life:
+some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in
+women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in
+sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is
+trivial, and nothing is important, it's all the same- only to save
+oneself from it as best one can," thought Pierre. "Only not to see it,
+that dreadful it!"
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski and his
+daughter moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor
+Alexander's regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French
+tendency prevailed there, and this, together with his past and his
+intellect and his originality, at once made Prince Nicholas
+Bolkonski an object of particular respect to the Moscovites and the
+center of the Moscow opposition to the government.
+
+The prince had aged very much that year. He showed marked signs of
+senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent
+events, remembrance of remote ones, and the childish vanity with which
+he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of
+this the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of
+respectful veneration- especially of an evening when he came in to tea
+in his old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone,
+told his abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and
+scathing criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned
+house with its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered
+footmen, and the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past
+century) with his gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who
+were reverently devoted to him presented a majestic and agreeable
+spectacle. But the visitors did not reflect that besides the couple of
+hours during which they saw their host, there were also twenty-two
+hours in the day during which the private and intimate life of the
+house continued.
+
+Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary.
+There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest pleasures- talks with
+the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hills- and
+she had none of the advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not
+go out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her
+go anywhere without him, and his failing health prevented his going
+out himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening
+parties. She had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She
+saw the coldness and malevolence with which the old prince received
+and dismissed the young men, possible suitors, who sometimes
+appeared at their house. She had no friends: during this visit to
+Moscow she had been disappointed in the two who had been nearest to
+her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom she had never been able to be
+quite frank, had now become unpleasant to her, and for various reasons
+Princess Mary avoided her. Julie, with whom she had corresponded for
+the last five years, was in Moscow, but proved to be quite alien to
+her when they met. Just then Julie, who by the death of her brothers
+had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow, was in the full
+whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young men who, she
+fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth. Julie was at
+that stage in the life of a society woman when she feels that her last
+chance of marrying has come and that her fate must be decided now or
+never. On Thursdays Princess Mary remembered with a mournful smile
+that she now had no one to write to, since Julie- whose presence
+gave her no pleasure was here and they met every week. Like the old
+emigre who declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent his
+evenings for years, she regretted Julie's presence and having no one
+to write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had no one to talk to, no one
+to whom to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow fell to her lot just
+then. The time for Prince Andrew's return and marriage was
+approaching, but his request to her to prepare his father for it had
+not been carried out; in fact, it seemed as if matters were quite
+hopeless, for at every mention of the young Countess Rostova the old
+prince (who apart from that was usually in a bad temper) lost
+control of himself. Another lately added sorrow arose from the lessons
+she gave her six year-old nephew. To her consternation she detected in
+herself in relation to little Nicholas some symptoms of her father's
+irritability. However often she told herself that she must not get
+irritable when teaching her nephew, almost every time that, pointer in
+hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet, she so longed to
+pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the child- who was
+already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get angry- that at
+his slightest inattention she trembled, became flustered and heated,
+raised her voice, and sometimes pulled him by the arm and put him in
+the corner. Having put him in the corner she would herself begin to
+cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas, following her
+example, would sob, and without permission would leave his corner,
+come to her, pull her wet hands from her face, and comfort her. But
+what distressed the princess most of all was her father's
+irritability, which was always directed against her and had of late
+amounted to cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate herself to the
+ground all night, had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water,
+it would never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but
+this loving despot- the more cruel because he loved her and for that
+reason tormented himself and her- knew how not merely to hurt and
+humiliate her deliberately, but to show her that she was always to
+blame for everything. Of late he had exhibited a new trait that
+tormented Princess Mary more than anything else; this was his
+ever-increasing intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at
+the first moment of receiving the news of his son's intentions had
+occurred to him in jest- that if Andrew got married he himself would
+marry Bourienne- had evidently pleased him, and latterly he had
+persistently, and as it seemed to Princess Mary merely to offend
+her, shown special endearments to the companion and expressed his
+dissatisfaction with his daughter by demonstrations of love of
+Bourienne.
+
+One day in Moscow in Princess Mary's presence (she thought her
+father did it purposely when she was there) the old prince kissed
+Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand and, drawing her to him, embraced her
+affectionately. Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few
+minutes later Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary's room
+smiling and making cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess
+Mary hastily wiped away her tears, went resolutely up to
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, and evidently unconscious of what she was
+doing began shouting in angry haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice
+breaking: "It's horrible, vile, inhuman, to take advantage of the
+weakness..." She did not finish. "Leave my room," she exclaimed, and
+burst into sobs.
+
+Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter, but she
+noticed that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne
+should be served first. After dinner, when the footman handed coffee
+and from habit began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew
+furious, threw his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to
+have him conscripted for the army.
+
+"He doesn't obey... I said it twice... and he doesn't obey! She is
+the first person in this house; she's my best friend," cried the
+prince. "And if you allow yourself," he screamed in a fury, addressing
+Princess Mary for the first time, "to forget yourself again before her
+as you dared to do yesterday, I will show you who is master in this
+house. Go! Don't let me set eyes on you; beg her pardon!"
+
+Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne's pardon, and also her
+father's pardon for herself and for Philip the footman, who had begged
+for her intervention.
+
+At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice gathered in
+her soul. And suddenly that father whom she had judged would look
+for his spectacles in her presence, fumbling near them and not
+seeing them, or would forget something that had just occurred, or take
+a false step with his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had
+noticed his feebleness, or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no
+visitors to excite him would suddenly fall asleep, letting his
+napkin drop and his shaking head sink over his plate. "He is old and
+feeble, and I dare to condemn him!" she thought at such moments,
+with a feeling of revulsion against herself.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor- Metivier- who
+had rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously tall, handsome,
+amiable as Frenchmen are, and was, as all Moscow said, an
+extraordinarily clever doctor. He was received in the best houses
+not merely as a doctor, but as an equal.
+
+Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on
+Mademoiselle Bourienne's advice had allowed this doctor to visit him
+and had grown accustomed to him. Metivier came to see the prince about
+twice a week.
+
+On December 6- St. Nicholas' Day and the prince's name day- all
+Moscow came to the prince's front door but he gave orders to admit
+no one and to invite to dinner only a small number, a list of whom
+he gave to Princess Mary.
+
+Metivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered
+it proper in his quality of doctor de forcer la consigne,~^ as he
+told Princess Mary, and went in to see the prince. It happened that on
+that morning of his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods.
+He had been going about the house all the morning finding fault with
+everyone and pretending not to understand what was said to him and not
+to be understood himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet
+absorbed querulousness, which generally culminated in a burst of rage,
+and she went about all that morning as though facing a cocked and
+loaded gun and awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor's
+arrival the morning had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor,
+Princess Mary sat down with a book in the drawing room near the door
+through which she could hear all that passed in the study.
+
+^~ To force the guard.
+
+At first she heard only Metivier's voice, then her father's, then
+both voices began speaking at the same time, the door was flung
+open, and on the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the
+terrified Metivier with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his
+dressing gown and fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils
+of his eyes rolled downwards.
+
+"You don't understand?" shouted the prince, "but I do! French spy,
+slave of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell you..."
+
+Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne
+who at the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room.
+
+"The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head.
+Keep calm, I will call again tomorrow," said Metivier; and putting his
+fingers to his lips he hastened away.
+
+Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry:
+"Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment's peace in my
+own house!"
+
+After Metivier's departure the old prince called his daughter in,
+and the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a
+spy had been admitted. Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a
+list, and not to admit anyone who was not on that list? Then why was
+that scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her, he
+said, he could not have a moment's peace and could not die quietly.
+
+"No, ma'am! We must part, we must part! Understand that,
+understand it! I cannot endure any more," he said, and left the
+room. Then, as if afraid she might find some means of consolation,
+he returned and trying to appear calm added: "And don't imagine I have
+said this in a moment of anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and
+it will be carried out- we must part; so find some place for
+yourself...." But he could not restrain himself and with the virulence
+of which only one who loves is capable, evidently suffering himself,
+he shook his fists at her and screamed:
+
+"If only some fool would marry her!" Then he slammed the door,
+sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.
+
+At two o'clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.
+
+These guests- the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince Lopukhin with
+his nephew, General Chatrov an old war comrade of the prince's, and of
+the younger generation Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy- awaited the prince
+in the drawing room.
+
+Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been
+anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, and had
+contrived to ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his
+case made an exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his
+house.
+
+The prince's house did not belong to what is known as fashionable
+society, but his little circle- though not much talked about in
+town- was one it was more flattering to be received in than any other.
+Boris had realized this the week before when the commander in chief in
+his presence invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas' Day, and
+Rostopchin had replied that he could not come:
+
+"On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince
+Nicholas Bolkonski."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes!" replied the commander in chief. "How is he?..."
+
+The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty
+old-fashioned drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn
+gathering of a court of justice. All were silent or talked in low
+tones. Prince Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary
+seemed even quieter and more diffident than usual. The guests were
+reluctant to address her, feeling that she was in no mood for their
+conversation. Count Rostopchin alone kept the conversation going,
+now relating the latest town news, and now the latest political
+gossip.
+
+Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in the
+conversation. Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding judge
+receives a report, only now and then, silently or by a brief word,
+showing that he took heed of what was being reported to him. The
+tone of the conversation was such as indicated that no one approved of
+what was being done in the political world. Incidents were related
+evidently confirming the opinion that everything was going from bad to
+worse, but whether telling a story or giving an opinion the speaker
+always stopped, or was stopped, at the point beyond which his
+criticism might touch the sovereign himself.
+
+At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon's
+seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and the Russian Note,
+hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent to all the European courts.
+
+"Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel," said
+Count Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times
+before. "One only wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the
+crowned heads. Now the Pope's turn has come and Bonaparte doesn't
+scruple to depose the head of the Catholic Church- yet all keep
+silent! Our sovereign alone has protested against the seizure of the
+Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and even..." Count Rostopchin paused,
+feeling that he had reached the limit beyond which censure was
+impossible.
+
+"Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of
+Oldenburg," said Prince Bolkonski. "He shifts the Dukes about as I
+might move my serfs from Bald Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan
+estates."
+
+"The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength
+of character and resignation," remarked Boris, joining in
+respectfully.
+
+He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the
+honor of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkonski glanced at
+the young man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his
+mind, evidently considering him too young.
+
+"I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was
+surprised how badly the Note was worded," remarked Count Rostopchin in
+the casual tone of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.
+
+Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment, not
+understanding why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the
+Note.
+
+"Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded," he asked, "so
+long as its substance is forcible?"
+
+"My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should
+be easy to have a good style," returned Count Rostopchin.
+
+Pierre now understood the count's dissatisfaction with the wording
+of the Note.
+
+"One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up,"
+remarked the old prince. "There in Petersburg they are always writing-
+not notes only but even new laws. My Andrew there has written a
+whole volume of laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!"
+and he laughed unnaturally.
+
+There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general
+cleared his throat to draw attention.
+
+"Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The
+figure cut by the new French ambassador."
+
+"Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His
+Majesty's presence."
+
+"His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the
+march past," continued the general, "and it seems the ambassador
+took no notice and allowed himself to reply that: 'We in France pay no
+attention to such trifles!' The Emperor did not condescend to reply.
+At the next review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to
+address him."
+
+All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it
+was impossible to pass any judgment.
+
+"Impudent fellows!" said the prince. "You know Metivier? I turned
+him out of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him spite
+of my request that they should let no one in," he went on, glancing
+angrily at his daughter.
+
+And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and
+the reasons that convinced him that Metivier was a spy. Though these
+reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.
+
+After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to
+congratulate the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him.
+
+He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled,
+clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told
+her that he had not forgotten the morning's talk, that his decision
+remained in force, and only the presence of visitors hindered his
+speaking of it to her now.
+
+When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the
+old men sat together.
+
+Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the
+impending war.
+
+He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long
+as we sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into
+European affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit.
+"We ought not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political
+interests are all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only
+thing is to have an armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will
+never dare to cross the Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!"
+
+"How can we fight the French, Prince?" said Count Rostopchin. "Can
+we arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our
+youths, look at our ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our
+Kingdom of Heaven."
+
+He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.
+
+"French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you
+turned Metivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a
+Frenchman and a scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their
+knees. I went to a party last night, and there out of five ladies
+three were Roman Catholics and had the Pope's indulgence for doing
+woolwork on Sundays. And they themselves sit there nearly naked,
+like the signboards at our Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when
+one looks at our young people, Prince, one would like to take Peter
+the Great's old cudgel out of the museum and belabor them in the
+Russian way till all the nonsense jumps out of them."
+
+All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin with a smile
+and wagged his head approvingly.
+
+"Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!" said Rostopchin,
+getting up with characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to
+the prince.
+
+"Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of
+hearing him!" said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and
+offering his cheek to be kissed.
+
+Following Rostopchin's example the others also rose.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men's talk and
+faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard; she only
+wondered whether the guests had all observed her father's hostile
+attitude toward her. She did not even notice the special attentions
+and amiabilities shown her during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who
+was visiting them for the third time already.
+
+Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to
+Pierre, who hat in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of
+the guests to approach her after the old prince had gone out and
+they were left alone in the drawing room.
+
+"May I stay a little longer?" he said, letting his stout body sink
+into an armchair beside her.
+
+"Oh yes," she answered. "You noticed nothing?" her look asked.
+
+Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight
+before him and smiled quietly.
+
+"Have you known that young man long, Princess?" he asked.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Drubetskoy."
+
+"No, not long..."
+
+"Do you like him?"
+
+"Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?" said
+Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning's conversation with
+her father.
+
+"Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from
+Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an
+heiress."
+
+"You have observed that?" said Princess Mary.
+
+"Yes," returned Pierre with a smile, "and this young man now manages
+matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I
+can read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay
+siege to- you or Mademoiselle Julie Karagina. He is very attentive
+to her."
+
+"He visits them?"
+
+"Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?" said
+Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good
+humored raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his
+diary.
+
+"No," replied Princess Mary.
+
+"To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is
+very melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagina," said Pierre.
+
+"Really?" asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre's kindly face and
+still thinking of her own sorrow. "It would be a relief," thought she,
+"if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should
+like to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would
+be a relief. He would give me advice."
+
+"Would you marry him?"
+
+"Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!"
+she cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice.
+"Ah, how bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel that..."
+she went on in a trembling voice, "that you can do nothing for him but
+grieve him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then there is only
+one thing left- to go away, but where could I go?"
+
+"What is wrong? What is it, Princess?"
+
+But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Mary burst
+into tears.
+
+"I don't know what is the matter with me today. Don't take any
+notice- forget what I have said!"
+
+Pierre's gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the
+princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him;
+but she only repeated that she begged him to forget what she had said,
+that she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no
+trouble except the one he knew of- that Prince Andrew's marriage
+threatened to cause a rupture between father and son.
+
+"Have you any news of the Rostovs?" she asked, to change the
+subject. "I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting
+Andrew any day. I should like them to meet here."
+
+"And how does he now regard the matter?" asked Pierre, referring
+to the old prince.
+
+Princess Mary shook her head.
+
+"What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The
+thing is impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first
+moments. I wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her.
+You have known them a long time," said Princess Mary. "Tell me
+honestly the whole truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you
+think of her?- The real truth, because you know Andrew is risking so
+much doing this against his father's will that I should like to
+know..."
+
+An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and
+repeated requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on
+the princess' part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that
+he should disapprove of Andrew's choice; but in reply he said what
+he felt rather than what he thought.
+
+"I don't know how to answer your question," he said, blushing
+without knowing why. "I really don't know what sort of girl she is;
+I can't analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I
+don't know. That is all one can say about her."
+
+Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face said: "Yes,
+that's what I expected and feared."
+
+"Is she clever?" she asked.
+
+Pierre considered.
+
+"I think not," he said, "and yet- yes. She does not deign to be
+clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all."
+
+Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.
+
+"Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do."
+
+"I hear they are expected very soon," said Pierre.
+
+Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her
+future sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived and to try to
+accustom the old prince to her.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg,
+so with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered
+between the two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though
+Princess Mary despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than
+Julie, he, without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to
+her. When they had last met on the old prince's name day, she had
+answered at random all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently
+not listening to what he was saying.
+
+Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a
+manner peculiar to herself.
+
+She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become
+very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself
+not merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She
+was confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a
+very wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew
+the less dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could
+associate with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and
+the animated company that assembled at her house, without incurring
+any obligation. A man who would have been afraid ten years before of
+going every day to the house when there was a girl of seventeen there,
+for fear of compromising her and committing himself, would now go
+boldly every day and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a
+sexless acquaintance.
+
+That winter the Karagins' house was the most agreeable and
+hospitable in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner
+parties, a large company, chiefly of men, gathered there every day,
+supping at midnight and staying till three in the morning. Julie never
+missed a ball, a promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of
+the latest fashion. But in spite of that she seemed to be
+disillusioned about everything and told everyone that she did not
+believe either in friendship or in love, or any of the joys of life,
+and expected peace only "yonder." She adopted the tone of one who
+has suffered a great disappointment, like a girl who has either lost
+the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of
+the kind had happened to her she was regarded in that light, and had
+even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life.
+This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing herself, did not
+hinder the young people who came to her house from passing the time
+pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid his tribute to
+the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused himself with
+society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and bouts rimes, which
+were in vogue at the Karagins'. Only a few of these young men, among
+them Boris, entered more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and with
+these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of
+all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled with
+mournful sketches, maxims, and verses.
+
+To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early
+disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of
+friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and
+showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote:
+"Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."
+
+On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:
+
+_1 La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.<br>
+Ah! contre les douleurs il n'y a pas d'autre asile.~^
+
+^~ Death gives relief and death is peaceful.
+
+_1 Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.
+
+Julia said this was charming
+
+"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she
+said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a
+book. "It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness
+and despair, showing the possibility of consolation."
+
+In reply Boris wrote these lines:
+
+_1 Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible,<br>
+Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,<br>
+Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler,<br>
+Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,<br>
+Et mele une douceur secrete<br>
+A ces pleurs que je sens couler.~^
+
+^~ Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,
+
+_1 Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,
+
+_1 Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,
+
+_1 Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,
+
+_1 And mingle a secret sweetness
+
+_1 With these tears that I feel to be flowing.
+
+For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris
+read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the
+reading because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large
+gatherings Julie and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who
+understood one another in a world of indifferent people.
+
+Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins, while playing
+cards with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie's dowry
+(she was to have two estates in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests).
+Anna Mikhaylovna regarded the refined sadness that united her son to
+the wealthy Julie with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.
+
+"You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie," she said to
+the daughter. "Boris says his soul finds repose at your house. He
+has suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive," said she to
+the mother. "Ah, my dear, I can't tell you how fond I have grown of
+Julie latterly," she said to her son. "But who could help loving
+her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!"- she paused. "And how
+I pity her mother," she went on; "today she showed me her accounts and
+letters from Penza (they have enormous estates there), and she, poor
+thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!"
+
+Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother.
+He laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had
+to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and
+Nizhegorod estates.
+
+Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy
+adorer and was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of
+repulsion for her, for her passionate desire to get married, for her
+artificiality, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility
+of real love still restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He
+spent every day and whole days at the Karagins', and every day on
+thinking the matter over told himself that he would propose
+tomorrow. But in Julie's presence, looking at her red face and chin
+(nearly always powdered), her moist eyes, and her expression of
+continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy to an unnatural
+rapture of married bliss, Boris could not utter the decisive words,
+though in imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor of
+those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had apportioned the use of
+the income from them. Julie saw Boris' indecision, and sometimes the
+thought occurred to her that she was repulsive to him, but her
+feminine self-deception immediately supplied her with consolation, and
+she told herself that he was only shy from love. Her melancholy,
+however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before Boris'
+departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just as Boris' leave
+of absence was expiring, Anatole Kuragin made his appearance in
+Moscow, and of course in the Karagins' drawing room, and Julie,
+suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and very attentive
+to Kuragin.
+
+"My dear," said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, "I know from a reliable
+source that Prince Vasili has sent his son to Moscow to get him
+married to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for
+her. What do you think of it, my dear?"
+
+The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that
+whole month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing
+all the revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally
+apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands of another,
+and especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris.
+He drove to the Karagins' with the firm intention of proposing.
+Julie met him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how she had
+enjoyed yesterday's ball, and asked when he was leaving. Though
+Boris had come intentionally to speak of his love and therefore
+meant to be tender, he began speaking irritably of feminine
+inconstancy, of how easily women can turn from sadness to joy, and how
+their moods depend solely on who happens to be paying court to them.
+Julie was offended and replied that it was true that a woman needs
+variety, and the same thing over and over again would weary anyone.
+
+"Then I should advise you..." Boris began, wishing to sting her; but
+at that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might have
+to leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly
+wasted his efforts- which was a thing he never allowed to happen.
+
+He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes
+to avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and
+said:
+
+"I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary..."
+
+He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability
+had suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were
+fixed on him with greedy expectation. "I can always arrange so as
+not to see her often," thought Boris. "The affair has been begun and
+must be finished!" He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and
+said:
+
+"You know my feelings for you!"
+
+There was no need to say more: Julie's face shone with triumph and
+self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all that is said on
+such occasions- that he loved her and had never loved any other
+woman more than her. She knew that for the Penza estates and
+Nizhegorod forests she could demand this, and she received what she
+demanded.
+
+The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom
+and melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house
+in Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant
+wedding.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow with Natasha
+and Sonya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it
+was impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in
+Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near
+Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his
+future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkonski while he was in
+Moscow could not be missed. The Rostovs' Moscow house had not been
+heated that winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the
+countess was not with them, the count decided to stay with Marya
+Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, who had long been pressing her hospitality
+on them.
+
+Late one evening the Rostovs' four sleighs drove into Marya
+Dmitrievna's courtyard in the old Konyusheny street. Marya
+Dmitrievna lived alone. She had already married off her daughter,
+and her sons were all in the service.
+
+She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly,
+loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach
+to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation- the possibility of
+which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing
+jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out:
+on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on
+affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after
+dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there
+were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing
+meal at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she
+played a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a
+new book read to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception
+and went out to pay visits, and then only to the most important
+persons in the town.
+
+She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived and the
+pulley of the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the
+Rostovs and their servants. Marya Dmitrievna, with her spectacles
+hanging down on her nose and her head flung back, stood in the hall
+doorway looking with a stern, grim face at the new arrivals. One might
+have thought she was angry with the travelers and would immediately
+turn them out, had she not at the same time been giving careful
+instructions to the servants for the accommodation of the visitors and
+their belongings.
+
+"The count's things? Bring them here," she said, pointing to the
+portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. "The young ladies'? There to the
+left. Now what are you dawdling for?" she cried to the maids. "Get the
+samovar ready!... You've grown plumper and prettier," she remarked,
+drawing Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold) to her by
+the hood. "Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things, quick!" she
+shouted to the count who was going to kiss her hand. "You're half
+frozen, I'm sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sonya dear!" she
+added, turning to Sonya and indicating by this French greeting her
+slightly contemptuous though affectionate attitude toward her.
+
+When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things
+and tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya Dmitrievna
+kissed them all in due order.
+
+"I'm heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was
+high time," she said, giving Natasha a significant look. "The old
+man is here and his son's expected any day. You'll have to make his
+aquaintance. But we'll speak of that later on," she added, glancing at
+Sonya with a look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her
+presence. "Now listen," she said to the count. "What do you want
+tomorrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshin?" she crooked one of her
+fingers. "The sniveling Anna Mikhaylovna? That's two. She's here
+with her son. The son is getting married! Then Bezukhov, eh? He is
+here too, with his wife. He ran away from her and she came galloping
+after him. He dined with me on Wednesday. As for them"- and she
+pointed to the girls- "tomorrow I'll take them first to the Iberian
+shrine of the Mother of God, and then we'll drive to the
+Super-Rogue's. I suppose you'll have everything new. Don't judge by
+me: sleeves nowadays are this size! The other day young Princess Irina
+Vasilevna came to see me; she was an awful sight- looked as if she had
+put two barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes now without
+some new fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?" she asked
+the count sternly.
+
+"One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a
+purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If
+you will be so kind, I'll fix a time and go down to the estate just
+for a day, and leave my lassies with you."
+
+"All right. All right. They'll be safe with me, as safe as in
+Chancery! I'll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet
+them a bit," said Marya Dmitrievna, touching her goddaughter and
+favorite, Natasha, on the cheek with her large hand.
+
+Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian
+shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so
+afraid of Marya Dmitrievna that she always let her have costumes at
+a loss merely to get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the
+whole trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out of the
+room except Nataisha, and then called her pet to her armchair.
+
+"Well, now we'll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed.
+You've hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I've known
+him since he was so high." She held her hand a couple of feet from the
+ground. Natasha blushed happily. "I like him and all his family. Now
+listen! You know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son's
+marrying. The old fellow's crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a
+child and can shift without him, but it's not nice to enter a family
+against a father's will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly.
+You're a clever girl and you'll know how to manage. Be kind, and use
+your wits. Then all will be well."
+
+Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya Dmitrievna supposed, but
+really because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her
+love of Prince Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human
+affairs that no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince
+Andrew, he loved her only, and was to come one of these days and
+take her. She wanted nothing more.
+
+"You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your
+future sister-in-law. 'Husbands' sisters bring up blisters,' but
+this one wouldn't hurt a fly. She has asked me to bring you two
+together. Tomorrow you'll go with your father to see her. Be very nice
+and affectionate to her: you're younger than she. When he comes, he'll
+find you already know his sister and father and are liked by them.
+Am I right or not? Won't that be best?"
+
+"Yes, it will," Natasha answered reluctantly.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna's advice, Count Rostov took Natasha to
+call on Prince Nicholas Bolkonski. The count did not set out
+cheerfully on this visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well
+remembered the last interview he had had with the old prince at the
+time of the enrollment, when in reply to an invitation to dinner he
+had had to listen to an angry reprimand for not having provided his
+full quota of men. Natasha, on the other hand, having put on her
+best gown, was in the highest spirits. "They can't help liking me,"
+she thought. "Everybody always has liked me, and I am so willing to do
+anything they wish, so ready to be fond of him- for being his
+father- and of her- for being his sister- that there is no reason
+for them not to like me..."
+
+They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvizhenka and
+entered the vestibule.
+
+"Well, the Lord have mercy on us!" said the count, half in jest,
+half in earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father was flurried on
+entering the anteroom and inquired timidly and softly whether the
+prince and princess were at home.
+
+When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the
+servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by
+another in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a
+maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning
+the princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced
+to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the
+princess begged them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the
+visitors was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and
+daughter with special politeness and showed them to the princess'
+room. The princess, looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in
+patches, ran in to meet the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly
+trying to appear cordial and at ease. From the first glance Princess
+Mary did not like Natasha. She thought her too fashionably dressed,
+frivolously gay and vain. She did not at all realize that before
+having seen her future sister-in-law she was prejudiced against her by
+involuntary envy of her beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by
+jealousy of her brother's love for her. Apart from this insuperable
+antipathy to her, Princess Mary was agitated just then because on
+the Rostovs' being announced, the old prince had shouted that he did
+not wish to see them, that Princess Mary might do so if she chose, but
+they were not to be admitted to him. She had decided to receive
+them, but feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in some
+freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostovs' visit.
+
+"There, my dear princess, I've brought you my songstress," said
+the count, bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old
+prince might appear. "I am so glad you should get to know one
+another... very sorry the prince is still ailing," and after a few
+more commonplace remarks he rose. "If you'll allow me to leave my
+Natasha in your hands for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I'll drive
+round to see Anna Semenovna, it's quite near in the Dogs' Square,
+and then I'll come back for her."
+
+The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told
+his daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk
+to one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of
+encountering the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention
+this to his daughter, but Natasha noticed her father's nervousness and
+anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew still
+angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess with a bold
+and defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of
+anybody. The princess told the count that she would be delighted,
+and only begged him to stay longer at Anna Semenovna's, and he
+departed.
+
+Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary- who
+wished to have a tete-a-tete with Natasha- Mademoiselle Bourienne
+remained in the room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements
+and theaters. Natasha felt offended by the hesitation she had
+noticed in the anteroom, by her father's nervousness, and by the
+unnatural manner of the princess who- she thought- was making a
+favor of receiving her, and so everything displeased her. She did
+not like Princess Mary, whom she thought very plain, affected, and
+dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into herself and involuntarily assumed an
+offhand air which alienated Princess Mary still more. After five
+minutes of irksome, constrained conversation, they heard the sound
+of slippered feet rapidly approaching. Princess Mary looked
+frightened.
+
+The door opened and the old prince, in a dress, ing gown and a white
+nightcap, came in.
+
+"Ah, madam!" he began. "Madam, Countess... Countess Rostova, if I am
+not mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not
+know, madam. God is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with
+a visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg
+you to excuse me... God is my witness, I didn't know-" he repeated,
+stressing the word "God" so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that
+Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look either at
+her father or at Natasha.
+
+Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do.
+Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.
+
+"I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not
+know," muttered the old man, and after looking Natasha over from
+head to foot he went out.
+
+Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this
+apparition and began speaking about the prince's indisposition.
+Natasha and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the
+longer they did so without saying what they wanted to say, the greater
+grew their antipathy to one another.
+
+When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely pleased and hastened
+to get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who
+could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an
+hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. "I couldn't begin
+talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman," thought
+Natasha. The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary.
+She knew what she ought to have said to Natasha, but she had been
+unable to say it because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and
+because, without knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of
+the marriage. When the count was already leaving the room, Princess
+Mary went up hurriedly to Natasha, took her by the hand, and said with
+a deep sigh:
+
+"Wait, I must..."
+
+Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.
+
+"Dear Natalie," said Princess Mary, "I want you to know that I am
+glad my brother has found happiness...."
+
+She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natasha
+noticed this and guessed its reason.
+
+"I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now,"
+she said with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears
+choking her.
+
+"What have I said and what have I done?" thought she, as soon as she
+was out of the room.
+
+They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner that day.
+She sat in her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing.
+Sonya stood beside her, kissing her hair.
+
+"Natasha, what is it about?" she asked. "What do they matter to you?
+It will all pass, Natasha."
+
+"But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..."
+
+"Don't talk about it, Natasha. It wasn't your fault so why should
+you mind? Kiss me," said Sonya.
+
+Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed
+her wet face against her.
+
+"I can't tell you, I don't know. No one's to blame," said Natasha-
+"It's my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn't he
+come?..."
+
+She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew
+how the prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how
+upset Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the
+count and the other guests.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya
+Dmitrievna had taken a box.
+
+Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya
+Dmitrievna's kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she
+came ready dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and
+looking in the large mirror there saw that she was pretty, very
+pretty, she felt even more sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.
+
+"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
+differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
+embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those
+searching inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me,
+and then I would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes- how
+I see those eyes!" thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister
+matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those
+eyes, with his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not
+think of him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for
+the present. I can't bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!"
+and she turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry.
+"And how can Sonya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so
+long and so patiently?" thought she, looking at Sonya, who also came
+in quite ready, with a fan in her hand. "No, she's altogether
+different. I can't!"
+
+Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
+enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
+once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words
+of love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside
+her father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps
+flickering on the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in
+love, and forgot where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into
+the line of carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the
+theater, its wheels squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya,
+holding up their dresses, jumped out quickly. The count got out helped
+by the footmen, and, passing among men and women who were entering and
+the program sellers, they all three went along the corridor to the
+first row of boxes. Through the closed doors the music was already
+audible.
+
+"Natasha, your hair!..." whispered Sonya.
+
+An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and
+opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the
+door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and
+shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered
+before their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of
+feminine envy at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the
+overture was being played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with
+Sonya and sat down, scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite.
+A sensation she had not experienced for a long time- that of
+hundreds of eyes looking at her bare arms and neck- suddenly
+affected her both agreeably and disagreeably and called up a whole
+crowd of memories, desires and emotions associated with that feeling.
+
+The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count
+Rostov who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted
+general attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natasha's
+engagement to Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in
+the country ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who
+was making one of the best matches in Russia.
+
+Natasha's looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the
+country, and that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly
+pretty. She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and
+beauty, combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her
+black eyes looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her
+delicate arm, bare to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the
+box, while, evidently unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in
+time to the music, crumpling her program. "Look, there's Alenina,"
+said Sonya, "with her mother, isn't it?"
+
+"Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!" remarked
+the count.
+
+"Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna- what a headdress she has on!"
+
+"The Karagins, Julie- and Boris with them. One can see at once
+that they're engaged...."
+
+"Drubetskoy has proposed?"
+
+"Oh yes, I heard it today," said Shinshin, coming into the
+Rostovs' box.
+
+Natasha looked in the direction in which her father's eyes were
+turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on
+her face and a string of pearls round her thick red neck- which
+Natasha knew was covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and
+leaning over with an ear to Julie's mouth, was Boris' handsome
+smoothly brushed head. He looked the Rostovs from under his brows
+and said something, smiling, to his betrothed.
+
+"They are talking about us, about me and him!" thought Natasha. "And
+he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn't trouble
+themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of
+them."
+
+Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green headdress and
+with a happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their
+box was pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which
+Natasha knew so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly
+remembered all that had been so humiliating in her morning's visit.
+
+"What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh,
+better not think of it- not till he comes back!" she told herself, and
+began looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in the
+stalls. In the front, in the very center, leaning back against the
+orchestra rail, stood Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair
+brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,
+well aware that he was attracting everyone's attention, yet as much at
+ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow's
+most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.
+
+The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and pointed to her
+former adorer.
+
+"Do you recognize him?" said he. "And where has he sprung from?"
+he asked, turning to Shinshin. "Didn't he vanish somewhere?"
+
+"He did," replied Shinshin. "He was in the Caucasus and ran away
+from there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling
+prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah's brother. Now all the
+Moscow ladies are mad about him! It's 'Dolokhov the Persian' that does
+it! We never hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear by him,
+they offer him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dolokhov
+and Anatole Kuragin have turned all our ladies' heads."
+
+A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed
+plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string
+of large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk
+dress and took a long time settling into her place.
+
+Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and
+pearls and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the
+pearls. While Natasha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time
+the lady looked round and, meeting the count's eyes, nodded to him and
+smiled. She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre's wife, and the
+count, who knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.
+
+"Have you been here long, Countess?" he inquired. "I'll call, I'll
+call to kiss your hand. I'm here on business and have brought my girls
+with me. They say Semenova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used
+to forget us. Is he here?"
+
+"Yes, he meant to look in," answered Helene, and glanced attentively
+at Natasha.
+
+Count Rostov resumed his seat.
+
+"Handsome, isn't she?" he whispered to Natasha.
+
+"Wonderful!" answered Natasha. "She's a woman one could easily
+fall in love with."
+
+Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the
+conductor tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in
+the stalls, and the curtain rose.
+
+As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent,
+and all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and
+all the women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole
+attention with eager curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look
+at it.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides
+was some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a
+cloth stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls
+in red bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk
+dress sat apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of
+green cardboard was glued. They all sang something. When they had
+finished their song the girl in white went up to the prompter's box
+and a man with tight silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding
+a plume and a dagger, went up to her and began singing, waving his
+arms about.
+
+First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang,
+then they both paused while the orchestra played and the man
+fingered the hand of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to
+start singing with her. They sang together and everyone in the theater
+began clapping and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage- who
+represented lovers- began smiling, spreading out their arms, and
+bowing.
+
+After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood,
+all this seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow
+the opera nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted
+cardboard and the queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke,
+and sang so strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what it was
+all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and
+unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused
+at them. She looked at the faces of the audience, seeking in them
+the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she herself experienced, but
+they all seemed attentive to what was happening on the stage, and
+expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. "I suppose it has
+to be like this!" she thought. She kept looking round in turn at the
+rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the seminude women
+in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box, who- apparently
+quite unclothed- sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not taking her
+eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded the
+whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natasha little by
+little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not
+experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she
+was, nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought,
+the strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through
+her mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box
+and singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to
+touch with her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then
+to lean over to Helene and tickle her.
+
+At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song,
+a door leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs' box
+creaked, and the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There's
+Kuragin!" whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the
+newcomer, and Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an
+exceptionally handsome adjutant approaching their box with a
+self-assured yet courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom
+she had seen and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was
+now in an adjutant's uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot.
+He moved with a restrained swagger which would have been ridiculous
+had he not been so good-looking and had his handsome face not worn
+such an expression of good-humored complacency and gaiety. Though
+the performance was proceeding, he walked deliberately down the
+carpeted gangway, his sword and spurs slightly jingling and his
+handsome perfumed head held high. Having looked at Natasha he
+approached his sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge of her
+box, nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a
+motion toward Natasha.
+
+"Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did
+not exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of
+his lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and
+sat down beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and
+offhand way that Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He
+winked at him gaily, smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra
+screen.
+
+"How like the brother is to the sister," remarked the count. "And
+how handsome they both are!"
+
+Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some
+intrigue of Kuragin's in Moscow, and Natasha tried to overhear it just
+because he had said she was "charmante."
+
+The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about,
+going out and coming in.
+
+Boris came to the Rostovs' box, received their congratulations
+very simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile
+conveyed to Natasha and Sonya his fiancee's invitation to her wedding,
+and went away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and
+congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom she
+had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in,
+everything seemed simple and natural.
+
+The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same way, and
+Natasha gave Boris a similar smile.
+
+Helene's box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most
+distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another
+in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her.
+
+During the whole of that entr'acte Kuragin stood with Dolokhov in
+front of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostovs' box. Natasha
+knew he was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure. She even
+turned so that he should see her profile in what she thought was its
+most becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act Pierre
+appeared in the stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him since their
+arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since
+Natasha last saw him. He passed up to the front rows, not noticing
+anyone. Anatole went up to him and began speaking to him, looking at
+and indicating the Rostovs' box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew
+animated and, hastily passing between the rows, came toward their box.
+When he got there he leaned on his elbows and, smiling, talked to
+her for a long time. While conversing with Pierre, Natasha heard a
+man's voice in Countess Bezukhova's box and something told her it
+was Kuragin. She turned and their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed
+straight into her eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that
+it seemed strange to be so near him, to look at him like that, to be
+so sure he admired her, and not to be acquainted with him.
+
+In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there
+was a round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were
+raised over the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep
+notes while many people appeared from right and left wearing black
+cloaks and holding things like daggers in their hands. They began
+waving their arms. Then some other people ran in and began dragging
+away the maiden who had been in white and was now in light blue.
+They did not drag her away at once, but sang with her for a long
+time and then at last dragged her off, and behind the scenes something
+metallic was struck three times and everyone knelt down and sang a
+prayer. All these things were repeatedly interrupted by the
+enthusiastic shouts of the audience.
+
+During this act every time Natasha looked toward the stalls she
+saw Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair,
+staring at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her
+and it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it.
+
+When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to
+the Rostovs' box- her whole bosom completely exposed- beckoned the old
+count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had
+entered her box began talking to him with an amiable smile.
+
+"Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," said she. "The
+whole town is singing their praises and I don't even know then!"
+
+Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so
+pleased by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with
+pleasure.
+
+"I want to become a Moscovite too, now," said Helene. "How is it
+you're not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?"
+
+Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a
+fascinating woman. She could say what she did not think- especially
+what was flattering- quite simply and naturally.
+
+"Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I
+am not staying here long this time- nor are you- I will try to amuse
+them. I have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get
+to know you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely
+smile. "I had heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard
+he is getting married? And also from my husband's friend Bolkonski,
+Prince Andrew Bolkonski," she went on with special emphasis,
+implying that she knew of his relation to Natasha. To get better
+acquainted she asked that one of the young ladies should come into her
+box for the rest of the performance, and Natasha moved over to it.
+
+The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many
+candles were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on
+the walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a
+queen. The king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang
+something badly and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had
+been first in white and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and
+stood beside the throne with her hair down. She sang something
+mournfully, addressing the queen, but the king waved his arm severely,
+and men and women with bare legs came in from both sides and began
+dancing all together. Then the violins played very shrilly and merrily
+and one of the women with thick bare legs and thin arms, separating
+from the others, went behind the wings, adjusted her bodice,
+returned to the middle of the stage, and began jumping and striking
+one foot rapidly against the other. In the stalls everyone clapped and
+shouted "bravo!" Then one of the men went into a corner of the
+stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra struck up more loudly,
+and this man with bare legs jumped very high and waved his feet
+about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty thousand rubles
+a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes, and galleries
+began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the man
+stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men
+and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the
+sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm
+came on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the
+orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number
+away, and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise
+and clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone
+began shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!" Natasha no longer thought
+this strange. She look about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.
+
+"Isn't Duport delightful?" Helene asked her.
+
+"Oh, yes," replied Natasha.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+During the entr'acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene's box, the
+door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush
+against anyone.
+
+"Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes shifting
+uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.
+
+Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young
+officer and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was
+as handsome at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her
+and told her he had long wished to have this happiness- ever since the
+Naryshkins' ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered
+pleasure of seeing her. Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with
+women than among men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha
+was strangely and agreeably struck by the fact that there was
+nothing formidable in this man about whom there was so much talk,
+but that on the contrary his smile was most naive, cheerful, and
+good-natured.
+
+Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
+previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage.
+
+"And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as
+an old, familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume
+tournament; you ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We
+shall all meet at the Karagins'! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said
+he.
+
+While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face,
+her neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was
+enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel
+constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt
+that he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his
+eye so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking
+into his eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that
+barrier of modesty she had always felt between herself and other
+men. She did not know how it was that within five minutes she had come
+to feel herself terribly near to this man. When she turned away she
+feared he might seize her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her
+on the neck. They spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that
+they were closer to one another than she had ever been to any man.
+Natasha kept turning to Helene and to her father, as if asking what it
+all meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation with a general and
+did not answer her look, and her father's eyes said nothing but what
+they always said: "Having a good time? Well, I'm glad of it!"
+
+During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole's
+prominent eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to
+break the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the
+question and blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she
+was doing something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage
+her.
+
+"At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant
+ce sont les jolies femmes,~^ isn't that so? But now I like it very much
+indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You'll come to the
+costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his hand to
+her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the
+prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as
+a pledge!"
+
+^~ Are the pretty women.
+
+Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did
+himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an
+improper intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if
+she had not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she
+felt that he was there, behind, so close behind her.
+
+"How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she asked
+herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked
+straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the
+good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just
+as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt
+with horror that no barrier lay between him and her.
+
+The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay.
+Natasha went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive
+to the world she found herself in. All that was going on before her
+now seemed quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous
+thoughts of her betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country
+did not once recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote
+past.
+
+In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his
+arm about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he
+disappeared down below. That was the only part of the fourth act
+that Natasha saw. She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of
+this was Kuragin whom she could not help watching. As they were
+leaving the theater Anatole came up to them, called their carriage,
+and helped them in. As he was putting Natasha in he pressed her arm
+above the elbow. Agitated and flushed she turned round. He was looking
+at her with glittering eyes, smiling tenderly.
+
+Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think
+over what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince
+Andrew she was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after
+the opera, she gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the
+room.
+
+"O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?"
+She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to
+realize what had happened to her, but was unable either to
+understand what had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark,
+obscure, and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater
+where the bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped
+about to the music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the
+nearly naked Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried
+"bravo!"- there in the presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear
+and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible.
+"What is it? What was that terror I felt of him? What is this
+gnawing of conscience I am feeling now?" she thought.
+
+Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all
+she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple
+views would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at
+such a confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by
+herself.
+
+"Am I spoiled for Andrew's love or not?" she asked herself, and with
+soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen
+to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn't lead him on at all.
+Nobody will know and I shall never see him again," she told herself.
+"So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is nothing to
+repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why 'still?' O God, why
+isn't he here?" Natasha quieted herself for a moment, but again some
+instinct told her that though all this was true, and though nothing
+had happened, yet the former purity of her love for Prince Andrew
+had perished. And again in imagination she went over her whole
+conversation with Kuragin, and again saw the face, gestures, and
+tender smile of that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent
+him away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand
+rubles a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more,
+which his creditors demanded from his father.
+
+His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for
+the last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as
+adjutant to the commander in chief- a post his father had procured for
+him- and would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to
+him Princess Mary and Julie Karagina.
+
+Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre's
+house. Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him
+after a while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and
+gave him money under the guise of loans.
+
+As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had
+turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that
+he slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French
+actresses- with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to
+be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at
+Danilov's or other Moscow revelers', drank whole nights through,
+outvying everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the
+best society. There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies,
+and he flirted with a few of them at the balls. But he did not run
+after the unmarried girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most
+of them plain. There was a special reason for this, as he had got
+married two years before- a fact known only to his most intimate
+friends. At that time while with his regiment in Poland, a Polish
+landowner of small means had forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole
+had very soon abandoned his wife and, for a payment which he agreed to
+send to his father-in-law, had arranged to be free to pass himself off
+as a bachelor.
+
+Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with
+others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that was
+impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had
+never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of
+considering how his actions might affect others or what the
+consequences of this or that action of his might be. He was
+convinced that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so
+God had made him such that he must spend thirty thousand rubles a year
+and always occupy a prominent position in society. He believed this so
+firmly that others, looking at him, were persuaded of it too and did
+not refuse him either a leading place in society or money, which he
+borrowed from anyone and everyone and evidently would not repay.
+
+He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning.
+He was not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still
+less could he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed
+his father by spoiling his own career, and he laughed at
+distinctions of all kinds. He was not mean, and did not refuse
+anyone who asked of him. All he cared about was gaiety and women,
+and as according to his ideas there was nothing dishonorable in
+these tastes, and he was incapable of considering what the
+gratification of his tastes entailed for others, he honestly
+considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues and bad
+people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.
+
+Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence
+similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope
+of forgiveness. "All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all
+will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much."
+
+Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and
+his Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling,
+and dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin
+and made use of him for his own ends.
+
+Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and
+audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and
+connections as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set,
+made use of him and amused himself at his expense without letting
+the other feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole,
+the very process of dominating another's will was in itself a
+pleasure, a habit, and a necessity to Dolokhov.
+
+Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At supper after the
+opera he described to Dolokhov with the air of a connoisseur the
+attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his
+intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was
+incapable of considering what might come of such love-making, as he
+never had any notion of the outcome of any of his actions.
+
+"She's first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us," replied
+Dolokhov.
+
+"I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner," said Anatole. "Eh?"
+
+"You'd better wait till she's married...."
+
+"You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once,"
+pursued Anatole.
+
+"You have been caught once already by a 'little girl,'" said
+Dolokhov who knew of Kuragin's marriage. "Take care!"
+
+"Well, that can't happen twice! Eh?" said Anatole, with a
+good-humored laugh.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and nobody came
+to see them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the count about something
+which they concealed from Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking
+about the old prince and planning something, and this disquieted and
+offended her. She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice
+that day sent a manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he
+had come. He had not arrived. She suffered more now than during her
+first days in Moscow. To her impatience and pining for him were now
+added the unpleasant recollection of her interview with Princess
+Mary and the old prince, and a fear and anxiety of which she did not
+understand the cause. She continually fancied that either he would
+never come or that something would happen to her before he came. She
+could no longer think of him by herself calmly and continuously as she
+had done before. As soon as she began to think of him, the
+recollection of the old prince, of Princess Mary, of the theater,
+and of Kuragin mingled with her thoughts. The question again presented
+itself whether she was not guilty, whether she had not already
+broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found herself recalling
+to the minutest detail every word, every gesture, and every shade in
+the play of expression on the face of the man who had been able to
+arouse in her such an incomprehensible and terrifying feeling. To
+the family Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was far less
+tranquil and happy than before.
+
+On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at
+her parish church- the Church of the Assumption built over the
+graves of victims of the plague.
+
+"I don't like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently
+priding herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same every
+where. We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service decently
+and with dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there
+in giving concerts in the choir? I don't like it, it's just
+self-indulgence!"
+
+Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her
+whole house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the
+servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church.
+At her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had
+vodka and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was
+the holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna's broad, stern
+face, which on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.
+
+After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room
+where the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a
+servant announced that the carriage was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna
+rose with a stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid
+calls, and announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas
+Bolkonski to have an explanation with him about Natasha.
+
+After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited
+on the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad of this diversion, having
+shut herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied
+herself trying on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice
+without sleeves and only tacked together, and was turning her head
+to see in the glass how the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room
+the animated sounds of her father's voice and another's- a woman's-
+that made her flush. It was Helene. Natasha had not time to take off
+the bodice before the door opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a
+purple velvet gown with a high collar, came into the room beaming with
+good-humored amiable smiles.
+
+"Oh, my enchantress!" she cried to the blushing Natasha.
+"Charming! No, this is really beyond anything, my dear count," said
+she to Count Rostov who had followed her in. "How can you live in
+Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won't let you off! Mademoiselle George
+will recite at my house tonight and there'll be some people, and if
+you don't bring your lovely girls- who are prettier than
+Mademoiselle George- I won't know you! My husband is away in Tver or I
+would send him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must!
+Between eight and nine."
+
+She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied
+respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the
+looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely.
+She did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually
+praising Natasha's beauty. She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised
+them, as well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze,"
+which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one
+like it.
+
+"But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked.
+
+A smile of pleasure never left Natasha's face. She felt happy and as
+if she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess
+Bezukhova who had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and
+important and was now so kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt
+almost in love with this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind.
+Helene for her part was sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to
+give her a good time. Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha
+together, and she was calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The
+idea of throwing her brother and Natasha together amused her.
+
+Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natasha
+for drawing Boris away, she did not think of that now, and in her
+own way heartily wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs
+she called her protegee aside.
+
+"My brother dined with me yesterday- we nearly died of laughter-
+he ate nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly,
+quite madly, in love with you, my dear."
+
+Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.
+
+"How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" said Helene. "You
+must certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a
+reason to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your
+fiance would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to
+death."
+
+"So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre- that
+good Pierre- have talked and laughed about this. So it's all right."
+And again, under Helene's influence, what had seemed terrible now
+seemed simple and natural. "And she is such a grande dame, so kind,
+and evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?" thought
+Natasha, gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes.
+
+Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having
+evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince's. She was still too
+agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly.
+In answer to the count's inquiries she replied that things were all
+right and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of
+Countess Bezukhova's visit and the invitation for that evening,
+Marya Dmitrievna remarked:
+
+"I don't care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and don't advise
+you to; however, if you've promised- go. It will divert your
+thoughts," she added, addressing Natasha.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova's. There were a
+good many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count
+Rostov was displeased to see that the company consisted almost
+entirely of men and women known for the freedom of their conduct.
+Mademoiselle George was standing in a corner of the drawing room
+surrounded by young men. There were several Frenchmen present, among
+them Metivier who from the time Helene reached Moscow had been an
+intimate in her house. The count decided not to sit down to cards or
+let his girls out of his sight and to get away as soon as Mademoiselle
+George's performance was over.
+
+Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostovs.
+Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natasha and
+followed her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same
+feeling she had had at the opera- gratified vanity at his admiration
+of her and fear at the absence of a moral barrier between them.
+
+Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in admiration of
+her beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George
+went out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people
+began arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a
+chair for Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count,
+who never lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down
+behind her.
+
+Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red
+shawl draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for
+her, and assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was
+audible.
+
+Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience
+and began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for
+her son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered,
+lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse
+sounds, rolling her eyes.
+
+"Adorable! divine! delicious!" was heard from every side.
+
+Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor
+understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt
+herself again completely borne away into this strange senseless world-
+so remote from her old world- a world in which it was impossible to
+know what was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat
+Anatole, and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened
+sense of expectancy.
+
+After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded
+Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.
+
+"How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had
+also risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.
+
+"I don't think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following
+Natasha. He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him.
+"You are enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never
+ceased..."
+
+"Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his
+daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything
+stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring
+eyes.
+
+After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and
+Countess Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.
+
+The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil
+her improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked
+Natasha for a valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand
+and told her she was bewitching and that he loved her. During the
+ecossaise, which she also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when
+they happened to be by themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha
+lifted her frightened eyes to him, but there was such confident
+tenderness in his affectionate look and smile that she could not,
+whilst looking at him, say what she had to say. She lowered her eyes.
+
+"Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another,"
+she said rapidly.... She glanced at him.
+
+Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.
+
+"Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell you I
+am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are
+enchanting?... It's our turn to begin."
+
+Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open
+frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly
+anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and
+the Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to
+remain. Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt
+his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her
+father to let her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that
+Helene had followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love,
+and that she again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene
+had disappeared leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and
+said in a tender voice:
+
+"I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never
+see you? I love you madly. Can I never...?" and, blocking her path, he
+brought his face close to hers.
+
+His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she
+saw nothing but them.
+
+"Natalie?" he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being
+painfully pressed. "Natalie?"
+
+"I don't understand. I have nothing to say," her eyes replied.
+
+Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she
+felt herself released, and Helene's footsteps and the rustle of her
+dress were heard in the room. Natasha looked round at her, and then,
+red and trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and
+moved toward the door.
+
+"One word, just one, for God's sake!" cried Anatole.
+
+She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to
+her what had happened and to which she could find no answer.
+
+"Natalie, just a word, only one!" he kept repeating, evidently not
+knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene came up to them.
+
+Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The Rostovs went
+away without staying for supper.
+
+After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She was
+tormented by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or
+Prince Andrew. She loved Prince Andrew- she remembered distinctly
+how deeply she loved him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there
+was no doubt. "Else how could all this have happened?" thought she.
+"If, after that, I could return his smile when saying good-by, if I
+was able to let it come to that, it means that I loved him from the
+first. It means that he is kind, noble, and splendid, and I could
+not help loving him. What am I to do if I love him and the other one
+too?" she asked herself, unable to find an answer to these terrible
+questions.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to
+move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna
+appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking
+uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to
+intercept every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the
+same as usual.
+
+After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat
+down in her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her.
+
+"Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is
+my advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince
+Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to
+begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had
+to say!"
+
+"Well, and he?" asked the count.
+
+"He? He's crazy... he did not want to listen. But what's the use
+of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out," said Marya
+Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business and go back home
+to Otradnoe... and wait there."
+
+"Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha.
+
+"Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and wait there. If your
+betrothed comes here now- there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but
+alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to
+you."
+
+Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its
+reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better
+to visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the
+wedding, against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe.
+
+"That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took
+her," said the old count.
+
+"No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But
+if he won't- that's his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for
+something in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau is ready, so
+there is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready I'll send after
+you. Though I don't like letting you go, it is the best way. So go,
+with God's blessing!"
+
+Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed
+it to Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.
+
+"She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She's
+afraid you might think that she does not like you."
+
+"But she doesn't like me," said Natasha.
+
+"Don't talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna.
+
+"I shan't believe anyone, I know she doesn't like me," replied
+Natasha boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold
+and angry resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look at her
+more intently and to frown.
+
+"Don't answer like that, my good girl!" she said. "What I say is
+true! Write an answer!" Natasha did not reply and went to her own room
+to read Princess Mary's letter.
+
+Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the
+misunderstanding that had occurred between them. Whatever her father's
+feelings might be, she begged Natasha to believe that she could not
+help loving her as the one chosen by her brother, for whose
+happiness she was ready to sacrifice everything.
+
+"Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my father is
+ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be
+forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes
+his son happy." Princess Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time
+when she could see her again.
+
+After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table to
+answer it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly and
+mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all
+that had happened the evening before? "Yes, yes! All that has
+happened, and now all is changed," she thought as she sat with the
+letter she had begun before her. "Must I break off with him? Must I
+really? That's awful... and to escape from these dreadful thoughts she
+went to Sonya and began sorting patterns with her.
+
+After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess
+Mary's letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought. "Can it
+be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all that
+went before?" She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its
+former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She
+vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew's wife, and the scenes of
+happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and
+at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of
+yesterday's interview with Anatole.
+
+"Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked herself in
+complete bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I
+have to choose, and I can't be happy without either of them. Only,"
+she thought, "to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide it
+from him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is
+spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew's
+love, in which I have lived so long?"
+
+"Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious
+air. "A man told me to give you this-" and she handed Natasha a
+letter.
+
+"Only, for Christ's sake..." the girl went on, as Natasha, without
+thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter from
+Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only
+that it was a letter from him- from the man she loved. Yes, she
+loved him, or else how could that have happened which had happened?
+And how could she have a love letter from him in her hand?
+
+With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter
+which Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she
+found in it an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.
+
+"Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you
+or to die. There is no other way for me," the letter began. Then he
+went on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him- for
+this there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her- but that
+if she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power
+could hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her
+away and carry her off to the ends of the earth.
+
+"Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading the letter for
+the twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each
+word of it.
+
+That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs' and
+proposed to take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache,
+remained at home.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha's room, and
+to her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open
+on the table, beside her lay Anatole's letter. Sonya picked it up
+and read it.
+
+As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying to find in
+her face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find
+it. Her face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep
+herself from choking, Sonya, pale and trembling with fear and
+agitation, sat down in an armchair and burst into tears.
+
+"How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she
+have left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kuragin go
+to such lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that's plain! What
+will Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is
+the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before
+yesterday, yesterday, and today," thought Sonya. "But it can't be that
+she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who it
+was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a
+thing!"
+
+Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha, again scanning
+her face.
+
+"Natasha!" she said, just audibly.
+
+Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.
+
+"Ah, you're back?"
+
+And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment
+of awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya's look of
+embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.
+
+"Sonya, you've read that letter?" she demanded.
+
+"Yes," answered Sonya softly.
+
+Natasha smiled rapturously.
+
+"No, Sonya, I can't any longer!" she said. "I can't hide it from you
+any longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya, darling, he
+writes... Sonya..."
+
+Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her ears.
+
+"And Bolkonski?" she asked.
+
+"Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!" cried Natasha. "You
+don't know what love is...."
+
+"But, Natasha, can that be all over?"
+
+Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she could not
+grasp the question.
+
+"Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?" said Sonya.
+
+"Oh, you don't understand anything! Don't talk nonsense, just
+listen!" said Natasha, with momentary vexation.
+
+"But I can't believe it," insisted Sonya. "I don't understand. How
+is it you have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you
+have only seen him three times! Natasha, I don't believe you, you're
+joking! In three days to forget everything and so..."
+
+"Three days?" said Natasha. "It seems to me I've loved him a hundred
+years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can't
+understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit here," and Natasha embraced
+and kissed her.
+
+"I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it
+too, but it's only now that I feel such love. It's not the same as
+before. As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his
+slave, and that I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave!
+Whatever he orders I shall do. You don't understand that. What can I
+do? What can I do, Sonya?" cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened
+expression.
+
+"But think what you are doing," cried Sonya. "I can't leave it
+like this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so
+far?" she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.
+
+"I told you that I have no will," Natasha replied. "Why can't you
+understand? I love him!"
+
+"Then I won't let it come to that... I shall tell!" cried Sonya,
+bursting into tears.
+
+"What do you mean? For God's sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!"
+declared Natasha. "You want me to be miserable, you want us to be
+separated...."
+
+When she saw Natasha's fright, Sonya shed tears of shame and pity
+for her friend.
+
+"But what has happened between you?" she asked. "What has he said to
+you? Why doesn't he come to the house?"
+
+Natasha did not answer her questions.
+
+"For God's sake, Sonya, don't tell anyone, don't torture me,"
+Natasha entreated. "Remember no one ought to interfere in such
+matters! I have confided in you...."
+
+"But why this secrecy? Why doesn't he come to the house?" asked
+Sonya. "Why doesn't he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince
+Andrew gave you complete freedom- if it is really so; but I don't
+believe it! Natasha, have you considered what these secret reasons can
+be?"
+
+Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently this question
+presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know
+how to answer it.
+
+"I don't know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!"
+
+Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously.
+
+"If there were reasons..." she began.
+
+But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.
+
+"Sonya, one can't doubt him! One can't, one can't! Don't you
+understand?" she cried.
+
+"Does he love you?"
+
+"Does he love me?" Natasha repeated with a smile of pity at her
+friend's lack of comprehension. "Why, you have read his letter and you
+have seen him."
+
+"But if he is dishonorable?"
+
+"He! dishonorable? If you only knew!" exclaimed Natasha.
+
+"If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions
+or cease seeing you; and if you won't do this, I will. I will write to
+him, and I will tell Papa!" said Sonya resolutely.
+
+"But I can't live without him!" cried Natasha.
+
+"Natasha, I don't understand you. And what are you saying! Think
+of your father and of Nicholas."
+
+"I don't want anyone, I don't love anyone but him. How dare you
+say he is dishonorable? Don't you know that I love him?" screamed
+Natasha. "Go away, Sonya! I don't want to quarrel with you, but go,
+for God's sake go! You see how I am suffering!" Natasha cried angrily,
+in a voice of despair and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into
+sobs and ran from the room.
+
+Natasha went to the table and without a moment's reflection wrote
+that answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all
+the morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their
+misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the
+magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her
+she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her if she
+had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his wife. At
+that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to Natasha.
+
+On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but on
+Wednesday the count went with the prospective purchaser to his
+estate near Moscow.
+
+On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big
+dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there.
+At that party Natasha again met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she
+spoke to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through
+dinner she was more agitated than ever. When they got home Natasha was
+the first to begin the explanation Sonya expected.
+
+"There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,"
+Natasha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to
+be praised. "We have had an explanation today."
+
+"Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how glad I am you're
+not angry with me! Tell me everything- the whole truth. What did he
+say?"
+
+Natasha became thoughtful.
+
+"Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I
+had promised Bolkonski. He was glad I was free to refuse him."
+
+Sonya sighed sorrowfully.
+
+"But you haven't refused Bolkonski?" said she.
+
+"Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkonski. Why
+do you think so badly of me?"
+
+"I don't think anything, only I don't understand this..."
+
+"Wait a bit, Sonya, you'll understand everything. You'll see what
+a man he is! Now don't think badly of me or of him. I don't think
+badly of anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?"
+
+Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used toward her.
+The more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natasha's face
+became, the more serious and stern grew Sonya's.
+
+"Natasha," said she, "you asked me not to speak to you, and I
+haven't spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don't trust him,
+Natasha. Why this secrecy?"
+
+"Again, again!" interrupted Natasha.
+
+"Natasha, I am afraid for you!"
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"I am afraid you're going to your ruin," said Sonya resolutely,
+and was herself horrified at what she had said.
+
+Anger again showed in Natasha's face.
+
+"And I'll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It's not
+your business! It won't be you, but I, who'll suffer. Leave me
+alone, leave me alone! I hate you!"
+
+Natasha!" moaned Sonya, aghast.
+
+"I hate you, I hate you! You're my enemy forever!" And Natasha ran
+out of the room.
+
+Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her. With the
+same expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the
+house, taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once
+abandoning them.
+
+Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and did not let her
+out of her sight.
+
+The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed that Natasha
+sat by the drawingroom window all the morning as if expecting
+something and that she made a sign to an officer who drove past,
+whom Sonya took to be Anatole.
+
+Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed
+that at dinner and all that evening Natasha was in a strange and
+unnatural state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she
+did not finish, and laughed at everything.
+
+After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha's door timidly
+waiting to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at
+the door learned that another letter had been delivered.
+
+Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha had some
+dreadful plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her door. Natasha did
+not let her in.
+
+"She will run away with him!" thought Sonya. "She is capable of
+anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in
+her face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle," Sonya
+remembered. "Yes, that's it, she means to elope with him, but what
+am I to do?" thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly
+indicated that Natasha had some terrible intention. "The count is
+away. What am I to do? Write to Kuragin demanding an explanation?
+But what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince
+Andrew asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she
+really has already refused Bolkonski- she sent a letter to Princess
+Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away...." To tell Marya Dmitrievna who
+had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya terrible. "Well, anyway,"
+thought Sonya as she stood in the dark passage, "now or never I must
+prove that I remember the family's goodness to me and that I love
+Nicholas. Yes! If I don't sleep for three nights I'll not leave this
+passage and will hold her back by force and will and not let the
+family be disgraced," thought she.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov's. The plan for Natalie
+Rostova's abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by
+Dolokhov a few days before, and on the day that Sonya, after listening
+at Natasha's door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been
+put into execution. Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin at the
+back porch at ten that evening. Kuragin was to put her into a troyka
+he would have ready and to drive her forty miles to the village of
+Kamenka, where an unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a
+marriage ceremony over them. At Kamenka a relay of horses was to
+wait which would take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they
+would hasten abroad with post horses.
+
+Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand
+rubles he had taken from his sister and another ten thousand
+borrowed with Dolokhov's help.
+
+Two witnesses for the mock marriage- Khvostikov, a retired petty
+official whom Dolokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and
+Makarin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an
+unbounded affection for Kuragin- were sitting at tea in Dolokhov's
+front room.
+
+In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with
+Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dolokhov in a traveling
+cloak and high boots, at an open desk on which lay abacus and some
+bundles of paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to
+and fro from the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the
+study to the room behind, where his French valet and others were
+packing the last of his things. Dolokhov was counting the money and
+noting something down.
+
+"Well," he said, "Khvostikov must have two thousand."
+
+"Give it to him, then," said Anatole.
+
+"Makarka" (their name for Makarin) "will go through fire and water
+for you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled," said
+Dolokhov, showing him the memorandum. "Is that right?"
+
+"Yes, of course," returned Anatole, evidently not listening to
+Dolokhov and looking straight before him with a smile that did not
+leave his face.
+
+Dolokhov banged down the or of his and turned to Anatole with an
+ironic smile:
+
+"Do you know? You'd really better drop it all. There's still time!"
+
+"Fool," retorted Anatole. "Don't talk nonsense! If you only
+knew... it's the devil knows what!"
+
+"No, really, give it up!" said Dolokhov. "I am speaking seriously.
+It's no joke, this plot you've hatched."
+
+"What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?" said Anatole, making a
+grimace. "Really it's no time for your stupid jokes," and he left
+the room.
+
+Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole
+had gone out.
+
+"You wait a bit," he called after him. "I'm not joking, I'm
+talking sense. Come here, come here!"
+
+Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to give him his
+attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily.
+
+"Now listen to me. I'm telling you this for the last time. Why
+should I joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything
+for you? Who found the priest and got the passport? Who raised the
+money? I did it all."
+
+"Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?" And
+Anatole sighed and embraced Dolokhov.
+
+"I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a
+dangerous business, and if you think about it- a stupid business.
+Well, you'll carry her off- all right! Will they let it stop at
+that? It will come out that you're already married. Why, they'll
+have you in the criminal court...."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" Anatole ejaculated and again made a
+grimace. "Didn't I explain to you? What?" And Anatole, with the
+partiality dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have
+reached by their own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already
+put to Dolokhov a hundred times. "Didn't I explain to you that I
+have come to this conclusion: if this marriage is invalid," he went
+on, crooking one finger, "then I have nothing to answer for; but if it
+is valid, no matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it.
+Isn't that so? And don't talk to me, don't, don't."
+
+"Seriously, you'd better drop it! You'll only get yourself into a
+mess!"
+
+"Go to the devil!" cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the
+room, but returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of
+Dolokhov with his feet turned under him. "It's the very devil! What?
+Feel how it beats!" He took Dolokhov's hand and put it on his heart.
+"What a foot, my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!" he added in
+French. "What?"
+
+Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes
+looked at him- evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of
+him.
+
+"Well and when the money's gone, what then?"
+
+"What then? Eh?" repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a
+thought of the future. "What then?... Then, I don't know.... But why
+talk nonsense!" He glanced at his watch. "It's time!"
+
+Anatole went into the back room.
+
+"Now then! Nearly ready? You're dawdling!" he shouted to the
+servants.
+
+Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to
+bring something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went
+into the room where Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting.
+
+Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and
+smiling pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to
+himself.
+
+"Come and eat something. Have a drink!" Dolokhov shouted to him from
+the other room.
+
+"I don't want to," answered Anatole continuing to smile.
+
+"Come! Balaga is here."
+
+Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga was a famous
+troyka driver who had known Dolokhov and Anatole some six years and
+had given them good service with his troykas. More than once when
+Anatole's regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in
+the evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back
+again the next night. More than once he had enabled Dolokhov to escape
+when pursued. More than once he had driven them through the town
+with gypsies and "ladykins" as he called the cocottes. More than
+once in their service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles
+in the streets of Moscow and had always been protected from the
+consequences by "my gentlemen" as he called them. He had ruined more
+than one horse in their service. More than once they had beaten him,
+and more than once they had made him drunk on champagne and Madeira,
+which he loved; and he knew more than one thing about each of them
+which would long ago have sent an ordinary man to Siberia. They
+often called Balaga into their orgies and made him drink and dance
+at the gypsies', and more than one thousand rubles of their money
+had passed through his hands. In their service he risked his skin
+and his life twenty times a year, and in their service had lost more
+horses than the money he had from them would buy. But he liked them;
+liked that mad driving at twelve miles an hour, liked upsetting a
+driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full gallop through
+the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild, tipsy shouts behind
+him: "Get on! Get on!" when it was impossible to go any faster. He
+liked giving a painful lash on the neck to some peasant who, more dead
+than alive, was already hurrying out of his way. "Real gentlemen!"
+he considered them.
+
+Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his masterly driving and
+because he liked the things they liked. With others Balaga
+bargained, charging twenty-five rubles for a two hours' drive, and
+rarely drove himself, generally letting his young men do so. But
+with "his gentlemen" he always drove himself and never demanded
+anything for his work. Only a couple of times a year- when he knew
+from their valets that they had money in hand- he would turn up of a
+morning quite sober and with a deep bow would ask them to help him.
+The gentlemen always made him sit down.
+
+"Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir," or "your excellency," he
+would say. "I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to go
+to the fair."
+
+And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money, would give him a
+thousand or a couple of thousand rubles.
+
+Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about
+twenty-seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck,
+glittering little eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine,
+dark-blue, silk-lined cloth coat over a sheepskin.
+
+On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the
+front corner of the room, and went up to Dolokhov, holding out a
+small, black hand.
+
+"Theodore Ivanych!" he said, bowing.
+
+"How d'you do, friend? Well, here he is!"
+
+"Good day, your excellency!" he said, again holding out his hand
+to Anatole who had just come in.
+
+"I say, Balaga," said Anatole, putting his hands on the man's
+shoulders, "do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service....
+What horses have you come with? Eh?"
+
+"As your messenger ordered, your special beasts," replied Balaga.
+
+"Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get me there
+in three hours. Eh?"
+
+"When they are dead, what shall I drive?" said Balaga with a wink.
+
+"Mind, I'll smash your face in! Don't make jokes!" cried Anatole,
+suddenly rolling his eyes.
+
+"Why joke?" said the driver, laughing. "As if I'd grudge my
+gentlemen anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast
+we'll go!"
+
+"Ah!" said Anatole. "Well, sit down."
+
+"Yes, sit down!" said Dolokhov.
+
+"I'll stand, Theodore Ivanych."
+
+"Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!" said Anatole, and filled a large
+glass of Madeira for him.
+
+The driver's eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After
+refusing it for manners' sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with
+a red silk handkerchief he took out of his cap.
+
+"And when are we to start, your excellency?"
+
+"Well..." Anatole looked at his watch. "We'll start at once. Mind,
+Balaga! You'll get there in time? Eh?"
+
+"That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn't we be
+there in time?" replied Balaga. "Didn't we get you to Tver in seven
+hours? I think you remember that, your excellency?"
+
+"Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver," said Anatole,
+smilingly at the recollection and turning to Makarin who gazed
+rapturously at him with wide-open eyes. "Will you believe it, Makarka,
+it took one's breath away, the rate we flew. We came across a train of
+loaded sleighs and drove right over two of them. Eh?"
+
+"Those were horses!" Balaga continued the tale. "That time I'd
+harnessed two young side horses with the bay in the shafts," he went
+on, turning to Dolokhov. "Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those
+animals flew forty miles? I couldn't hold them in, my hands grew
+numb in the sharp frost so that I threw down the reins- 'Catch hold
+yourself, your excellency!' says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom
+of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn't a case of urging them
+on, there was no holding them in till we reached the place. The devils
+took us there in three hours! Only the near one died of it."
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later
+wearing a fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily
+set on one side and very becoming to his handsome face. Having
+looked in a mirror, and standing before Dolokhov in the same pose he
+had assumed before it, he lifted a glass of wine.
+
+"Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!"
+said Anatole. "Well, comrades and friends..." he considered for a
+moment "...of my youth, farewell!" he said, turning to Makarin and the
+others.
+
+Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to
+make something touching and solemn out of this address to his
+comrades. He spoke slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest
+slightly swayed one leg.
+
+"All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and friends of my
+youth, we've had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when
+shall we meet again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time- now
+farewell, lads! To our health! Hurrah!..." he cried, and emptying
+his glass flung it on the floor.
+
+"To your health!" said Balaga who also emptied his glass, and
+wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.
+
+Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.
+
+"Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!
+
+"Let's go. Let's go!" cried Anatole.
+
+Balaga was about to leave the room.
+
+"No, stop!" said Anatole. "Shut the door; we have first to sit down.
+That's the way."
+
+They shut the door and all sat down.
+
+"Now, quick march, lads!" said Anatole, rising.
+
+Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all
+went out into the vestibule.
+
+"And where's the fur cloak?" asked Dolokhov. "Hey, Ignatka! Go to
+Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what
+elopements are like," continued Dolokhov with a wink. "Why, she'll
+rush out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if
+you delay at all there'll be tears and 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and she's
+frozen in a minute and must go back- but you wrap the fur cloak
+round her first thing and carry her to the sleigh."
+
+The valet brought a woman's fox-lined cloak.
+
+"Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the sable!" he
+shouted so that his voice rang far through the rooms.
+
+A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black
+eyes and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a
+sable mantle on her arm.
+
+"Here, I don't grudge it- take it!" she said, evidently afraid of
+her master and yet regretful of her cloak.
+
+Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over
+Matrena, and wrapped her up in it.
+
+"That's the way," said Dolokhov, "and then so!" and he turned the
+collar up round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered.
+"And then so, do you see?" and he pushed Anatole's head forward to
+meet the gap left by the collar, through which Matrena's brilliant
+smile was seen.
+
+"Well, good-by, Matrena," said Anatole, kissing her. "Ah, my
+revels here are over. Remember me to Steshka. There, good-by! Good-by,
+Matrena, wish me luck!"
+
+"Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!" said Matrena in her
+gypsy accent.
+
+Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers
+were holding the horses. Balaga took his seat in the front one and
+holding his elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and
+Dolokhov got in with him. Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated
+themselves in the other sleigh.
+
+"Well, are you ready?" asked Balaga.
+
+"Go!" he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka
+tore down the Nikitski Boulevard.
+
+"Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!..." The shouting of Balaga
+and of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could be
+heard. On the Arbat Square the troyka caught against a carriage;
+something cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the
+Arbat Street.
+
+After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard, Balaga began to
+rein in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old
+Konyusheny Street.
+
+The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and
+Anatole and Dolokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the
+gate Dolokhov whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant
+ran out.
+
+"Come into the courtyard or you'll be seen; she'll come out
+directly," said she.
+
+Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the
+courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the porch.
+
+He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna's gigantic footman.
+
+"Come to the mistress, please," said the footman in his deep bass,
+intercepting any retreat.
+
+"To what Mistress? Who are you?" asked Anatole in a breathless
+whisper.
+
+"Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in."
+
+"Kuragin! Come back!" shouted Dolokhov. "Betrayed! Back!"
+
+Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and
+was struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With
+a last desperate effort Dolokhov pushed the porter aside, and when
+Anatole ran back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket,
+and ran back with him to the troyka.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the corridor, made
+her confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natasha she
+read it and went into Natasha's room with it in her hand.
+
+"You shameless good-for-nothing!" said she. "I won't hear a word."
+
+Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with astonished but
+tearless eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders to the
+yard porter to admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but
+not to let them out again, and having told the footman to bring them
+up to her, she seated herself in the drawing room to await the
+abductors.
+
+When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run
+away again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced
+through the rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward
+midnight she went to Natasha's room fingering the key in her pocket.
+Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor. "Marya Dmitrievna, for
+God's sake let me in to her!" she pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna
+unlocked the door and went in without giving her an answer....
+"Disgusting, abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I'm only
+sorry for her father!" thought she, trying to restrain her wrath.
+"Hard as it may be, I'll tell them all to hold their tongues and
+will hide it from the count." She entered the room with resolute
+steps. Natasha lying on the sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and
+she did not stir. She was in just the same position in which Marya
+Dmitrievna had left her.
+
+"A nice girl! Very nice!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "Arranging meetings
+with lovers in my house! It's no use pretending: you listen when I
+speak to you!" And Marya Dmitrievna touched her arm. "Listen when when
+I speak! You've disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I'd
+treat you differently, but I'm sorry for your father, so I will
+conceal it."
+
+Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved
+with noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Marya Dmitrievna
+glanced round at Sonya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha.
+
+"It's lucky for him that he escaped me; but I'll find him!" she said
+in her rough voice. "Do you hear what I am saying or not?" she added.
+
+She put her large hand under Natasha's face and turned it toward
+her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were amazed when they saw how
+Natasha looked. Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed,
+her cheeks sunken.
+
+"Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!" she muttered,
+wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna's hands with a vicious
+effort and sinking down again into her former position.
+
+"Natalie!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "I wish for your good. Lie
+still, stay like that then, I won't touch you. But listen. I won't
+tell you how guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your
+father comes back tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?"
+
+Again Natasha's body shook with sobs.
+
+"Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?"
+
+"I have no betrothed: I have refused him!" cried Natasha.
+
+"That's all the same," continued Dmitrievna. "If they hear of
+this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he
+challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?"
+
+"Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who
+asked you to?" shouted Natasha, raising herself on the sofa and
+looking malignantly at Marya Dmitrievna.
+
+"But what did you want?" cried Marya Dmitrievna, growing angry
+again. "Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to
+the house? Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing
+girl?... Well, if he had carried you off... do you think they wouldn't
+have found him? Your father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he's a
+scoundrel, a wretch- that's a fact!"
+
+"He is better than any of you!" exclaimed Natasha getting up. "If
+you hadn't interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it?
+Sonya, why?... Go away!"
+
+And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which
+people bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned.
+Marya Dmitrievna was to speak again but Natasha cried out:
+
+"Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!" and she threw
+herself back on the sofa.
+
+Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on
+her that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that
+nobody would know anything about it if only Natasha herself would
+undertake to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had
+happened. Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she
+grew cold and had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow under
+her head, covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some
+lime-flower water, but Natasha did not respond to her.
+
+"Well, let her sleep," said Marya Dmitrievna as she went of the room
+supposing Natasha to be asleep.
+
+But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open
+eyes she looked straight before her. All that night she did not
+sleep or weep and did not speak to Sonya who got up and went to her
+several times.
+
+Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near Moscow in time
+for lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the
+affair with the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was
+nothing to keep him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess
+whom he missed. Marya Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had
+been very unwell the day before and that they had sent for the doctor,
+but that she was better now. Natasha had not left her room that
+morning. With compressed and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she
+sat at the window, uneasily watching the people who drove past and
+hurriedly glancing round at anyone who entered the room. She was
+evidently expecting news of him and that he would come or would
+write to her.
+
+When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the
+sound of a man's footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and
+malevolent expression. She did not even get up to greet him. "What
+is the matter with you, my angel? Are you ill?" asked the count.
+
+After a moment's silence Natasha answered: "Yes, ill."
+
+In reply to the count's anxious inquiries as to why she was so
+dejected and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she
+assured him that nothing had happened and asked him not to worry.
+Marya Dmitrievna confirmed Natasha's assurances that nothing had
+happened. From the pretense of illness, from his daughter's
+distress, and by the embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya
+Dmitrievna, the count saw clearly that something had gone wrong during
+his absence, but it was so terrible for him to think that anything
+disgraceful had happened to his beloved daughter, and he so prized his
+own cheerful tranquillity, that he avoided inquiries and tried to
+assure himself that nothing particularly had happened; and he was only
+dissatisfied that her indisposition delayed their return to the
+country.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to
+go away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostovs
+came to Moscow the effect Natasha had on him made him hasten to
+carry out his intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich's
+widow, who had long since promised to hand over to him some papers
+of her deceased husband's.
+
+When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Marya
+Dmitrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great
+importance relating to Andrew Bolkonski and his betrothed. Pierre
+had been avoiding Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling
+for her was stronger than a married man's should be for his friend's
+fiancee. Yet some fate constantly threw them together.
+
+"What can have happened? And what can they want with me?" thought he
+as he dressed to go to Marya Dmitrievna's. "If only Prince Andrew
+would hurry up and come and marry her!" thought he on his way to the
+house.
+
+On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.
+
+"Pierre! Been back long?" someone shouted. Pierre raised his head.
+In a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering
+the dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makarin
+dashed past. Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of
+military dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver
+collar and his head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his
+white-plumed hat, tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded
+hair besprinkled with powdery snow.
+
+"Yes, indeed, that's a true sage," thought Pierre. "He sees
+nothing beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so
+he is always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What wouldn't I give
+to be like him!" he thought enviously.
+
+In Marya Dmitrievna's anteroom the footman who helped him off with
+his fur coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom.
+
+When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha sitting at the
+window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at
+him, frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity.
+
+"What has happened?" asked Pierre, entering Marya Dmitrievna's room.
+
+"Fine doings!" answered Dmitrievna. "For fifty-eight years have I
+lived in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!"
+
+And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him,
+Marya Dmitrievna informed him that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew
+without her parents' knowledge and that the cause of this was
+Anatole Kuragin into whose society Pierre's wife had thrown her and
+with whom Natasha had tried to elope during her father's absence, in
+order to be married secretly.
+
+Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was
+told him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince
+Andrew's deeply loved affianced wife- the same Natasha Rostova who
+used to be so charming- should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole
+who was already secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in
+love with him as to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre
+could not conceive and could not imagine.
+
+He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha,
+whom he had known from a child, with this new conception of her
+baseness, folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. "They are all
+alike!" he said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man
+unfortunate enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied
+Prince Andrew to the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded
+pride, and the more he pitied his friend the more did he think with
+contempt and even with disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him
+in the ballroom with such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that
+Natasha's soul was overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation,
+and that it was not her fault that her face happened to assume an
+expression of calm dignity and severity.
+
+"But how get married?" said Pierre, in answer to Marya Dmitrievna.
+"He could not marry- he is married!"
+
+"Things get worse from hour to hour!" ejaculated Marya Dmitrievna.
+"A nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she's expecting him- expecting
+him since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won't go on
+expecting him."
+
+After hearing the details of Anatole's marriage from Pierre, and
+giving vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Marya
+Dmitrievna told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that
+the count or Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew
+of this affair (which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge
+Anatole to a duel, and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his
+brother-in-law in her name to leave Moscow and not dare to let her set
+eyes on him again. Pierre- only now realizing the danger to the old
+count, Nicholas, and Prince Andrew- promised to do as she wished.
+Having briefly and exactly explained her wishes to him, she let him go
+to the drawing room.
+
+"Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing
+either," she said. "And I will go and tell her it is no use
+expecting him! And stay to dinner if you care to!" she called after
+Pierre.
+
+Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning
+Natasha had told him that she had rejected Bolkonski.
+
+"Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!" he said to Pierre. "What
+troubles one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret
+having come here.... I will be frank with you. Have you heard she
+has broken off her engagement without consulting anybody? It's true
+this engagement never was much to my liking. Of course he is an
+excellent man, but still, with his father's disapproval they
+wouldn't have been happy, and Natasha won't lack suitors. Still, it
+has been going on so long, and to take such a step without father's or
+mother's consent! And now she's ill, and God knows what! It's hard,
+Count, hard to manage daughters in their mother's absence...."
+
+Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the
+subject, but the count returned to his troubles.
+
+Sonya entered the room with an agitated face.
+
+"Natasha is not quite well; she's in her room and would like to
+see you. Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too asks you to come."
+
+"Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski's, no doubt she wants to
+send him a message," said the count. "Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it
+all was!"
+
+And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the
+room.
+
+When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole was married, Natasha
+did not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by
+Pierre himself. Sonya told Pierre this as she led him along the
+corridor to Natasha's room.
+
+Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitrievna, and
+her eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look
+the moment he entered. She did not smile or nod, but only gazed
+fixedly at him, and her look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or
+like the others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he
+evidently did not exist for her.
+
+"He knows all about it," said Marya Dmitrievna pointing to Pierre
+and addressing Natasha. "Let him tell you whether I have told the
+truth."
+
+Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded
+animal looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.
+
+"Natalya Ilynichna," Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a
+feeling of pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to do,
+"whether it is true or not should make no difference to you,
+because..."
+
+"Then it is not true that he's married!"
+
+"Yes, it is true."
+
+"Has he been married long?" she asked. "On your honor?..."
+
+Pierre gave his word of honor.
+
+"Is he still here?" she asked, quickly.
+
+"Yes, I have just seen him."
+
+She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands
+that they should leave her alone.
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at
+once. He drove through the town seeking Anatole Kuragin, at the
+thought of whom now the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a
+difficulty in breathing. He was not at the ice hills, nor at the
+gypsies', nor at Komoneno's. Pierre drove to the Club. In the Club all
+was going on as usual. The members who were assembling for dinner were
+sitting about in groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town
+news. The footman having greeted him, knowing his habits and his
+acquaintances, told him there was a place left for him in the small
+dining room and that Prince Michael Zakharych was in the library,
+but Paul Timofeevich had not yet arrived. One of Pierre's
+acquaintances, while they were talking about the weather, asked if
+he had heard of Kuragin's abduction of Rostova which was talked of
+in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and said it was
+nonsense for he had just come from the Rostovs'. He asked everyone
+about Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and another
+that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see this calm,
+indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was going on in his
+soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come,
+and as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but drove
+home.
+
+Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with
+Dolokhov, consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate
+affair. It seemed to him essential to see Natasha. In the evening he
+drove to his sister's to discuss with her how to arrange a meeting.
+When Pierre returned home after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his
+valet informed him that Prince Anatole was with the countess. The
+countess' drawing room was full of guests.
+
+Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his
+return- at that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever-
+entered the drawing room and seeing Anatole went up to him.
+
+"Ah, Pierre," said the countess going up to her husband. "You
+don't know what a plight our Anatole..."
+
+She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband's head,
+in his glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of
+that rage and strength which she knew and had herself experienced
+after his duel with Dolokhov.
+
+"Where you are, there is vice and evil!" said Pierre to his wife.
+"Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you," he added in French.
+
+Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready
+to follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward
+himself and was leading him from the room.
+
+"If you allow yourself in my drawing room..." whispered Helene,
+but Pierre did not reply and went out of the room.
+
+Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face
+betrayed anxiety.
+
+Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed
+Anatole without looking at him.
+
+"You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and were about to
+elope with her, is that so?"
+
+"Mon cher," answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in
+French), "I don't consider myself bound to answer questions put to
+me in that tone."
+
+Pierre's face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized
+Anatole by the collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him
+from side to side till Anatole's face showed a sufficient degree of
+terror.
+
+"When I tell you that I must talk to you!..." repeated Pierre.
+
+"Come now, this is stupid. What?" said Anatole, fingering a button
+of his collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth.
+
+"You're a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don't know what deprives
+me from the pleasure of smashing your head with this!" said Pierre,
+expressing himself so artificially because he was talking French.
+
+He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly, but at once
+put it back in its place.
+
+"Did you promise to marry her?"
+
+"I... I didn't think of it. I never promised, because..."
+
+Pierre interrupted him.
+
+"Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?" he said, moving
+toward Anatole.
+
+Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his
+pocket and drew out his pocketbook.
+
+Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table
+that stood in his way, threw himself on the sofa.
+
+"I shan't be violent, don't be afraid!" said Pierre in answer to a
+frightened gesture of Anatole's. "First, the letters," said he, as
+if repeating a lesson to himself. "Secondly," he continued after a
+short pause, again rising and again pacing the room, "tomorrow you
+must get out of Moscow."
+
+"But how can I?..."
+
+"Thirdly," Pierre continued without listening to him, "you must
+never breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess
+Rostova. I know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark
+of conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times in silence.
+
+Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.
+
+"After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there
+is such a thing as other people's happiness and peace, and that you
+are ruining a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse
+yourself with women like my wife- with them you are within your
+rights, for they know what you want of them. They are armed against
+you by the same experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid to
+marry her... to deceive, to kidnap.... Don't you understand that it is
+as mean as beating an old man or a child?..."
+
+Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with
+a questioning look.
+
+"I don't know about that, eh?" said Anatole, growing more
+confident as Pierre mastered his wrath. "I don't know that and don't
+want to," he said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of
+his lower jaw, "but you have used such words to me- 'mean' and so
+on- which as a man of honor I can't allow anyone to use."
+
+Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he
+wanted.
+
+"Though it was tete-a-tete," Anatole continued, "still I can't..."
+
+"Is it satisfaction you want?" said Pierre ironically.
+
+"You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do
+as you wish, eh?"
+
+"I take them back, I take them back!" said Pierre, "and I ask you to
+forgive me." Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. "And if
+you require money for your journey..."
+
+Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile,
+which Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.
+
+"Oh, vile and heartless brood!" he exclaimed, and left the room.
+
+Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna's to tell her of the fulfillment of
+her wish that Kuragin should be banished from Moscow. The whole
+house was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill,
+having, as Marya Dmitrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the
+night after she had been told that Anatole was married, with some
+arsenic she had stealthily procured. After swallowing a little she had
+been so frightened that she woke Sonya and told her what she had done.
+The necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she was
+now out of danger, though still so weak that it was out of the
+question to move her to the country, and so the countess had been sent
+for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and Sonya, who had a
+tear-stained face, but he could not see Natasha.
+
+Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip
+about the attempted abduction of Rostova. He resolutely denied these
+rumors, assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his
+brother-in-law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to
+Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and
+re-establish Natasha's reputation.
+
+He was awaiting Prince Andrew's return with dread and went every day
+to the old prince's for news of him.
+
+Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in the town from
+Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which
+Natasha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits
+than usual and awaited his son with great impatience.
+
+Some days after Anatole's departure Pierre received a note from
+Prince Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come
+to see him.
+
+As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his
+father Natasha's note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement
+(Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and
+given it to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of
+Natasha's elopement, with additions.
+
+Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see
+him next morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost
+the same state as Natasha and was therefore surprised on entering
+the drawing room to hear him in the study talking in a loud animated
+voice about some intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince's
+voice and another now and then interrupted him. Princess Mary came out
+to meet Pierre. She sighed, looking toward the door of the room
+where Prince Andrew was, evidently intending to express her sympathy
+with his sorrow, but Pierre saw by her face that she was glad both
+at what had happened and at the way her brother had taken the news
+of Natasha's faithlessness.
+
+"He says he expected it," she remarked. "I know his pride will not
+let him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far
+better, than I expected. Evidently it had to be...."
+
+"But is it possible that all is really ended?" asked Pierre.
+
+Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not
+understand how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the
+study. Prince Andrew, greatly changed and plainly in better health,
+but with a fresh horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in
+civilian dress facing his father and Prince Meshcherski, warmly
+disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The conversation was about
+Speranski- the news of whose sudden exile and alleged treachery had
+just reached Moscow.
+
+"Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about
+him a month ago," Prince Andrew was saying, "and by those who were
+unable to understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and
+to throw on him all the blame of other men's mistakes is very easy,
+but I maintain that if anything good has been accomplished in this
+reign it was done by him, by him alone."
+
+He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and
+immediately assumed a vindictive expression.
+
+"Posterity will do him justice," he concluded, and at once turned to
+Pierre.
+
+"Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?" he said with
+animation, but the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened. "Yes, I am
+well," he said in answer to Pierre's question, and smiled.
+
+To Pierre that smile said plainly: "I am well, but my health is
+now of no use to anyone."
+
+After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish
+frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre,
+and about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his
+son's tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation
+about Speranski which was still going on between the two old men.
+
+"If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon,
+they would have been made public," he said with warmth and haste. "I
+do not, and never did, like Speranski personally, but I like justice!"
+
+Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only
+too familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous
+matters in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too
+intimate. When Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took
+Pierre's arm and asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A
+bed had been made up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks
+stood about. Prince Andrew went to one and took out a small casket,
+from which he drew a packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently
+and very quickly. He stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his
+lips compressed.
+
+"Forgive me for troubling you..."
+
+Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natasha, and his
+broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated
+Prince Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he
+continued:
+
+"I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and have heard
+reports of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of
+that kind. Is that true?"
+
+"Both true and untrue," Pierre began; but Prince Andrew
+interrupted him.
+
+"Here are her letters and her portrait," said he.
+
+He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.
+
+"Give this to the countess... if you see her."
+
+"She is very ill," said Pierre.
+
+"Then she is here still?" said Prince Andrew. "And Prince
+Kuragin?" he added quickly.
+
+"He left long ago. She has been at death's door."
+
+"I much regret her illness," said Prince Andrew; and he smiled
+like his father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.
+
+"So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his
+hand?" said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.
+
+"He could not marry, for he was married already," said Pierre.
+
+Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his
+father.
+
+"And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?" he said.
+
+"He has gone to Peters... But I don't know," said Pierre.
+
+"Well, it doesn't matter," said Prince Andrew. "Tell Countess
+Rostova that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all
+that is good."
+
+Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember
+whether he had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre
+would say anything, looked fixedly at him.
+
+"I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?" asked Pierre,
+"about..."
+
+"Yes," returned Prince Andrew hastily. "I said that a fallen woman
+should be forgiven, but I didn't say I could forgive her. I can't."
+
+"But can this be compared...?" said Pierre.
+
+Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: "Yes, ask her
+hand again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very
+noble, but I am unable to follow in that gentleman's footsteps. If you
+wish to be my friend never speak to me of that... of all that! Well,
+good-by. So you'll give her the packet?"
+
+Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.
+
+The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same
+as always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed
+her satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at
+them Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the
+Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to
+mention the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone
+else.
+
+At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was
+becoming evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with
+his father, now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an
+unnatural animation, the cause of which Pierre so well understood.
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs' to fulfill the
+commission entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the count at the
+Club, and Pierre, after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya
+Dmitrievna who was interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken
+the news. Ten minutes later Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna.
+
+"Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich," said she.
+
+"But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not
+been tidied up."
+
+"No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room," said Sonya.
+
+Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind,
+don't tell her everything!" said she to Pierre. "One hasn't the
+heart to scold her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be
+pitied."
+
+Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated,
+with a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected
+to find her. When he appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently
+undecided whether to go to meet him or to wait till he came up.
+
+Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as
+usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her
+arms hanging lifelessly just in the pose she used to stand in when she
+went to the middle of the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different
+expression of face.
+
+"Peter Kirilovich," she began rapidly, "Prince Bolkonski was your
+friend- is your friend," she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that
+everything that had once been must now be different.) "He told me once
+to apply to you..."
+
+Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then
+he had reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he
+now felt so sorry for her that there was no room in his soul for
+reproach.
+
+"He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!" She stopped
+and breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears.
+
+"Yes... I will tell him," answered Pierre; "but..."
+
+He did not know what to say.
+
+Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think
+she had meant.
+
+"No, I know all is over," she said hurriedly. "No, that can never
+be. I'm only tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only
+that I beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything...."
+
+She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.
+
+A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre's heart.
+
+"I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more," said
+Pierre. "But... I should like to know one thing...."
+
+"Know what?" Natasha's eyes asked.
+
+"I should like to know, did you love..." Pierre did not know how
+to refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of him- "did you love
+that bad man?"
+
+"Don't call him bad!" said Natasha. "But I don't know, don't know at
+all...."
+
+She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness,
+and love welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his
+spectacles and hoped they would not be noticed.
+
+"We won't speak of it any more, my dear," said Pierre, and his
+gentle, cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natasha.
+
+"We won't speak of it, my dear- I'll tell him everything; but one
+thing I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you want help,
+advice, or simply to open your heart to someone- not now, but when
+your mind is clearer think of me!" He took her hand and kissed it.
+"I shall be happy if it's in my power..."
+
+Pierre grew confused.
+
+"Don't speak to me like that. I am not worth it!" exclaimed
+Natasha and turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand.
+
+He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it
+he was amazed at his own words.
+
+"Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you," said he to her.
+
+"Before me? No! All is over for me," she replied with shame and
+self-abasement.
+
+"All over?" he repeated. "If I were not myself, but the handsomest,
+cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this
+moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love!"
+
+For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of gratitude and
+tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room.
+
+Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom,
+restraining tears of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without
+finding the sleeves of his fur cloak threw it on and got into his
+sleigh.
+
+"Where to now, your excellency?" asked the coachman.
+
+"Where to?" Pierre asked himself. "Where can I go now? Surely not to
+the Club or to pay calls?" All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in
+comparison with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in
+comparison with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him
+through her tears.
+
+"Home!" said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost
+Fahrenheit he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and
+inhaled the air with joy.
+
+It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the
+black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky
+did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane
+things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been
+raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark
+starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it,
+above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all
+sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to
+the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the
+enormous and brilliant comet of 18l2- the comet which was said to
+portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre,
+however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling
+of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears,
+at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with
+inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly-
+like an arrow piercing the earth- to remain fixed in a chosen spot,
+vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white
+light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre
+that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own
+softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.
+
+BOOK NINE: 1812
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating
+of the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces-
+millions of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army-
+moved from the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which
+since 1811 Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth
+of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian
+frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to
+human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated
+against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries,
+thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms,
+and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of
+all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them
+did not at the time regard as being crimes.
+
+What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes?
+The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the
+wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the
+Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of
+Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.
+
+Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich,
+Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to
+have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for
+Napoleon to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I
+consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"- and there
+would have been no war.
+
+We can understand that the matter seemed like that to
+contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was
+caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St.
+Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that
+the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of
+Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him;
+to businessmen that the cause of the way was the Continental System
+which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the
+chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them
+employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of
+re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that
+time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between
+Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed
+from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178.
+It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of
+other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points
+of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to
+posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and
+perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem
+insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of
+Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon
+was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was
+astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what
+connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter
+and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men
+from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk
+and Moscow and were killed by them.
+
+To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried
+away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event
+with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes
+present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes
+the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of
+causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by
+its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its
+impotence- apart from the cooperation of all the other coincident
+causes- to occasion the event. To us, the wish or objection of this or
+that French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a cause as
+Napoleon's refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to
+restore the duchy of Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and
+had a second, a third, and a thousandth corporal and private also
+refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon's army and
+the war could not have occurred.
+
+Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw
+beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would
+have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a
+second term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there
+have been a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of
+Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been
+an autocratic government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a
+subsequent dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced
+the French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing
+could have happened. So all these causes- myriads of causes- coincided
+to bring it about. And so there was no one cause for that
+occurrence, but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men,
+renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to
+east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes
+of men had come from the east to the west, slaying their fellows.
+
+The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event
+seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier
+who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This
+could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and
+Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried
+out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without
+any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was
+necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power-
+the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns- should
+consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should
+have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and
+complex causes.
+
+We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of
+irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of
+which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in
+history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they
+become to us.
+
+Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal
+aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain
+from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that
+action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and
+belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined
+significance.
+
+There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life,
+which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his
+elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for
+him.
+
+Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious
+instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of
+humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in
+time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic
+significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more
+people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the
+more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every
+action.
+
+"The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord."
+
+A king is history's slave.
+
+History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind,
+uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.
+
+Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than
+ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses
+peuples~^ as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him-
+he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which
+compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own
+volition, to perform for the hive life- that is to say, for history-
+whatever had to be performed.
+
+^~ "To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples."
+
+The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and
+by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and
+co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the
+nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's
+wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia- undertaken (as it
+seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace,
+the French Emperor's love and habit of war coinciding with his
+people's inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations,
+and the expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining
+advantages to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors
+he received in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the
+opinion of contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to
+attain peace, but which only wounded the self-love of both sides,
+and millions and millions of other causes that adapted themselves to
+the event that was happening or coincided with it.
+
+When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of
+its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it
+is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes
+it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
+
+Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions
+in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the
+botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue
+decays and so forth is equally right with the child who stands under
+the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and
+prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon
+went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander
+desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill
+weighing a million tons fell because the last navvy struck it for
+the last time with his mattock. In historic events the so-called great
+men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but
+the smallest connection with the event itself.
+
+Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will,
+is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole
+course of history and predestined from eternity.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent
+three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings,
+and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the
+emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings
+and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and
+diamonds of his own- that is, which he had taken from other kings-
+to the Empress of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us,
+tenderly embraced the Empress Marie Louise- who regarded him as her
+husband, though he had left another wife in Paris- left her grieved by
+the parting which she seemed hardly able to bear. Though the
+diplomatists still firmly believed in the possibility of peace and
+worked zealously to that end, and though the Emperor Napoleon
+himself wrote a letter to Alexander, calling him Monsieur mon frere,
+and sincerely assured him that he did not want war and would always
+love and honor him- yet he set off to join his army, and at every
+station gave fresh orders to accelerate the movement of his troops
+from west to east. He went in a traveling coach with six horses,
+surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp, and an escort, along the road to
+Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg. At each of these towns thousands
+of people met him with excitement and enthusiasm.
+
+The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses
+carried him in the same direction. On the tenth of June,~^ coming up
+with the army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on
+the estate of a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest.
+
+^~ Old style.
+
+Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the
+Niemen, and, changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank
+in order to select a place for the crossing.
+
+Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the
+wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of
+Moscow (Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the
+Scythia into which Alexander the Great had marched- Napoleon
+unexpectedly, and contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic
+considerations, ordered an advance, and the next day his army began to
+cross the Niemen.
+
+Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent,
+which was pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and
+looked through a spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out
+of the Vilkavisski forest and flowing over the three bridges thrown
+across the river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor's presence,
+were on the lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in
+an overcoat and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in front of
+his tent on the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: "Vive
+l'Empereur!" and one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of
+the vast forest that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and
+on by the three bridges to the other side.
+
+"Now we'll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself,
+things get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l'Empereur! So
+these are the steppes of Asia! It's a nasty country all the same. Au
+revoir, Beauche; I'll keep the best palace in Moscow for you! Au
+revoir. Good luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l'Empereur!...
+preur!- If they make me Governor of India, Gerard, I'll make you
+Minister of Kashmir- that's settled. Vive l'Empereur! Hurrah!
+hurrah! hurrah! The Cossacks- those rascals- see how they run! Vive
+l'Empereur! There he is, do you see him? I've seen him twice, as I see
+you now. The little corporal... I saw him give the cross to one of the
+veterans.... Vive l'Empereur!" came the voices of men, old and
+young, of most diverse characters and social positions. On the faces
+of all was one common expression of joy at the commencement of the
+long-expected campaign and of rapture and devotion to the man in the
+gray coat who was standing on the hill.
+
+On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse
+was brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one
+of the bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant
+and rapturous acclamations which he evidently endured only because
+it was impossible to forbid the soldiers to express their love of
+him by such shouting, but the shouting which accompanied him
+everywhere disturbed him and distracted him from the military cares
+that had occupied him from the time he joined the army. He rode across
+one of the swaying pontoon bridges to the farther side, turned sharply
+to the left, and galloped in the direction of Kovno, preceded by
+enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the Guard who, breathless with
+delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for him through the troops. On
+reaching the broad river Viliya, he stopped near a regiment of
+Polish Uhlans stationed by the river.
+
+"Vivat!" shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and
+pressing against one another to see him.
+
+Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a
+log that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was
+handed him which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run
+up to him, and he gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became
+absorbed in a map laid out on the logs. Without lifting his head he
+said something, and two of his aides-de-camp galloped off to the
+Polish Uhlans.
+
+"What? What did he say?" was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans
+when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them.
+
+The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel
+of the Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his
+speech from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be
+permitted to swim the river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford.
+In evident fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on
+a horse, he begged to be allowed to swim across the river before the
+Emperor's eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that probably the Emperor
+would not be displeased at this excess of zeal.
+
+As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached
+officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted
+"Vivat!" and, commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse
+and galloped into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse,
+which had grown restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading
+for the deepest part where the current was swift. Hundreds of Uhlans
+galloped in after him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in
+the middle of the stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as
+they fell off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some
+of the men; the others tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some
+clinging to their horses' manes. They tried to make their way
+forward to the opposite bank and, though there was a ford one third of
+a mile away, were proud that they were swimming and drowning in this
+river under the eyes of the man who sat on the log and was not even
+looking at what they were doing. When the aide-de-camp, having
+returned and choosing an opportune moment, ventured to draw the
+Emperor's attention to the devotion of the Poles to his person, the
+little man in the gray overcoat got up and, having summoned
+Berthier, began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving him
+instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly at the
+drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.
+
+For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of
+the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough
+to dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called
+for his horse and rode to his quarters.
+
+Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were
+sent to their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from
+which they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and
+with difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they
+had got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted
+"Vivat!" and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been
+but where he no longer was and at that moment considered themselves
+happy.
+
+That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian
+paper money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as
+quickly as possible and another that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a
+letter containing information about the orders to the French army
+had been found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish
+colonel who had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled
+in the Legion d'honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head.
+
+Quos vult perdere dementat.~^
+
+^~ Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna for more than
+a month. reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for
+the war that everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor
+had come from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The
+vacillation between the various plans that were proposed had even
+increased after the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month. Each
+of the three armies had its own commander in chief, but there was no
+supreme commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not assume
+that responsibility himself.
+
+The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less did everybody-
+tired of waiting- prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who
+surrounded the sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend
+his time pleasantly and forget that war was impending.
+
+In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by
+the courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the
+Polish aides-de-camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be
+given for the Emperor by his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly
+received. The Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected
+money by subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to
+the Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a
+landowner in the Vilna province, offered his country house for the
+fete, and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner,
+regatta, and fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen's country seat.
+
+The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and
+his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian
+frontier, Alexander spent the evening at the entertainment given by
+his aides-de-camp at Bennigsen's country house.
+
+It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters
+declared that rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one
+place. Countess Bezukhova was present among other Russian ladies who
+had followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the
+refined Polish ladies by her massive, so called Russian type of
+beauty. The Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance.
+
+Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the
+present en garcon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not
+an aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Boris
+was now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no longer sought
+patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those of
+his own age. He was meeting Helene in Vilna after not having seen
+her for a long time and did not recall the past, but as Helene was
+enjoying the favors of a very important personage and Boris had only
+recently married, they met as good friends of long standing.
+
+At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not having a
+suitable partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Boris.
+They were the third couple. Boris, coolly looking at Helene's dazzling
+bare shoulders which emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze
+gown, talked to her of old acquaintances and at the same time, unaware
+of it himself and unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased
+to observe the Emperor who was in the same room. The Emperor was not
+dancing, he stood in the doorway, stopping now one pair and now
+another with gracious words which he alone knew how to utter.
+
+As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant General Balashev,
+one of those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him
+and contrary to court etiquette stood near him while he was talking to
+a Polish lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked
+inquiringly at Balashev and, evidently understanding that he only
+acted thus because there were important reasons for so doing, nodded
+slightly to the lady and turned to him. Hardly had Balashev begun to
+speak before a look of amazement appeared on the Emperor's face. He
+took Balashev by the arm and crossed the room with him,
+unconsciously clearing a path seven yards wide as the people on both
+sides made way for him. Boris noticed Arakcheev's excited face when
+the sovereign went out with Balashev. Arakcheev looked at the
+Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with his red nose, stepped
+forward from the crowd as if expecting the Emperor to address him.
+(Boris understood that Arakcheev envied Balashev and was displeased
+that evidently important news had reached the Emperor otherwise than
+through himself.)
+
+But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the illuminated
+garden without noticing Arakcheev who, holding his sword and
+glancing wrathfully around, followed some twenty paces behind them.
+
+All the time Boris was going through the figures of the mazurka,
+he was worried by the question of what news Balashev had brought and
+how he could find it out before others. In the figure in which he
+had to choose two ladies, he whispered to Helene that he meant to
+choose Countess Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the
+veranda, and glided over the parquet to the door opening into the
+garden, where, seeing Balashev and the Emperor returning to the
+veranda, he stood still. They were moving toward the door. Boris,
+fluttering as if he had not had time to withdraw, respectfully pressed
+close to the doorpost with bowed head.
+
+The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally
+affronted, was finishing with these words:
+
+"To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as
+long as a single armed enemy remains in my country!" It seemed to
+Boris that it gave the Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was
+satisfied with the form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but
+displeased that Boris had overheard it.
+
+"Let no one know of it! " the Emperor added with a frown.
+
+Boris understood that this was meant for him and, closing his
+eyes, slightly bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and
+remained there about another half-hour.
+
+Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the French army
+had crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain
+important personages that much that was concealed from others was
+usually known to him, and by this means he rose higher in their
+estimation.
+
+The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was
+particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations,
+and at a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of
+indignation and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased
+him, fully expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On
+returning home at two o'clock that night he sent for his secretary,
+Shishkov, and told him to write an order to the troops and a
+rescript to Field Marshal Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the
+words being inserted that he would not make peace so long as a
+single armed Frenchman remained on Russian soil.
+
+Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:
+
+Monsieur mon frere,
+
+Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty which I have kept my
+engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian
+frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in
+which Count Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression,
+that Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with
+me from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his passports. The reasons
+on which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him
+would never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a
+pretext for aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has
+declared, was never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I
+was informed of it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and
+ordered him to remain at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend
+to shed the blood of our peoples for such a misunderstanding, and
+consents to withdraw your troops from Russian territory, I will regard
+what has passed as not having occurred and an understanding between us
+will be possible. In the contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see
+myself forced to repel an attack that nothing on my part has provoked.
+It still depends on Your Majesty to preserve humanity from the
+calamity of another war. I am, etc.,
+
+(signed) Alexander
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having
+sent for Balashev and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him
+to take it and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When
+dispatching Balashev, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he
+would not make peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on
+Russian soil and told him to transmit those words to Napoleon.
+Alexander did not insert them in his letter to Napoleon, because
+with his characteristic tact he felt it would be injudicious to use
+them at a moment when a last attempt at reconciliation was being made,
+but he definitely instructed Balashev to repeat them personally to
+Napoleon.
+
+Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied
+by a bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev reached the French outposts
+at the village of Rykonty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn.
+There he was stopped by French cavalry sentinels.
+
+A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform
+and a shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashev to halt.
+Balashev did not do so at once, but continued to advance along the
+road at a walking pace.
+
+The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse,
+advanced his horse's chest against Balashev, put his hand to his
+saber, and shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he
+deaf that he did not do as he was told? Balashev mentioned who he was.
+The noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about
+regimental matters without looking at the Russian general.
+
+After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after
+conversing with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in
+general being accustomed to the respect due to his rank in the
+service, Balashev found it very strange here on Russian soil to
+encounter this hostile, and still more this disrespectful, application
+of brute force to himself.
+
+The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air
+was fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road
+from the village, and over the fields the larks rose trilling, one
+after another, like bubbles rising in water.
+
+Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer
+from the village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French
+hussars looked silently at one another from time to time.
+
+A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed,
+came riding from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse,
+accompanied by two hussars. The officer, the soldiers, and their
+horses all looked smart and well kept.
+
+It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full
+trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of
+martial swagger in their clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit
+of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign.
+
+The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was
+polite and evidently understood Balashev's importance. He led him past
+his soldiers and behind the outposts and told him that his wish to
+be presented to the Emperor would most likely be satisfied
+immediately, as the Emperor's quarters were, he believed, not far off.
+
+They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered French
+hussar horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and
+stared with curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the
+other end of the village. The colonel said that the commander of the
+division was a mile and a quarter away and would receive Balashev
+and conduct him to his destination.
+
+The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure.
+
+They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a
+group of horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a
+black horse with trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall
+man with plumes in his hat and black hair curling down to his
+shoulders. He wore a red mantle, and stretched his long legs forward
+in French fashion. This man rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his
+plumes flowing and his gems and gold lace glittering in the bright
+June sunshine.
+
+Balashev was only two horses' length from the equestrian with the
+bracelets, plunies, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was
+galloping toward him with a theatrically solemn countenance, when
+Julner, the French colonel, whispered respectfully: "The King of
+Naples!" It was, in fact, Murat, now called "King of Naples." Though
+it was quite incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he
+was called so, and was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore
+assumed a more solemn and important air than formerly. He was so
+sure that he really was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of
+his departure from that city, while walking through the streets with
+his wife, some Italians called out to him: "Viva il re!"~^ he turned to
+his wife with a pensive smile and said: "Poor fellows, they don't know
+that I am leaving them tomorrow!"
+
+^~ "Long live the king."
+
+But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and
+pitied the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly,
+after he had been ordered to return to military service- and
+especially since his last interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when
+his august brother-in-law had told him: "I made you King that you
+should reign in my way, but not in yours!"- he had cheerfully taken up
+his familiar business, and- like a well-fed but not overfat horse that
+feels himself in harness and grows skittish between the shafts- he
+dressed up in clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and
+gaily and contentedly galloped along the roads of Poland, without
+himself knowing why or whither.
+
+On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its
+long hair curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner,
+and looked inquiringly at the French colonel. The colonel respectfully
+informed His Majesty of Balashev's mission, whose name he could not
+pronounce.
+
+"De Bal-macheve!" said the King (overcoming by his assurance the
+difficulty that had presented itself to the colonel). "Charmed to make
+your acquaintance, General!" he added, with a gesture of kingly
+condescension.
+
+As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity
+instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his
+natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the
+withers of Balashev's horse and said:
+
+"Well, General, it all looks like war," as if regretting a
+circumstance of which he was unable to judge.
+
+"Your Majesty," replied Balashev, "my master, the Emperor, does
+not desire war and as Your Majesty sees..." said Balashev, using the
+words Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation
+unavoidable in frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a
+novelty.
+
+Murat's face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to
+"Monsieur de Bal-macheve." But royaute oblige!~^ and he felt it
+incumbent on him, as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs
+with Alexander's envoy. He dismounted, took Balashev's arm, and moving
+a few steps away from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to
+pace up and down with him, trying to speak significantly. He
+referred to the fact that the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand
+that he should withdraw his troops from Prussia, especially when
+that demand became generally known and the dignity of France was
+thereby offended.
+
+^~ "Royalty has its obligations."
+
+Balashev replied that there was nothing offensive in the demand,
+because..." but Murat interrupted him.
+
+"Then you don't consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?" he
+asked unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile.
+
+Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of
+the war.
+
+"Oh, my dear general!" Murat again interrupted him, "with all my
+heart I wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and
+that the war begun by no wish of mine may finish as quickly as
+possible!" said he, in the tone of a servant who wants to remain
+good friends with another despite a quarrel between their masters.
+
+And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of
+his health, and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had
+spent with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal
+dignity, Murat solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which
+he had stood at his coronation. and, waving his right arm, said:
+
+"I won't detain you longer, General. I wish success to your
+mission," and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers,
+and his glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite who were
+respectfully awaiting him.
+
+Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat's words that he would very
+soon be brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the
+next village the sentinels of Davout's infantry corps detained him
+as the pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the
+corps commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to
+Marshal Davout.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Davout was to Napoleon what Arakcheev was to Alexander- though not a
+coward like Arakcheev, he was as precise, as cruel, and as unable to
+express his devotion to his monarch except by cruelty.
+
+In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are
+necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always
+appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and
+their proximity to the head of the government may be. This
+inevitability alone can explain how the cruel Arakcheev, who tore
+out a grenadier's mustache with his own hands, whose weak nerves
+rendered him unable to face danger, and who was neither an educated
+man nor a courtier, was able to maintain his powerful position with
+Alexander, whose own character was chivalrous, noble, and gentle.
+
+Balashev found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a
+peasant's hut, writing- he was auditing accounts. Better quarters
+could have been found him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who
+purposely put themselves in most depressing conditions to have a
+justification for being gloomy. For the same reason they are always
+hard at work and in a hurry. "How can I think of the bright side of
+life when, as you see, I am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty
+shed?" the expression of his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure
+and necessity of such men, when they encounter anyone who shows
+animation, is to flaunt their own dreary, persistent activity.
+Davout allowed himself that pleasure when Balashev was brought in.
+He became still more absorbed in his task when the Russian general
+entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at Balashev's face,
+which was animated by the beauty of the morning and by his talk with
+Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still more and
+sneered malevolently.
+
+When he noticed in Balashev's face the disagreeable impression
+this reception produced, Davout raised his head and coldly asked
+what he wanted.
+
+Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because
+Davout did not know that he was adjutant general to the Emperor
+Alexander and even his envoy to Napoleon, Balashev hastened to
+inform him of his rank and mission. Contrary to his expectation,
+Davout, after hearing him, became still surlier and ruder.
+
+"Where is your dispatch?" he inquired. "Give it to me. I will send
+it to the Emperor."
+
+Balashev replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to
+the Emperor.
+
+"Your Emperor's orders are obeyed in your army, but here," said
+Davout, "you must do as you're told."
+
+And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his
+dependence on brute force, Davout sent an adjutant to call the officer
+on duty.
+
+Balashev took out the packet containing the Emperor's letter and
+laid it on the table (made of a door with its hinges still hanging
+on it, laid across two barrels). Davout took the packet and read the
+inscription.
+
+"You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or not,"
+protested Balashev, "but permit me to observe that I have the honor to
+be adjutant general to His Majesty...."
+
+Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived pleasure from the
+signs of agitation and confusion which appeared on Balashev's face.
+
+"You will be treated as is fitting," said he and, putting the packet
+in his pocket, left the shed.
+
+A minute later the marshal's adjutant, de Castres, came in and
+conducted Balashev to the quarters assigned him.
+
+That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board on the
+barrels.
+
+Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking Balashev to come to
+him, peremptorily requested him to remain there, to move on with the
+baggage train should orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one
+except Monsieur de Castres.
+
+After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness of his
+impotence and insignificance- particularly acute by contrast with
+the sphere of power in which he had so lately moved- and after several
+marches with the marshal's baggage and the French army, which occupied
+the whole district, Balashev was brought to Vilna- now occupied by the
+French- through the very gate by which he had left it four days
+previously.
+
+Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte de Turenne,
+came to Balashev and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon's wish to
+honor him with an audience.
+
+Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhensk regiment had
+stood in front of the house to which Balashev was conducted, and now
+two French grenadiers stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front
+and with shaggy caps on their heads, and an escort of hussars and
+Uhlans and a brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and generals,
+who were waiting for Napoleon to come out, were standing at the porch,
+round his saddle horse and his Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon received
+Balashev in the very house in Vilna from which Alexander had
+dispatched him on his mission.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the
+luxury and magnificence of Napoleon's court.
+
+The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many
+generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates- several of whom
+Balashev had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia- were waiting.
+Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before
+going for his ride.
+
+After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came
+into the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashev
+to follow him.
+
+Balashev went into a small reception room, one door of which led
+into a study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had
+dispatched him on his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He
+heard hurried footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened
+rapidly; all was silent and then from the study the sound was heard of
+other steps, firm and resolute- they were those of Napoleon. He had
+just finished dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform,
+opening in front over a white waistcoat so long that it covered his
+rotund stomach, white leather breeches tightly fitting the fat
+thighs of his short legs, and Hessian boots. His short hair had
+evidently just been brushed, but one lock hung down in the middle of
+his broad forehead. His plump white neck stood out sharply above the
+black collar of his uniform, and he smelled of Eau de Cologne. His
+full face, rather young-looking, with its prominent chin, wore a
+gracious and majestic expression of imperial welcome.
+
+He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head
+slightly thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad
+thick shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding, had
+that imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live
+in comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits
+that day.
+
+He nodded in answer to Balashav's low and respectful bow, and coming
+up to him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of
+his time and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but
+is sure he will always say the right thing and say it well.
+
+"Good day, General!" said he. "I have received the letter you
+brought from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you." He
+glanced with his large eyes into Balashav's face and immediately
+looked past him.
+
+It was plain that Balashev's personality did not interest him at
+all. Evidently only what took place within his own mind interested
+him. Nothing outside himself had any significance for him, because
+everything in the world, it seemed to him, depended entirely on his
+will.
+
+"I do not, and did not, desire war," he continued, "but it has
+been forced on me. Even now" (he emphasized the word) "I am ready to
+receive any explanations you can give me."
+
+And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons for
+dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by the calmly
+moderate and amicable tone in which the French Emperor spoke, Balashev
+was firmly persuaded that he wished for peace and intended to enter
+into negotiations.
+
+When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the
+Russian envoy, Balashev began a speech he had prepared long before:
+"Sire! The Emperor, my master..." but the sight of the Emperor's
+eyes bent on him confused him. "You are flurried- compose yourself!"
+Napoleon seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked
+at Balashev's uniform and sword.
+
+Balashev recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the
+Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurakin's demand for his
+passports a sufficient cause for war; that Kurakin had acted on his
+own initiative and without his sovereign's assent, that the Emperor
+Alexander did not desire war, and had no relations with England.
+
+"Not yet!" interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give vent to
+his feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as a sign that Balashev
+might proceed.
+
+After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashev added
+that the Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter
+into negotiations except on condition that... Here Balashev hesitated:
+he remembered the words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his
+letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykov and had
+told Balashev to repeat to Napoleon. Balashev remembered these
+words, "So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian soil," but
+some complex feeling restrained him. He could not utter them, though
+he wished to do so. He grew confused and said: "On condition that
+the French army retires beyond the Niemen."
+
+Napoleon noticed Balashev's embarrassment when uttering these last
+words; his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began to
+quiver rhythmically. Without moving from where he stood he began
+speaking in a louder tone and more hurriedly than before. During the
+speech that followed, Balashev, who more than once lowered his eyes,
+involuntarily noticed the quivering of Napoleon's left leg which
+increased the more Napoleon raised his voice.
+
+"I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander," he began.
+"Have I not for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it?
+I have waited eighteen months for explanations. But in order to
+begin negotiations, what is demanded of me?" he said, frowning and
+making an energetic gesture of inquiry with his small white plump
+hand.
+
+"The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire," replied
+Balashev.
+
+"The Niemen?" repeated Napoleon. "So now you want me to retire
+beyond the Niemen- only the Niemen?" repeated Napoleon, looking
+straight at Balashev.
+
+The latter bowed his head respectfully.
+
+Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from
+Pomerania, only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded.
+Napoleon turned quickly and began to pace the room.
+
+"You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen
+before commencing negotiations, but in just the same way two months
+ago the demand was that I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the
+Oder, and yet you are willing to negotiate."
+
+He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other and
+again stopped in front of Balashev. Balashev noticed that his left leg
+was quivering faster than before and his face seemed petrified in
+its stern expression. This quivering of his left leg was a thing
+Napoleon was conscious of. "The vibration of my left calf is a great
+sign with me," he remarked at a later date.
+
+"Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder may be
+made to a Prince of Baden, but not to me!" Napoleon almost screamed,
+quite to his own surprise. "If you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I
+could not accept such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But
+who first joined his army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer
+me negotiations when I have expended millions, when you are in
+alliance with England, and when your position is a bad one. You
+offer me negotiations! But what is the aim of your alliance with
+England? What has she given you?" he continued hurriedly, evidently no
+longer trying to show the advantages of peace and discuss its
+possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and power and
+Alexander's errors and duplicity.
+
+The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with the
+intention of demonstrating the advantages of his position and
+showing that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had
+begun talking, and the more he talked the less could he control his
+words.
+
+The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt
+himself and insult Alexander- just what he had least desired at the
+commencement of the interview.
+
+"I hear you have made peace with Turkey?"
+
+Balashev bowed his head affirmatively.
+
+"Peace has been concluded..." he began.
+
+But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all
+the talking himself, and continued to talk with the sort of
+eloquence and unrestrained irritability to which spoiled people are so
+prone.
+
+"Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining
+Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign those
+provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes," he went on, "I promised and
+would have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now
+he won't have those splendid provinces. Yet he might have united
+them to his empire and in a single reign would have extended Russia
+from the Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the
+Great could not have done more," said Napoleon, growing more and
+more excited as he paced up and down the room, repeating to Balashev
+almost the very words he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. "All
+that, he would have owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!"
+he repeated several times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold
+snuffbox, lifted it to his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.
+
+"What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander's might have been!"
+
+He looked compassionately at Balashev, and as soon as the latter
+tried to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted him.
+
+"What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained
+through my friendship?" demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders
+in perplexity. "But no, he has preferred to surround himself with my
+enemies, and with whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and
+Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country;
+Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French
+subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but
+all the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807
+and who should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander's
+mind.... Granted that were they competent they might be made use
+of," continued Napoleon- hardly able to keep pace in words with the
+rush of thoughts that incessantly sprang up, proving how right and
+strong he was (in his perception the two were one and the same)-
+"but they are not even that! They are neither fit for war nor peace!
+Barclay is said to be the most capable of them all, but I cannot say
+so, judging by his first movements. And what are they doing, all these
+courtiers? Pfuel proposes, Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and
+Barclay, called on to act, does not know what to decide on, and time
+passes bringing no result. Bagration alone is a military man. He's
+stupid, but he has experience, a quick eye, and resolution.... And
+what role is your young monarch playing in that monstrous crowd?
+They compromise him and throw on him the responsibility for all that
+happens. A sovereign should not be with the army unless he is a
+general!" said Napoleon, evidently uttering these words as a direct
+challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander desired to be a
+military commander.
+
+"The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven't even been
+able to defend Vilna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of
+the Polish provinces. Your army is grumbling."
+
+"On the contrary, Your Majesty," said Balashev, hardly able to
+remember what had been said to him and following these verbal
+fireworks with difficulty, "the troops are burning with eagerness..."
+
+"I know everything!" Napoleon interrupted him. "I know everything. I
+know the number of your battalions as exactly as I know my own. You
+have not two hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number.
+I give you my word of honor," said Napoleon, forgetting that his
+word of honor could carry no weight- "I give you my word of honor that
+I have five hundred and thirty thousand men this side of the
+Vistula. The Turks will be of no use to you; they are worth nothing
+and have shown it by making peace with you. As for the Swedes- it is
+their fate to be governed by mad kings. Their king was insane and they
+changed him for another- Bernadotte, who promptly went mad- for no
+Swede would ally himself with Russia unless he were mad."
+
+Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox to his
+nose.
+
+Balashev knew how to reply to each of Napoleon's remarks, and
+would have done so; he continually made the gesture of a man wishing
+to say something, but Napoleon always interrupted him. To the
+alleged insanity of the Swedes, Balashev wished to reply that when
+Russia is on her side Sweden is practically an island: but Napoleon
+gave an angry exclamation to drown his voice. Napoleon was in that
+state of irritability in which a man has to talk, talk, and talk,
+merely to convince himself that he is in the right. Balashev began
+to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared to demean his dignity and
+felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man, he shrank before the
+transport of groundless wrath that had evidently seized Napoleon. He
+knew that none of the words now uttered by Napoleon had any
+significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them
+when he came to his senses. Balashev stood with downcast eyes, looking
+at the movements of Napoleon's stout legs and trying to avoid
+meeting his eyes.
+
+"But what do I care about your allies?" said Napoleon. "I have
+allies- the Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and they fight
+like lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them."
+
+And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had uttered
+this obvious falsehood, and that Balashev still stood silently
+before him in the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon
+abruptly turned round, drew close to Balashev's face, and,
+gesticulating rapidly and energetically with his white hands, almost
+shouted:
+
+"Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I'll wipe it off the
+map of Europe!" he declared, his face pale and distorted by anger, and
+he struck one of his small hands energetically with the other. "Yes, I
+will throw you back beyond the Dvina and beyond the Dnieper, and
+will re-erect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind
+of Europe to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is what will happen to
+you. That is what you have gained by alienating me!" And he walked
+silently several times up and down the room, his fat shoulders
+twitching.
+
+He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again,
+lifted it several times to his nose, and stopped in front of Balashev.
+He paused, looked ironically straight into Balashev's eyes, and said
+in a quiet voice:
+
+"And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had!"
+
+Balashev, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that from the
+Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy a light. Napoleon
+was silent, still looking derisively at him and evidently not
+listening to him. Balashev said that in Russia the best results were
+expected from the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as if to
+say, "I know it's your duty to say that, but you don't believe it
+yourself. I have convinced you."
+
+When Balashev had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox,
+sniffed at it, and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal.
+The door opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully,
+handed the Emperor his hat and gloves; another brought hima pocket
+handkerchief. Napoleon, without giving them a glance, turned to
+Balashev:
+
+"Assure the Emperor Alexander from me," said he, taking his hat,
+"that I am as devoted to him as before: I know him thoroughly and very
+highly esteem his lofty qualities. I will detain you no longer,
+General; you shall receive my letter to the Emperor."
+
+And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the reception
+room rushed forward and descended the staircase.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+After all that Napoleon had said to him- those bursts of anger and
+the last dryly spoken words: "I will detain you no longer, General;
+you shall receive my letter," Balashev felt convinced that Napoleon
+would not wish to see him, and would even avoid another meeting with
+him- an insulted envoy- especially as he had witnessed his unseemly
+anger. But, to his surprise, Balashev received, through Duroc, an
+invitation to dine with the Emperor that day.
+
+Bessieres, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at that dinner.
+
+Napoleon met Balashev cheerfully and amiably. He not only showed
+no sign of constraint or self-reproach on account of his outburst that
+morning, but, on the contrary, tried to reassure Balashev. It was
+evident that he had long been convinced that it was impossible for him
+to make a mistake, and that in his perception whatever he did was
+right, not because it harmonized with any idea of right and wrong, but
+because he did it.
+
+The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride through Vilna,
+where crowds of people had rapturously greeted and followed him.
+From all the windows of the streets through which he rode, rugs,
+flags, and his monogram were displayed, and the Polish ladies,
+welcoming him, waved their handkerchiefs to him.
+
+At dinner, having placed Balashev beside him, Napoleon not only
+treated him amiably but behaved as if Balashev were one of his own
+courtiers, one of those who sympathized with his plans and ought to
+rejoice at his success. In the course of conversation he mentioned
+Moscow and questioned Balashev about the Russian capital, not merely
+as an interested traveler asks about a new city he intends to visit,
+but as if convinced that Balashev, as a Russian, must be flattered
+by his curiosity.
+
+"How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How many houses? Is it
+true that Moscow is called 'Holy Moscow'? How many churches are
+there in Moscow?" he asked.
+
+And receiving the reply that there were more than two hundred
+churches, he remarked:
+
+"Why such a quantity of churches?"
+
+"The Russians are very devout," replied Balashev.
+
+"But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign
+of the backwardness of a people," said Napoleon, turning to
+Caulaincourt for appreciation of this remark.
+
+Balashev respectfully ventured to disagree with the French Emperor.
+
+"Every country has its own character," said he.
+
+"But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that," said Napoleon.
+
+"I beg your Majesty's pardon," returned Balashev, "besides Russia
+there is Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries."
+
+This reply of Balashev's, which hinted at the recent defeats of
+the French in Spain, was much appreciated when he related it at
+Alexander's court, but it was not much appreciated at Napoleon's
+dinner, where it passed unnoticed.
+
+The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals showed that
+they were puzzled as to what Balashev's tone suggested. "If there is a
+point we don't see it, or it is not at all witty," their expressions
+seemed to say. So little was his rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon
+did not notice it at all and naively asked Balashev through what towns
+the direct road from there to Moscow passed. Balashev, who was on
+the alert all through the dinner, replied that just as "all roads lead
+to Rome," so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and
+"among them the road through Poltava, which Charles XII chose."
+Balashev involuntarily flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this
+reply, but hardly had he uttered the word Poltava before
+Caulaincourt began speaking of the badness of the road from Petersburg
+to Moscow and of his Petersburg reminiscences.
+
+After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon's study, which
+four days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander.
+Napoleon sat down, toying with his Sevres coffee cup, and motioned
+Balashev to a chair beside him.
+
+Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than
+any reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to
+consider everyone his friend. It seemed to him that he was
+surrounded by men who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after
+his dinner, Balashev too was his friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned
+to him with a pleasant, though slightly ironic, smile.
+
+"They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander occupied?
+Strange, isn't it, General?" he said, evidently not doubting that this
+remark would be agreeable to his hearer since it went to prove his,
+Napoleon's, superiority to Alexander.
+
+Balashev made no reply and bowed and bowed his head in silence.
+
+"Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were
+deliberating," continued Napoleon with the same derisive and
+self-confident smile. "What I can't understand," he went on, "is
+that the Emperor Alexander has surrounded himself with my personal
+enemies. That I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may
+the same?" and he turned inquiringly to Balashev, and evidently this
+thought turned him back on to the track of his morning's anger,
+which was still fresh in him.
+
+"And let him know that I will do so!" said Napoleon, rising and
+pushing his cup away with his hand. "I'll drive all his Wurttemberg,
+Baden, and Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I'll drive them
+out. Let him prepare an asylum for them in Russia!"
+
+Balashev bowed his head with an air indicating that he would like to
+make his bow and leave, and only listened because he could not help
+hearing what was said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression;
+he treated Balashev not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man now
+fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his former master's
+humiliation.
+
+"And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of the armies? What
+is the good of that? War is my profession, but his business is to
+reign and not to command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a
+responsibility?"
+
+Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several times up
+and down the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly,
+went up to Balashev and with a slight smile, as confidently,
+quickly, and simply as if he were doing something not merely
+important but pleasing to Balashev, he raised his hand to the
+forty-year-old Russian general's face and, taking him by the ear,
+pulled it gently, smiling with his lips only.
+
+To have one's ear pulled by the Emperor was considered the
+greatest honor and mark of favor at the French court.
+
+"Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander, why don't you
+say anything?" said he, as if it was ridiculous, in his presence, to
+be the adorer and courtier of anyone but himself, Napoleon. "Are the
+horses ready for the general?" he added, with a slight inclination
+of his head in reply to Balashev's bow. "Let him have mine, he has a
+long way to go!"
+
+The letter taken by Balashev was the last Napoleon sent to
+Alexander. Every detail of the interview was communicated to the
+Russian monarch, and the war began...
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to
+Petersburg, on business as he told his family, but really to meet
+Anatole Kuragin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching
+Petersburg he inquired for Kuragin but the latter had already left the
+city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on
+his track. Anatole Kuragin promptly obtained an appointment from the
+Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in
+Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutuzov, his former commander who was
+always well disposed toward him, and Kutuzov suggested that he
+should accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general
+had been appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having
+received an appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.
+
+Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge
+Kuragin. He thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause
+it might compromise the young Countess Rostova and so he wanted to
+meet Kuragin personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel.
+But he again failed to meet Kuragin in Turkey, for soon after Prince
+Andrew arrived, the latter returned to Russia. In a new country,
+amid new conditions, Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. After
+his betrothed had broken faith with him- which he felt the more
+acutely the more he tried to conceal its effects- the surroundings
+in which he had been happy became trying to him, and the freedom and
+independence he had once prized so highly were still more so. Not only
+could he no longer think the thoughts that had first come to him as he
+lay gazing at the sky on the field of Austerlitz and had later
+enlarged upon with Pierre, and which had filled his solitude at
+Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded to
+recall them and them and the bright and boundless horizons they had
+revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical matters
+unrelated to his past interests, and he seized on these the more
+eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if
+that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above
+him had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed him down,
+in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.
+
+Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army service was
+the simplest and most familiar. As a general on duty on Kutuzov's
+staff, he applied himself to business with zeal and perseverance and
+surprised Kutuzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not
+having found Kuragin in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not think it
+necessary to rush back to Russia after him, but all the same he knew
+that however long it might be before he met Kuragin, despite his
+contempt for him and despite all the proofs he deduced to convince
+himself that it was not worth stooping to a conflict with him- he knew
+that when he did meet him he would not be able to resist calling him
+out, any more than a ravenous man can help snatching at food. And
+the consciousness that the insult was not yet avenged, that his rancor
+was still unspent, weighed on his heart and poisoned the artificial
+tranquillity which he managed to obtain in Turkey by means of
+restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and ambitious activity.
+
+In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached
+Bucharest- where Kutuzov had been living for two months, passing his
+days and nights with a Wallachian woman- Prince Andrew asked Kutuzov
+to transfer him to the Western Army. Kutuzov, who was already weary of
+Bolkonski's activity which seemed to reproach his own idleness, very
+readily let him go and gave him a mission to Barclay de Tolly.
+
+Before joining the Western Army which was then, in May, encamped
+at Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills which was directly on
+his way, being only two miles off the Smolensk highroad. During the
+last three years there had been so many changes in his life, he had
+thought, felt, and seen so much (having traveled both in the east
+and the west), that on reaching Bald Hills it struck him as strange
+and unexpected to find the way of life there unchanged and still the
+same in every detail. He entered through the gates with their stone
+pillars and drove up the avenue leading to the house as if he were
+entering an enchanted, sleeping castle. The same old stateliness,
+the same cleanliness, the same stillness reigned there, and inside
+there was the same furniture, the same walls, sounds, and smell, and
+the same timid faces, only somewhat older. Princess Mary was still the
+same timid, plain maiden getting on in years, uselessly and
+joylessly passing the best years of her life in fear and constant
+suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was the same coquettish,
+self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of her existence and full
+of joyous hopes for the future. She had merely become more
+self-confident, Prince Andrew thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had
+brought from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and
+talking broken Russian to the servants, but was still the same
+narrowly intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic preceptor. The old
+prince had changed in appearance only by the loss of a tooth, which
+left a noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character he was
+the same as ever, only showing still more irritability and
+skepticism as to what was happening in the world. Little Nicholas
+alone had changed. He had grown, become rosier, had curly dark hair,
+and, when merry and laughing, quite unconsciously lifted the upper lip
+of his pretty little mouth just as the little princess used to do.
+He alone did not obey the law of immutability in the enchanted,
+sleeping castle. But though externally all remained as of old, the
+inner relations of all these people had changed since Prince Andrew
+had seen them last. The household was divided into two alien and
+hostile camps, who changed their habits for his sake and only met
+because he was there. To the one camp belonged the old prince,
+Madmoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the other Princess
+Mary, Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and maids.
+
+During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but
+they were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for
+whose sake an exception was being made and that his presence made them
+all feel awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first
+day, he was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also became
+morosely dumb and retired to his apartments directly after dinner.
+In the evening, when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying to rouse
+him, began to tell him of the young Count Kamensky's campaign, the old
+prince began unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming her for
+her superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he
+said, was the only person really attached to him.
+
+The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because of
+Princess Mary: that she purposely worried and irritated him, and
+that by indulgence and silly talk she was spoiling little Prince
+Nicholas. The old prince knew very well that he tormented his daughter
+and that her life was very hard, but he also knew that he could not
+help tormenting her and that she deserved it. "Why does Prince Andrew,
+who sees this, say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me
+a scoundrel, or an old fool who, without any reason, keeps his own
+daughter at a distance and attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He
+doesn't understand, so I must explain it, and he must hear me out,"
+thought the old prince. And he began explaining why he could not put
+up with his daughter's unreasonable character.
+
+"If you ask me," said Prince Andrew, without looking up (he was
+censuring his father for the first time in his life), "I did not
+wish to speak about it, but as you ask me I will give you my frank
+opinion. If there is any misunderstanding and discord between you
+and Mary, I can't blame her for it at all. I know how she loves and
+respects you. Since you ask me," continued Prince Andrew, becoming
+irritable- as he was always liable to do of late- "I can only say that
+if there are any misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless
+woman, who is not fit to be my sister's companion."
+
+The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural
+smile disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andrew
+could not get accustomed.
+
+"What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You've already been talking it
+over! Eh?"
+
+"Father, I did not want to judge," said Prince Andrew, in a hard and
+bitter tone, "but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall
+say, that Mary is not to blame, but those to blame- the one to
+blame- is that Frenchwoman."
+
+"Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!" said the old man
+in a low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some
+embarrassment, but then he suddenly jumped up and cried: "Be off, be
+off! Let not a trace of you remain here!..."
+
+Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess Mary persuaded
+him to stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did
+not leave his room and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne
+and Tikhon, but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next
+day, before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son's rooms. The boy,
+curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee,
+and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell
+into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this
+pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He
+sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father or
+regret at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms
+with him, and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more
+to him was that he sought and did not find in himself the former
+tenderness for his son which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing the
+boy and taking him on his knee.
+
+"Well, go on!" said his son.
+
+Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from his knee and went
+out of the room.
+
+As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily occupations, and
+especially on returning to the old conditions of life amid which he
+had been happy, weariness of life overcame him with its former
+intensity, and he hastened to escape from these memories and to find
+some work as soon as possible.
+
+"So you've decided to go, Andrew?" asked his sister.
+
+"Thank God that I can," replied Prince Andrew. "I am very sorry
+you can't."
+
+"Why do you say that?" replied Princess Mary. "Why do you say
+that, when you are going to this terrible war, and he is so old?
+Mademoiselle Bourienne says he has been asking about you...."
+
+As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled and her
+tears began to fall. Prince Andrew turned away and began pacing the
+room.
+
+"Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and what- what trash- can
+cause people misery!" he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess
+Mary.
+
+She understood that when speaking of "trash" he referred not only to
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man
+who had ruined his own happiness.
+
+"Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!" she said, touching
+his elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears.
+"I understand you" (she looked down). "Don't imagine that sorrow is
+the work of men. Men are His tools." She looked a little above
+Prince Andrew's head with the confident, accustomed look with which
+one looks at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. "Sorrow is
+sent by Him, not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not to
+blame. If you think someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We
+have no right to punish. And then you will know the happiness of
+forgiving."
+
+"If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman's virtue.
+But a man should not and cannot forgive and forget," he replied, and
+though till that moment he had not been thinking of Kuragin, all his
+unexpended anger suddenly swelled up in his heart.
+
+"If Mary is already persuading me forgive, it means that I ought
+long ago to have punished him," he thought. And giving her no
+further reply, he began thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he
+would meet Kuragin who he knew was now in the army.
+
+Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying that she
+knew how unhappy her father would be if Andrew left without being
+reconciled to him, but Prince Andrew replied that he would probably
+soon be back again from the army and would certainly write to his
+father, but that the longer he stayed now the more embittered their
+differences would become.
+
+"Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come from God, and men
+are never to blame," were the last words he heard from his sister when
+he took leave of her.
+
+"Then it must be so!" thought Prince Andrew as he drove out of the
+avenue from the house at Bald Hills. "She, poor innocent creature,
+is left to be victimized by an old man who has outlived his wits.
+The old man feels he is guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is
+growing up and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he
+will deceive or be deceived. And I am off to the army. Why? I myself
+don't know. I want to meet that man whom I despise, so as to give
+him a chance to kill and laugh at me!
+
+These conditions of life had been the same before, but then they
+were all connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only
+senseless things, lacking coherence, presented themselves one after
+another to Prince Andrew's mind.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the army at the
+end of June. The first army, with which was the Emperor, occupied
+the fortified camp at Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying
+to effect a junction with the first one from which it was said to be
+cut off by large French forces. Everyone was dissatisfied with the
+general course of affairs in the Russian army, but no one
+anticipated any danger of invasion of the Russian provinces, and no
+one thought the war would extend farther than the western, the Polish,
+provinces.
+
+Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had been
+assigned, on the bank of the Drissa. As there was not a single town or
+large village in the vicinity of the camp, the immense number of
+generals and courtiers accompanying the army were living in the best
+houses of the villages on both sides of the river, over a radius of
+six miles. Barclay de Tolly was quartered nearly three miles from
+the Emperor. He received Bolkonski stiffly and coldly and told him
+in his foreign accent that he would mention him to the Emperor for a
+decision as to his employment, but asked him meanwhile to remain on
+his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom Prince Andrew had hoped to find
+with the army, was not there. He had gone to Petersburg, but Prince
+Andrew was glad to hear this. His mind was occupied by the interests
+of the center that was conducting a gigantic war, and he was glad to
+be free for a while from the distraction caused by the thought of
+Kuragin. During the first four days, while no duties were required
+of him, Prince Andrew rode round the whole fortified camp and, by
+the aid of his own knowledge and by talks with experts, tried to
+form a definite opinion about it. But the question whether the camp
+was advantageous or disadvantageous remained for him undecided.
+Already from his military experience and what he had seen in the
+Austrian campaign, he had come to the conclusion that in war the
+most deeply considered plans have no significance and that all depends
+on the way unexpected movements of the enemy- that cannot be foreseen-
+are met, and on how and by whom the whole matter is handled. To
+clear up this last point for himself, Prince Andrew, utilizing his
+position and acquaintances, tried to fathom the character of the
+control of the army and of the men and parties engaged in it, and he
+deduced for himself the following of the state of affairs.
+
+While the Emperor had still been at Vilna, the forces had been
+divided into three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly,
+secondly, the army under Bagration, and thirdly, the one commanded
+by Tormasov. The Emperor was with the first army, but not as commander
+in chief. In the orders issued it was stated, not that the Emperor
+would take command, but only that he would be with the army. The
+Emperor, moreover, had with him not a commander in chief's staff but
+the imperial headquarters staff. In attendance on him was the head
+of the imperial staff, Quartermaster General Prince Volkonski, as well
+as generals, imperial aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials, and a large
+number of foreigners, but not the army staff. Besides these, there
+were in attendance on the Emperor without any definite appointments:
+Arakcheev, the ex-Minister of War; Count Bennigsen, the senior general
+in rank; the Grand Duke Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich; Count
+Rumyantsev, the Chancellor; Stein, a former Prussian minister;
+Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel, the chief author of the plan of
+campaign; Paulucci, an adjutant general and Sardinian emigre;
+Wolzogen- and many others. Though these men had no military
+appointment in the army, their position gave them influence, and often
+a corps commander, or even the commander in chief, did not know in
+what capacity he was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand Duke,
+Arakcheev, or Prince Volkonski, or was given this or that advice and
+did not know whether a certain order received in the form of advice
+emanated from the man who gave it or from the Emperor and whether it
+had to be executed or not. But this was only the external condition;
+the essential significance of the presence of the Emperor and of all
+these people, from a courtier's point of view (and in an Emperor's
+vicinity all became courtiers), was clear to everyone. It was this:
+the Emperor did not assume the title of commander in chief, but
+disposed of all the armies; the men around him were his assistants.
+Arakcheev was a faithful custodian to enforce order and acted as the
+sovereign's bodyguard. Bennigsen was a landlord in the Vilna
+province who appeared to be doing the honors of the district, but
+was in reality a good general, useful as an adviser and ready at
+hand to replace Barclay. The Grand Duke was there because it suited
+him to be. The ex-Minister Stein was there because his advice was
+useful and the Emperor Alexander held him in high esteem personally.
+Armfeldt virulently hated Napoleon and was a general full of
+self-confidence, a quality that always influenced Alexander.
+Paulucci was there because he was bold and decided in speech. The
+adjutants general were there because they always accompanied the
+Emperor, and lastly and chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn
+up the plan of campaign against Napoleon and, having induced Alexander
+to believe in the efficacy of that plan, was directing the whole
+business of the war. With Pfuel was Wolzogen, who expressed Pfuel's
+thoughts in a more comprehensible way than Pfuel himself (who was a
+harsh, bookish theorist, self-confident to the point of despising
+everyone else) was able to do.
+
+Besides these Russians and foreigners who propounded new and
+unexpected ideas every day- especially the foreigners, who did so with
+a boldness characteristic of people employed in a country not their
+own- there were many secondary personages accompanying the army
+because their principals were there.
+
+Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless,
+brilliant, and proud sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the following
+sharply defined subdivisions of and parties:
+
+The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents- military
+theorists who believed in a science of war with immutable laws- laws
+of oblique movements, outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his
+adherents demanded a retirement into the depths of the country in
+accordance with precise laws defined by a pseudo-theory of war, and
+they saw only barbarism, ignorance, or evil intention in every
+deviation from that theory. To this party belonged the foreign nobles,
+Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and others, chiefly Germans.
+
+The second party was directly opposed to the first; one extreme,
+as always happens, was met by representatives of the other. The
+members of this party were those who had demanded an advance from
+Vilna into Poland and freedom from all prearranged plans. Besides
+being advocates of bold action, this section also represented
+nationalism, which made them still more one-sided in the dispute. They
+were Russians: Bagration, Ermolov (who was beginning to come to the
+front), and others. At that time a famous joke of Ermolov's was
+being circulated, that as a great favor he had petitioned the
+Emperor to make him a German. The men of that party, remembering
+Suvorov, said that what one had to do was not to reason, or stick pins
+into maps, but to fight, beat the enemy, keep him out of Russia, and
+not let the army get discouraged.
+
+To the third party- in which the Emperor had most confidence-
+belonged the courtiers who tried to arrange compromises between the
+other two. The members of this party, chiefly civilians and to whom
+Arakcheev belonged, thought and said what men who have no
+convictions but wish to seem to have some generally say. They said
+that undoubtedly war, particularly against such a genius as
+Bonaparte (they called him Bonaparte now), needs most deeply devised
+plans and profound scientific knowledge and in that respect Pfuel
+was a genius, but at the same time it had to be acknowledged that
+the theorists are often one sided, and therefore one should not
+trust them absolutely, but should also listen to what Pfuel's
+opponents and practical men of experience in warfare had to say, and
+then choose a middle course. They insisted on the retention of the
+camp at Drissa, according to Pfuel's plan, but on changing the
+movements of the other armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim
+nor the other could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents
+of this third party.
+
+Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous representative was the
+Tsarevich, who could not forget his disillusionment at Austerlitz,
+where he had ridden out at the head of the Guards, in his casque and
+cavalry uniform as to a review, expecting to crush the French
+gallantly; but unexpectedly finding himself in the front line had
+narrowly escaped amid the general confusion. The men of this party had
+both the quality and the defect of frankness in their opinions. They
+feared Napoleon, recognized his strength and their own weakness, and
+frankly said so. They said: "Nothing but sorrow, shame, and ruin
+will come of all this! We have abandoned Vilna and Vitebsk and shall
+abandon Drissa. The only reasonable thing left to do is to conclude
+peace as soon as possible, before we are turned out of Petersburg."
+
+This view was very general in the upper army circles and found
+support also in Petersburg and from the chancellor, Rumyantsev, who,
+for other reasons of state, was in favor of peace.
+
+The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents of Barclay
+de Tolly, not so much as a man but as minister of war and commander in
+chief. "Be he what he may" (they always began like that), "he is an
+honest, practical man and we have nobody better. Give him real
+power, for war cannot be conducted successfully without unity of
+command, and he will show what he can do, as he did in Finland. If our
+army is well organized and strong and has withdrawn to Drissa
+without suffering any defeats, we owe this entirely to Barclay. If
+Barclay is now to be superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for
+Bennigsen showed his incapacity already in 1807."
+
+The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the contrary, that at
+any rate there was no one more active and experienced than
+Bennigsen: "and twist about as you may, you will have to come to
+Bennigsen eventually. Let the others make mistakes now!" said they,
+arguing that our retirement to Drissa was a most shameful reverse
+and an unbroken series of blunders. "The more mistakes that are made
+the better. It will at any rate be understood all the sooner that
+things cannot go on like this. What is wanted is not some Barclay or
+other, but a man like Bennigsen, who made his mark in 1807, and to
+whom Napoleon himself did justice- a man whose authority would be
+willingly recognized, and Bennigsen is the only such man."
+
+The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who are always
+to be found, especially around young sovereigns, and of whom there
+were particularly many round Alexander- generals and imperial
+aides-de-camp passionately devoted to the Emperor, not merely as a
+monarch but as a man, adoring him sincerely and disinterestedly, as
+Rostov had done in 1805, and who saw in him not only all the virtues
+but all human capabilities as well. These men, though enchanted with
+the sovereign for refusing the command of the army, yet blamed him for
+such excessive modesty, and only desired and insisted that their
+adored sovereign should abandon his diffidence and openly announce
+that he would place himself at the head of the army, gather round
+him a commander in chief's staff, and, consulting experienced
+theoreticians and practical men where necessary, would himself lead
+the troops, whose spirits would thereby be raised to the highest
+pitch.
+
+The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to
+the others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither
+peace nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa
+or anywhere else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor
+Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing- as much advantage
+and pleasure for themselves as possible. In the troubled waters of
+conflicting and intersecting intrigues that eddied about the Emperor's
+headquarters, it was possible to succeed in many ways unthinkable at
+other times. A man who simply wished to retain his lucrative post
+would today agree with Pfuel, tomorrow with his opponent, and the
+day after, merely to avoid responsibility or to please the Emperor,
+would declare that he had no opinion at all on the matter. Another who
+wished to gain some advantage would attract the Emperor's attention by
+loudly advocating the very thing the Emperor had hinted at the day
+before, and would dispute and shout at the council, beating his breast
+and challenging those who did not agree with him to duels, thereby
+proving that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the common good.
+A third, in the absence of opponents, between two councils would
+simply solicit a special gratuity for his faithful services, well
+knowing that at that moment people would be too busy to refuse him.
+A fourth while seemingly overwhelmed with work would often come
+accidentally under the Emperor's eye. A fifth, to achieve his
+long-cherished aim of dining with the Emperor, would stubbornly insist
+on the correctness or falsity of some newly emerging opinion and for
+this object would produce arguments more or less forcible and correct.
+
+All the men of this party were fishing for rubles, decorations,
+and promotions, and in this pursuit watched only the weathercock of
+imperial favor, and directly they noticed it turning in any direction,
+this whole drone population of the army began blowing hard that way,
+so that it was all the harder for the Emperor to turn it elsewhere.
+Amid the uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious
+danger giving a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid
+this vortex of intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings,
+and the diversity of race among these people- this eighth and
+largest party of those preoccupied with personal interests imparted
+great confusion and obscurity to the common task. Whatever question
+arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their
+buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum
+drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.
+
+From among all these parties, just at the time Prince Andrew reached
+the army, another, a ninth party, was being formed and was beginning
+to raise its voice. This was the party of the elders, reasonable men
+experienced and capable in state affairs, who, without sharing any
+of those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached view of
+what was going on at the staff at headquarters and to consider means
+of escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, and weakness.
+
+The men of this party said and thought that what was wrong
+resulted chiefly from the Emperor's presence in the army with his
+military court and from the consequent presence there of an
+indefinite, conditional, and unsteady fluctuation of relations,
+which is in place at court but harmful in an army; that a sovereign
+should reign but not command the army, and that the only way out of
+the position would be for the Emperor and his court to leave the army;
+that the mere presence of the Emperor paralyzed the action of fifty
+thousand men required to secure his personal safety, and that the
+worst commander in chief if independent would be better than the
+very best one trammeled by the presence and authority of the monarch.
+
+Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at Drissa,
+Shishkov, the Secretary of State and one of the chief
+representatives of this party, wrote a letter to the Emperor which
+Arakcheev and Balashev agreed to sign. In this letter, availing
+himself of permission given him by the Emperor to discuss the
+general course of affairs, he respectfully suggested- on the plea that
+it was necessary for the sovereign to arouse a warlike spirit in the
+people of the capital- that the Emperor should leave the army.
+
+That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to
+them to defend their country- the very incitement which was the
+chief cause of Russia's triumph in so far as it was produced by the
+Tsar's personal presence in Moscow- was suggested to the Emperor,
+and accepted by him, as a pretext for quitting the army.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor when
+Barclay, one day at dinner, informed Bolkonski that the sovereign
+wished to see him personally, to question him about Turkey, and that
+Prince Andrew was to present himself at Bennigsen's quarters at six
+that evening.
+
+News was received at the Emperor's quarters that very day of a fresh
+movement by Napoleon which might endanger the army- news
+subsequently found to be false. And that morning Colonel Michaud had
+ridden round the Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had
+pointed out to him that this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel,
+and till then considered a chef-d'oeuvre of tactical science which
+would ensure Napoleon's destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the
+destruction of the Russian army.
+
+Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen's quarters- a country gentleman's
+house of moderate size, situated on the very banks of the river.
+Neither Bennigsen nor the Emperor was there, but Chernyshev, the
+Emperor's aide-de-camp, received Bolkonski and informed him that the
+Emperor, accompanied by General Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci, had
+gone a second time that day to inspect the fortifications of the
+Drissa camp, of the suitability of which serious doubts were beginning
+to be felt.
+
+Chernyshev was sitting at a window in the first room with a French
+novel in his hand. This room had probably been a music room; there was
+still an organ in it on which some rugs were piled, and in one
+corner stood the folding bedstead of Bennigsen's adjutant. This
+adjutant was also there and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding,
+evidently exhausted by work or by feasting. Two doors led from the
+room, one straight on into what had been the drawing room, and
+another, on the right, to the study. Through the first door came the
+sound of voices conversing in German and occasionally in French. In
+that drawing room were gathered, by the Emperor's wish, not a military
+council (the Emperor preferred indefiniteness), but certain persons
+whose opinions he wished to know in view of the impending
+difficulties. It was not a council of war, but, as it were, a
+council to elucidate certain questions for the Emperor personally.
+To this semicouncil had been invited the Swedish General Armfeldt,
+Adjutant General Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had referred
+to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein who was
+not a military man at all, and Pfuel himself, who, as Prince Andrew
+had heard, was the mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew had
+an opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel arrived soon
+after himself and, in passing through to the drawing room, stopped a
+minute to speak to Chernyshev.
+
+At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a Russian general,
+which fitted him badly like a fancy costume, seemed familiar to Prince
+Andrew, though he saw him now for the first time. There was about
+him something of Weyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German
+theorist-generals whom Prince Andrew had seen in 1805, but he was more
+typical than any of them. Prince Andrew had never yet seen a German
+theorist in whom all the characteristics of those others were united
+to such an extent.
+
+Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of coarse, robust
+build, broad in the hips, and with prominent shoulder blades. His face
+was much wrinkled and his eyes deep set. His hair had evidently been
+hastily brushed smooth in front of the temples, but stuck up behind in
+quaint little tufts. He entered the room, looking restlessly and
+angrily around, as if afraid of everything in that large apartment.
+Awkwardly holding up his sword, he addressed Chernyshev and asked in
+German where the Emperor was. One could see that he wished to pass
+through the rooms as quickly as possible, finish with the bows and
+greetings, and sit down to business in front of a map, where he
+would feel at home. He nodded hurriedly in reply to Chernyshev, and
+smiled ironically on hearing that the sovereign was inspecting the
+fortifications that he, Pfuel, had planned in accord with his
+theory. He muttered something to himself abruptly and in a bass voice,
+as self-assured Germans do- it might have been "stupid fellow"... or
+"the whole affair will be ruined," or "something absurd will come of
+it."... Prince Andrew did not catch what he said and would have passed
+on, but Chernyshev introduced him to Pfuel, remarking that Prince
+Andrew was just back from Turkey where the war had terminated so
+fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced- not so much at Prince Andrew as
+past him- and said, with a laugh: "That must have been a fine tactical
+war"; and, laughing contemptuously, went on into the room from which
+the sound of voices was heard.
+
+Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly
+disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that they had dared to
+inspect and criticize his camp in his absence. From this short
+interview with Pfuel, Prince Andrew, thanks to his Austerlitz
+experiences, was able to form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel was
+one of those hopelessly and immutably self-confident men,
+self-confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are,
+because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract
+notion- science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth.
+A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally,
+both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An
+Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized
+state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what
+he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is
+undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is
+excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is
+self-assured just because he knows nothing does not want to know
+anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The
+German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive
+than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth-
+science- which he himself has invented but which is for him the
+absolute truth.
+
+Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a science- the theory of
+oblique movements deduced by him from the history of Frederick the
+Great's wars, and all he came across in the history of more recent
+warfare seemed to him absurd and barbarous- monstrous collisions in
+which so many blunders were committed by both sides that these wars
+could not be called wars, they did not accord with the theory, and
+therefore could not serve as material for science.
+
+In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the plan of
+campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstadt, but he did not see the
+least proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of
+that war. On the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were,
+in his opinion, the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with
+characteristically gleeful sarcasm he would remark, "There, I said the
+whole affair would go to the devil!" Pfuel was one of those
+theoreticians who so love their theory that they lose sight of the
+theory's object- its practical application. His love of theory made
+him hate everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He was
+even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in
+practice from the theory only proved to him the accuracy of his
+theory.
+
+He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernyshev about the
+present war, with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all
+will go wrong, and who is not displeased that it should be so. The
+unbrushed tufts of hair sticking up behind and the hastily brushed
+hair on his temples expressed this most eloquently.
+
+He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous sounds of
+his voice were at once heard from there.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Prince Andrew's eyes were still following Pfuel out of the room when
+Count Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and nodding to Bolkonski, but not
+pausing, went into the study, giving instructions to his adjutant as
+he went. The Emperor was following him, and Bennigsen had hastened
+on to make some preparations and to be ready to receive the sovereign.
+Chernyshev and Prince Andrew went out into the porch, where the
+Emperor, who looked fatigued, was dismounting. Marquis Paulucci was
+talking to him with particular warmth and the Emperor, with his head
+bent to the left, was listening with a dissatisfied air. The Emperor
+moved forward evidently wishing to end the conversation, but the
+flushed and excited Italian, oblivious of decorum, followed him and
+continued to speak.
+
+"And as for the man who advised forming this camp- the Drissa camp,"
+said Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince
+Andrew scanned his unfamiliar face, "as to that person, sire..."
+continued Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain
+himself, "the man who advised the Drissa camp- I see no alternative
+but the lunatic asylum or the gallows!"
+
+Without heeding the end of the Italian's remarks, and as though
+not hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing Bolkonski, addressed him
+graciously.
+
+"I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are meeting,
+and wait for me."
+
+The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by Prince Peter
+Mikhaylovich Volkonski and Baron Stein, and the door closed behind
+them. Prince Andrew, taking advantage of the Emperor's permission,
+accompanied Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the drawing
+room where the council was assembled.
+
+Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski occupied the position, as it
+were, of chief of the Emperor's staff. He came out of the study into
+the drawing room with some maps which he spread on a table, and put
+questions on which he wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen
+present. What had happened was that news (which afterwards proved to
+be false) had been received during the night of a movement by the
+French to outflank the Drissa camp.
+
+The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet the
+difficulty that presented itself, unexpectedly proposed a perfectly
+new position away from the Petersburg and Moscow roads. The reason for
+this was inexplicable (unless he wished to show that he, too, could
+have an opinion), but he urged that at this point the army should
+unite and there await the enemy. It was plain that Armfeldt had
+thought out that plan long ago and now expounded it not so much to
+answer the questions put- which, in fact, his plan did not answer-
+as to avail himself of the opportunity to air it. It was one of the
+millions of proposals, one as good as another, that could be made as
+long as it was quite unknown what character the war would take. Some
+disputed his arguments, others defended them. Young Count Toll
+objected to the Swedish general's views more warmly than anyone
+else, and in the course of the dispute drew from his side pocket a
+well-filled notebook, which he asked permission to read to them. In
+these voluminous notes Toll suggested another scheme, totally
+different from Armfeldt's or Pfuel's plan of campaign. In answer to
+Toll, Paulucci suggested an advance and an attack, which, he urged,
+could alone extricate us from the present uncertainty and from the
+trap (as he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated.
+
+During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter, Wolzogen
+(his "bridge" in court relations), were silent. Pfuel only snorted
+contemptuously and turned away, to show that he would never demean
+himself by replying to such nonsense as he was now hearing. So when
+Prince Volkonski, who was in the chair, called on him to give his
+opinion, he merely said:
+
+"Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a splendid position
+with an exposed rear, or why not this Italian gentleman's attack- very
+fine, or a retreat, also good! Why ask me?" said he. "Why, you
+yourselves know everything better than I do."
+
+But when Volkonski said, with a frown, that it was in the
+Emperor's name that he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose and, suddenly
+growing animated, began to speak:
+
+"Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled, everybody
+thought they knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How
+mend matters? There is nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me
+must be strictly adhered to," said he, drumming on the table with
+his bony fingers. "What is the difficulty? Nonsense, childishness!"
+
+He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began proving that no
+eventuality could alter the efficiency of the Drissa camp, that
+everything had been foreseen, and that if the enemy were really
+going to outflank it, the enemy would inevitably be destroyed.
+
+Paulucci, who did not know German, began questioning him in
+French. Wolzogen came to the assistance of his chief, who spoke French
+badly, and began translating for him, hardly able to keep pace with
+Pfuel, who was rapidly demonstrating that not only all that had
+happened, but all that could happen, had been foreseen in his
+scheme, and that if there were now any difficulties the whole fault
+lay in the fact that his plan had not been precisely executed. He kept
+laughing sarcastically, he demonstrated, and at last contemptuously
+ceased to demonstrate, like a mathematician who ceases to prove in
+various ways the accuracy of a problem that has already been proved.
+Wolzogen took his place and continued to explain his views in
+French, every now and then turning to Pfuel and saying, "Is it not so,
+your excellency?" But Pfuel, like a man heated in a fight who
+strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at his own supporter,
+Wolzogen:
+
+"Well, of course, what more is there to explain?"
+
+Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in
+French. Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to
+Volkonski in Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence.
+
+Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most with Pfuel, angry,
+determined, and absurdly self-confident as he was. Of all those
+present, evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself,
+nursed no hatred against anyone, and only desired that the plan,
+formed on a theory arrived at by years of toil, should be carried out.
+He was ridiculous, and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet he inspired
+involuntary respect by his boundless devotion to an idea. Besides
+this, the remarks of all except Pfuel had one common trait that had
+not been noticeable at the council of war in 1805: there was now a
+panic fear of Napoleon's genius, which, though concealed, was
+noticeable in every rejoinder. Everything was assumed to be possible
+for Napoleon, they expected him from every side, and invoked his
+terrible name to shatter each other's proposals. Pfuel alone seemed to
+consider Napoleon a barbarian like everyone else who opposed his
+theory. But besides this feeling of respect, Pfuel evoked pity in
+Prince Andrew. From the tone in which the courtiers addressed him
+and the way Paulucci had allowed himself to speak of him to the
+Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation in Pfuel's own
+expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel himself
+felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence and
+grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly
+brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he
+concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was
+evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his
+theory by a huge experiment and proving its soundness to the whole
+world was slipping away from him.
+
+The discussions continued a long time, and the longer they lasted
+the more heated became the disputes, culminating in shouts and
+personalities, and the less was it possible to arrive at any general
+conclusion from all that had been said. Prince Andrew, listening to
+this polyglot talk and to these surmises, plans, refutations, and
+shouts, felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A thought
+that had long since and often occurred to him during his military
+activities- the idea that there is not and cannot be any science of
+war, and that therefore there can be no such thing as a military
+genius- now appeared to him an obvious truth. "What theory and science
+is possible about a matter the conditions and circumstances of which
+are unknown and cannot be defined, especially when the strength of the
+acting forces cannot be ascertained? No one was or is able to
+foresee in what condition our or the enemy's armies will be in a day's
+time, and no one can gauge the force of this or that detachment.
+Sometimes- when there is not a coward at the front to shout, 'We are
+cut off!' and start running, but a brave and jolly lad who shouts,
+'Hurrah!'- a detachment of five thousand is worth thirty thousand,
+as at Schon Grabern, while at times fifty thousand run from eight
+thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can there be in a matter in
+which, as in all practical matters, nothing can be defined and
+everything depends on innumerable conditions, the significance of
+which is determined at a particular moment which arrives no one
+knows when? Armfeldt says our army is cut in half, and Paulucci says
+we have got the French army between two fires; Michaud says that the
+worthlessness of the Drissa camp lies in having the river behind it,
+and Pfuel says that is what constitutes its strength; Toll proposes
+one plan, Armfeldt another, and they are all good and all bad, and the
+advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at the moment of trial.
+And why do they all speak of a 'military genius'? Is a man a genius
+who can order bread to be brought up at the right time and say who
+is to go to the right and who to the left? It is only because military
+men are invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants flatter
+power, attributing to it qualities of genius it does not possess.
+The best generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid or
+absent-minded men. Bagration was the best, Napoleon himself admitted
+that. And of Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied
+face on the field of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander
+not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence
+of the highest and best human attributes- love, poetry, tenderness,
+and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly
+convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will
+not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave
+leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity,
+or think of what is just and unjust. It is understandable that a
+theory of their 'genius' was invented for them long ago because they
+have power! The success of a military action depends not on them,
+but on the man in the ranks who shouts, 'We are lost!' or who
+shouts, 'Hurrah!' And only in the ranks can one serve with assurance
+of being useful."
+
+So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking, and he
+roused himself only when Paulucci called him and everyone was leaving.
+
+At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince Andrew where he
+would like to serve, and Prince Andrew lost his standing in court
+circles forever by not asking to remain attached to the sovereign's
+person, but for permission to serve in the army.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostov had received a letter
+from his parents in which they told him briefly of Natasha's illness
+and the breaking off of her engagement to Prince Andrew (which they
+explained by Natasha's having rejected him) and again asked Nicholas
+to retire from the army and return home. On receiving this letter,
+Nicholas did not even make any attempt to get leave of absence or to
+retire from the army, but wrote to his parents that he was sorry
+Natasha was ill and her engagement broken off, and that he would do
+all he could to meet their wishes. To Sonya he wrote separately.
+
+"Adored friend of my soul!" he wrote. "Nothing but honor could
+keep me from returning to the country. But now, at the commencement of
+the campaign, I should feel dishonored, not only in my comrades'
+eyes but in my own, if I preferred my own happiness to my love and
+duty to the Fatherland. But this shall be our last separation. Believe
+me, directly the war is over, if I am still alive and still loved by
+you, I will throw up everything and fly to you, to press you forever
+to my ardent breast."
+
+It was, in fact, only the commencement of the campaign that
+prevented Rostov from returning home as he had promised and marrying
+Sonya. The autumn in Otradnoe with the hunting, and the winter with
+the Christmas holidays and Sonya's love, had opened out to him a vista
+of tranquil rural joys and peace such as he had never known before,
+and which now allured him. "A splendid wife, children, a good pack
+of hounds, a dozen leashes of smart borzois, agriculture, neighbors,
+service by election..." thought he. But now the campaign was
+beginning, and he had to remain with his regiment. And since it had to
+be so, Nicholas Rostov, as was natural to him, felt contented with the
+life he led in the regiment and was able to find pleasure in that
+life.
+
+On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been joyfully
+welcomed by his comrades, was sent to obtain remounts and brought back
+from the Ukraine excellent horses which pleased him and earned him
+commendation from his commanders. During his absence he had been
+promoted captain, and when the regiment was put on war footing with an
+increase in numbers, he was again allotted his old squadron.
+
+The campaign began, the regiment was moved into Poland on double
+pay, new officers arrived, new men and horses, and above all everybody
+was infected with the merrily excited mood that goes with the
+commencement of a war, and Rostov, conscious of his advantageous
+position in the regiment, devoted himself entirely to the pleasures
+and interests of military service, though he knew that sooner or later
+he would have to relinquish them.
+
+The troops retired from Vilna for various complicated reasons of
+state, political and strategic. Each step of the retreat was
+accompanied by a complicated interplay of interests, arguments, and
+passions at headquarters. For the Pavlograd hussars, however, the
+whole of this retreat during the finest period of summer and with
+sufficient supplies was a very simple and agreeable business.
+
+It was only at headquarters that there was depression, uneasiness,
+and intriguing; in the body of the army they did not ask themselves
+where they were going or why. If they regretted having to retreat,
+it was only because they had to leave billets they had grown
+accustomed to, or some pretty young Polish lady. If the thought that
+things looked bad chanced to enter anyone's head, he tried to be as
+cheerful as befits a good soldier and not to think of the general
+trend of affairs, but only of the task nearest to hand. First they
+camped gaily before Vilna, making acquaintance with the Polish
+landowners, preparing for reviews and being reviewed by the Emperor
+and other high commanders. Then came an order to retreat to Sventsyani
+and destroy any provisions they could not carry away with them.
+Sventsyani was remembered by the hussars only as the drunken camp, a
+name the whole army gave to their encampment there, and because many
+complaints were made against the troops, who, taking advantage of
+the order to collect provisions, took also horses, carriages, and
+carpets from the Polish proprietors. Rostov remembered Sventsyani,
+because on the first day of their arrival at that small town he
+changed his sergeant major and was unable to manage all the drunken
+men of his squadron who, unknown to him, had appropriated five barrels
+of old beer. From Sventsyani they retired farther and farther to
+Drissa, and thence again beyond Drissa, drawing near to the frontier
+of Russia proper.
+
+On the thirteenth of July the Pavlograds took part in a serious
+action for the first time.
+
+On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there was a heavy
+storm of rain and hail. In general, the summer of 18l2 was
+remarkable for its storms.
+
+The two Pavlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a field of rye,
+which was already in ear but had been completely trodden down by
+cattle and horses. The rain was descending in torrents, and Rostov,
+with a young officer named Ilyin, his protege, was sitting in a
+hastily constructed shelter. An officer of their regiment, with long
+mustaches extending onto his cheeks, who after riding to the staff had
+been overtaken by the rain, entered Rostov's shelter.
+
+"I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of Raevski's
+exploit?"
+
+And the officer gave them details of the Saltanov battle, which he
+had heard at the staff.
+
+Rostov, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as the water
+trickled down his neck, listened inattentively, with an occasional
+glance at Ilyin, who was pressing close to him. This officer, a lad of
+sixteen who had recently joined the regiment, was now in the same
+relation to Nicholas that Nicholas had been to Denisov seven years
+before. Ilyin tried to imitate Rostov in everything and adored him
+as a girl might have done.
+
+Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke
+grandiloquently of the Saltanov dam being "a Russian Thermopylae," and
+of how a deed worthy of antiquity had been performed by General
+Raevski. He recounted how Raevski had led his two sons onto the dam
+under terrific fire and had charged with them beside him. Rostov heard
+the story and not only said nothing to encourage Zdrzhinski's
+enthusiasm but, on the contrary, looked like a man ashamed of what
+he was hearing, though with no intention of contradicting it. Since
+the campaigns of Austerlitz and of 1807 Rostov knew by experience that
+men always lie when describing military exploits, as he himself had
+done when recounting them; besides that, he had experience enough to
+know that nothing happens in war at all as we can imagine or relate
+it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski's tale, nor did he like
+Zdrzhinski himself who, with his mustaches extending over his
+cheeks, bent low over the face of his hearer, as was his habit, and
+crowded Rostov in the narrow shanty. Rostov looked at him in
+silence. "In the first place, there must have been such a confusion
+and crowding on the dam that was being attacked that if Raevski did
+lead his sons there, it could have had no effect except perhaps on
+some dozen men nearest to him," thought he, "the rest could not have
+seen how or with whom Raevski came onto the dam. And even those who
+did see it would not have been much stimulated by it, for what had
+they to do with Raevski's tender paternal feelings when their own
+skins were in danger? And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did
+not depend on whether they took the Saltanov dam or not, as we are
+told was the case at Thermopylae. So why should he have made such a
+sacrifice? And why expose his own children in the battle? I would
+not have taken my brother Petya there, or even Ilyin, who's a stranger
+to me but a nice lad, but would have tried to put them somewhere under
+cover," Nicholas continued to think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But
+he did not express his thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had
+gained experience. He knew that this tale redounded to the glory of
+our arms and so one had to pretend not to doubt it. And he acted
+accordingly.
+
+"I can't stand this any more," said Ilyin, noticing that Rostov
+did not relish Zdrzhinski's conversation. "My stockings and shirt...
+and the water is running on my seat! I'll go and look for shelter. The
+rain seems less heavy."
+
+Ilyin went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.
+
+Five minutes later Ilyin, splashing through the mud, came running
+back to the shanty.
+
+"Hurrah! Rostov, come quick! I've found it! About two hundred
+yards away there's a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can
+at least get dry there, and Mary Hendrikhovna's there."
+
+Mary Hendrikhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty
+young German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether
+from lack of means or because he did not like to part from his young
+wife in the early days of their marriage, took her about with him
+wherever the hussar regiment went and his jealousy had become a
+standing joke among the hussar officers.
+
+Rostov threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrushka to
+follow with the things, and- now slipping in the mud, now splashing
+right through it- set off with Ilyin in the lessening rain and the
+darkness that was occasionally rent by distant lightning.
+
+"Rostov, where are you?"
+
+"Here. What lightning!" they called to one another.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+In the tavern, before which stood the doctor's covered cart, there
+were already some five officers. Mary Hendrikhovna, a plump little
+blonde German, in a dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a
+broad bench in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep
+behind her. Rostov and Ilyin, on entering the room, were welcomed with
+merry shouts and laughter.
+
+"Dear me, how jolly we are!" said Rostov laughing.
+
+"And why do you stand there gaping?"
+
+"What swells they are! Why, the water streams from them! Don't
+make our drawing room so wet."
+
+"Don't mess Mary Hendrikhovna's dress!" cried other voices.
+
+Rostov and Ilyin hastened to find a corner where they could change
+into dry clothes without offending Mary Hendrikhovna's modesty. They
+were going into a tiny recess behind a partition to change, but
+found it completely filled by three officers who sat playing cards
+by the light of a solitary candle on an empty box, and these
+officers would on no account yield their position. Mary Hendrikhovna
+obliged them with the loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and
+behind that screen Rostov and Ilyin, helped by Lavrushka who had
+brought their kits, changed their wet things for dry ones.
+
+A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was
+found, fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small
+samovar was produced and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and
+having asked Mary Hendrikhovna to preside, they all crowded round her.
+One offered her a clean handkerchief to wipe her charming hands,
+another spread a jacket under her little feet to keep them from the
+damp, another hung his coat over the window to keep out the draft, and
+yet another waved the flies off her husband's face, lest he should
+wake up.
+
+"Leave him alone," said Mary Hendrikhovna, smiling timidly and
+happily. "He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night."
+
+"Oh, no, Mary Hendrikhovna," replied the officer, "one must look
+after the doctor. Perhaps he'll take pity on me someday, when it comes
+to cutting off a leg or an arm for me."
+
+There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy that one
+could not make out whether the tea was strong or weak, and the samovar
+held only six tumblers of water, but this made it all the pleasanter
+to take turns in order of seniority to receive one's tumbler from Mary
+Hendrikhovna's plump little hands with their short and not overclean
+nails. All the officers appeared to be, and really were, in love
+with her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the partition
+soon left their game and came over to the samovar, yielding to the
+general mood of courting Mary Hendrikhovna. She, seeing herself
+surrounded by such brilliant and polite young men, beamed with
+satisfaction, try as she might to hide it, and perturbed as she
+evidently was each time her husband moved in his sleep behind her.
+
+There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful than anything
+else, but it took too long to dissolve, so it was decided that Mary
+Hendrikhovna should stir the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostov
+received his tumbler, and adding some rum to it asked Mary
+Hendrikhovna to stir it.
+
+"But you take it without sugar?" she said, smiling all the time,
+as if everything she said and everything the others said was very
+amusing and had a double meaning.
+
+"It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand should
+stir my tea."
+
+Mary Hendrikhovna assented and began looking for the spoon which
+someone meanwhile had pounced on.
+
+"Use your finger, Mary Hendrikhovna, it will be still nicer," said
+Rostov.
+
+"Too hot!" she replied, blushing with pleasure.
+
+Ilyin put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and brought it
+to Mary Hendrikhovna, asking her to stir it with her finger.
+
+"This is my cup," said he. "Only dip your finger in it and I'll
+drink it all up."
+
+When they had emptied the samovar, Rostov took a pack of cards and
+proposed that they should play "Kings" with Mary Hendrikhovna. They
+drew lots to settle who should make up her set. At Rostov's suggestion
+it was agreed that whoever became "King" should have the right to kiss
+Mary Hendrikhovna's hand, and that the "Booby" should go to refill and
+reheat the samovar for the doctor when the latter awoke.
+
+"Well, but supposing Mary Hendrikhovna is 'King'?" asked Ilyin.
+
+"As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!"
+
+They had hardly begun to play before the doctor's disheveled head
+suddenly appeared from behind Mary Hendrikhovna. He had been awake for
+some time, listening to what was being said, and evidently found
+nothing entertaining or amusing in what was going on. His face was sad
+and depressed. Without greeting the officers, he scratched himself and
+asked to be allowed to pass as they were blocking the way. As soon
+as he had left the room all the officers burst into loud laughter
+and Mary Hendrikhovna blushed till her eyes filled with tears and
+thereby became still more attractive to them. Returning from the yard,
+the doctor told his wife (who had ceased to smile so happily, and
+looked at him in alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had
+ceased and they must go to sleep in their covered cart, or
+everything in it would be stolen.
+
+"But I'll send an orderly.... Two of them!" said Rostov. "What an
+idea, doctor!"
+
+"I'll stand guard on it myself!" said Ilyin.
+
+"No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have not slept for
+two nights," replied the doctor, and he sat down morosely beside his
+wife, waiting for the game to end.
+
+Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers
+grew still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from
+laughter, for which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts. When
+he had gone, taking his wife with him, and had settled down with her
+in their covered cart, the officers lay down in the tavern, covering
+themselves with their wet cloaks, but they did not sleep for a long
+time; now they exchanged remarks, recalling the doctor's uneasiness
+and his wife's delight, now they ran out into the porch and reported
+what was taking place in the covered trap. Several times Rostov,
+covering his head, tried to go to sleep, but some remark would
+arouse him and conversation would be resumed, to the accompaniment
+of unreasoning, merry, childlike laughter.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+It was nearly three o'clock but no one was yet asleep, when the
+quartermaster appeared with an order to move on to the little town
+of Ostrovna. Still laughing and talking, the officers began
+hurriedly getting ready and again boiled again boiled some muddy water
+in the samovar. But Rostov went off to his squadron without waiting
+for tea. Day was breaking, the rain had ceased, and the clouds were
+dispersing. It felt damp and cold, especially in clothes that were
+still moist. As they left the tavern in the twilight of the dawn,
+Rostov and Ilyin both glanced under the wet and glistening leather
+hood of the doctor's cart, from under the apron of which his feet were
+sticking out, and in the middle of which his wife's nightcap was
+visible and her sleepy breathing audible.
+
+"She really is a dear little thing," said Rostov to Ilyin, who was
+following him.
+
+"A charming woman!" said Ilyin, with all the gravity of a boy of
+sixteen.
+
+Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the road. The
+command was heard to "mount" and the soldiers crossed themselves and
+mounted. Rostov riding in front gave the order "Forward!" and the
+hussars, with clanking sabers and subdued talk, their horses' hoofs
+splashing in the mud, defiled in fours and moved along the broad
+road planted with birch trees on each side, following the infantry and
+a battery that had gone on in front.
+
+Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east, were scudding
+before the wind. It was growing lighter and lighter. That curly
+grass which always grows by country roadsides became clearly
+visible, still wet with the night's rain; the drooping branches of the
+birches, also wet, swayed in the wind and flung down bright drops of
+water to one side. The soldiers' faces were more and more clearly
+visible. Rostov, always closely followed by Ilyin, rode along the side
+of the road between two rows of birch trees.
+
+When campaigning, Rostov allowed himself the indulgence of riding
+not a regimental but a Cossack horse. A judge of horses and a
+sportsman, he had lately procured himself a large, fine, mettlesome,
+Donets horse, dun-colored, with light mane and tail, and when he
+rode it no one could outgallop him. To ride this horse was a
+pleasure to him, and he thought of the horse, of the morning, of the
+doctor's wife, but not once of the impending danger.
+
+Formerly, when going into action, Rostov had felt afraid; now he had
+not the least feeling of fear. He was fearless, not because he had
+grown used to being under fire (one cannot grow used to danger), but
+because he had learned how to manage his thoughts when in danger. He
+had grown accustomed when going into action to think about anything
+but what would seem most likely to interest him- the impending danger.
+During the first period of his service, hard as he tried and much as
+he reproached himself with cowardice, he had not been able to do this,
+but with time it had come of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyin under
+the birch trees, occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met
+his hand, sometimes touching his horse's side with his foot, or,
+without turning round, handing a pipe he had finished to an hussar
+riding behind him, with as calm and careless an air as though he
+were merely out for a ride. He glanced with pity at the excited face
+of Ilyin, who talked much and in great agitation. He knew from
+experience the tormenting expectation of terror and death the cornet
+was suffering and knew that only time could help him.
+
+As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky beneath the
+clouds, the wind fell, as if it dared not spoil the beauty of the
+summer morning after the storm; drops still continued to fall, but
+vertically now, and all was still. The whole sun appeared on the
+horizon and disappeared behind a long narrow cloud that hung above it.
+A few minutes later it reappeared brighter still from behind the top
+of the cloud, tearing its edge. Everything grew bright and
+glittered. And with that light, and as if in reply to it, came the
+sound of guns ahead of them.
+
+Before Rostov had had time to consider and determine the distance of
+that firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstoy's adjutant came galloping from
+Vitebsk with orders to advance at a trot along the road.
+
+The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and the battery- which
+had also quickened their pace- rode down a hill, and passing through
+an empty and deserted village again ascended. The horses began to
+lather and the men to flush.
+
+"Halt! Dress your ranks!" the order of the regimental commander
+was heard ahead. "Forward by the left. Walk, march!" came the order
+from in front.
+
+And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the left
+flank of our position, halted behind our Uhlans who were in the
+front line. To the right stood our infantry in a dense column: they
+were the reserve. Higher up the hill, on the very horizon, our guns
+were visible through the wonderfully clear air, brightly illuminated
+by slanting morning sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could be
+seen the enemy's columns and guns. Our advanced line, already in
+action, could be heard briskly exchanging shots with the enemy in
+the dale.
+
+At these sounds, long unheard, Rostov's spirits rose, as at the
+strains of the merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap! cracked the shots,
+now together, now several quickly one after another. Again all was
+silent and then again it sounded as if someone were walking on
+detonators and exploding them.
+
+The hussars remained in the same place for about an hour. A
+cannonade began. Count Ostermann with his suite rode up behind the
+squadron, halted, spoke to the commander of the regiment, and rode
+up the hill to the guns.
+
+After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the Uhlans.
+
+"Form column! Prepare to charge!"
+
+The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the
+cavalry to pass. The Uhlans started, the streamers on their spears
+fluttering, and trotted downhill toward the French cavalry which was
+seen below to the left.
+
+As soon as the Uhlans descended the hill, the hussars were ordered
+up the hill to support the battery. As they took the places vacated by
+the Uhlans, bullets came from the front, whining and whistling, but
+fell spent without taking effect.
+
+The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an even more
+pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostov than the previous sounds
+of firing. Drawing himself up, he viewed the field of battle opening
+out before him from the hill, and with his whole soul followed the
+movement of the Uhlans. They swooped down close to the French
+dragoons, something confused happened there amid the smoke, and five
+minutes later our Uhlans were galloping back, not to the place they
+had occupied but more to the left, and among the orange-colored Uhlans
+on chestnut horses and behind them, in a large group, blue French
+dragoons on gray horses could be seen.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Rostov, with his keen sportsman's eye, was one of the first to catch
+sight of these blue French dragoons pursuing our Uhlans. Nearer and
+nearer in disorderly crowds came the Uhlans and the French dragoons
+pursuing them. He could already see how these men, who looked so small
+at the foot of the hill, jostled and overtook one another, waving
+their arms and their sabers in the air.
+
+Rostov gazed at what was happening before him as at a hunt. He
+felt instinctively that if the hussars struck at the French dragoons
+now, the latter could not withstand them, but if a charge was to be
+made it must be done now, at that very moment, or it would be too
+late. He looked around. A captain, standing beside him, was gazing
+like himself with eyes fixed on the cavalry below them.
+
+"Andrew Sevastyanych!" said Rostov. "You know, we could crush
+them...."
+
+"A fine thing too!" replied the captain, "and really..."
+
+Rostov, without waiting to hear him out, touched his horse, galloped
+to the front of his squadron, and before he had time to finish
+giving the word of command, the whole squadron, sharing his feeling,
+was following him. Rostov himself did not know how or why he did it.
+He acted as he did when hunting, without reflecting or considering. He
+saw the dragoons near and that they were galloping in disorder; he
+knew they could not withstand an attack- knew there was only that
+moment and that if he let it slip it would not return. The bullets
+were whining and whistling so stimulatingly around him and his horse
+was so eager to go that he could not restrain himself. He touched
+his horse, gave the word of command, and immediately, hearing behind
+him the tramp of the horses of his deployed squadron, rode at full
+trot downhill toward the dragoons. Hardly had they reached the
+bottom of the hill before their pace instinctively changed to a
+gallop, which grew faster and faster as they drew nearer to our Uhlans
+and the French dragoons who galloped after them. The dragoons were now
+close at hand. On seeing the hussars, the foremost began to turn,
+while those behind began to halt. With the same feeling with which
+he had galloped across the path of a wolf, Rostov gave rein to his
+Donets horse and galloped to intersect the path of the dragoons'
+disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped, another who was on foot flung
+himself to the ground to avoid being knocked over, and a riderless
+horse fell in among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were
+galloping back. Rostov, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed
+after him. On the way he came upon a bush, his gallant horse cleared
+it, and almost before he had righted himself in his saddle he saw that
+he would immediately overtake the enemy he had selected. That
+Frenchman, by his uniform an officer, was going at a gallop, crouching
+on his gray horse and urging it on with his saber. In another moment
+Rostov's horse dashed its breast against the hindquarters of the
+officer's horse, almost knocking it over, and at the same instant
+Rostov, without knowing why, raised his saber and struck the Frenchman
+with it.
+
+The instant he had done this, all Rostov's animation vanished. The
+officer fell, not so much from the blow- which had but slightly cut
+his arm above the elbow- as from the shock to his horse and from
+fright. Rostov reined in his horse, and his eyes sought his foe to see
+whom he had vanquished. The French dragoon officer was hopping with
+one foot on the ground, the other being caught in the stirrup. His
+eyes, screwed up with fear as if he every moment expected another
+blow, gazed up at Rostov with shrinking terror. His pale and
+mud-stained face- fair and young, with a dimple in the chin and
+light-blue eyes- was not an enemy's face at all suited to a
+battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face. Before Rostov had
+decided what to do with him, the officer cried, "I surrender!" He
+hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the stirrup and
+did not remove his frightened blue eyes from Rostov's face. Some
+hussars who galloped up disengaged his foot and helped him into the
+saddle. On all sides, the hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was
+wounded, but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up his
+horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with his arms round
+him; a third was being helped by an hussar to mount his horse. In
+front, the French infantry were firing as they ran. The hussars
+galloped hastily back with their prisoners. Rostov galloped back
+with the rest, aware of an unpleasant feeling of depression in his
+heart. Something vague and confused, which he could not at all account
+for, had come over him with the capture of that officer and the blow
+he had dealt him.
+
+Count Ostermann-Tolstoy met the returning hussars, sent for
+Rostov, thanked him, and said he would report his gallant deed to
+the Emperor and would recommend him for a St. George's Cross. When
+sent for by Count Ostermann, Rostov, remembering that he had charged
+without orders, felt sure his commander was sending for him to
+punish him for breach of discipline. Ostermann's flattering words
+and promise of a reward should therefore have struck him all the
+more pleasantly, but he still felt that same vaguely disagreeable
+feeling of moral nausea. "But what on earth is worrying me?" he
+asked himself as he rode back from the general. "Ilyin? No, he's safe.
+Have I disgraced myself in any way? No, that's not it." Something
+else, resembling remorse, tormented him. "Yes, oh yes, that French
+officer with the dimple. And I remember how my arm paused when I
+raised it."
+
+Rostov saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to
+have a look at his Frenchman with the dimple on his chin. He was
+sitting in his foreign uniform on an hussar packhorse and looked
+anxiously about him; The sword cut on his arm could scarcely be called
+a wound. He glanced at Rostov with a feigned smile and waved his
+hand in greeting. Rostov still had the same indefinite feeling, as
+of shame.
+
+All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that
+Rostov, without being dull or angry, was silent, thoughtful, and
+preoccupied. He drank reluctantly, tried to remain alone, and kept
+turning something over in his mind.
+
+Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his,
+which to his amazement had gained him the St. George's Cross and
+even given him a reputation for bravery, and there was something he
+could not at all understand. "So others are even more afraid than I
+am!" he thought. "So that's all there is in what is called heroism!
+And heroism! And did I do it for my country's sake? And how was he
+to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And how frightened he was! He
+thought that I should kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand
+trembled. And they have given me a St. George's Cross.... I can't make
+it out at all."
+
+But while Nicholas was considering these questions and still could
+reach no clear solution of what puzzled him so, the wheel of fortune
+in the service, as often happens, turned in his favor. After the
+affair at Ostrovna he was brought into notice, received command of
+an hussar battalion, and when a brave officer was needed he was
+chosen.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+On receiving news of Natasha's illness, the countess, though not
+quite well yet and still weak, went to Moscow with Petya and the
+rest of the household, and the whole family moved from Marya
+Dmitrievna's house to their own and settled down in town.
+
+Natasha's illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and for
+her parents, the consideration of all that had caused the illness, her
+conduct and the breaking off of her engagement, receded into the
+background. She was so ill that it was impossible for them to consider
+in how far she was to blame for what had happened. She could not eat
+or sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made them
+feel, was in danger. They could not think of anything but how to
+help her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked
+much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and
+prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known
+to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they
+could not know the disease Natasha was suffering from, as no disease
+suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his
+own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel,
+complicated disease, unknown to medicine- not a disease of the
+lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical
+books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations
+of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur
+to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to
+work his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure,
+and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their
+lives on that business. But, above all, that thought was kept out of
+their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful, as in
+fact they were to the whole Rostov family. Their usefulness did not
+depend on making the patient swallow substances for the most part
+harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible, as they were given in
+small doses), but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable
+because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and of those who
+loved her- and that is why there are, and always will be,
+pseudo-healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They
+satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy,
+and that something should be done, which is felt by those who are
+suffering. They satisfied the need seen in its most elementary form in
+a child, when it wants to have a place rubbed that has been hurt. A
+child knocks itself and runs at once to the arms of its mother or
+nurse to have the aching spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better
+when this is done. The child cannot believe that the strongest and
+wisest of its people have no remedy for its pain, and the hope of
+relief and the expression of its mother's sympathy while she rubs
+the bump comforts it. The doctors were of use to Natasha because
+they kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her that it would soon
+pass if only the coachman went to the chemist's in the Arbat and got a
+powder and some pills in a pretty box of a ruble and seventy kopeks,
+and if she took those powders in boiled water at intervals of
+precisely two hours, neither more nor less.
+
+What would Sonya and the count and countess have done, how would
+they have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not been
+those pills to give by the clock, the warm drinks, the chicken
+cutlets, and all the other details of life ordered by the doctors, the
+carrying out of which supplied an occupation and consolation to the
+family circle? How would the count have borne his dearly loved
+daughter's illness had he not known that it was costing him a thousand
+rubles, and that he would not grudge thousands more to benefit her, or
+had he not known that if her illness continued he would not grudge yet
+other thousands and would take her abroad for consultations there, and
+had he not been able to explain the details of how Metivier and Feller
+had not understood the symptoms, but Frise had, and Mudrov had
+diagnosed them even better? What would the countess have done had
+she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid for not strictly
+obeying the doctor's orders?
+
+"You'll never get well like that," she would say, forgetting her
+grief in her vexation, "if you won't obey the doctor and take your
+medicine at the right time! You mustn't trifle with it, you know, or
+it may turn to pneumonia," she would go on, deriving much comfort from
+the utterance of that foreign word, incomprehensible to others as well
+as to herself.
+
+What would Sonya have done without the glad consciousness that she
+had not undressed during the first three nights, in order to be
+ready to carry out all the doctor's injunctions with precision, and
+that she still kept awake at night so as not to miss the proper time
+when the slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be
+administered? Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to see that so
+many sacrifices were being made for her sake, and to know that she had
+to take medicine at certain hours, though she declared that no
+medicine would cure her and that it was all nonsense. And it was
+even pleasant to be able to show, by disregarding the orders, that she
+did not believe in medical treatment and did not value her life.
+
+The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and
+regardless of her grief-stricken face joked with her. But when he
+had gone into another room, to which the countess hurriedly followed
+him, he assumed a grave air and thoughtfully shaking his head said
+that though there was danger, he had hopes of the effect of this
+last medicine and one must wait and see, that the malady was chiefly
+mental, but... And the countess, trying to conceal the action from
+herself and from him, slipped a gold coin into his hand and always
+returned to the patient with a more tranquil mind.
+
+The symptoms of Natasha's illness were that she ate little, slept
+little, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said that
+she could not get on without medical treatment, so they kept her in
+the stifling atmosphere of the town, and the Rostovs did not move to
+the country that summer of 1812.
+
+In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders
+out of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who was
+fond of such things made a large collection, and in spite of being
+deprived of the country life to which she was accustomed, youth
+prevailed. Natasha's grief began to be overlaid by the impressions
+of daily life, it ceased to press so painfully on her heart, it
+gradually faded into the past, and she began to recover physically.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Natasha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all
+external forms of pleasure- balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters-
+but she never laughed without a sound of tears in her laughter. She
+could not sing. As soon as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by
+herself, tears choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection
+of those pure times which could never return, tears of vexation that
+she should so uselessly have ruined her young life which might have
+been so happy. Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a
+blasphemy, in face of her sorrow. Without any need of
+self-restraint, no wish to coquet ever entered her head. She said
+and felt at that time that no man was more to her than Nastasya
+Ivanovna, the buffoon. Something stood sentinel within her and forbade
+her every joy. Besides, she had lost all the old interests of her
+carefree girlish life that had been so full of hope. The previous
+autumn, the hunting, "Uncle," and the Christmas holidays spent with
+Nicholas at Otradnoe were what she recalled oftenest and most
+painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even a single
+day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at the
+time had not deceived her- that that state of freedom and readiness
+for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live
+on.
+
+It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had
+formerly imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the
+world. But this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself,
+"What next?" But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in
+life, yet life was passing. Natasha apparently tried not to be a
+burden or a hindrance to anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She
+kept away from everyone in the house and felt at ease only with her
+brother Petya. She liked to be with him better than with the others,
+and when alone with him she sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left
+the house and of those who came to see them was glad to see only one
+person, Pierre. It would have been impossible to treat her with more
+delicacy, greater care, and at the same time more seriously than did
+Count Bezukhov. Natasha unconsciously felt this delicacy and so
+found great pleasure in his society. But she was not even grateful
+to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an
+effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there
+was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natasha noticed
+embarrassment and awkwardness on his part in her presence,
+especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared
+that something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her.
+She noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and
+shyness, which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was
+to her. After those involuntary words- that if he were free he would
+have asked on his knees for her hand and her love- uttered at a moment
+when she was so strongly agitated, Pierre never spoke to Natasha of
+his feelings; and it seemed plain to her that those words, which had
+then so comforted her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words
+are spoken to comfort a crying child. It was not because Pierre was
+a married man, but because Natasha felt very strongly with him that
+moral barrier the absence of which she had experienced with Kuragin
+that it never entered her head that the relations between him and
+herself could lead to love on her part, still less on his, or even
+to the kind of tender, self-conscious, romantic friendship between a
+man and a woman of which she had known several instances.
+
+Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agrafena Ivanovna Belova, a
+country neighbor of the Rostovs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions
+at the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natasha should
+fast and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natasha gladly welcomed the
+idea. Despite the doctor's orders that she should not go out early
+in the morning, Natasha insisted on fasting and preparing for the
+sacrament, not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostov
+family by attending three services in their own house, but as Agrafena
+Ivanovna did, by going to church every day for a week and not once
+missing Vespers, Matins, or Mass.
+
+The countess was pleased with Natasha's zeal; after the poor results
+of the medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that
+prayer might help her daughter more than medicines and, though not
+without fear and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to
+Natasha's wish and entrusted her to Belova. Agrafena Ivanovna used
+to come to wake Natasha at three in the morning, but generally found
+her already awake. She was afraid of being late for Matins. Hastily
+washing, and meekly putting on her shabbiest dress and an old
+mantilla, Natasha, shivering in the fresh air, went out into the
+deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn. By Agrafena
+Ivanovna's advice Natasha prepared herself not in their own parish,
+but at a church where, according to the devout Agrafena Ivanovna,
+the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were never
+many people in the church; Natasha always stood beside Belova in the
+customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the
+screen before the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her,
+of humility before something great and incomprehensible, seized her
+when at that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the
+Virgin illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the morning
+light falling from the window, she listened to the words of the
+service which she tried to follow with understanding. When she
+understood them her personal feeling became interwoven in the
+prayers with shades of its own. When she did not understand, it was
+sweeter still to think that the wish to understand everything is
+pride, that it is impossible to understand all, that it is only
+necessary to believe and to commit oneself to God, whom she felt
+guiding her soul at those moments. She crossed herself, bowed low, and
+when she did not understand, in horror at her own vileness, simply
+asked God to forgive her everything, everything, to have mercy upon
+her. The prayers to which she surrendered herself most of all were
+those of repentance. On her way home at an early hour when she met
+no one but bricklayers going to work or men sweeping the street, and
+everybody within the houses was still asleep, Natasha experienced a
+feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility of correcting her
+faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of happiness.
+
+During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every
+day. And the happiness of taking communion, or "communing" as Agrafena
+Ivanovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natasha
+so great that she felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday.
+
+But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when,
+dressed in white muslin, she returned home after communion, for the
+first time for many months she felt calm and not oppressed by the
+thought of the life that lay before her.
+
+The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to continue
+the powders he had prescribed a fortnight previously.
+
+"She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening," said he,
+evidently sincerely satisfied with his success. "Only, please be
+particular about it.
+
+"Be quite easy," he continued playfully, as he adroitly took the
+gold coin in his palm. "She will soon be singing and frolicking about.
+The last medicine has done her a very great deal of good. She has
+freshened up very much."
+
+The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face, looked down at
+her nails and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing
+room.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+At the beginning of July more and more disquieting reports about the
+war began to spread in Moscow; people spoke of an appeal by the
+Emperor to the people, and of his coming himself from the army to
+Moscow. And as up to the eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had
+been received, exaggerated reports became current about them and about
+the position of Russia. It was said that the Emperor was leaving the
+army because it was in danger, it was said that Smolensk had
+surrendered, that Napoleon had an army of a million and only a miracle
+could save Russia.
+
+On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the manifesto was
+received but was not yet in print, and Pierre, who was at the
+Rostovs', promised to come to dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a
+copy of the manifesto and appeal, which he would obtain from Count
+Rostopchin.
+
+That Sunday, the Rostovs went to Mass at the Razumovskis' private
+chapel as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o'clock, when
+the Rostovs got out of their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air,
+the shouts of hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the
+crowd, the dusty leaves of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of
+the band and the white trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the
+rattling of wheels on the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot
+sunshine were all full of that summer languor, that content and
+discontent with the present, which is most strongly felt on a
+bright, hot day in town. All the Moscow notabilities, all the Rostovs'
+acquaintances, were at the Razumovskis' chapel, for, as if expecting
+something to happen, many wealthy families who usually left town for
+their country estates had not gone away that summer. As Natasha, at
+her mother's side, passed through the crowd behind a liveried
+footman who cleared the way for them, she heard a young man speaking
+about her in too loud a whisper.
+
+"That's Rostova, the one who..."
+
+"She's much thinner, but all the same she's pretty!"
+
+She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kuragin and Bolkonski.
+But she was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that
+everyone who looked at her was thinking only of what had happened to
+her. With a sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she
+found herself in a crowd, Natasha in her lilac silk dress trimmed with
+black lace walked- as women can walk- with the more repose and
+stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul. She knew for
+certain that she was pretty, but this no longer gave her
+satisfaction as it used to. On the contrary it tormented her more than
+anything else of late, and particularly so on this bright, hot
+summer day in town. "It's Sunday again- another week past," she
+thought, recalling that she had been here the Sunday before, "and
+always the same life that is no life, and the same surroundings in
+which it used to be so easy to live. I'm pretty, I'm young, and I know
+that now I am good. I used to be bad, but now I know I am good," she
+thought, "but yet my best years are slipping by and are no good to
+anyone." She stood by her mother's side and exchanged nods with
+acquaintances near her. From habit she scrutinized the ladies'
+dresses, condemned the bearing of a lady standing close by who was not
+crossing herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she
+thought with vexation that she was herself being judged and was
+judging others, and suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt
+horrified at her own vileness, horrified that the former purity of her
+soul was again lost to her.
+
+A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the service with that
+mild solemnity which has so elevating and soothing an effect on the
+souls of the worshipers. The gates of the sanctuary screen were
+closed, the curtain was slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft
+mysterious voice pronounced some words. Tears, the cause of which
+she herself did not understand, made Natasha's breast heave, and a
+joyous but oppressive feeling agitated her.
+
+"Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I may grow good
+forever, forever!" she pleaded.
+
+The deacon came out onto the raised space before the altar screen
+and, holding his thumb extended, drew his long hair from under his
+dalmatic and, making the sign of the cross on his breast, began in a
+loud and solemn voice to recite the words of the prayer...
+
+"In peace let us pray unto the Lord."
+
+"As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity,
+united by brotherly love- let us pray!" thought Natasha.
+
+"For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our
+souls."
+
+"For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell above us,"
+prayed Natasha.
+
+When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her brother and
+Denisov. When they prayed for all traveling by land and sea, she
+remembered Prince Andrew, prayed for him, and asked God to forgive her
+all the wrongs she had done him. When they prayed for those who love
+us, she prayed for the members of her own family, her father and
+mother and Sonya, realizing for the first time how wrongly she had
+acted toward them, and feeling all the strength of her love for
+them. When they prayed for those who hate us, she tried to think of
+her enemies and people who hated her, in order to pray for them. She
+included among her enemies the creditors and all who had business
+dealings with her father, and always at the thought of enemies and
+those who hated her she remembered Anatole who had done her so much
+harm- and though he did not hate her she gladly prayed for him as
+for an enemy. Only at prayer did she feel able to think clearly and
+calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole, as men for whom her feelings were
+as nothing compared with her awe and devotion to God. When they prayed
+for the Imperial family and the Synod, she bowed very low and made the
+sign of the cross, saying to herself that even if she did not
+understand, still she could not doubt, and at any rate loved the
+governing Synod and prayed for it.
+
+When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over
+his breast and said, "Let us commit ourselves and our whole lives to
+Christ the Lord!"
+
+"Commit ourselves to God," Natasha inwardly repeated. "Lord God, I
+submit myself to Thy will!" she thought. "I want nothing, wish for
+nothing; teach me what to do and how to use my will! Take me, take
+me!" prayed Natasha, with impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing
+herself but letting her slender arms hang down as if expecting some
+invisible power at any moment to take her and deliver her from
+herself, from her regrets, desires, remorse, hopes, and sins.
+
+The countess looked round several times at her daughter's softened
+face and shining eyes and prayed God to help her.
+
+Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in the usual
+order Natasha knew so well, the deacon brought out a small stool,
+the one he knelt on when praying on Trinity Sunday, and placed it
+before the doors of the sanctuary screen. The priest came out with his
+purple velvet biretta on his head, adjusted his hair, and knelt down
+with an effort. Everybody followed his example and they looked at
+one another in surprise. Then came the prayer just received from the
+Synod- a prayer for the deliverance of Russia from hostile invasion.
+
+"Lord God of might, God of our salvation!" began the priest in
+that voice, clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in which only the
+Slav clergy read and which acts so irresistibly on a Russian heart.
+
+"Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this day in mercy and
+blessing on Thy humble people, and graciously hear us, spare us, and
+have mercy upon us! This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay
+waste the whole world, rises against us; these lawless men are
+gathered together to overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear
+Jerusalem, Thy beloved Russia; to defile Thy temples, to overthrow
+Thine altars, and to desecrate our holy shrines. How long, O Lord, how
+long shall the wicked triumph? How long shall they wield unlawful
+power?
+
+"Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen with Thy might
+our most gracious sovereign lord, the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich;
+be mindful of his uprightness and meekness, reward him according to
+his righteousness, and let it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel! Bless
+his counsels, his undertakings, and his work; strengthen his kingdom
+by Thine almighty hand, and give him victory over his enemy, even as
+Thou gavest Moses the victory over Amalek, Gideon over Midian, and
+David over Goliath. Preserve his army, put a bow of brass in the hands
+of those who have armed themselves in Thy Name, and gird their loins
+with strength for the fight. Take up the spear and shield and arise to
+help us; confound and put to shame those who have devised evil against
+us, may they be before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust
+before the wind, and may Thy mighty Angel confound them and put them
+to flight; may they be ensnared when they know it not, and may the
+plots they have laid in secret be turned against them; let them fall
+before Thy servants' feet and be laid low by our hosts! Lord, Thou art
+able to save both great and small; Thou art God, and man cannot
+prevail against Thee!
+
+"God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy and
+loving-kindness which are from of old; turn not Thy face from us,
+but be gracious to our unworthiness, and in Thy great goodness and Thy
+many mercies regard not our transgressions and iniquities! Create in
+us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us, strengthen us all
+in Thy faith, fortify our hope, inspire us with true love one for
+another, arm us with unity of spirit in the righteous defense of the
+heritage Thou gavest to us and to our fathers, and let not the scepter
+of the wicked be exalted against the destiny of those Thou hast
+sanctified.
+
+"O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom we put our trust,
+let us not be confounded in our hope of Thy mercy, and give us a token
+of Thy blessing, that those who hate us and our Orthodox faith may see
+it and be put to shame and perish, and may all the nations know that
+Thou art the Lord and we are Thy people. Show Thy mercy upon us this
+day, O Lord, and grant us Thy salvation; make the hearts of Thy
+servants to rejoice in Thy mercy; smite down our enemies and destroy
+them swiftly beneath the feet of Thy faithful servants! For Thou art
+the defense, the succor, and the victory of them that put their
+trust in Thee, and to Thee be all glory, to Father, Son, and Holy
+Ghost, now and forever, world without end. Amen."
+
+In Natasha's receptive condition of soul this prayer affected her
+strongly. She listened to every word about the victory of Moses over
+Amalek, of Gideon over Midian, and of David over Goliath, and about
+the destruction of "Thy Jerusalem," and she prayed to God with the
+tenderness and emotion with which her heart was overflowing, but
+without fully understanding what she was asking of God in that prayer.
+She shared with all her heart in the prayer for the spirit of
+righteousness, for the strengthening of the heart by faith and hope,
+and its animation by love. But she could not pray that her enemies
+might be trampled under foot when but a few minutes before she had
+been wishing she had more of them that she might pray for them. But
+neither could she doubt the righteousness of the prayer that was being
+read on bended knees. She felt in her heart a devout and tremulous awe
+at the thought of the punishment that overtakes men for their sins,
+and especially of her own sins, and she prayed to God to forgive
+them all, and her too, and to give them all, and her too, peace and
+happiness. And it seemed to her that God heard her prayer.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with
+Natasha's grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that
+seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was
+appearing on his own horizon- from that day the problem of the
+vanity and uselessness of all earthly things, that had incessantly
+tormented him, no longer presented itself. That terrible question
+"Why?" "Wherefore?" which had come to him amid every occupation, was
+now replaced, not by another question or by a reply to the former
+question, but by her image. When he listened to, or himself took
+part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of human
+baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did not ask
+himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so
+transient and incomprehensible- but he remembered her as he had last
+seen her, and all his doubts vanished- not because she had answered
+the questions that had haunted him, but because his conception of
+her transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of
+spiritual activity in which no one could be justified or guilty- a
+realm of beauty and love which it was worth living for. Whatever
+worldly baseness presented itself to him, he said to himself:
+
+"Well, supposing N. N. swindled the country and the Tsar, and the
+country and the Tsar confer honors upon him, what does that matter?
+She smiled at me yesterday and asked me to come again, and I love her,
+and no one will ever know it." And his soul felt calm and peaceful.
+
+Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the same
+idle and dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the
+Rostovs' there were other hours he had to spend somehow, and the
+habits and acquaintances he had made in Moscow formed a current that
+bore him along irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more
+disquieting reports came from the seat of war and Natasha's health
+began to improve and she no longer aroused in him the former feeling
+of careful pity, an ever-increasing restlessness, which he could not
+explain, took possession of him. He felt that the condition he was
+in could not continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which
+would change his whole life, and he impatiently sought everywhere
+for signs of that approaching catastrophe. One of his brother Masons
+had revealed to Pierre the following prophecy concerning Napoleon,
+drawn from the Revelation of St. John.
+
+In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said:
+
+Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number
+of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six
+hundred threescore and six.
+
+And in the fifth verse of the same chapter:
+
+And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and
+blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two
+months.
+
+The French alphabet, written out with the same numerical values as
+the Hebrew, in which the first nine letters denote units and the
+others tens, will have the following significance:
+
+      a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   i   k
+      1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10
+       l    m    n    o    p    q    r    s
+      20   30   40   50   60   70   80   90
+             t    u    v    w    x    y
+            100  110  120  130  140  150
+                        z
+                       160
+
+Writing the words L'Empereur Napoleon in numbers, it appears that
+the sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon therefore the beast foretold
+in the Apocalypse. Moreover, by applying the same system to the
+words quarante-deux,~^ which was the term allowed to the beast that
+"spoke great things and blasphemies," the same number 666 was
+obtained; from which it followed that the limit fixed for Napoleon's
+power had come in the year 1812 when the French emperor was forty-two.
+This prophecy pleased Pierre very much and he often asked himself what
+would put an end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon,
+and tried by the same system of using letters as numbers and adding
+them up, to find an answer to the question that engrossed him. He
+wrote the words L'Empereur Alexandre, La nation russe and added up
+their numbers, but the sums were either more or less than 666. Once
+when making such calculations he wrote down his own name in French,
+Comte Pierre Besouhoff, but the sum of the numbers did not come right.
+Then he changed the spelling, substituting a z for the s and adding de
+and the article le, still without obtaining the desired result. Then
+it occurred to him: if the answer to the question were contained in
+his name, his nationality would also be given in the answer. So he
+wrote Le russe Besuhof and adding up the numbers got 671. This was
+only five too much, and five was represented by e, the very letter
+elided from the article le before the word Empereur. By omitting the
+e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the answer he sought. L'russe
+Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited him. How, or by what means,
+he was connected with the great event foretold in the Apocalypse he
+did not know, but he did not doubt that connection for a moment. His
+love for Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the comet,
+666, L'Empereur Napoleon, and L'russe Besuhof- all this had to
+mature and culminate, to lift him out of that spellbound, petty sphere
+of Moscow habits in which he felt himself held captive and lead him to
+a great achievement and great happiness.
+
+^~ Forty-two.
+
+On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was read, Pierre
+had promised the Rostovs to bring them, from Count Rostopchin whom
+he knew well, both the appeal to the people and the news from the
+army. In the morning, when he went to call at Rostopchin's he met
+there a courier fresh from the army, an acquaintance of his own, who
+often danced at Moscow balls.
+
+"Do, please, for heaven's sake, relieve me of something!" said the
+courier. "I have a sackful of letters to parents."
+
+Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostov to his father.
+Pierre took that letter, and Rostopchin also gave him the Emperor's
+appeal to Moscow, which had just been printed, the last army orders,
+and his own most recent bulletin. Glancing through the army orders,
+Pierre found in one of them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and
+rewarded, the name of Nicholas Rostov, awarded a St. George's Cross of
+the Fourth Class for courage shown in the Ostrovna affair, and in
+the same order the name of Prince Andrew Bolkonski, appointed to the
+command of a regiment of Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind
+the Rostovs of Bolkonski, Pierre could not refrain from making them
+happy by the news of their son's having received a decoration, so he
+sent that printed army order and Nicholas' letter to the Rostovs,
+keeping the appeal, the bulletin, and the other orders to take with
+him when he went to dinner.
+
+His conversation with Count Rostopchin and the latter's tone of
+anxious hurry, the meeting with the courier who talked casually of how
+badly things were going in the army, the rumors of the discovery of
+spies in Moscow and of a leaflet in circulation stating that
+Napoleon promised to be in both the Russian capitals by the autumn,
+and the talk of the Emperor's being expected to arrive next day- all
+aroused with fresh force that feeling of agitation and expectation
+in Pierre which he had been conscious of ever since the appearance
+of the comet, and especially since the beginning of the war.
+
+He had long been thinking of entering the army and would have done
+so had he not been hindered, first, by his membership of the Society
+of Freemasons to which he was bound by oath and which preached
+perpetual peace and the abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact
+that when he saw the great mass of Muscovites who had donned uniform
+and were talking patriotism, he somehow felt ashamed to take the step.
+But the chief reason for not carrying out his intention to enter the
+army lay in the vague idea that he was L'russe Besuhof who had the
+number of the beast, 666; that his part in the great affair of setting
+a limit to the power of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous
+things had been predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought
+not to undertake anything, but wait for what was bound to come to
+pass.
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostovs that day, as
+usual on Sundays.
+
+Pierre came early so as to find them alone.
+
+He had grown so stout this year that he would have been abnormal had
+he not been so tall, so broad of limb, and so strong that he carried
+his bulk with evident ease.
+
+He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something. His coachman
+did not even ask whether he was to wait. He knew that when his
+master was at the Rostovs' he stayed till midnight. The Rostovs'
+footman rushed eagerly forward to help him off with his cloak and take
+his hat and stick. Pierre, from club habit, always left both hat and
+stick in the anteroom.
+
+The first person he saw in the house was Natasha. Even before he saw
+her, while taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practicing
+solfa exercises in the music room. He knew that she had not sung since
+her illness, and so the sound of her voice surprised and delighted
+him. He opened the door softly and saw her, in the lilac dress she had
+worn at church, walking about the room singing. She had her back to
+him when he opened the door, but when, turning quickly, she saw his
+broad, surprised face, she blushed and came rapidly up to him.
+
+"I want to try to sing again," she said, adding as if by way of
+excuse, "it is, at least, something to do."
+
+"That's capital!"
+
+"How glad I am you've come! I am so happy today," she said, with the
+old animation Pierre had not seen in her for along time. "You know
+Nicholas has received a St. George's Cross? I am so proud of him."
+
+"Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don't want to interrupt
+you," he added, and was about to go to the drawing room.
+
+Natasha stopped him.
+
+"Count, is it wrong of me to sing?" she said blushing, and fixing
+her eyes inquiringly on him.
+
+"No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do you ask me?"
+
+"I don't know myself," Natasha answered quickly, "but I should not
+like to do anything you disapproved of. I believe in you completely.
+You don't know how important you are to me, how much you've done for
+me...." She spoke rapidly and did not notice how Pierre flushed at her
+words. "I saw in that same army order that he, Bolkonski" (she
+whispered the name hastily), "is in Russia, and in the army again.
+What do you think?"- she was speaking hurriedly, evidently afraid
+her strength might fail her- "Will he ever forgive me? Will he not
+always have a bitter feeling toward me? What do you think? What do you
+think?"
+
+"I think..." Pierre replied, "that he has nothing to forgive....
+If I were in his place..."
+
+By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried back to the
+day when, trying to comfort her, he had said that if he were not
+himself but the best man in the world and free, he would ask on his
+knees for her hand; and the same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love
+took possession of him and the same words rose to his lips. But she
+did not give him time to say them.
+
+"Yes, you... you..." she said, uttering the word you rapturously-
+"that's a different thing. I know no one kinder, more generous, or
+better than you; nobody could be! Had you not been there then, and now
+too, I don't know what would have become of me, because..."
+
+Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted her music
+before her eyes, began singing again, and again began walking up and
+down the room.
+
+Just then Petya came running in from the drawing room.
+
+Petya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips
+and resembled Natasha. He was preparing to enter the university, but
+he and his friend Obolenski had lately, in secret, agreed to join
+the hussars.
+
+Petya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake about this
+affair. He had asked Pierre to find out whether he would be accepted
+in the hussars.
+
+Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not listening to what
+Petya was saying.
+
+Petya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.
+
+"Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirilych, for heaven's sake! You
+are my only hope " said Petya.
+
+"Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I'll mention it, I'll bring
+it all up today."
+
+"Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?" asked the old count.
+"The countess has been to Mass at the Razumovskis' and heard the new
+prayer. She says it's very fine."
+
+"Yes, I've got it," said Pierre. "The Emperor is to be here
+tomorrow... there's to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the nobility,
+and they are talking of a levy of ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me
+congratulate you!"
+
+"Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the army?"
+
+"We are again retreating. They say we're already near Smolensk,"
+replied Pierre.
+
+"O Lord, O Lord!" exclaimed the count. "Where is the manifesto?"
+
+"The Emperor's appeal? Oh yes!"
+
+Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but could not
+find them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the hand of the
+countess who entered the room and glanced uneasily around, evidently
+expecting Natasha, who had left off singing but had not yet come
+into the drawing room.
+
+"On my word, I don't know what I've done with it," he said.
+
+"There he is, always losing everything!" remarked the countess.
+
+Natasha entered with a softened and agitated expression of face
+and sat down looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered,
+Pierre's features, which had been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and
+while still searching for the papers he glanced at her several times.
+
+"No, really! I'll drive home, I must have left them there. I'll
+certainly..."
+
+"But you'll be late for dinner."
+
+"Oh! And my coachman has gone."
+
+But Sonya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom,
+had found them in Pierre's hat, where he had carefully tucked them
+under the lining. Pierre was about to begin reading.
+
+"No, after dinner," said the old count, evidently expecting much
+enjoyment from that reading.
+
+At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health of the new
+chevalier of St. George, Shinshin told them the town news, of the
+illness of the old Georgian princess, of Metivier's disappearance from
+Moscow, and of how some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchin
+and accused of being a French "spyer" (so Count Rostopchin had told
+the story), and how Rostopchin let him go and assured the people
+that he was "not a spire at all, but only an old German ruin."
+
+"People are being arrested..." said the count. "I've told the
+countess she should not speak French so much. It's not the time for it
+now."
+
+"And have you heard?" Shinshin asked. "Prince Golitsyn has engaged a
+master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak
+French in the streets."
+
+"And how about you, Count Peter Kirilych? If they call up the
+militia, you too will have to mount a horse," remarked the old
+count, addressing Pierre.
+
+Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming
+not to grasp what was said. He looked at the count.
+
+"Oh yes, the war," he said. "No! What sort of warrior should I make?
+And yet everything is so strange, so strange! I can't make it out. I
+don't know, I am very far from having military tastes, but in these
+times no one can answer for himself."
+
+After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an easy
+chair and with a serious face asked Sonya, who was considered an
+excellent reader, to read the appeal.
+
+"To Moscow, our ancient Capital!
+
+"The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He
+comes to despoil our beloved country,"
+
+Sonya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count
+listened with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.
+
+Natasha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father
+and now at Pierre.
+
+Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The
+countess shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn
+expression in the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that
+the danger threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshin,
+with a sarcastic smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make
+fun of anything that gave him the opportunity: Sonya's reading, any
+remark of the count's, or even the manifesto itself should no better
+pretext present itself.
+
+After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes
+the Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious
+nobility, Sonya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the
+attention that was being paid to her, read the last words:
+
+"We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that
+Capital and in others parts of our realm for consultation, and for the
+direction of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy's path
+and those freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the
+ruin he hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may
+Europe delivered from bondage glorify the name of Russia!"
+
+"Yes, that's it!" cried the count, opening his moist eyes and
+sniffing repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his
+nose; and he added, "Let the Emperor but say the word and we'll
+sacrifice everything and begrudge nothing."
+
+Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on
+the count's patriotism, Natasha jumped up from her place and ran to
+her father.
+
+"What a darling our Papa is!" she cried, kissing him, and she
+again looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned
+to her with her better spirits.
+
+"There! Here's a patriot for you!" said Shinshin.
+
+"Not a patriot at all, but simply..." Natasha replied in an
+injured tone. "Everything seems funny to you, but this isn't at all
+a joke...."
+
+"A joke indeed!" put in the count. "Let him but say the word and
+we'll all go.... We're not Germans!"
+
+"But did you notice, it says, 'for consultation'?" said Pierre.
+
+"Never mind what it's for...."
+
+At this moment, Petya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came
+up to his father with a very flushed face and said in his breaking
+voice that was now deep and now shrill:
+
+"Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it's as you
+please, but I say definitely that you must let me enter the army,
+because I can't... that's all...."
+
+The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped her hands, and
+turned angrily to her husband.
+
+"That comes of your talking!" said she.
+
+But the count had already recovered from his excitement.
+
+"Come, come!" said he. "Here's a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You
+must study."
+
+"It's not nonsense, Papa. Fedya Obolenski is younger than I, and
+he's going too. Besides, all the same I can't study now when..." Petya
+stopped short, flushed till he perspired, but still got out the words,
+"when our Fatherland is in danger."
+
+"That'll do, that'll do- nonsense...."
+
+"But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything."
+
+"Petya! Be quiet, I tell you!" cried the count, with a glance at his
+wife, who had turned pale and was staring fixedly at her son.
+
+"And I tell you- Peter Kirilych here will also tell you..."
+
+"Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother's milk has hardly dried on your
+lips and you want to go into the army! There, there, I tell you,"
+and the count moved to go out of the room, taking the papers, probably
+to reread them in his study before having a nap.
+
+"Well, Peter Kirilych, let's go and have a smoke," he said.
+
+Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natasha's unwontedly brilliant
+eyes, continually glancing at him with a more than cordial look, had
+reduced him to this condition.
+
+"No, I think I'll go home."
+
+"Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us.... You don't
+often come nowadays as it is, and this girl of mine," said the count
+good-naturedly, pointing to Natasha, "only brightens up when you're
+here."
+
+"Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business..."
+said Pierre hurriedly.
+
+"Well, then, au revoir!" said the count, and went out of the room.
+
+"Why are you going? Why are you upset?" asked Natasha, and she
+looked challengingly into Pierre's eyes.
+
+"Because I love you!" was what he wanted to say, but he did not
+say it, and only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes.
+
+"Because it is better for me to come less often... because... No,
+simply I have business...."
+
+"Why? No, tell me!" Natasha began resolutely and suddenly stopped.
+
+They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He
+tried to smile but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he
+silently kissed her hand and went out.
+
+Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostovs' any more.
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+After the definite refusal he had received, Petya went to his room
+and there locked himself in and wept bitterly. When he came in to tea,
+silent, morose, and with tear-stained face, everybody pretended not to
+notice anything.
+
+Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several of the
+Rostovs' domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him.
+That morning Petya was a long time dressing and arranging his hair and
+collar to look like a grown-up man. He frowned before his looking
+glass, gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without
+saying a word to anyone, took his cap and left the house by the back
+door, trying to avoid notice. Petya decided to go straight to where
+the Emperor was and to explain frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting
+(he imagined the Emperor to be always surrounded by
+gentlemen-in-waiting) that he, Count Rostov, in spite of his youth
+wished to serve his country; that youth could be no hindrance to
+loyalty, and that he was ready to... While dressing, Petya had
+prepared many fine things he meant to say to the gentleman-in-waiting.
+
+It was on the very fact of being so young that Petya counted for
+success in reaching the Emperor- he even thought how surprised
+everyone would be at his youthfulness- and yet in the arrangement of
+his collar and hair and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to
+appear a grown-up man. But the farther he went and the more his
+attention was diverted by the ever-increasing crowds moving toward the
+Kremlin, the less he remembered to walk with the sedateness and
+deliberation of a man. As he approached the Kremlin he even began to
+avoid being crushed and resolutely stuck out his elbows in a
+menacing way. But within the Trinity Gateway he was so pressed to
+the wall by people who probably were unaware of the patriotic
+intentions with which he had come that in spite of all his
+determination he had to give in, and stop while carriages passed in,
+rumbling beneath the archway. Beside Petya stood a peasant woman, a
+footman, two tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing
+some time in the gateway, Petya tried to move forward in front of
+the others without waiting for all the carriages to pass, and he began
+resolutely working his way with his elbows, but the woman just in
+front of him, who was the first against whom he directed his
+efforts, angrily shouted at him:
+
+"What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don't you see we're all
+standing still? Then why push?"
+
+"Anybody can shove," said the footman, and also began working his
+elbows to such effect that he pushed Petya into a very filthy corner
+of the gateway.
+
+Petya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and pulled up the
+damp collar which he had arranged so well at home to seem like a
+man's.
+
+He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared that if
+he were now to approach the gentlemen-in-waiting in that plight he
+would not be admitted to the Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten
+oneself up or move to another place, because of the crowd. One of
+the generals who drove past was an acquaintance of the Rostovs', and
+Petya thought of asking his help, but came to the conclusion that that
+would not be a manly thing to do. When the carriages had all passed
+in, the crowd, carrying Petya with it, streamed forward into the
+Kremlin Square which was already full of people. There were people not
+only in the square, but everywhere- on the slopes and on the roofs. As
+soon as Petya found himself in the square he clearly heard the sound
+of bells and the joyous voices of the crowd that filled the whole
+Kremlin.
+
+For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all heads were
+bared, and everyone rushed forward in one direction. Petya was being
+pressed so that he could scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted,
+"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" Petya stood on tiptoe and pushed and
+pinched, but could see nothing except the people about him.
+
+All the faces bore the same expression of excitement and enthusiasm.
+A tradesman's wife standing beside Petya sobbed, and the tears ran
+down her cheeks.
+
+"Father! Angel! Dear one!" she kept repeating, wiping away her tears
+with her fingers.
+
+"Hurrah!" was heard on all sides.
+
+For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made another rush
+forward.
+
+Quite beside himself, Petya, clinching his teeth and rolling his
+eyes ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his way and shouting
+"hurrah!" as if he were prepared that instant to kill himself and
+everyone else, but on both sides of him other people with similarly
+ferocious faces pushed forward and everybody shouted "hurrah!"
+
+"So this is what the Emperor is!" thought Petya. "No, I can't
+petition him myself- that would be too bold." But in spite of this
+he continued to struggle desperately forward, and from between the
+backs of those in front he caught glimpses of an open space with a
+strip of red cloth spread out on it; but just then the crowd swayed
+back- the police in front were pushing back those who had pressed
+too close to the procession: the Emperor was passing from the palace
+to the Cathedral of the Assumption- and Petya unexpectedly received
+such a blow on his side and ribs and was squeezed so hard that
+suddenly everything grew dim before his eyes and he lost
+consciousness. When he came to himself, a man of clerical appearance
+with a tuft of gray hair at the back of his head and wearing a
+shabby blue cassock- probably a church clerk and chanter- was
+holding him under the arm with one hand while warding off the pressure
+of the crowd with the other.
+
+"You've crushed the young gentleman!" said the clerk. "What are
+you up to? Gently!... They've crushed him, crushed him!"
+
+The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd
+spread out again more evenly, and the clerk led Petya- pale and
+breathless- to the Tsar-cannon. Several people were sorry for Petya,
+and suddenly a crowd turned toward him and pressed round him. Those
+who stood nearest him attended to him, unbuttoned his coat, seated him
+on the raised platform of the cannon, and reproached those others
+(whoever they might be) who had crushed him.
+
+"One might easily get killed that way! What do they mean by it?
+Killing people! Poor dear, he's as white as a sheet!"- various
+voices were heard saying.
+
+Petya soon came to himself, the color returned to his face, the pain
+had passed, and at the cost of that temporary unpleasantness he had
+obtained a place by the cannon from where he hoped to see the
+Emperor who would be returning that way. Petya no longer thought of
+presenting his petition. If he could only see the Emperor he would
+be happy!
+
+While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of the Assumption-
+it was a combined service of prayer on the occasion of the Emperor's
+arrival and of thanksgiving for the conclusion of peace with the
+Turks- the crowd outside spread out and hawkers appeared, selling
+kvas, gingerbread, and poppyseed sweets (of which Petya was
+particularly fond), and ordinary conversation could again be heard.
+A tradesman's wife was showing a rent in her shawl and telling how
+much the shawl had cost; another was saying that all silk goods had
+now got dear. The clerk who had rescued Petya was talking to a
+functionary about the priests who were officiating that day with the
+bishop. The clerk several times used the word "plenary" (of the
+service), a word Petya did not understand. Two young citizens were
+joking with some serf girls who were cracking nuts. All these
+conversations, especially the joking with the girls, were such as
+might have had a particular charm for Petya at his age, but they did
+not interest him now. He sat on his elevation- the pedestal of the
+cannon- still agitated as before by the thought of the Emperor and
+by his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he had experienced
+when he was being crushed, together with that of rapture, still
+further intensified his sense of the importance of the occasion.
+
+Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard from the
+embankment, to celebrate the signing of peace with the Turks, and
+the crowd rushed impetuously toward the embankment to watch the
+firing. Petya too would have run there, but the clerk who had taken
+the young gentleman under his protection stopped him. The firing was
+still proceeding when officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-waiting
+came running out of the cathedral, and after them others in a more
+leisurely manner: caps were again raised, and those who had run to
+look at the cannon ran back again. At last four men in uniforms and
+sashes emerged from the cathedral doors. "Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the
+crowd again.
+
+"Which is he? Which?" asked Petya in a tearful voice, of those
+around him, but no one answered him, everybody was too excited; and
+Petya, fixing on one of those four men, whom he could not clearly
+see for the tears of joy that filled his eyes, concentrated all his
+enthusiasm on him- though it happened not to be the Emperor-
+frantically shouted "Hurrah!" and resolved that tomorrow, come what
+might, he would join the army.
+
+The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the palace, and
+began to disperse. It was already late, and Petya had not eaten
+anything and was drenched with perspiration, yet he did not go home
+but stood with that diminishing, but still considerable, crowd
+before the palace while the Emperor dined- looking in at the palace
+windows, expecting he knew not what, and envying alike the notables he
+saw arriving at the entrance to dine with the Emperor and the court
+footmen who served at table, glimpses of whom could be seen through
+the windows.
+
+While the Emperor was dining, Valuev, looking out of the window,
+said:
+
+"The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty again."
+
+The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor, munching a biscuit,
+rose and went out onto the balcony. The people, with Petya among them,
+rushed toward the balcony.
+
+"Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!..." cried the crowd, and Petya
+with it, and again the women and men of weaker mold, Petya among them,
+wept with joy.
+
+A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding in his hand
+broke off, fell on the balcony parapet, and then to the ground. A
+coachman in a jerkin, who stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched
+it up. Several people in the crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this
+the Emperor had a plateful of biscuits brought him and began
+throwing them down from the balcony. Petya's eyes grew bloodshot,
+and still more excited by the danger of being crushed, he rushed at
+the biscuits. He did not know why, but he had to have a biscuit from
+the Tsar's hand and he felt that he must not give way. He sprang
+forward and upset an old woman who was catching at a biscuit; the
+old woman did not consider herself defeated though she was lying on
+the ground- she grabbed at some biscuits but her hand did not reach
+them. Petya pushed her hand away with his knee, seized a biscuit,
+and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted "Hurrah!" with a voice
+already hoarse.
+
+The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of the crowd
+began to disperse.
+
+"There! I said if only we waited- and so it was!" was being joyfully
+said by various people.
+
+Happy as Petya was, he felt sad at having to go home knowing that
+all the enjoyment of that day was over. He did not go straight home
+from the Kremlin, but called on his friend Obolenski, who was
+fifteen and was also entering the regiment. On returning home Petya
+announced resolutely and firmly that if he was not allowed to enter
+the service he would run away. And next day, Count Ilya Rostov- though
+he had not yet quite yielded- went to inquire how he could arrange for
+Petya to serve where there would be least danger.
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense number of
+carriages were standing outside the Sloboda Palace.
+
+The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility and gentry
+in their uniforms, in the second bearded merchants in full-skirted
+coats of blue cloth and wearing medals. in the noblemen's hall there
+was an incessant movement and buzz of voices. The chief magnates sat
+on high-backed chairs at a large table under the portrait of the
+Emperor, but most of the gentry were strolling about the room.
+
+All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the Club or in
+their own houses, were in uniform- some in that of Catherine's day,
+others in that of Emperor Paul, others again in the new uniforms of
+Alexander's time or the ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the
+general characteristic of being in uniform imparted something
+strange and fantastic to these diverse and familiar personalities,
+both old and young. The old men, dim-eyed, toothless, bald, sallow,
+and bloated, or gaunt and wrinkled, were especially striking. For
+the most part they sat quietly in their places and were silent, or, if
+they walked about and talked, attached themselves to someone
+younger. On all these faces, as on the faces of the crowd Petya had
+seen in the Square, there was a striking contradiction: the general
+expectation of a solemn event, and at the same time the everyday
+interests in a boston card party, Peter the cook, Zinaida Dmitrievna's
+health, and so on.
+
+Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning in a
+nobleman's uniform that had become too tight for him. He was agitated;
+this extraordinary gathering not only of nobles but also of the
+merchant-class- les etats generaux (States-General)- evoked in him a
+whole series of ideas he had long laid aside but which were deeply
+graven in his soul: thoughts of the Contrat social and the French
+Revolution. The words that had struck him in the Emperor's appeal-
+that the sovereign was coming to the capital for consultation with his
+people- strengthened this idea. And imagining that in this direction
+something important which he had long awaited was drawing near, he
+strolled about watching and listening to conversations, but nowhere
+finding any confirmation of the ideas that occupied him.
+
+The Emperor's manifesto was read, evoking enthusiasm, and then all
+moved about discussing it. Besides the ordinary topics of
+conversation, Pierre heard questions of where the marshals of the
+nobility were to stand when the Emperor entered, when a ball should be
+given in the Emperor's honor, whether they should group themselves
+by districts or by whole provinces... and so on; but as soon as the
+war was touched on, or what the nobility had been convened for, the
+talk became undecided and indefinite. Then all preferred listening
+to speaking.
+
+A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a
+retired naval officer, was speaking in one of the rooms, and a small
+crowd was pressing round him. Pierre went up to the circle that had
+formed round the speaker and listened. Count Ilya Rostov, in a
+military uniform of Catherine's time, was sauntering with a pleasant
+smile among the crowd, with all of whom he was acquainted. He too
+approached that group and listened with a kindly smile and nods of
+approval, as he always did, to what the speaker was saying. The
+retired naval man was speaking very boldly, as was evident from the
+expression on the faces of the listeners and from the fact that some
+people Pierre knew as the meekest and quietest of men walked away
+disapprovingly or expressed disagreement with him. Pierre pushed his
+way into the middle of the group, listened, and convinced himself that
+the man was indeed a liberal, but of views quite different from his
+own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly sonorous, musical,
+and aristocratic baritone voice, pleasantly swallowing his r's and
+generally slurring his consonants: the voice of a man calling out to
+his servant, "Heah! Bwing me my pipe!" It was indicative of
+dissipation and the exercise of authority.
+
+"What if the Smolensk people have offahd to waise militia for the
+Empewah? Ah we to take Smolensk as our patte'n? If the noble
+awistocwacy of the pwovince of Moscow thinks fit, it can show its
+loyalty to our sov'weign the Empewah in other ways. Have we
+fo'gotten the waising of the militia in the yeah 'seven? All that
+did was to enwich the pwiests' sons and thieves and wobbahs...."
+
+Count Ilya Rostov smiled blandly and nodded approval.
+
+"And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at all! It only
+wuined our farming! Bettah have another conscwiption... o' ou' men
+will wetu'n neithah soldiers no' peasants, and we'll get only
+depwavity fwom them. The nobility don't gwudge theah lives- evewy
+one of us will go and bwing in more wecwuits, and the sov'weign" (that
+was the way he referred to the Emperor) "need only say the word and
+we'll all die fo' him!" added the orator with animation.
+
+Count Rostov's mouth watered with pleasure and he nudged Pierre, but
+Pierre wanted to speak himself. He pushed forward, feeling stirred,
+but not yet sure what stirred him or what he would say. Scarcely had
+he opened his mouth when one of the senators, a man without a tooth in
+his head, with a shrewd though angry expression, standing near the
+first speaker, interrupted him. Evidently accustomed to managing
+debates and to maintaining an argument, he began in low but distinct
+tones:
+
+"I imagine, sir," said he, mumbling with his toothless mouth,
+"that we have been summoned here not to discuss whether it's best
+for the empire at the present moment to adopt conscription or to
+call out the militia. We have been summoned to reply to the appeal
+with which our sovereign the Emperor has honored us. But to judge what
+is best- conscription or the militia- we can leave to the supreme
+authority...."
+
+Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He hardened his
+heart against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow
+attitude into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped
+forward and interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would
+say, but he began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French
+or expressing himself in bookish Russian.
+
+"Excuse me, your excellency," he began. (He was well acquainted with
+the senator, but thought it necessary on this occasion to address
+him formally.) "Though I don't agree with the gentleman..." (he
+hesitated: he wished to say, "Mon tres honorable preopinant"- "My very
+honorable opponent") "with the gentleman... whom I have not the
+honor of knowing, I suppose that the nobility have been summoned not
+merely to express their sympathy and enthusiasm but also to consider
+the means by which we can assist our Fatherland! I imagine," he went
+on, warming to his subject, "that the Emperor himself would not be
+satisfied to find in us merely owners of serfs whom we are willing
+to devote to his service, and chair a canon~^ we are ready to make of
+ourselves- and not to obtain from us any co-co-counsel."
+
+^~ "Food for cannon."
+
+Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the senator's
+sarcastic smile and the freedom of Pierre's remarks. Only Count Rostov
+was pleased with them as he had been pleased with those of the naval
+officer, the senator, and in general with whatever speech he had
+last heard.
+
+"I think that before discussing these questions," Pierre
+continued, "we should ask the Emperor- most respectfully ask His
+Majesty- to let us know the number of our troops and the position in
+which our army and our forces now are, and then..."
+
+But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he was attacked
+from three sides. The most vigorous attack came from an old
+acquaintance, a boston player who had always been well disposed toward
+him, Stepan Stepanovich Adraksin. Adraksin was in uniform, and whether
+as a result of the uniform or from some other cause Pierre saw
+before him quite a different man. With a sudden expression of
+malevolence on his aged face, Adraksin shouted at Pierre:
+
+"In the first place, I tell you we have no right to question the
+Emperor about that, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had that
+right, the Emperor could not answer such a question. The troops are
+moved according to the enemy's movements and the number of men
+increases and decreases..."
+
+Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height and about forty
+years of age, whom Pierre had formerly met at the gypsies' and knew as
+a bad cardplayer, and who, also transformed by his uniform, came up to
+Pierre, interrupted Adraksin.
+
+"Yes, and this is not a time for discussing," he continued, "but for
+acting: there is war in Russia! The enemy is advancing to destroy
+Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers, to carry off our
+wives and children." The nobleman smote his breast. "We will all
+arise, every one of us will go, for our father the Tsar!" he
+shouted, rolling his bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were
+heard in the crowd. "We are Russians and will not grudge our blood
+in defense of our faith, the throne, and the Fatherland! We must cease
+raving if we are sons of our Fatherland! We will show Europe how
+Russia rises to the defense of Russia!"
+
+Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He felt that
+his words, apart from what meaning they conveyed, were less audible
+than the sound of his opponent's voice.
+
+Count Rostov at the back of the crowd was expressing approval;
+several persons, briskly turning a shoulder to the orator at the end
+of a phrase, said:
+
+"That's right, quite right! Just so!"
+
+Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his money, his
+serfs, or himself, only one ought to know the state of affairs in
+order to be able to improve it, but he was unable to speak. Many
+voices shouted and talked at the same time, so that Count Rostov had
+not time to signify his approval of them all, and the group increased,
+dispersed, re-formed, and then moved with a hum of talk into the
+largest hall and to the big table. Not only was Pierre's attempt to
+speak unsuccessful, but he was rudely interrupted, pushed aside, and
+people turned away from him as from a common enemy. This happened
+not because they were displeased by the substance of his speech, which
+had even been forgotten after the many subsequent speeches, but to
+animate it the crowd needed a tangible object to love and a tangible
+object to hate. Pierre became the latter. Many other orators spoke
+after the excited nobleman, and all in the same tone. Many spoke
+eloquently and with originality.
+
+Glinka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was recognized
+(cries of "author! author!" were heard in the crowd), said that
+"hell must be repulsed by hell," and that he had seen a child
+smiling at lightning flashes and thunderclaps, but "we will not be
+that child."
+
+"Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!" was repeated approvingly in the back
+rows of the crowd.
+
+The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat gray-haired or
+bald seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and besashed almost all of
+whom Pierre had seen in their own homes with their buffoons, or
+playing boston at the clubs. With an incessant hum of voices the crowd
+advanced to the table. Pressed by the throng against the high backs of
+the chairs, the orators spoke one after another and sometimes two
+together. Those standing behind noticed what a speaker omitted to
+say and hastened to supply it. Others in that heat and crush racked
+their brains to find some thought and hastened to utter it. The old
+magnates, whom Pierre knew, sat and turned to look first at one and
+then at another, and their faces for the most part only expressed
+the fact that they found it very hot. Pierre, however, felt excited,
+and the general desire to show that they were ready to go to all
+lengths- which found expression in the tones and looks more than in
+the substance of the speeches- infected him too. He did not renounce
+his opinions, but felt himself in some way to blame and wished to
+justify himself.
+
+"I only said that it would be more to the purpose to make sacrifices
+when we know what is needed!" said he, trying to be heard above the
+other voices.
+
+One of the old men nearest to him looked round, but his attention
+was immediately diverted by an exclamation at the other side of the
+table.
+
+"Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our expiation!"
+shouted one man.
+
+"He is the enemy of mankind!" cried another. "Allow me to speak...."
+"Gentlemen, you are crushing me!..."
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+At that moment Count Rostopchin with his protruding chin and alert
+eyes, wearing the uniform of a general with sash over his shoulder,
+entered the room, stepping briskly to the front of the crowd of
+gentry.
+
+"Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment," said
+Rostopchin. "I am straight from the palace. Seeing the position we are
+in, I think there is little need for discussion. The Emperor has
+deigned to summon us and the merchants. Millions will pour forth
+from there"- he pointed to the merchants' hall- "but our business is
+to supply men and not spare ourselves... That is the least we can do!"
+
+A conference took place confined to the magnates sitting at the
+table. The whole consultation passed more than quietly. After all
+the preceding noise the sound of their old voices saying one after
+another, "I agree," or for variety, "I too am of that opinion," and so
+on had even a mournful effect.
+
+The secretary was told to write down the resolution of the Moscow
+nobility and gentry, that they would furnish ten men, fully
+equipped, out of every thousand serfs, as the Smolensk gentry had
+done. Their chairs made a scraping noise as the gentlemen who had
+conferred rose with apparent relief, and began walking up and down,
+arm in arm, to stretch their legs and converse in couples.
+
+"The Emperor! The Emperor!" a sudden cry resounded through the halls
+and the whole throng hurried to the entrance.
+
+The Emperor entered the hall through a broad path between two
+lines of nobles. Every face expressed respectful, awe-struck
+curiosity. Pierre stood rather far off and could not hear all that the
+Emperor said. From what he did hear he understood that the Emperor
+spoke of the danger threatening the empire and of the hopes he
+placed on the Moscow nobility. He was answered by a voice which
+informed him of the resolution just arrived at.
+
+"Gentlemen!" said the Emperor with a quivering voice.
+
+There was a rustling among the crowd and it again subsided, so
+that Pierre distinctly heard the pleasantly human voice of the Emperor
+saying with emotion:
+
+"I never doubted the devotion of the Russian nobles, but today it
+has surpassed my expectations. I thank you in the name of the
+Fatherland! Gentlemen, let us act! Time is most precious..."
+
+The Emperor ceased speaking, the crowd began pressing round him, and
+rapturous exclamations were heard from all sides.
+
+"Yes, most precious... a royal word," said Count Rostov, with a sob.
+He stood at the back, and, though he had heard hardly anything,
+understood everything in his own way.
+
+From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that of the
+merchants. There he remained about ten minutes. Pierre was among those
+who saw him come out from the merchants' hall with tears of emotion in
+his eyes. As became known later, he had scarcely begun to address
+the merchants before tears gushed from his eyes and he concluded in
+a trembling voice. When Pierre saw the Emperor he was coming out
+accompanied by two merchants, one of whom Pierre knew, a fat
+otkupshchik. The other was the mayor, a man with a thin sallow face
+and narrow beard. Both were weeping. Tears filled the thin man's eyes,
+and the fat otkupshchik sobbed outright like a child and kept
+repeating:
+
+"Our lives and property- take them, Your Majesty!"
+
+Pierre's one feeling at the moment was a desire to show that he
+was ready to go all lengths and was prepared to sacrifice
+everything. He now felt ashamed of his speech with its
+constitutional tendency and sought an opportunity of effacing it.
+Having heard that Count Mamonov was furnishing a regiment, Bezukhov at
+once informed Rostopchin that he would give a thousand men and their
+maintenance.
+
+Old Rostov could not tell his wife of what had passed without tears,
+and at once consented to Petya's request and went himself to enter his
+name.
+
+Next day the Emperor left Moscow. The assembled nobles all took
+off their uniforms and settled down again in their homes and clubs,
+and not without some groans gave orders to their stewards about the
+enrollment, feeling amazed themselves at what they had done.
+
+BOOK TEN: 1812
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could not resist going
+to Dresden, could not help having his head turned by the homage he
+received, could not help donning a Polish uniform and yielding to
+the stimulating influence of a June morning, and could not refrain
+from bursts of anger in the presence of Kurakin and then of Balashev.
+
+Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself to be
+personally insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to command the army in the
+best way, because he wished to fulfill his duty and earn fame as a
+great commander. Rostov charged the French because he could not
+restrain his wish for a gallop across a level field; and in the same
+way the innumerable people who took part in the war acted in accord
+with their personal characteristics, habits, circumstances, and
+aims. They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant,
+reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it
+of their own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of
+history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible
+to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher
+they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.
+
+The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their personal
+interests have vanished leaving no trace, and nothing remains of
+that time but its historic results.
+
+Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain personal
+aims, to further the accomplishment of a stupendous result no one of
+them at all expected- neither Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor still
+less any of those who did the actual fighting.
+
+The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812 is clear
+to us now. No one will deny that that cause was, on the one hand,
+its advance into the heart of Russia late in the season without any
+preparation for a winter campaign and, on the other, the character
+given to the war by the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the
+foe this aroused among the Russian people. But no one at the time
+foresaw (what now seems so evident) that this was the only way an army
+of eight hundred thousand men- the best in the world and led by the
+best general- could be destroyed in conflict with a raw army of half
+its numerical strength, and led by inexperienced commanders as the
+Russian army was. Not only did no one see this, but on the Russian
+side every effort was made to hinder the only thing that could save
+Russia, while on the French side, despite Napoleon's experience and
+so-called military genius, every effort was directed to pushing on
+to Moscow at the end of the summer, that is, to doing the very thing
+that was bound to lead to destruction.
+
+In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are very fond of
+saying that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he
+sought a battle and that his marshals advised him to stop at Smolensk,
+and of making similar statements to show that the danger of the
+campaign was even then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of
+telling us that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war
+plan was adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and
+this plan some of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain
+Frenchman, others to Toll, and others again to Alexander himself-
+pointing to notes, projects, and letters which contain hints of such a
+line of action. But all these hints at what happened, both from the
+French side and the Russian, are advanced only because they fit in
+with the event. Had that event not occurred these hints would have
+been forgotten, as we have forgotten the thousands and millions of
+hints and expectations to the contrary which were current then but
+have now been forgotten because the event falsified them. There are
+always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that however
+it may end there will always be people to say: "I said then that it
+would be so," quite forgetting that amid their innumerable conjectures
+many were to quite the contrary effect.
+
+Conjectures as to Napoleon's awareness of the danger of extending
+his line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the
+depths of Russia, are evidently of that kind, and only by much
+straining can historians attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and
+his marshals, or such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts
+are in flat contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period
+of the war not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw
+the French into the heart of the country, but from their first entry
+into Russia everything was done to stop them. And not only was
+Napoleon not afraid to extend his line, but he welcomed every step
+forward as a triumph and did not seek battle as eagerly as in former
+campaigns, but very lazily.
+
+At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our
+sole aim was to unite them, though uniting the armies was no advantage
+if we meant to retire and lure the enemy into the depths of the
+country. Our Emperor joined the army to encourage it to defend every
+inch of Russian soil and not to retreat. The enormous Drissa camp
+was formed on Pfuel's plan, and there was no intention of retiring
+farther. The Emperor reproached the commanders in chief for every step
+they retired. He could not bear the idea of letting the enemy even
+reach Smolensk, still less could he contemplate the burning of Moscow,
+and when our armies did unite he was displeased that Smolensk was
+abandoned and burned without a general engagement having been fought
+under its walls.
+
+So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders and people were
+still more provoked at the thought that our forces were retreating
+into the depths of the country.
+
+Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far into the country
+and missed several chances of forcing an engagement. In August he
+was at Smolensk and thought only of how to advance farther, though
+as we now see that advance was evidently ruinous to him.
+
+The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee the danger of
+the advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian commanders
+then think of luring Napoleon on, but quite the contrary. The luring
+of Napoleon into the depths of the country was not the result of any
+plan, for no one believed it to be possible; it resulted from a most
+complex interplay of intrigues, aims, and wishes among those who
+took part in the war and had no perception whatever of the inevitable,
+or of the one way of saving Russia. Everything came about
+fortuitously. The armies were divided at the commencement of the
+campaign. We tried to unite them, with the evident intention of giving
+battle and checking the enemy's advance, and by this effort to unite
+them while avoiding battle with a much stronger enemy, and necessarily
+withdrawing the armies at an acute angle- we led the French on to
+Smolensk. But we withdrew at an acute angle not only because the
+French advanced between our two armies; the angle became still more
+acute and we withdrew still farther, because Barclay de Tolly was an
+unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagration (who would come his
+command), and Bagration- being in command of the second army- tried to
+postpone joining up and coming under Barclay's command as long as he
+could. Bagration was slow in effecting the junction- though that was
+the chief aim of all at headquarters- because, as he alleged, he
+exposed his army to danger on this march, and it was best for him to
+retire more to the left and more to the south, worrying the enemy from
+flank and rear and securing from the Ukraine recruits for his army;
+and it looks as if he planned this in order not to come under the
+command of the detested foreigner Barclay, whose rank was inferior
+to his own.
+
+The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but his presence
+and ignorance of what steps to take, and the enormous number of
+advisers and plans, destroyed the first army's energy and it retired.
+
+The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp, but
+Paulucci, aiming at becoming commander in chief, unexpectedly employed
+his energy to influence Alexander, and Pfuel's whole plan was
+abandoned and the command entrusted to Barclay. But as Barclay did not
+inspire confidence his power was limited. The armies were divided,
+there was no unity of command, and Barclay was unpopular; but from
+this confusion, division, and the unpopularity of the foreign
+commander in chief, there resulted on the one hand indecision and
+the avoidance of a battle (which we could not have refrained from
+had the armies been united and had someone else, instead of Barclay,
+been in command) and on the other an ever-increasing indignation
+against the foreigners and an increase in patriotic zeal.
+
+At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and
+indeed the only pretext for his departure it was decided that it was
+necessary for him to inspire the people in the capitals and arouse the
+nation in general to a patriotic war. And by this visit of the Emperor
+to Moscow the strength of the Russian army was trebled.
+
+He left in order not to obstruct the commander in chief's
+undivided control of the army, and hoping that more decisive action
+would then be taken, but the command of the armies became still more
+confused and enfeebled. Bennigsen, the Tsarevich, and a swarm of
+adjutants general remained with the army to keep the commander in
+chief under observation and arouse his energy, and Barclay, feeling
+less free than ever under the observation of all these "eyes of the
+Emperor," became still more cautious of undertaking any decisive
+action and avoided giving battle.
+
+Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarevich hinted at treachery and
+demanded a general engagement. Lubomirski, Bronnitski, Wlocki, and the
+others of that group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under
+pretext of sending papers to the Emperor, dispatched these Polish
+adjutants general to Petersburg and plunged into an open struggle with
+Bennigsen and the Tsarevich.
+
+At Smolensk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagration
+disliked it.
+
+Bagration drove up in a carriage to to the house occupied by
+Barclay. Barclay donned his sash and came out to meet and report to
+his senior officer Bagration.
+
+Despite his seniority in rank Bagration, in this contest of
+magnanimity, took his orders from Barclay, but, having submitted,
+agreed with him less than ever. By the Emperor's orders Bagration
+reported direct to him. He wrote to Arakcheev, the Emperor's
+confidant: "It must be as my sovereign pleases, but I cannot work with
+the Minister (meaning Barclay). For God's sake send me somewhere
+else if only in command of a regiment. I cannot stand it here.
+Headquarters are so full of Germans that a Russian cannot exist and
+there is no sense in anything. I thought I was really serving my
+sovereign and the Fatherland, but it turns out that I am serving
+Barclay. I confess I do not want to."
+
+The swarm of Bronnitskis and Wintzingerodes and their like still
+further embittered the relations between the commanders in chief,
+and even less unity resulted. Preparations were made to fight the
+French before Smolensk. A general was sent to survey the position.
+This general, hating Barclay, rode to visit a friend of his own, a
+corps commander, and, having spent the day with him, returned to
+Barclay and condemned, as unsuitable from every point of view, the
+battleground he had not seen.
+
+While disputes and intrigues were going on about the future field of
+battle, and while we were looking for the French- having lost touch
+with them- the French stumbled upon Neverovski's division and
+reached the walls of Smolensk.
+
+It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolensk to save
+our lines of communication. The battle was fought and thousands were
+killed on both sides.
+
+Smolensk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the Emperor and
+of the whole people. But Smolensk was burned by its own
+inhabitants-who had been misled by their governor. And these ruined
+inhabitants, setting an example to other Russians, went to Moscow
+thinking only of their own losses but kindling hatred of the foe.
+Napoleon advanced farther and we retired, thus arriving at the very
+result which caused his destruction.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for Princess
+Mary to come to his study.
+
+"Well? Are you satisfied now?" said he. "You've made me quarrel with
+my son! Satisfied, are you? That's all you wanted! Satisfied?... It
+hurts me, it hurts. I'm old and weak and this is what you wanted. Well
+then, gloat over it! Gloat over it!"
+
+After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a whole week. He
+was ill and did not leave his study.
+
+Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this illness the
+old prince not only excluded her from his room, but did not admit
+Mademoiselle Bourienne either. Tikhon alone attended him.
+
+At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his
+former way of life, devoting himself with special activity to building
+operations and the arrangement of the gardens and completely
+breaking off his relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks
+and cold tone to his daughter seemed to say: "There, you see? You
+plotted against me, you lied to Prince Andrew about my relations
+with that Frenchwoman and made me quarrel with him, but you see I need
+neither her nor you!"
+
+Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas, watching
+his lessons, teaching him Russian and music herself, and talking to
+Dessalles; the rest of the day she spent over her books, with her
+old nurse, or with "God's folk" who sometimes came by the back door to
+see her.
+
+Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think about wars. She
+feared for her brother who was in it, was horrified by and amazed at
+the strange cruelty that impels men to kill one another, but she did
+not understand the significance of this war, which seemed to her
+like all previous wars. She did not realize the significance of this
+war, though Dessalles with whom she constantly conversed was
+passionately interested in its progress and tried to explain his own
+conception of it to her, and though the "God's folk" who came to see
+her reported, in their own way, the rumors current among the people of
+an invasion by Antichrist, and though Julie (now Princess
+Drubetskaya), who had resumed correspondence with her, wrote patriotic
+letters from Moscow.
+
+"I write you in Russian, my good friend," wrote Julie in her
+Frenchified Russian, "because I have a detestation for all the French,
+and the same for their language which I cannot support to hear
+spoken.... We in Moscow are elated by enthusiasm for our adored
+Emperor.
+
+"My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but
+the news which I have inspires me yet more.
+
+"You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raevski, embracing
+his two sons and saying: 'I will perish with them but we will not be
+shaken!' And truly though the enemy was twice stronger than we, we
+were unshakable. We pass the time as we can, but in war as in war! The
+princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days with me, and we, unhappy
+widows of live men, make beautiful conversations over our charpie,
+only you, my friend, are missing..." and so on.
+
+The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full significance
+of this war was that the old prince never spoke of it, did not
+recognize it, and laughed at Dessalles when he mentioned it at dinner.
+The prince's tone was so calm and confident that Princess Mary
+unhesitatingly believed him.
+
+All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and even
+animated. He planned another garden and began a new building for the
+domestic serfs. The only thing that made Princess Mary anxious about
+him was that he slept very little and, instead of sleeping in his
+study as usual, changed his sleeping place every day. One day he would
+order his camp bed to be set up in the glass gallery, another day he
+remained on the couch or on the lounge chair in the drawing room and
+dozed there without undressing, while- instead of Mademoiselle
+Bourienne- a serf boy read to him. Then again he would spend a night
+in the dining room.
+
+On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrew. In his
+first letter which came soon after he had left home, Prince Andrew had
+dutifully asked his father's forgiveness for what he had allowed
+himself to say and begged to be restored to his favor. To this
+letter the old prince had replied affectionately, and from that time
+had kept the Frenchwoman at at Prince Andrew's second letter,
+written near Vitebsk after the French had occupied that town, gave a
+brief account of the whole campaign, enclosed for them a plan he had
+drawn and forecasts as to the further progress of the war. In this
+letter Prince Andrew pointed out to his father the danger of staying
+at Bald Hills, so near the theater of war and on the army's direct
+line of march, and advised him to move to Moscow.
+
+At dinner that day, on Dessalles' mentioning that the French were
+said to have already entered Vitebsk, the old prince remembered his
+son's letter.
+
+"There was a letter from Prince Andrew today," he said to Princess
+Mary- "Haven't you read it?"
+
+"No, Father," she replied in a frightened voice.
+
+She could not have read the letter as she did not even know it had
+arrived.
+
+"He writes about this war," said the prince, with the ironic smile
+that had become habitual to him in speaking of the present war.
+
+"That must be very interesting," said Dessalles. "Prince Andrew is
+in a position to know..."
+
+"Oh, very interesting!" said Mademoiselle Bourienne.
+
+"Go and get it for me," said the old prince to Mademoiselle
+Bourienne. "You know- under the paperweight on the little table."
+
+Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.
+
+"No, don't!" he exclaimed with a frown. "You go, Michael Ivanovich."
+
+Michael Ivanovich rose and went to the study. But as soon as he
+had left the room the old prince, looking uneasily round, threw down
+his napkin and went himself.
+
+"They can't do anything... always make some muddle," he muttered.
+
+While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle
+Bourienne, and even little Nicholas exchanged looks in silence. The
+old prince returned with quick steps, accompanied by Michael
+Ivanovich, bringing the letter and a plan. These he put down beside
+him- not letting anyone read them at dinner.
+
+On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to Princess
+Mary and, spreading out before him the plan of the new building and
+fixing his eyes upon it, told her to read the letter aloud. When she
+had done so Princess Mary looked inquiringly at her father. He was
+examining the plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas.
+
+"What do you think of it, Prince?" Dessalles ventured to ask.
+
+"I? I?..." said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened, and not
+taking his eyes from the plan of the building.
+
+"Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to us that..."
+
+"Ha ha ha! The theater of war!" said the prince. "I have said and
+still say that the theater of war is Poland and the enemy will never
+get beyond the Niemen."
+
+Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was talking of
+the Niemen when the enemy was already at the Dnieper, but Princess
+Mary, forgetting the geographical position of the Niemen, thought that
+what her father was saying was correct.
+
+"When the snow melts they'll sink in the Polish swamps. Only they
+could fail to see it," the prince continued, evidently thinking of the
+campaign of 1807 which seemed to him so recent. "Bennigsen should have
+advanced into Prussia sooner, then things would have taken a different
+turn..."
+
+"But, Prince," Dessalles began timidly, "the letter mentions
+Vitebsk...."
+
+"Ah, the letter? Yes..." replied the prince peevishly. "Yes...
+yes..." His face suddenly took on a morose expression. He paused.
+"Yes, he writes that the French were beaten at... at... what river
+is it?"
+
+Dessalles dropped his eyes.
+
+"The prince says nothing about that," he remarked gently.
+
+"Doesn't he? But I didn't invent it myself."
+
+No one spoke for a long time.
+
+"Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivanovich," he suddenly went on,
+raising his head and pointing to the plan of the building, "tell me
+how you mean to alter it...."
+
+Michael Ivanovich went up to the plan, and the prince after speaking
+to him about the building looked angrily at Princess Mary and
+Dessalles and went to his own room.
+
+Princess Mary saw Dessalles' embarrassed and astonished look fixed
+on her father, noticed his silence, and was struck by the fact that
+her father had forgotten his son's letter on the drawing-room table;
+but she was not only afraid to speak of it and ask Dessalles the
+reason of his confusion and silence, but was afraid even to think
+about it.
+
+In the evening Michael Ivanovich, sent by the prince, came to
+Princess Mary for Prince Andrew's letter which had been forgotten in
+the drawing room. She gave it to him and, unpleasant as it was to
+her to do so, ventured to ask him what her father was doing.
+
+"Always busy," replied Michael Ivanovich with a respectfully
+ironic smile which caused Princess Mary to turn pale. "He's worrying
+very much about the new building. He has been reading a little, but
+now"- Michael Ivanovich went on, lowering his voice- "now he's at
+his desk, busy with his will, I expect." (One of the prince's favorite
+occupations of late had been the preparation of some papers he meant
+to leave at his death and which he called his "will.")
+
+"And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?" asked Princess Mary.
+
+"Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time."
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+When Michael Ivanovich returned to the study with the letter, the
+old prince, with spectacles on and a shade over his eyes, was
+sitting at his open bureau with screened candles, holding a paper in
+his outstretched hand, and in a somewhat dramatic attitude was reading
+his manuscript- his "Remarks" as he termed it- which was to be
+transmitted to the Emperor after his death.
+
+When Michael Ivanovich went in there were tears in the prince's eyes
+evoked by the memory of the time when the paper he was now reading had
+been written. He took the letter from Michael Ivanovich's hand, put it
+in his pocket, folded up his papers, and called in Alpatych who had
+long been waiting.
+
+The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolensk and,
+walking up and down the room past Alpatych who stood by the door, he
+gave his instructions.
+
+"First, notepaper- do you hear? Eight quires, like this sample,
+gilt-edged... it must be exactly like the sample. Varnish, sealing
+wax, as in Michael Ivanovich's list."
+
+He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his notes.
+
+"Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the deed."
+
+Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were wanted and had to
+be of a special shape the prince had himself designed, and a leather
+case had to be ordered to keep the "will" in.
+
+The instructions to Alpatych took over two hours and still the
+prince did not let him go. He sat down, sank into thought, closed
+his eyes, and dozed off. Alpatych made a slight movement.
+
+"Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I'll send after you."
+
+Alpatych went out. The prince again went to his bureau, glanced into
+it, fingered his papers, closed the bureau again, and sat down at
+the table to write to the governor.
+
+It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter. He wished
+to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to and that most depressing
+thoughts came to him in bed. So he called Tikhon and went through
+the rooms with him to show him where to set up the bed for that night.
+
+He went about looking at every corner. Every place seemed
+unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study.
+That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive
+thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory
+everywhere, but the corner behind the piano in the sitting room was
+better than other places: he had never slept there yet.
+
+With the help of a footman Tikhon brought in the bedstead and
+began putting it up.
+
+"That's not right! That's not right!" cried the prince, and
+himself pushed it a few inches from the corner and then closer in
+again.
+
+"Well, at last I've finished, now I'll rest," thought the prince,
+and let Tikhon undress him.
+
+Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to divest himself
+of his coat and trousers, the prince undressed, sat down heavily on
+the bed, and appeared to be meditating as he looked contemptuously
+at his withered yellow legs. He was not meditating, but only deferring
+the moment of making the effort to lift those legs up and turn over on
+the bed. "Ugh, how hard it is! Oh, that this toil might end and you
+would release me!" thought he. Pressing his lips together he made that
+effort for the twenty-thousandth time and lay down. But hardly had
+he done so before he felt the bed rocking backwards and forwards
+beneath him as if it were breathing heavily and jolting. This happened
+to him almost every night. He opened his eyes as they were closing.
+
+"No peace, damn them!" he muttered, angry he knew not with whom. "Ah
+yes, there was something else important, very important, that I was
+keeping till I should be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them.
+No, it was something, something in the drawing room. Princess Mary
+talked some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said something.
+Something in my pocket- can't remember..."
+
+"Tikhon, what did we talk about at dinner?"
+
+"About Prince Michael..."
+
+"Be quiet, quiet!" The prince slapped his hand on the table. "Yes, I
+know, Prince Andrew's letter! Princess Mary read it. Dessalles said
+something about Vitebsk. Now I'll read it."
+
+He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table- on which
+stood a glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candle- moved close to
+the bed, and putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only now in
+the stillness of the night, reading it by the faint light under the
+green shade, did he grasp its meaning for a moment.
+
+"The French at Vitebsk, in four days' march they may be at Smolensk;
+perhaps are already there! Tikhon!" Tikhon jumped up. "No, no, I don't
+want anything!" he shouted.
+
+He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And
+there rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian
+camp, and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face,
+vigorous and alert, entering Potemkin's gaily colored tent, and a
+burning sense of jealousy of "the favorite" agitated him now as
+strongly as it had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that
+first meeting with Potemkin. And he saw before him a plump, rather
+sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile
+and her words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that
+same face on the catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zubov
+over her coffin about his right to kiss her hand.
+
+"Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with
+all the present! Quicker, quicker- and that they should leave me in
+peace!"
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's estate, lay forty miles east
+from Smolensk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.
+
+The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to
+Alpatych, Dessalles, having asked to see Princess Mary, told her that,
+as the prince was not very well and was taking no steps to secure
+his safety, though from Prince Andrew's letter it was evident that
+to remain at Bald Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully advised
+her to send a letter by Alpatych to the Provincial Governor at
+Smolensk, asking him to let her know the state of affairs and the
+extent of the danger to which Bald Hills was exposed. Dessalles
+wrote this letter to the Governor for Princess Mary, she signed it,
+and it was given to Alpatych with instructions to hand it to the
+Governor and to come back as quickly as possible if there was danger.
+
+Having received all his orders Alpatych, wearing a white beaver hat-
+a present from the prince- and carrying a stick as the prince did,
+went out accompanied by his family. Three well-fed roans stood ready
+harnessed to a small conveyance with a leather hood.
+
+The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness
+stuffed with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald Hills to drive
+with ringing bells; but on a long journey Alpatych liked to have them.
+His satellites- the senior clerk, a countinghouse clerk, a scullery
+maid, a cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and
+various domestic serfs- were seeing him off.
+
+His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for him to sit on
+and behind his back. His old sister-in-law popped in a small bundle,
+and one of the coachmen helped him into the vehicle.
+
+"There! There! Women's fuss! Women, women!" said Alpatych, puffing
+and speaking rapidly just as the prince did, and he climbed into the
+trap.
+
+After giving the clerk orders about the work to be done, Alpatych,
+not trying to imitate the prince now, lifted the hat from his bald
+head and crossed himself three times.
+
+"If there is anything... come back, Yakov Alpatych! For Christ's
+sake think of us!" cried his wife, referring to the rumors of war
+and the enemy.
+
+"Women, women! Women's fuss!" muttered Alpatych to himself and
+started on his journey, looking round at the fields of yellow rye
+and the still-green, thickly growing oats, and at other quite black
+fields just being plowed a second time.
+
+As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year's splendid crop
+of corn, scrutinized the strips of ryefield which here and there
+were already being reaped, made his calculations as to the sowing
+and the harvest, and asked himself whether he had not forgotten any of
+the prince's orders.
+
+Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived at the town
+toward evening on the fourth of August.
+
+Alpatych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains and troops on
+the road. As he approached Smolensk he heard the sounds of distant
+firing, but these did not impress him. What struck him most was the
+sight of a splendid field of oats in which a camp had been pitched and
+which was being mown down by the soldiers, evidently for fodder.
+This fact impressed Alpatych, but in thinking about his own business
+he soon forgot it.
+
+All the interests of his life for more than thirty years had been
+bounded by the will of the prince, and he never went beyond that
+limit. Everything not connected with the execution of the prince's
+orders did not interest and did not even exist for Alpatych.
+
+On reaching Smolensk on the evening of the fourth of August he put
+up in the Gachina suburb across the Dnieper, at the inn kept by
+Ferapontov, where he had been in the habit of putting up for the
+last thirty years. Some thirty years ago Ferapontov, by Alpatych's
+advice, had bought a wood from the prince, had begun to trade, and now
+had a house, an inn, and a corn dealer's shop in that province. He was
+a stout, dark, red-faced peasant in the forties, with thick lips, a
+broad knob of a nose, similar knobs over his black frowning brows, and
+a round belly.
+
+Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapontov was standing
+before his shop which opened onto the street. On seeing Alpatych he
+went up to him.
+
+"You're welcome, Yakov Alpatych. Folks are leaving the town, but you
+have come to it," said he.
+
+"Why are they leaving the town?" asked Alpatych.
+
+"That's what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the French."
+
+"Women's fuss, women's fuss!" said Alpatych.
+
+"Just what I think, Yakov Alpatych. What I say is: orders have
+been given not to let them in, so that must be right. And the peasants
+are asking three rubles for carting- it isn't Christian!"
+
+Yakov Alpatych heard without heeding. He asked for a samovar and for
+hay for his horses, and when he had had his tea he went to bed.
+
+All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next morning
+Alpatych donned a jacket he wore only in town and went out on
+business. It was a sunny morning and by eight o'clock it was already
+hot. "A good day for harvesting," thought Alpatych.
+
+From beyond the town firing had been heard since early morning. At
+eight o'clock the booming of cannon was added to the sound of
+musketry. Many people were hurrying through the streets and there were
+many soldiers, but cabs were still driving about, tradesmen stood at
+their shops, and service was being held in the churches as usual.
+Alpatych went to the shops, to government offices, to the post office,
+and to the Governor's. In the offices and shops and at the post office
+everyone was talking about the army and about the enemy who was
+already attacking the town, everybody was asking what should be
+done, and all were trying to calm one another.
+
+In front of the Governor's house Alpatych found a large number of
+people, Cossacks, and a traveling carriage of the Governor's. At the
+porch he met two of the landed gentry, one of whom he knew. This
+man, an ex-captain of police, was saying angrily:
+
+"It's no joke, you know! It's all very well if you're single. 'One
+man though undone is but one,' as the proverb says, but with
+thirteen in your family and all the property... They've brought us
+to utter ruin! What sort of governors are they to do that? They
+ought to be hanged- the brigands!..."
+
+"Oh come, that's enough!" said the other.
+
+"What do I care? Let him hear! We're not dogs," said the
+ex-captain of police, and looking round he noticed Alpatych.
+
+"Oh, Yakov Alpatych! What have you come for?"
+
+"To see the Governor by his excellency's order," answered
+Alpatych, lifting his head and proudly thrusting his hand into the
+bosom of his coat as he always did when he mentioned the prince.... He
+has ordered me to inquire into the position of affairs," he added.
+
+"Yes, go and find out!" shouted the angry gentleman. "They've
+brought things to such a pass that there are no carts or
+anything!... There it is again, do you hear?" said he, pointing in the
+direction whence came the sounds of firing.
+
+"They've brought us all to ruin... the brigands!" he repeated, and
+descended the porch steps.
+
+Alpatych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the waiting room were
+tradesmen, women, and officials, looking silently at one another.
+The door of the Governor's room opened and they all rose and moved
+forward. An official ran out, said some words to a merchant, called
+a stout official with a cross hanging on his neck to follow him, and
+vanished again, evidently wishing to avoid the inquiring looks and
+questions addressed to him. Alpatych moved forward and next time the
+official came out addressed him, one hand placed in the breast of
+his buttoned coat, and handed him two letters.
+
+"To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief Prince Bolkonski,"
+he announced with such solemnity and significance that the official
+turned to him and took the letters.
+
+A few minutes later the Governor received Alpatych and hurriedly
+said to him:
+
+"Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I acted on
+the highest instructions- here..." and he handed a paper to
+Alpatych. "Still, as the prince is unwell my advice is that they
+should go to Moscow. I am just starting myself. Inform them..."
+
+But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring officer ran into
+the room and began to say something in French. The Governor's face
+expressed terror.
+
+"Go," he said, nodding his head to Alpatych, and began questioning
+the officer.
+
+Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on Alpatych when
+he came out of the Governor's room. Involuntarily listening now to the
+firing, which had drawn nearer and was increasing in strength,
+Alpatych hurried to his inn. The paper handed to him by the Governor
+said this:
+
+"I assure you that the town of Smolensk is not in the slightest
+danger as yet and it is unlikely that it will be threatened with
+any. I from the one side and Prince Bagration from the other are
+marching to unite our forces before Smolensk, which junction will be
+effected on the 22nd instant, and both armies with their united forces
+will defend our compatriots of the province entrusted to your care
+till our efforts shall have beaten back the enemies of our Fatherland,
+or till the last warrior in our valiant ranks has perished. From
+this you will see that you have a perfect right to reassure the
+inhabitants of Smolensk, for those defended by two such brave armies
+may feel assured of victory." (Instructions from Barclay de Tolly to
+Baron Asch, the civil governor of Smolensk, 1812.)
+
+People were anxiously roaming about the streets.
+
+Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and cupboards kept
+emerging from the gates of the yards and moving along the streets.
+Loaded carts stood at the house next to Ferapontov's and women were
+wailing and lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran round
+barking in front of the harnessed horses.
+
+Alpatych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than usual and went
+straight to the shed where his horses and trap were. The coachman
+was asleep. He woke him up, told him to harness, and went into the
+passage. From the host's room came the sounds of a child crying, the
+despairing sobs of a woman, and the hoarse angry shouting of
+Ferapontov. The cook began running hither and thither in the passage
+like a frightened hen, just as Alpatych entered.
+
+"He's done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her... dragged
+her about so!..."
+
+"What for?" asked Alpatych.
+
+"She kept begging to go away. She's a woman! 'Take me away,' says
+she, 'don't let me perish with my little children! Folks,' she says,
+'are all gone, so why,' she says, 'don't we go?' And he began
+beating and pulling her about so!"
+
+At these words Alpatych nodded as if in approval, and not wishing to
+hear more went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper's, where
+he had left his purchases.
+
+"You brute, you murderer!" screamed a thin, pale woman who, with a
+baby in her arms and her kerchief torn from her head, burst through
+the door at that moment and down the steps into the yard.
+
+Ferapontov came out after her, but on seeing Alpatych adjusted his
+waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpatych into the
+opposite room.
+
+"Going already?" said he.
+
+Alpatych, without answering or looking at his host, sorted his
+packages and asked how much he owed.
+
+"We'll reckon up! Well, have you been to the Governor's?" asked
+Ferapontov. "What has been decided?"
+
+Alpatych replied that the Governor had not told him anything
+definite.
+
+"With our business, how can we get away?" said Ferapontov. "We'd
+have to pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobuzh and I tell them
+they're not Christians to ask it! Selivanov, now, did a good stroke
+last Thursday- sold flour to the army at nine rubles a sack. Will
+you have some tea?" he added.
+
+While the horses were being harnessed Alpatych and Ferapontov over
+their tea talked of the price of corn, the crops, and the good weather
+for harvesting.
+
+"Well, it seems to be getting quieter," remarked Ferapontov,
+finishing his third cup of tea and getting up. "Ours must have got the
+best of it. The orders were not to let them in. So we're in force,
+it seems.... They say the other day Matthew Ivanych Platov drove
+them into the river Marina and drowned some eighteen thousand in one
+day."
+
+Alpatych collected his parcels, handed them to the coachman who
+had come in, and settled up with the innkeeper. The noise of wheels,
+hoofs, and bells was heard from the gateway as a little trap passed
+out.
+
+It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was in
+shadow, the other half brightly lit by the sun. Alpatych looked out of
+the window and went to the door. Suddenly the strange sound of a
+far-off whistling and thud was heard, followed by a boom of cannon
+blending into a dull roar that set the windows rattling.
+
+He went out into the street: two men were running past toward the
+bridge. From different sides came whistling sounds and the thud of
+cannon balls and bursting shells falling on the town. But these sounds
+were hardly heard in comparison with the noise of the firing outside
+the town and attracted little attention from the inhabitants. The town
+was being bombarded by a hundred and thirty guns which Napoleon had
+ordered up after four o'clock. The people did not at once realize
+the meaning of this bombardment.
+
+At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only aroused
+curiosity. Ferapontov's wife, who till then had not ceased wailing
+under the shed, became quiet and with the baby in her arms went to the
+gate, listening to the sounds and looking in silence at the people.
+
+The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With lively
+curiosity everyone tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they
+flew over their heads. Several people came round the corner talking
+eagerly.
+
+"What force!" remarked one. "Knocked the roof and ceiling all to
+splinters!"
+
+"Routed up the earth like a pig," said another.
+
+"That's grand, it bucks one up!" laughed the first. "Lucky you
+jumped aside, or it would have wiped you out!"
+
+Others joined those men and stopped and told how cannon balls had
+fallen on a house close to them. Meanwhile still more projectiles, now
+with the swift sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the
+agreeable intermittent whistle of a shell, flew over people's heads
+incessantly, but not one fell close by, they all flew over. Alpatych
+was getting into his trap. The innkeeper stood at the gate.
+
+"What are you staring at?" he shouted to the cook, who in her red
+skirt, with sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare elbows, had stepped
+to the corner to listen to what was being said.
+
+"What marvels!" she exclaimed, but hearing her master's voice she
+turned back. pulling down her tucked-up skirt.
+
+Once more something whistled, but this time quite close, swooping
+downwards like a little bird; a flame flashed in the middle of the
+street, something exploded, and the street was shrouded in smoke.
+
+"Scoundrel, what are you doing?" shouted the innkeeper, rushing to
+the cook.
+
+At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was heard from different
+sides, the frightened baby began to cry, and people crowded silently
+with pale faces round the cook. The loudest sound in that crowd was
+her wailing.
+
+"Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don't let me die! My good
+souls!..."
+
+Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The cook, with her
+thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been carried into the kitchen.
+Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov's wife and children and the house
+porter were all sitting in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns,
+the whistling of projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the cook,
+which rose above the other sounds, did not cease for a moment. The
+mistress rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone came into the
+cellar asked in a pathetic whisper what had become of her husband
+who had remained in the street. A shopman who entered told her that
+her husband had gone with others to the cathedral, whence they were
+fetching the wonder-working icon of Smolensk.
+
+Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatych left the cellar
+and stopped in the doorway. The evening sky that had been so clear was
+clouded with smoke, through which, high up, the sickle of the new moon
+shone strangely. Now that the terrible din of the guns had ceased a
+hush seemed to reign over the town, broken only by the rustle of
+footsteps, the moaning, the distant cries, and the crackle of fires
+which seemed widespread everywhere. The cook's moans had now subsided.
+On two sides black curling clouds of smoke rose and spread from the
+fires. Through the streets soldiers in various uniforms walked or
+ran confusedly in different directions like ants from a ruined
+ant-hill. Several of them ran into Ferapontov's yard before Alpatych's
+eyes. Alpatych went out to the gate. A retreating regiment,
+thronging and hurrying, blocked the street.
+
+Noticing him, an officer said: "The town is being abandoned. Get
+away, get away!" and then, turning to the soldiers, shouted:
+
+"I'll teach you to run into the yards!"
+
+Alpatych went back to the house, called the coachman, and told him
+to set off. Ferapontov's whole household came out too, following
+Alpatych and the coachman. The women, who had been silent till then,
+suddenly began to wail as they looked at the fires- the smoke and even
+the flames of which could be seen in the failing twilight- and as if
+in reply the same kind of lamentation was heard from other parts of
+the street. Inside the shed Alpatych and the coachman arranged the
+tangled reins and traces of their horses with trembling hands.
+
+As Alpatych was driving out of the gate he saw some ten soldiers
+in Ferapontov's open shop, talking loudly and filling their bags and
+knapsacks with flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapontov
+returned and entered his shop. On seeing the soldiers he was about
+to shout at them, but suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair,
+burst into sobs and laughter:
+
+"Loot everything, lads! Don't let those devils get it!" he cried,
+taking some bags of flour himself and throwing them into the street.
+
+Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away, others went on
+filling their bags. On seeing Alpatych, Ferapontov turned to him:
+
+"Russia is done for!" he cried. "Alpatych, I'll set the place on
+fire myself. We're done for!..." and Ferapontov ran into the yard.
+
+Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the street blocking
+it completely, so that Alpatych could not pass out and had to wait.
+Ferapontov's wife and children were also sitting in a cart waiting
+till it was it was possible to drive out.
+
+Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the new moon shone
+out amid the smoke that screened it. On the sloping descent to the
+Dnieper Alpatych's cart and that of the innkeeper's wife, which were
+slowly moving amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had
+to stop. In a side street near the crossroads where the vehicles had
+stopped, a house and some shops were on fire. This fire was already
+burning itself out. The flames now died down and were lost in the
+black smoke, now suddenly flared up again brightly, lighting up with
+strange distinctness the faces of the people crowding at the
+crossroads. Black figures flitted about before the fire, and through
+the incessant crackling of the flames talking and shouting could be
+heard. Seeing that his trap would not be able to move on for some
+time, Alpatych got down and turned into the side street to look at the
+fire. Soldiers were continually rushing backwards and forwards near
+it, and he saw two of them and a man in a frieze coat dragging burning
+beams into another yard across the street, while others carried
+bundles of hay.
+
+Alpatych went up to a large crowd standing before a high barn
+which was blazing briskly. The walls were all on fire and the back
+wall had fallen in, the wooden roof was collapsing, and the rafters
+were alight. The crowd was evidently watching for the roof to fall in,
+and Alpatych watched for it too.
+
+"Alpatych!" a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man.
+
+"Mercy on us! Your excellency!" answered Alpatych, immediately
+recognizing the voice of his young prince.
+
+Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black horse, was
+looking at Alpatych from the back of the crowd.
+
+"Why are you here?" he asked.
+
+"Your... your excellency," stammered Alpatych and broke into sobs.
+"Are we really lost? Master!..."
+
+"Why are you here?" Prince Andrew repeated.
+
+At that moment the flames flared up and showed his young master's
+pale worn face. Alpatych told how he had been sent there and how
+difficult it was to get away.
+
+"Are we really quite lost, your excellency?" he asked again.
+
+Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook and raising his
+knee began writing in pencil on a page he tore out. He wrote to his
+sister:
+
+"Smolensk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be occupied by the
+enemy within a week. Set off immediately for Moscow. Let me know at
+once when you will start. Send by special messenger to Usvyazh."
+
+Having written this and given the paper to Alpatych, he told him how
+to arrange for departure of the prince, the princess, his son, and the
+boy's tutor, and how and where to let him know immediately. Before
+he had had time to finish giving these instructions, a chief of
+staff followed by a suite galloped up to him.
+
+"You are a colonel?" shouted the chief of staff with a German
+accent, in a voice familiar to Prince Andrew. "Houses are set on
+fire in your presence and you stand by! What does this mean? You
+will answer for it!" shouted Berg, who was now assistant to the
+chief of staff of the commander of the left flank of the infantry of
+the first army, a place, as Berg said, "very agreeable and well en
+evidence."
+
+Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went on speaking to
+Alpatych.
+
+"So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and if by
+the tenth I don't receive news that they have all got away I shall
+have to throw up everything and come myself to Bald Hills."
+
+"Prince," said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrew, "I only spoke
+because I have to obey orders, because I always do obey exactly....
+You must please excuse me," he went on apologetically.
+
+Something cracked in the flames. The fire died down for a moment and
+wreaths of black smoke rolled from under the roof. There was another
+terrible crash and something huge collapsed.
+
+"Ou-rou-rou!" yelled the crowd, echoing the crash of the
+collapsing roof of the barn, the burning grain in which diffused a
+cakelike aroma all around. The flames flared up again, lighting the
+animated, delighted, exhausted faces of the spectators.
+
+The man in the frieze coat raised his arms and shouted:
+
+"It's fine, lads! Now it's raging... It's fine!"
+
+"That's the owner himself," cried several voices.
+
+"Well then," continued Prince Andrew to Alpatych, "report to them as
+I have told you"; and not replying a word to Berg who was now mute
+beside him, he touched his horse and rode down the side street.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+From Smolensk the troops continued to retreat, followed by the
+enemy. On the tenth of August the regiment Prince Andrew commanded was
+marching along the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills.
+Heat and drought had continued for more than three weeks. Each day
+fleecy clouds floated across the sky and occasionally veiled the
+sun, but toward evening the sky cleared again and the sun set in
+reddish-brown mist. Heavy night dews alone refreshed the earth. The
+unreaped corn was scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried up.
+The cattle lowed from hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched
+meadows. Only at night and in the forests while the dew lasted was
+there any freshness. But on the road, the highroad along which the
+troops marched, there was no such freshness even at night or when
+the road passed through the forest; the dew was imperceptible on the
+sandy dust churned up more than six inches deep. As soon as day dawned
+the march began. The artillery and baggage wagons moved noiselessly
+through the deep dust that rose to the very hubs of the wheels, and
+the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft, choking, hot dust that
+never cooled even at night. Some of this dust was kneaded by the
+feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a cloud over the
+troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and nostrils, and worst of all
+in the lungs of the men and beasts as they moved along that road.
+The higher the sun rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and
+through the screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked
+eye at the sun, which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded
+sky. There was no wind, and the men choked in that motionless
+atmosphere. They marched with handkerchiefs tied over their noses
+and mouths. When they passed through a village they all rushed to
+the wells and fought for the water and drank it down to the mud.
+
+Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the management of
+that regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving
+and giving orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolensk and its
+abandonment made an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger
+against the foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely
+devoted to the affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind to
+his men and officers. In the regiment they called him "our prince,"
+were proud of him and loved him. But he was kind and gentle only to
+those of his regiment, to Timokhin and the like- people quite new to
+him, belonging to a different world and who could not know and
+understand his past. As soon as he came across a former acquaintance
+or anyone from the staff, he bristled up immediately and grew
+spiteful, ironical, and contemptuous. Everything that reminded him
+of his past was repugnant to him, and so in his relations with that
+former circle he confined himself to trying to do his duty and not
+to be unfair.
+
+In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy light to
+Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolensk on the
+sixth of August (he considered that it could and should have been
+defended) and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow,
+abandoning to pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built
+and peopled. But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew
+had something to think about entirely apart from general questions.
+Two days previously he had received news that his father, son, and
+sister had left for Moscow; and though there was nothing for him to do
+at Bald Hills, Prince Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment
+his own grief decided that he must ride there.
+
+He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on
+the march, rode to his father's estate where he had been born and
+spent his childhood. Riding past the pond where there used always to
+be dozens of women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it
+with wooden beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul
+about and that the little washing wharf, torn from its place and
+half submerged, was floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He
+rode to the keeper's lodge. No one at the stone entrance gates of
+the drive and the door stood open. Grass had already begun to grow
+on the garden paths, and horses and calves were straying in the
+English park. Prince Andrew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass
+panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and
+others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one replied.
+Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden,
+he saw that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of the
+plum trees had been torn off with the fruit. An old peasant whom
+Prince Andrew in his childhood had often seen at the gate was
+sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a bast shoe.
+
+He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting
+on the seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him
+strips of bast were hanging on the broken and withered branch of a
+magnolia.
+
+Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old
+garden had been cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were
+wandering in front of the house among the rosebushes. The shutters
+were all closed, except at one window which was open. A little serf
+boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran into the house. Alpatych, having sent
+his family away, was alone at Bald Hills and was sitting indoors
+reading the Lives of the Saints. On hearing that Prince Andrew had
+come, he went out with his spectacles on his nose, buttoning his coat,
+and, hastily stepping up, without a word began weeping and kissing
+Prince Andrew's knee.
+
+Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to
+report on the position of affairs. Everything precious and valuable
+had been removed to Bogucharovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also
+been carted away. The hay and the spring corn, of which Alpatych
+said there had been a remarkable crop that year, had been commandeered
+by the troops and mown down while still green. The peasants were
+ruined; some of them too had gone to Bogucharovo, only a few remained.
+
+Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:
+
+"When did my father and sister leave?" meaning when did they leave
+for Moscow.
+
+Alpatych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for
+Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on the seventh and again
+went into details concerning the estate management, asking for
+instructions.
+
+"Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for
+them? We have still six hundred quarters left," he inquired.
+
+"What am I to say to him?" thought Prince Andrew, looking down on
+the old man's bald head shining in the sun and seeing by the
+expression on his face that the old man himself understood how
+untimely such questions were and only asked them to allay his grief.
+
+"Yes, let them have it," replied Prince Andrew.
+
+"If you noticed some disorder in the garden," said Alpatych, "it was
+impossible to prevent it. Three regiments have been here and spent the
+night, dragoons mostly. I took down the name and rank of their
+commanding officer, to hand in a complaint about it."
+
+"Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if the enemy
+occupies the place?" asked Prince Andrew.
+
+Alpatych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at him, and
+suddenly with a solemn gesture raised his arm.
+
+"He is my refuge! His will be done!" he exclaimed.
+
+A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across the meadow
+toward the prince.
+
+"Well, good-by!" said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpatych.
+"You must go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go
+to the Ryazan estate or to the one near Moscow."
+
+Alpatych clung to Prince Andrew's leg and burst into sobs. Gently
+disengaging himself, the prince spurred his horse and rode down the
+avenue at a gallop.
+
+The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly
+impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead, tapping the last
+on which he was making the bast shoe, and two little girls, running
+out from the hot house carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked
+from the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young
+master, the elder one frightened look clutched her younger companion
+by the hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick
+up some green plums they had dropped.
+
+Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them
+see that they had been observed. He was sorry for the pretty
+frightened little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt
+an irresistible desire to do so. A new sensation of comfort and relief
+came over him when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of
+other human interests entirely aloof from his own and just as
+legitimate as those that occupied him. Evidently these girls
+passionately desired one thing- to carry away and eat those green
+plums without being caught- and Prince Andrew shared their wish for
+the success of their enterprise. He could not resist looking at them
+once more. Believing their danger past, they sprang from their
+ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill little voices and
+holding up their skirts, their bare little sunburned feet scampered
+merrily and quickly across the meadow grass.
+
+Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the
+dusty highroad along which the troops were moving. But not far from
+Bald Hills he again came out on the road and overtook his regiment
+at its halting place by the dam of a small pond. It was past one
+o'clock. The sun, a red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his
+back intolerably through his black coat. The dust always hung
+motionless above the buzz of talk that came from the resting troops.
+There was no wind. As he crossed the dam Prince Andrew smelled the
+ooze and freshness of the pond. He longed to get into that water,
+however dirty it might be, and he glanced round at the pool from
+whence came sounds of shrieks and laughter. The small, muddy, green
+pond had risen visibly more than a foot, flooding the dam, because
+it was full of the naked white bodies of soldiers with brick-red
+hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing about in it. All this
+naked white human flesh, laughing and shrieking, floundered about in
+that dirty pool like carp stuffed into a watering can, and the
+suggestion of merriment in that floundering mass rendered it specially
+pathetic.
+
+One fair-haired young soldier of the third company, whom Prince
+Andrew knew and who had a strap round the calf of one leg, crossed
+himself, stepped back to get a good run, and plunged into the water;
+another, a dark noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood
+up to his waist in the water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure
+and snorted with satisfaction as he poured the water over his head
+with hands blackened to the wrists. There were sounds of men
+slapping one another, yelling, and puffing.
+
+Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond, there was
+healthy, white, muscular flesh. The officer, Timokhin, with his red
+little nose, standing on the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt
+confused at seeing the prince, but made up his mind to address him
+nevertheless.
+
+"It's very nice, your excellency! Wouldn't you like to?" said he.
+
+"It's dirty," replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.
+
+"We'll clear it out for you in a minute," said Timokhin, and,
+still undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the pond.
+
+"The prince wants to bathe."
+
+"What prince? Ours?" said many voices, and the men were in such
+haste to clear out that the prince could hardly stop them. He
+decided that he would rather himself with water in the barn.
+
+"Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!" he thought, and he looked at his own
+naked body and shuddered, not from cold but from a sense of disgust
+and horror he did not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that
+immense number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.
+
+On the seventh of August Prince Bagration wrote as follows from
+his quarters at Mikhaylovna on the Smolensk road:
+
+Dear Count Alexis Andreevich- (He was writing to Arakcheev but
+knew that his letter would be read by the Emperor, and therefore
+weighed every word in it to the best of his ability.)
+
+I expect the Minister [Barclay de Tolly] has already reported the
+abandonment of Smolensk to the enemy. It is pitiable and sad, and
+the whole army is in despair that this most important place has been
+wantonly abandoned. I, for my part, begged him personally most
+urgently and finally wrote him, but nothing would induce him to
+consent. I swear to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a fix as
+never before and might have lost half his army but could not have
+taken Smolensk. Our troops fought, and are fighting, as never
+before. With fifteen thousand men I held the enemy at bay for
+thirty-five hours and beat him; but he would not hold out even for
+fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain on our army, and as for
+him, he ought, it seems to me, not to live. If he reports that our
+losses were great, it is not true; perhaps about four thousand, not
+more, and not even that; but even were they ten thousand, that's
+war! But the enemy has lost masses...
+
+What would it have cost him to hold out for another two days? They
+would have had to retire of their own accord, for they had no water
+for men or horses. He gave me his word he would not retreat, but
+suddenly sent instructions that he was retiring that night. We
+cannot fight in this way, or we may soon bring the enemy to Moscow...
+
+There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you
+should make peace after all our sacrifices and such insane retreats!
+You would set all Russia against you and every one of us would feel
+ashamed to wear the uniform. If it has come to this- we must fight
+as long as Russia can and as long as there are men able to stand...
+
+One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may
+perhaps be good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad
+but execrable, yet to him is entrusted the fate of our whole
+country.... I am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing
+boldly. It is clear that the man who advocates the conclusion of a
+peace, and that the Minister should command the army, does not love
+our sovereign and desires the ruin of us all. So I write you
+frankly: call out the militia. For the Minister is leading these
+visitors after him to Moscow in a most masterly way. The whole army
+feels great suspicion of the Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is
+said to be more Napoleon's man than ours, and he is always advising
+the Minister. I am not merely civil to him but obey him like a
+corporal, though I am his senior. This is painful, but, loving my
+benefactor and sovereign, I submit. Only I am sorry for the Emperor
+that he entrusts our fine army to such as he. Consider that on our
+retreat we have lost by fatigue and left in the hospital more than
+fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would not have
+happened. Tell me, for God's sake, what will Russia, our mother
+Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning
+our good and gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings
+of hatred and shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and
+of whom are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is
+vacillating, a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The
+whole army bewails it and calls down curses upon him...
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Among the innumerable categories applicable to the phenomena of
+human life one may discriminate between those in which substance
+prevails and those in which form prevails. To the latter- as
+distinguished from village, country, provincial, or even Moscow
+life- we may allot Petersburg life, and especially the life of its
+salons. That life of the salons is unchanging. Since the year 1805
+we had made peace and had again quarreled with Bonaparte and had
+made constitutions and unmade them again, but the salons of Anna
+Pavlovna Helene remained just as they had been- the one seven and
+the other five years before. At Anna Pavlovna's they talked with
+perplexity of Bonaparte's successes just as before and saw in them and
+in the subservience shown to him by the European sovereigns a
+malicious conspiracy, the sole object of which was to cause
+unpleasantness and anxiety to the court circle of which Anna
+Pavlovna was the representative. And in Helene's salon, which
+Rumyantsev himself honored with his visits, regarding Helene as a
+remarkably intelligent woman, they talked with the same ecstasy in
+1812 as in 1808 of the "great nation" and the "great man," and
+regretted our rupture with France, a rupture which, according to them,
+ought to be promptly terminated by peace.
+
+Of late, since the Emperor's return from the army, there had been
+some excitement in these conflicting salon circles and some
+demonstrations of hostility to one another, but each camp retained its
+own tendency. In Anna Pavlovna's circle only those Frenchmen were
+admitted who were deep-rooted legitimists, and patriotic views were
+expressed to the effect that one ought not to go to the French theater
+and that to maintain the French troupe was costing the government as
+much as a whole army corps. The progress of the war was eagerly
+followed, and only the reports most flattering to our army were
+circulated. In the French circle of Helene and Rumyantsev the
+reports of the cruelty of the enemy and of the war were contradicted
+and all Napoleon's attempts at conciliation were discussed. In that
+circle they discountenanced those who advised hurried preparations for
+a removal to Kazan of the court and the girls' educational
+establishments under the patronage of the Dowager Empress. In Helene's
+circle the war in general was regarded as a series of formal
+demonstrations which would very soon end in peace, and the view
+prevailed expressed by Bilibin- who now in Petersburg was quite at
+home in Helene's house, which every clever man was obliged to visit-
+that not by gunpowder but by those who invented it would matters be
+settled. In that circle the Moscow enthusiasm- news of which had
+reached Petersburg simultaneously with the Emperor's return- was
+ridiculed sarcastically and very cleverly, though with much caution.
+
+Anna Pavlovna's circle on the contrary was enraptured by this
+enthusiasm and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the
+ancients. Prince Vasili, who still occupied his former important
+posts, formed a connecting link between these two circles. He
+visited his "good friend Anna Pavlovna" as well as his daughter's
+"diplomatic salon," and often in his constant comings and goings
+between the two camps became confused and said at Helene's what he
+should have said at Anna Pavlovna's and vice versa.
+
+Soon after the Emperor's return Prince Vasili in a conversation
+about the war at Anna Pavlovna's severely condemned Barclay de
+Tolly, but was undecided as to who ought to be appointed commander
+in chief. One of the visitors, usually spoken of as "a man of great
+merit," having described how he had that day seen Kutuzov, the newly
+chosen chief of the Petersburg militia, presiding over the
+enrollment of recruits at the Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest
+that Kutuzov would be the man to satisfy all requirements.
+
+Anna Pavlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutuzov had done
+nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.
+
+"I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility," Prince
+Vasili interrupted, "but they did not listen to me. I told them his
+election as chief of the militia would not please the Emperor. They
+did not listen to me.
+
+"It's all this mania for opposition," he went on. "And who for? It
+is all because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm of those
+Muscovites," Prince Vasili continued, forgetting for a moment that
+though at Helene's one had to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at
+Anna Pavlovna's one had to be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved
+his mistake at once. "Now, is it suitable that Count Kutuzov, the
+oldest general in Russia, should preside at that tribunal? He will get
+nothing for his pains! How could they make a man commander in chief
+who cannot mount a horse, who drops asleep at a council, and has the
+very worst morals! A good reputation he made for himself at Bucharest!
+I don't speak of his capacity as a general, but at a time like this
+how they appoint they appoint a decrepit, blind old man, positively
+blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can't see anything.
+To play blindman's bluff? He can't see at all!"
+
+No one replied to his remarks.
+
+This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July. But on the
+twenty-ninth of July Kutuzov received the title of Prince. This
+might indicate a wish to get rid of him, and therefore Prince Vasili's
+opinion continued to be correct though he was not now in any hurry
+to express it. But on the eighth of August a committee, consisting
+of Field Marshal Saltykov, Arakcheev, Vyazmitinov, Lopukhin, and
+Kochubey met to consider the progress of the war. This committee
+came to the conclusion that our failures were due to a want of unity
+in the command and though the members of the committee were aware of
+the Emperor's dislike of Kutuzov, after a short deliberation they
+agreed to advise his appointment as commander in chief. That same
+day Kutuzov was appointed commander in chief with full powers over the
+armies and over the whole region occupied by them.
+
+On the ninth of August Prince Vasili at Anna Pavlovna's again met
+the "man of great merit." The latter was very attentive to Anna
+Pavlovna because he wanted to be appointed director of one of the
+educational establishments for young ladies. Prince Vasili entered the
+room with the air of a happy conqueror who has attained the object
+of his desires.
+
+"Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutuzov is field
+marshal! All dissensions are at an end! I am so glad, so delighted! At
+last we have a man!" said he, glancing sternly and significantly round
+at everyone in the drawing room.
+
+The "man of great merit," despite his desire to obtain the post of
+director, could not refrain from reminding Prince Vasili of his former
+opinion. Though this was impolite to Prince Vasili in Anna
+Pavlovna's drawing room, and also to Anna Pavlovna herself who had
+received the news with delight, he could not resist the temptation.
+
+"But, Prince, they say he is blind!" said he, reminding Prince
+Vasili of his own words.
+
+"Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough," said Prince Vasili rapidly,
+in a deep voice and with a slight cough- the voice and cough with
+which he was wont to dispose of all difficulties.
+
+"He sees well enough," he added. "And what I am so pleased about,"
+he went on, "is that our sovereign has given him full powers over
+all the armies and the whole region- powers no commander in chief ever
+had before. He is a second autocrat," he concluded with a victorious
+smile.
+
+"God grant it! God grant it!" said Anna Pavlovna.
+
+The "man of great merit," who was still a novice in court circles,
+wishing to flatter Anna Pavlovna by defending her former position on
+this question, observed:
+
+"It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutuzov those
+powers. They say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read,
+when he said to Kutuzov: 'Your Emperor and the Fatherland award you
+this honor.'
+
+"Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech," said Anna Pavlovna.
+
+"Oh, no, no!" warmly rejoined Prince Vasili, who would not now yield
+Kutuzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutuzov was not only admirable
+himself, but was adored by everybody. "No, that's impossible," said
+he, "for our sovereign appreciated him so highly before."
+
+"God grant only that Prince Kutuzov assumes real power and does
+not allow anyone to put a spoke in his wheel," observed Anna Pavlovna.
+
+Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince Vasili said in a
+whisper:
+
+"I know for a fact that Kutuzov made it an absolute condition that
+the Tsarevich should not be with the army. Do you know what he said to
+the Emperor?"
+
+And Prince Vasili repeated the words supposed to have been spoken by
+Kutuzov to the Emperor. "I can neither punish him if he does wrong nor
+reward him if he does right."
+
+"Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutuzov! I have known him a long
+time!"
+
+"They even say," remarked the "man of great merit" who did not yet
+possess courtly tact, "that his excellency made it an express
+condition that the sovereign himself should not be with the army."
+
+As soon as he said this both Prince Vasili and Anna Pavlovna
+turned away from him and glanced sadly at one another with a sigh at
+his naivete.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already
+passed Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow.
+Napoleon's historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to
+justify his hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against
+his will. He is as right as other historians who look for the
+explanation of historic events in the will of one man; he is as
+right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was drawn
+to Moscow by the skill of the Russian commanders. Here besides the law
+of retrospection, which regards all the past as a preparation for
+events that subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity comes in,
+confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer having lost a game is
+sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a mistake he made
+and looks for that mistake in the opening, but forgets that at each
+stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none of his
+moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays
+attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much more
+complex than this is the game of war, which occurs under certain
+limits of time, and where it is not one will that manipulates lifeless
+objects, but everything results from innumerable conflicts of
+various wills!
+
+After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobuzh at Vyazma,
+and then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but it happened that owing to a
+conjunction of innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give
+battle till they reached Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow. From
+Vyazma Napoleon ordered a direct advance on Moscow.
+
+Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacree
+des peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises en forme
+de pagodes chinoises,~^ this Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination no
+rest. On the march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his light
+bay bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his
+pages, and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind
+to question a Russian prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by
+Lelorgne d'Ideville, an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a
+gallop and reined in his horse with an amused expression.
+
+^~ "Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the sacred
+city of Alexander's people, Moscow with its innumerable churches
+shaped like Chinese pagodas."
+
+"Well?" asked Napoleon.
+
+"One of Platov's Cossacks says that Platov's corps is joining up
+with the main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed commander in
+chief. He is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow."
+
+Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and
+bring the man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several
+adjutants galloped off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf Denisov
+had handed over to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly's
+jacket and on a French cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face.
+Napoleon told him to ride by his side and began questioning him.
+
+"You are a Cossack?"
+
+"Yes, a Cossack, your Honor."
+
+"The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon's
+plain appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental
+mind the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the
+incidents of the war," says Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality
+Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before and left his master
+dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of
+chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him
+prisoner. Lavrushka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who
+have seen all sorts of things, consider it necessary to do
+everything in a mean and cunning way, are ready to render any sort
+of service to their master, and are keen at guessing their master's
+baser impulses, especially those prompted by vanity and pettiness.
+
+Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had
+easily and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the least abashed
+but merely did his utmost to gain his new master's favor.
+
+He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon's presence
+could no more intimidate him than Rostov's, or a sergeant major's with
+the rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant
+major or Napoleon could deprive him of.
+
+So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the
+orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the
+Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed
+up his eyes and considered.
+
+In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see
+cunning in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.
+
+"It's like this," he said thoughtfully, "if there's a battle soon,
+yours will win. That's right. But if three days pass, then after that,
+well, then that same battle will not soon be over."
+
+Lelorgne d'Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon
+thus: "If a battle takes place within the next three days the French
+will win, but if later, God knows what will happen." Napoleon did
+not smile, though he was evidently in high good humor, and he
+ordered these words to be repeated.
+
+Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending
+not to know who Napoleon was, added:
+
+"We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in
+the world, but we are a different matter..."- without knowing why or
+how this bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.
+
+The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase,
+and Bonaparte smiled. "The young Cossack made his mighty
+interlocutor smile," says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence,
+Napoleon turned to Berthier and said he wished to see how the news
+that he was talking to the Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who
+had written his immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would
+affect this enfant du Don.~^
+
+^~ "Child of the Don."
+
+The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.
+
+Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and
+that Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new
+masters promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his
+eyes wide, and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken
+to be whipped. "As soon as Napoleon's interpreter had spoken," says
+Thiers, "the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another word,
+but rode on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached
+him across the steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly
+arrested and replaced by a naive and silent feeling of admiration.
+Napoleon, after making the Cossack a present, had him set free like
+a bird restored to its native fields."
+
+Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his
+imagination, and "the bird restored to its native fields" galloped
+to our outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but
+that he meant to relate to his comrades. What had really taken place
+he did not wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth
+telling. He found the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating
+with Platov's detachment and by evening found his master, Nicholas
+Rostov, quartered at Yankovo. Rostov was just mounting to go for a
+ride round the neighboring villages with Ilyin; he let Lavrushka
+have another horse and took him along with him.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as Prince Andrew
+supposed.
+
+After the return of Alpatych from Smolensk the old prince suddenly
+seemed to awake as from a dream. He ordered the militiamen to be
+called up from the villages and armed, and wrote a letter to the
+commander in chief informing him that he had resolved to remain at
+Bald Hills to the last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the
+commander in chief's discretion to take measures or not for the
+defense of Bald Hills, where one of Russia's oldest generals would
+be captured or killed, and he announced to his household that he would
+remain at Bald Hills.
+
+But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for the
+departure of the princess and Dessalles with the little prince to
+Bogucharovo and thence to Moscow. Princess Mary, alarmed by her
+father's feverish and sleepless activity after his previous apathy,
+could not bring herself to leave him alone and for the first time in
+her life ventured to disobey him. She refused to go away and her
+father's fury broke over her in a terrible storm. He repeated every
+injustice he had ever inflicted on her. Trying to convict her, he told
+her she had worn him out, had caused his quarrel with his son, had
+harbored nasty suspicions of him, making it the object of her life
+to poison his existence, and he drove her from his study telling her
+that if she did not go away it was all the same to him. He declared
+that he did not wish to remember her existence and warned her not to
+dare to let him see her. The fact that he did not, as she had
+feared, order her to be carried away by force but only told her not to
+let him see her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof that in
+the depth of his soul he was glad she was remaining at home and had
+not gone away.
+
+The morning after little Nicholas had left, the old prince donned
+his full uniform and prepared to visit the commander in chief. His
+caleche was already at the door. Princess Mary saw him walk out of the
+house in his uniform wearing all his orders and go down the garden
+to review his armed peasants and domestic serfs. She sat by the window
+listening to his voice which reached her from the garden. Suddenly
+several men came running up the avenue with frightened faces.
+
+Princess Mary ran out to the porch, down the flower-bordered path,
+and into the avenue. A large crowd of militiamen and domestics were
+moving toward her, and in their midst several men were supporting by
+the armpits and dragging along a little old man in a uniform and
+decorations. She ran up to him and, in the play of the sunlight that
+fell in small round spots through the shade of the lime-tree avenue,
+could not be sure what change there was in his face. All she could see
+was that his former stern and determined expression had altered to one
+of timidity and submission. On seeing his daughter he moved his
+helpless lips and made a hoarse sound. It was impossible to make out
+what he wanted. He was lifted up, carried to his study, and laid on
+the very couch he had so feared of late.
+
+The doctor, who was fetched that same night, bled him and said
+that the prince had had seizure a paralyzing his right side.
+
+It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain at Bald Hills, and
+next day they moved the prince to Bogucharovo, the doctor accompanying
+him.
+
+By the time they reached Bogucharovo, Dessalles and the little
+prince had already left for Moscow.
+
+For three weeks the old prince lay stricken by paralysis in the
+new house Prince Andrew had built at Bogucharovo, ever in the same
+state, getting neither better nor worse. He was unconscious and lay
+like a distorted corpse. He muttered unceasingly, his eyebrows and
+lips twitching, and it was impossible to tell whether he understood
+what was going on around him or not. One thing was certain- that he
+was suffering and wished to say something. But what it was, no one
+could tell: it might be some caprice of a sick and half-crazy man,
+or it might relate to public affairs, or possibly to family concerns.
+
+The doctor said this restlessness did not mean anything and was
+due to physical causes; but Princess Mary thought he wished to tell
+her something, and the fact that her presence always increased his
+restlessness confirmed her opinion.
+
+He was evidently suffering both physically and mentally. There was
+no hope of recovery. It was impossible for him to travel, it would not
+do to let him die on the road. "Would it not be better if the end
+did come, the very end?" Princess Mary sometimes thought. Night and
+day, hardly sleeping at all, she watched him and, terrible to say,
+often watched him not with hope of finding signs of improvement but
+wishing to find symptoms of the approach of the end.
+
+Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in herself, yet
+there it was. And what seemed still more terrible to her was that
+since her father's illness began (perhaps even sooner, when she stayed
+with him expecting something to happen), all the personal desires
+and hopes that had been forgotten or sleeping within her had awakened.
+Thoughts that had not entered her mind for years- thoughts of a life
+free from the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love and
+of family happiness- floated continually in her imagination like
+temptations of the devil. Thrust them aside as she would, questions
+continually recurred to her as to how she would order her life now,
+after that. These were temptations of the devil and Princess Mary knew
+it. She knew that the sole weapon against him was prayer, and she
+tried to pray. She assumed an attitude of prayer, looked at the icons,
+repeated the words of a prayer, but she could not pray. She felt
+that a different world had now taken possession of her- the life of
+a world of strenuous and free activity, quite opposed to the spiritual
+world in which till now she had been confined and in which her
+greatest comfort had been prayer. She could not pray, could not
+weep, and worldly cares took possession of her.
+
+It was becoming dangerous to remain in Bogucharovo. News of the
+approach of the French came from all sides, and in one village, ten
+miles from Bogucharovo, a homestead had been looted by French
+marauders.
+
+The doctor insisted on the necessity of moving the prince; the
+provincial Marshal of the Nobility sent an official to Princess Mary
+to persuade her to get away as quickly as possible, and the head of
+the rural police having come to Bogucharovo urged the same thing,
+saying that the French were only some twenty-five miles away, that
+French proclamations were circulating in the villages, and that if the
+princess did not take her father away before the fifteenth, he could
+not answer for the consequences.
+
+The princess decided to leave on the fifteenth. The cares of
+preparation and giving orders, for which everyone came to her,
+occupied her all day. She spent the night of the fourteenth as
+usual, without undressing, in the room next to the one where the
+prince lay. Several times, waking up, she heard his groans and
+muttering, the creak of his bed, and the steps of Tikhon and the
+doctor when they turned him over. Several times she listened at the
+door, and it seemed to her that his mutterings were louder than
+usual and that they turned him over oftener. She could not sleep and
+several times went to the door and listened, wishing to enter but
+not deciding to do so. Though he did not speak, Princess Mary saw
+and knew how unpleasant every sign of anxiety on his account was to
+him. She had noticed with what dissatisfaction he turned from the look
+she sometimes involuntarily fixed on him. She knew that her going in
+during the night at an unusual hour would irritate him.
+
+But never had she felt so grieved for him or so much afraid of
+losing him. She recalled all her life with him and in every word and
+act of his found an expression of his love of her. Occasionally amid
+these memories temptations of the devil would surge into her
+imagination: thoughts of how things would be after his death, and
+how her new, liberated life would be ordered. But she drove these
+thoughts away with disgust. Toward morning he became quiet and she
+fell asleep.
+
+She woke late. That sincerity which often comes with waking showed
+her clearly what chiefly concerned her about her father's illness.
+On waking she listened to what was going on behind the door and,
+hearing him groan, said to herself with a sigh that things were
+still the same.
+
+"But what could have happened? What did I want? I want his death!"
+she cried with a feeling of loathing for herself.
+
+She washed, dressed, said her prayers, and went out to the porch. In
+front of it stood carriages without horses and things were being
+packed into the vehicles.
+
+It was a warm, gray morning. Princess Mary stopped at the porch,
+still horrified by her spiritual baseness and trying to arrange her
+thoughts before going to her father. The doctor came downstairs and
+went out to her.
+
+"He is a little better today," said he. "I was looking for you.
+One can make out something of what he is saying. His head is
+clearer. Come in, he is asking for you..."
+
+Princess Mary's heart beat so violently at this news that she grew
+pale and leaned against the wall to keep from falling. To see him,
+talk to him, feel his eyes on her now that her whole soul was
+overflowing with those dreadful, wicked temptations, was a torment
+of joy and terror.
+
+"Come," said the doctor.
+
+Princess Mary entered her father's room and went up to his bed. He
+was lying on his back propped up high, and his small bony hands with
+their knotted purple veins were lying on the quilt; his left eye gazed
+straight before him, his right eye was awry, and his brows and lips
+motionless. He seemed altogether so thin, small, and pathetic. His
+face seemed to have shriveled or melted; his features had grown
+smaller. Princess Mary went up and kissed his hand. His left hand
+pressed hers so that she understood that he had long been waiting
+for her to come. He twitched her hand, and his brows and lips quivered
+angrily.
+
+She looked at him in dismay trying to guess what he wanted of her.
+When she changed her position so that his left eye could see her
+face he calmed down, not taking his eyes off her for some seconds.
+Then his lips and tongue moved, sounds came, and he began to speak,
+gazing timidly and imploringly at her, evidently afraid that she might
+not understand.
+
+Straining all her faculties Princess Mary looked at him. The comic
+efforts with which he moved his tongue made her drop her eyes and with
+difficulty repress the sobs that rose to her throat. He said
+something, repeating the same words several times. She could not
+understand them, but tried to guess what he was saying and inquiringly
+repeated the words he uttered.
+
+"Mmm...ar...ate...ate..." he repeated several times.
+
+It was quite impossible to understand these sounds. The doctor
+thought he had guessed them, and inquiringly repeated: "Mary, are
+you afraid?" The prince shook his head, again repeated the same
+sounds.
+
+"My mind, my mind aches?" questioned Princess Mary.
+
+He made a mumbling sound in confirmation of this, took her hand, and
+began pressing it to different parts of his breast as if trying to
+find the right place for it.
+
+"Always thoughts... about you... thoughts..." he then uttered much
+more clearly than he had done before, now that he was sure of being
+understood.
+
+Princess Mary pressed her head against his hand, trying to hide
+her sobs and tears.
+
+He moved his hand over her hair.
+
+"I have been calling you all night..." he brought out.
+
+"If only I had known..." she said through her tears. "I was afraid
+to come in."
+
+He pressed her hand.
+
+"Weren't you asleep?"
+
+"No, I did not sleep," said Princess Mary, shaking her head.
+
+Unconsciously imitating her father, she now tried to express herself
+as he did, as much as possible by signs, and her tongue too seemed
+to move with difficulty.
+
+"Dear one... Dearest..." Princess Mary could not quite make out what
+he had said, but from his look it was clear that he had uttered a
+tender caressing word such as he had never used to her before. "Why
+didn't you come in?"
+
+"And I was wishing for his death!" thought Princess Mary.
+
+He was silent awhile.
+
+"Thank you... daughter dear!... for all, for all... forgive!...
+thank you!... forgive!... thank you!..." and tears began to flow
+from his eyes. "Call Andrew!" he said suddenly, and a childish,
+timid expression of doubt showed itself on his face as he spoke.
+
+He himself seemed aware that his demand was meaningless. So at least
+it seemed to Princess Mary.
+
+"I have a letter from him," she replied.
+
+He glanced at her with timid surprise.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"He's with the army, Father, at Smolensk."
+
+He closed his eyes and remained silent a long time. Then as if in
+answer to his doubts and to confirm the fact that now he understood
+and remembered everything, he nodded his head and reopened his eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said, softly and distinctly. "Russia has perished. They've
+destroyed her."
+
+And he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his eyes.
+Princess Mary could no longer restrain herself and wept while she
+gazed at his face.
+
+Again he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed to his eyes,
+and Tikhon, understanding him, wiped away the tears.
+
+Then he again opened his eyes and said something none of them
+could understand for a long time, till at last Tikhon understood and
+repeated it. Princess Mary had sought the meaning of his words in
+the mood in which he had just been speaking. She thought he was
+speaking of Russia, or Prince Andrew, of herself, of his grandson,
+or of his own death, and so she could not guess his words.
+
+"Put on your white dress. I like it," was what he said.
+
+Having understood this Princess Mary sobbed still louder, and the
+doctor taking her arm led her out to the veranda, soothing her and
+trying to persuade her to prepare for her journey. When she had left
+the room the prince again began speaking about his son, about the war,
+and about the Emperor, angrily twitching his brows and raising his
+hoarse voice, and then he had a second and final stroke.
+
+Princess Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had cleared, it was hot
+and sunny. She could understand nothing, think of nothing and feel
+nothing, except passionate love for her father, love such as she
+thought she had never felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing
+into the garden and as far as the pond, along the avenues of young
+lime trees Prince Andrew had planted.
+
+"Yes... I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to end
+quicker.... I wished to be at peace.... And what will become of me?
+What use will peace be when he is no longer here?" Princess Mary
+murmured, pacing the garden with hurried steps and pressing her
+hands to her bosom which heaved with convulsive sobs.
+
+When she had completed the tour of the garden, which brought her
+again to the house, she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne- who had remained
+at Bogucharovo and did not wish to leave it- coming toward her with
+a stranger. This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district,
+who had come personally to point out to the princess the necessity for
+her prompt departure. Princess Mary listened without understanding
+him; she led him to the house, offered him lunch, and sat down with
+him. Then, excusing herself, she went to the door of the old
+prince's room. The doctor came out with an agitated face and said
+she could not enter.
+
+"Go away, Princess! Go away... go away!"
+
+She returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at the foot
+of the slope by the pond, where no one could see her. She did not know
+how long she had been there when she was aroused by the sound of a
+woman's footsteps running along the path. She rose and saw Dunyasha
+her maid, who was evidently looking for her, and who stopped
+suddenly as if in alarm on seeing her mistress.
+
+"Please come, Princess... The Prince," said Dunyasha in a breaking
+voice.
+
+"Immediately, I'm coming, I'm coming!" replied the princess
+hurriedly, not giving Dunyasha time to finish what she was saying, and
+trying to avoid seeing the girl she ran toward the house.
+
+"Princess, it's God's will! You must be prepared for everything,"
+said the Marshal, meeting her at the house door.
+
+"Let me alone; it's not true!" she cried angrily to him.
+
+The doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and ran to her
+father's door. "Why are these people with frightened faces stopping
+me? I don't want any of them! And what are they doing here?" she
+thought. She opened the door and the bright daylight in that
+previously darkened room startled her. In the room were her nurse
+and other women. They all drew back from the bed, making way for
+her. He was still lying on the bed as before, but the stern expression
+of his quiet face made Princess Mary stop short on the threshold.
+
+"No, he's not dead- it's impossible!" she told herself and
+approached him, and repressing the terror that seized her, she pressed
+her lips to his cheek. But she stepped back immediately. All the force
+of the tenderness she had been feeling for him vanished instantly
+and was replaced by a feeling of horror at what lay there before
+her. "No, he is no more! He is not, but here where he was is something
+unfamiliar and hostile, some dreadful, terrifying, and repellent
+mystery!" And hiding her face in her hands, Princess Mary sank into
+the arms of the doctor, who held her up.
+
+In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women washed what had
+been the prince, tied his head up with a handkerchief that the mouth
+should not stiffen while open, and with another handkerchief tied
+together the legs that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed
+him in uniform with his decorations and placed his shriveled little
+body on a table. Heaven only knows who arranged all this and when, but
+it all got done as if of its own accord. Toward night candles were
+burning round his coffin, a pall was spread over it, the floor was
+strewn with sprays of juniper, a printed band was tucked in under
+his shriveled head, and in a corner of the room sat a chanter
+reading the psalms.
+
+Just as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead horse, so the
+inmates of the house and strangers crowded into the drawing room round
+the coffin- the Marshal, the village Elder, peasant women- and all
+with fixed and frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and
+kissed the old prince's cold and stiffened hand.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Until Prince Andrew settled in Bogucharovo its owners had always
+been absentees, and its peasants were of quite a different character
+from those of Bald Hills. They differed from them in speech, dress,
+and disposition. They were called steppe peasants. The old prince used
+to approve of them for their endurance at work when they came to
+Bald Hills to help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches,
+but he disliked them for their boorishness.
+
+Prince Andrew's last stay at Bogucharovo, when he introduced
+hospitals and schools and reduced the quitrent the peasants had to
+pay, had not softened their disposition but had on the contrary
+strengthened in them the traits of character the old prince called
+boorishness. Various obscure rumors were always current among them: at
+one time a rumor that they would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at
+another of a new religion to which they were all to be converted; then
+of some proclamation of the Tsar's and of an oath to the Tsar Paul
+in 1797 (in connection with which it was rumored that freedom had been
+granted them but the landowners had stopped it), then of Peter
+Fedorovich's return to the throne in seven years' time, when
+everything would be made free and so "simple" that there would be no
+restrictions. Rumors of the war with Bonaparte and his invasion were
+connected in their minds with the same sort of vague notions of
+Antichrist, the end of the world, and "pure freedom."
+
+In the vicinity of Bogucharovo were large villages belonging to
+the crown or to owners whose serfs paid quitrent and could work
+where they pleased. There were very few resident landlords in the
+neighborhood and also very few domestic or literate serfs, and in
+the lives of the peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents
+in the life of the Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are
+so baffling to contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly
+noticeable than among others. One instance, which had occurred some
+twenty years before, was a movement among the peasants to emigrate
+to some unknown "warm rivers." Hundreds of peasants, among them the
+Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began selling their cattle and moving in
+whole families toward the southeast. As birds migrate to somewhere
+beyond the sea, so these men with their wives and children streamed to
+the southeast, to parts where none of them had ever been. They set off
+in caravans, bought their freedom one by one or ran away, and drove or
+walked toward the "warm rivers." Many of them were punished, some sent
+to Siberia, many died of cold and hunger on the road, many returned of
+their own accord, and the movement died down of itself just as it
+had sprung up, without apparent reason. But such undercurrents still
+existed among the people and gathered new forces ready to manifest
+themselves just as strangely, unexpectedly, and at the same time
+simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812, to anyone living in
+close touch with these people it was apparent that these undercurrents
+were acting strongly and nearing an eruption.
+
+Alpatych, who had reached Bogucharovo shortly before the old
+prince's death, noticed an agitation among the peasants, and that
+contrary to what was happening in the Bald Hills district, where
+over a radius of forty miles all the peasants were moving away and
+leaving their villages to be devastated by the Cossacks, the
+peasants in the steppe region round Bogucharovo were, it was
+rumored, in touch with the French, received leaflets from them that
+passed from hand to hand, and did not migrate. He learned from
+domestic serfs loyal to him that the peasant Karp, who possessed great
+influence in the village commune and had recently been away driving
+a government transport, had returned with news that the Cossacks
+were destroying deserted villages, but that the French did not harm
+them. Alpatych also knew that on the previous day another peasant
+had even brought from the village of Visloukhovo, which was occupied
+by the French, a proclamation by a French general that no harm would
+be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained they would be paid
+for anything taken from them. As proof of this the peasant had brought
+from Visloukhovo a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that
+they were false) paid to him in advance for hay.
+
+More important still, Alpatych learned that on the morning of the
+very day he gave the village Elder orders to collect carts to move the
+princess' luggage from Bogucharovo, there had been a village meeting
+at which it had been decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was no
+time to waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old prince's death,
+the Marshal had insisted on Princess Mary's leaving at once, as it was
+becoming dangerous. He had told her that after the sixteenth he
+could not be responsible for what might happen. On the evening of
+the day the old prince died the Marshal went away, promising to return
+next day for the funeral. But this he was unable to do, for he
+received tidings that the French had unexpectedly advanced, and had
+barely time to remove his own family and valuables from his estate.
+
+For some thirty years Bogucharovo had been managed by the village
+Elder, Dron, whom the old prince called by the diminutive "Dronushka."
+
+Dron was one of those physically and mentally vigorous peasants
+who grow big beards as soon as they are of age and go on unchanged
+till they are sixty or seventy, without a gray hair or the loss of a
+tooth, as straight and strong at sixty as at thirty.
+
+Soon after the migration to the "warm rivers," in which he had taken
+part like the rest, Dron was made village Elder and overseer of
+Bogucharovo, and had since filled that post irreproachably for
+twenty-three years. The peasants feared him more than they did their
+master. The masters, both the old prince and the young, and the
+steward respected him and jestingly called him "the Minister."
+During the whole time of his service Dron had never been drunk or ill,
+never after sleepless nights or the hardest tasks had he shown the
+least fatigue, and though he could not read he had never forgotten a
+single money account or the number of quarters of flour in any of
+the endless cartloads he sold for the prince, nor a single shock of
+the whole corn crop on any single acre of the Bogucharovo fields.
+
+Alpatych, arriving from the devastated Bald Hills estate, sent for
+his Dron on the day of the prince's funeral and told him to have
+twelve horses got ready for the princess' carriages and eighteen carts
+for the things to be removed from Bogucharovo. Though the peasants
+paid quitrent, Alpatych thought no difficulty would be made about
+complying with this order, for there were two hundred and thirty
+households at work in Bogucharovo and the peasants were well to do.
+But on hearing the order Dron lowered his eyes and remained silent.
+Alpatych named certain peasants he knew, from whom he told him to take
+the carts.
+
+Dron replied that the horses of these peasants were away carting.
+Alpatych named others, but they too, according to Dron, had no
+horses available: some horses were carting for the government,
+others were too weak, and others had died for want of fodder. It
+seemed that no horses could be had even for the carriages, much less
+for the carting.
+
+Alpatych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as Dron was a
+model village Elder, so Alpatych had not managed the prince's
+estates for twenty years in vain. He a model steward, possessing in
+the highest degree the faculty of divining the needs and instincts
+of those he dealt with. Having glanced at Dron he at once understood
+that his answers did not express his personal views but the general
+mood of the Bogucharovo commune, by which the Elder had already been
+carried away. But he also knew that Dron, who had acquired property
+and was hated by the commune, must be hesitating between the two
+camps: the masters' and the serfs'. He noticed this hesitation in
+Dron's look and therefore frowned and moved closer up to him.
+
+"Now just listen, Dronushka," said he. "Don't talk nonsense to me.
+His excellency Prince Andrew himself gave me orders to move all the
+people away and not leave them with the enemy, and there is an order
+from the Tsar about it too. Anyone who stays is a traitor to the Tsar.
+Do you hear?"
+
+"I hear," Dron answered without lifting his eyes.
+
+Alpatych was not satisfied with this reply.
+
+"Eh, Dron, it will turn out badly!" he said, shaking his head.
+
+"The power is in your hands," Dron rejoined sadly.
+
+"Eh, Dron, drop it!" Alpatych repeated, withdrawing his hand from
+his bosom and solemnly pointing to the floor at Dron's feet. "I can
+see through you and three yards into the ground under you," he
+continued, gazing at the floor in front of Dron.
+
+Dron was disconcerted, glanced furtively at Alpatych and again
+lowered his eyes.
+
+"You drop this nonsense and tell the people to get ready to leave
+their homes and go to Moscow and to get carts ready for tomorrow
+morning for the princess' things. And don't go to any meeting
+yourself, do you hear?"
+
+Dron suddenly fell on his knees.
+
+"Yakov Alpatych, discharge me! Take the keys from me and discharge
+me, for Christ's sake!"
+
+"Stop that!" cried Alpatych sternly. "I see through you and three
+yards under you," he repeated, knowing that his skill in beekeeping,
+his knowledge of the right time to sow the oats, and the fact that
+he had been able to retain the old prince's favor for twenty years had
+long since gained him the reputation of being a wizard, and that the
+power of seeing three yards under a man is considered an attribute
+of wizards.
+
+Dron got up and was about to say something, but Alpatych interrupted
+him.
+
+"What is it you have got into your heads, eh?... What are you
+thinking of, eh?"
+
+"What am I to do with the people?" said Dron. "They're quite
+beside themselves; I have already told them..."
+
+"'Told them,' I dare say!" said Alpatych. "Are they drinking?" he
+asked abruptly.
+
+"Quite beside themselves, Yakov Alpatych; they've fetched another
+barrel."
+
+"Well, then, listen! I'll go to the police officer, and you tell
+them so, and that they must stop this and the carts must be got
+ready."
+
+"I understand."
+
+Alpatych did not insist further. He had managed people for a long
+time and knew that the chief way to make them obey is to show no
+suspicion that they can possibly disobey. Having wrung a submissive "I
+understand" from Dron, Alpatych contented himself with that, though he
+not only doubted but felt almost certain that without the help of
+troops the carts would not be forthcoming.
+
+And so it was, for when evening came no carts had been provided.
+In the village, outside the drink shop, another meeting was being
+held, which decided that the horses should be driven out into the
+woods and the carts should not be provided. Without saying anything of
+this to the princess, Alpatych had his own belongings taken out of the
+carts which had arrived from Bald Hills and had those horses got ready
+for the princess' carriages. Meanwhile he went himself to the police
+authorities.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+After her father's funeral Princess Mary shut herself up in her room
+and did not admit anyone. A maid came to the door to say that Alpatych
+was asking for orders about their departure. (This was before his talk
+with Dron.) Princess Mary raised herself on the sofa on which she
+had been lying and replied through the closed door that she did not
+mean to go away and begged to be left in peace.
+
+The windows of the room in which she was lying looked westward.
+She lay on the sofa with her face to the wall, fingering the buttons
+of the leather cushion and seeing nothing but that cushion, and her
+confused thoughts were centered on one subject- the irrevocability
+of death and her own spiritual baseness, which she had not
+suspected, but which had shown itself during her father's illness. She
+wished to pray but did not dare to, dared not in her present state
+of mind address herself to God. She lay for a long time in that
+position.
+
+The sun had reached the other side of the house, and its slanting
+rays shone into the open window, lighting up the room and part of
+the morocco cushion at which Princess Mary was looking. The flow of
+her thoughts suddenly stopped. Unconsciously she sat up, smoothed
+her hair, got up, and went to the window, involuntarily inhaling the
+freshness of the clear but windy evening.
+
+"Yes, you can well enjoy the evening now! He is gone and no one will
+hinder you," she said to herself, and sinking into a chair she let her
+head fall on the window sill.
+
+Someone spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from the garden
+and kissed her head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a
+black dress and weepers. She softly approached Princess Mary,
+sighed, kissed her, and immediately began to cry. The princess
+looked up at her. All their former disharmony and her own jealousy
+recurred to her mind. But she remembered too how he had changed of
+late toward Mademoiselle Bourienne and could not bear to see her,
+thereby showing how unjust were the reproaches Princess Mary had
+mentally addressed to her. "Besides, is it for me, for me who
+desired his death, to condemn anyone?" she thought.
+
+Princess Mary vividly pictured to herself the position of
+Mademoiselle Bourienne, whom she had of late kept at a distance, but
+who yet was dependent on her and living in her house. She felt sorry
+for her and held out her hand with a glance of gentle inquiry.
+Mademoiselle Bourienne at once began crying again and kissed that
+hand, speaking of the princess' sorrow and making herself a partner in
+it. She said her only consolation was the fact that the princess
+allowed her to share her sorrow, that all the old misunderstandings
+should sink into nothing but this great grief; that she felt herself
+blameless in regard to everyone, and that he, from above, saw her
+affection and gratitude. The princess heard her, not heeding her words
+but occasionally looking up at her and listening to the sound of her
+voice.
+
+"Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess," said Mademoiselle
+Bourienne after a pause. "I understand that you could not, and cannot,
+think of yourself, but with my love for you I must do so.... Has
+Alpatych been to you? Has he spoken to you of going away?" she asked.
+
+Princess Mary did not answer. She did not understand who was to go
+or where to. "Is it possible to plan or think of anything now? Is it
+not all the same?" she thought, and did not reply.
+
+"You know, chere Marie," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "that we are
+in danger- are surrounded by the French. It would be dangerous to move
+now. If we go we are almost sure to be taken prisoners, and God
+knows..."
+
+Princess Mary looked at her companion without understanding what she
+was talking about.
+
+"Oh, if anyone knew how little anything matters to me now," she
+said. "Of course I would on no account wish to go away from him....
+Alpatych did say something about going.... Speak to him; I can do
+nothing, nothing, and don't want to...."
+
+"I've spoken to him. He hopes we should be in time to get away
+tomorrow, but I think it would now be better to stay here," said
+Mademoiselle Bourienne. "Because, you will agree, chere Marie, to fall
+into the hands of the soldiers or of riotous peasants would be
+terrible."
+
+Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a proclamation (not
+printed on ordinary Russian paper) of General Rameau's, telling people
+not to leave their homes and that the French authorities would
+afford them proper protection. She handed this to the princess.
+
+"I think it would be best to appeal to that general," she continued,
+"and and am sure that all due respect would be shown you."
+
+Princess Mary read the paper, and her face began to quiver with
+stifled sobs.
+
+"From whom did you get this?" she asked.
+
+"They probably recognized that I am French, by my name," replied
+Mademoiselle Bourienne blushing.
+
+Princess Mary, with the paper in her hand, rose from the window
+and with a pale face went out of the room and into what had been
+Prince Andrew's study.
+
+"Dunyasha, send Alpatych, or Dronushka, or somebody to me!" she
+said, "and tell Mademoiselle Bourienne not to come to me," she
+added, hearing Mademoiselle Bourienne's voice. "We must go at once, at
+once!" she said, appalled at the thought of being left in the hands of
+the French.
+
+"If Prince Andrew heard that I was in the power of the French!
+That I, the daughter of Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, asked General
+Rameau for protection and accepted his favor!" This idea horrified
+her, made her shudder, blush, and feel such a rush of anger and
+pride as she had never experienced before. All that was distressing,
+and especially all that was humiliating, in her position rose
+vividly to her mind. "They, the French, would settle in this house: M.
+le General Rameau would occupy Prince Andrew's study and amuse himself
+by looking through and reading his letters and papers. Mademoiselle
+Bourienne would do the honors of Bogucharovo for him. I should be
+given a small room as a favor, the soldiers would violate my
+father's newly dug grave to steal his crosses and stars, they would
+tell me of their victories over the Russians, and would pretend to
+sympathize with my sorrow..." thought Princess Mary, not thinking
+her own thoughts but feeling bound to think like her father and her
+brother. For herself she did not care where she remained or what
+happened to her, but she felt herself the representative of her dead
+father and of Prince Andrew. Involuntarily she thought their
+thoughts and felt their feelings. What they would have said and what
+they would have done she felt bound to say and do. She went into
+Prince Andrew's study, trying to enter completely into his ideas,
+and considered her position.
+
+The demands of life, which had seemed to her annihilated by her
+father's death, all at once rose before her with a new, previously
+unknown force and took possession of her.
+
+Agitated and flushed she paced the room, sending now for Michael
+Ivanovich and now for Tikhon or Dron. Dunyasha, the nurse, and the
+other maids could not say in how far Mademoiselle Bourienne's
+statement was correct. Alpatych was not at home, he had gone to the
+police. Neither could the architect Michael Ivanovich, who on being
+sent for came in with sleepy eyes, tell Princess Mary anything. With
+just the same smile of agreement with which for fifteen years he had
+been accustomed to answer the old prince without expressing views of
+his own, he now replied to Princess Mary, so that nothing definite
+could be got from his answers. The old valet Tikhon, with sunken,
+emaciated face that bore the stamp of inconsolable grief, replied:
+"Yes, Princess" to all Princess Mary's questions and hardly
+refrained from sobbing as he looked at her.
+
+At length Dron, the village Elder, entered the room and with a
+deep bow to Princess Mary came to a halt by the doorpost.
+
+Princess Mary walked up and down the room and stopped in front of
+him.
+
+"Dronushka," she said, regarding as a sure friend this Dronushka who
+always used to bring a special kind of gingerbread from his visit to
+the fair at Vyazma every year and smilingly offer it to her,
+"Dronushka, now since our misfortune..." she began, but could not go
+on.
+
+"We are all in God's hands," said he, with a sigh.
+
+They were silent for a while.
+
+"Dronushka, Alpatych has gone off somewhere and I have no one to
+turn to. Is true, as they tell me, that I can't even go away?"
+
+"Why shouldn't you go away, your excellency? You can go," said Dron.
+
+"I was told it would be dangerous because of the enemy. Dear friend,
+I can do nothing. I understand nothing. I have nobody! I want to go
+away tonight or early tomorrow morning."
+
+Dron paused. He looked askance at Princess Mary and said: "There are
+no horses; I told Yakov Alpatych so."
+
+"Why are there none?" asked the princess.
+
+"It's all God's scourge," said Dron. "What horses we had have been
+taken for the army or have died- this is such a year! It's not a
+case of feeding horses- we may die of hunger ourselves! As it is, some
+go three days without eating. We've nothing, we've been ruined."
+
+Princess Mary listened attentively to what he told her.
+
+"The peasants are ruined? They have no bread?" she asked.
+
+"They're dying of hunger," said Dron. "It's not a case of carting."
+
+"But why didn't you tell me, Dronushka? Isn't it possible to help
+them? I'll do all I can...."
+
+To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment when such
+sorrow was filling her soul, there could be rich people and poor,
+and the rich could refrain from helping the poor. She had heard
+vaguely that there was such a thing as "landlord's corn" which was
+sometimes given to the peasants. She also knew that neither her father
+nor her brother would refuse to help the peasants in need, she only
+feared to make some mistake in speaking about the distribution of
+the grain she wished to give. She was glad such cares presented
+themselves, enabling her without scruple to forget her own grief.
+She began asking Dron about the peasants' needs and what there was
+in Bogucharovo that belonged to the landlord.
+
+"But we have grain belonging to my brother?" she said.
+
+"The landlord's grain is all safe," replied Dron proudly. "Our
+prince did not order it to be sold."
+
+"Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I give you
+leave in my brother's name," said she.
+
+Dron made no answer but sighed deeply.
+
+"Give them that corn if there is enough of it. Distribute it all.
+I give this order in my brother's name; and tell them that what is
+ours is theirs. We do not grudge them anything. Tell them so."
+
+" Dron looked intently at the princess while she was speaking.
+
+"Discharge me, little mother, for God's sake! Order the keys to be
+taken from me," said he. "I have served twenty-three years and have
+done no wrong. Discharge me, for God's sake!"
+
+Princess Mary did not understand what he wanted of her or why he was
+asking to be discharged. She replied that she had never doubted his
+devotion and that she was ready to do anything for him and for the
+peasants.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+An hour later Dunyasha came to tell the princess that Dron had come,
+and all the peasants had assembled at the barn by the princess'
+order and wished to have word with their mistress.
+
+"But I never told them to come," said Princess Mary. "I only told
+Dron to let them have the grain."
+
+"Only, for God's sake, Princess dear, have them sent away and
+don't go out to them. It's all a trick," said Dunyasha, "and when
+Yakov Alpatych returns let us get away... and please don't..."
+
+"What is a trick?" asked Princess Mary in surprise.
+
+"I know it is, only listen to me for God's sake! Ask nurse too. They
+say they don't agree to leave Bogucharovo as you ordered."
+
+"You're making some mistake. I never ordered them to go away,"
+said Princess Mary. "Call Dronushka."
+
+Dron came and confirmed Dunyasha's words; the peasants had come by
+the princess' order.
+
+"But I never sent for them," declared the princess. "You must have
+given my message wrong. I only said that you were to give them the
+grain."
+
+Dron only sighed in reply.
+
+"If you order it they will go away," said he.
+
+"No, no. I'll go out to them," said Princess Mary, and in spite of
+the nurse's and Dunyasha's protests she went out into the porch; Dron,
+Dunyasha, the nurse, and Michael Ivanovich following her.
+
+"They probably think I am offering them the grain to bribe them to
+remain here, while I myself go away leaving them to the mercy of the
+French," thought Princess Mary. "I will offer them monthly rations and
+housing at our Moscow estate. I am sure Andrew would do even more in
+my place," she thought as she went out in the twilight toward the
+crowd standing on the pasture by the barn.
+
+The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly took off their
+hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and, tripping over her skirt,
+came close up to them. So many different eyes, old and young, were
+fixed on her, and there were so many different faces, that she could
+not distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak to them
+all at once, did not know how to do it. But again the sense that she
+represented her father and her brother gave her courage, and she
+boldly began her speech.
+
+"I am very glad you have come," she said without raising her eyes,
+and feeling her heart beating quickly and violently. "Dronushka
+tells me that the war has ruined you. That is our common misfortune,
+and I shall grudge nothing to help you. I am myself going away because
+it is dangerous here... the enemy is near... because... I am giving
+you everything, my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all
+our grain, so that you may not suffer want! And if you have been
+told that I am giving you the grain to keep you here- that is not
+true. On the contrary, I ask you to go with all your belongings to our
+estate near Moscow, and I promise you I will see to it that there
+you shall want for nothing. You shall be given food and lodging."
+
+The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard in the crowd.
+
+"I am not doing this on my own account," she continued, "I do it
+in the name of my dead father, who was a good master to you, and of my
+brother and his son."
+
+Again she paused. No one broke the silence.
+
+"Ours is a common misfortune and we will share it together. All that
+is mine is yours," she concluded, scanning the faces before her.
+
+All eyes were gazing at her with one and the same expression. She
+could not fathom whether it was curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or
+apprehension and distrust- but the expression on all the faces was
+identical.
+
+"We are all very thankful for your bounty, but it won't do for us to
+take the landlord's grain," said a voice at the back of the crowd.
+
+"But why not?" asked the princess.
+
+No one replied and Princess Mary, looking round at the crowd,
+found that every eye she met now was immediately dropped.
+
+"But why don't you want to take it?" she asked again.
+
+No one answered.
+
+The silence began to oppress the princess and she tried to catch
+someone's eye.
+
+"Why don't you speak?" she inquired of a very old man who stood just
+in front of her leaning on his stick. "If you think something more
+is wanted, tell me! I will do anything," said she, catching his eye.
+
+But as if this angered him, he bent his head quite low and muttered:
+
+"Why should we agree? We don't want the grain."
+
+"Why should we give up everything? We don't agree. Don't agree....
+We are sorry for you, but we're not willing. Go away yourself,
+alone..." came from various sides of the crowd.
+
+And again all the faces in that crowd bore an identical
+expression, though now it was certainly not an expression of curiosity
+or gratitude, but of angry resolve.
+
+"But you can't have understood me," said Princess Mary with a sad
+smile. "Why don't you want to go? I promise to house and feed you,
+while here the enemy would ruin you..."
+
+But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd.
+
+"We're not willing. Let them ruin us! We won't take your grain. We
+don't agree."
+
+Again Princess Mary tried to catch someone's eye, but not a single
+eye in the crowd was turned to her; evidently they were all trying
+to avoid her look. She felt strange and awkward.
+
+"Oh yes, an artful tale! Follow her into slavery! Pull down your
+houses and go into bondage! I dare say! 'I'll give you grain, indeed!'
+she says," voices in the crowd were heard saying.
+
+With drooping head Princess Mary left the crowd and went back to the
+house. Having repeated her order to Dron to have horses ready for
+her departure next morning, she went to her room and remained alone
+with her own thoughts.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window of
+her room hearing the sound of the peasants' voices that reached her
+from the village, but it was not of them she was thinking. She felt
+that she could not understand them however much she might think
+about them. She thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which, after
+the break caused by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to
+the past. Now she could remember it and weep or pray.
+
+After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh.
+Toward midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full
+moon began to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist
+began to rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.
+
+Pictures of the near past- her father's illness and last moments-
+rose one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now
+lingered over these images, repelling with horror only the last one,
+the picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate
+even in imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And
+these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly and in such
+detail that they seemed now present, now past, and now future.
+
+She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke and was
+being dragged along by his armpits through the garden at Bald Hills,
+muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray
+eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her.
+
+"Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day he died,"
+she thought. "He had always thought what he said then." And she
+recalled in all its detail the night at Bald Hills before he had the
+last stroke, when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at
+home against his will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs
+on tiptoe, and going to the door of the conservatory where he slept
+that night had listened at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he
+was saying something to Tikhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm
+nights and of the Empress. Evidently he had wanted to talk. "And why
+didn't he call me? Why didn't he let me be there instead of Tikhon?"
+Princess Mary had thought and thought again now. "Now he will never
+tell anyone what he had in his soul. Never will that moment return for
+him or for me when he might have said all he longed to say, and not
+Tikhon but I might have heard and understood him. Why didn't I enter
+the room?" she thought. "Perhaps he would then have said to me what he
+said the day he died. While talking to Tikhon he asked about me twice.
+He wanted to see me, and I was standing close by, outside the door. It
+was sad and painful for him to talk to Tikhon who did not understand
+him. I remember how he began speaking to him about Lise as if she were
+alive- he had forgotten she was dead- and Tikhon reminded him that she
+was no more, and he shouted, 'Fool!' He was greatly depressed. From
+behind the door I heard how he lay down on his bed groaning and loudly
+exclaimed, 'My God!' Why didn't I go in then? What could he have
+done to me? What could I have lost? And perhaps he would then have
+been comforted and would have said that word to me." And Princess Mary
+uttered aloud the caressing word he had said to her on the day of
+his death. "Dear-est!" she repeated, and began sobbing, with tears
+that relieved her soul. She now saw his face before her. And not the
+face she had known ever since she could remember and had always seen
+at a distance, but the timid, feeble face she had seen for the first
+time quite closely, with all its wrinkles and details, when she
+stooped near to his mouth to catch what he said.
+
+"Dear-est!" she repeated again.
+
+"What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What is he thinking
+now?" This question suddenly presented itself to her, and in answer
+she saw him before her with the expression that was on his face as
+he lay in his coffin with his chin bound up with a white handkerchief.
+And the horror that had seized her when she touched him and
+convinced herself that that was not he, but something mysterious and
+horrible, seized her again. She tried to think of something else and
+to pray, but could do neither. With wide-open eyes she gazed at the
+moonlight and the shadows, expecting every moment to see his dead
+face, and she felt that the silence brooding over the house and within
+it held her fast.
+
+"Dunyasha," she whispered. "Dunyasha!" she screamed wildly, and
+tearing herself out of this silence she ran to the servants'
+quarters to meet her old nurse and the maidservants who came running
+toward her.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+On the seventeenth of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by
+Lavrushka who had just returned from captivity and by an hussar
+orderly, left their quarters at Yankovo, ten miles from Bogucharovo,
+and went for a ride- to try a new horse Ilyin had bought and to find
+out whether there was any hay to be had in the villages.
+
+For the last three days Bogucharovo had lain between the two hostile
+armies, so that it was as easy for the Russian rearguard to get to
+it as for the French vanguard; Rostov, as a careful squadron
+commander, wished to take such provisions as remained at Bogucharovo
+before the French could get them.
+
+Rostov and Ilyin were in the merriest of moods. On the way to
+Bogucharovo, a princely estate with a dwelling house and farm where
+they hoped to find many domestic serfs and pretty girls, they
+questioned Lavrushka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and
+raced one another to try Ilyin's horse.
+
+Rostov had no idea that the village he was entering was the property
+of that very Bolkonski who had been engaged to his sister.
+
+Rostov and Ilyin gave rein to their horses for a last race along the
+incline before reaching Bogucharovo, and Rostov, outstripping Ilyin,
+was the first to gallop into the village street.
+
+"You're first!" cried Ilyin, flushed.
+
+"Yes, always first both on the grassland and here," answered Rostov,
+stroking his heated Donets horse.
+
+"And I'd have won on my Frenchy, your excellency," said Lavrushka
+from behind, alluding to his shabby cart horse, "only I didn't wish to
+mortify you.
+
+They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large crowd of peasants
+was standing.
+
+Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the new arrivals
+without doffing their caps. Two tall old peasants with wrinkled
+faces and scanty beards emerged from the tavern, smiling,
+staggering, and singing some incoherent song, and approached the
+officers.
+
+"Fine fellows!" said Rostov laughing. "Is there any hay here?"
+
+"And how like one another," said Ilyin.
+
+"A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!" sang one of the peasants with a
+blissful smile.
+
+One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to Rostov.
+
+"Who do you belong to?" he asked.
+
+"The French," replied Ilyin jestingly, "and here is Napoleon
+himself"- and he pointed to Lavrushka.
+
+"Then you are Russians?" the peasant asked again.
+
+"And is there a large force of you here?" said another, a short man,
+coming up.
+
+"Very large," answered Rostov. "But why have you collected here?" he
+added. "Is it a holiday?"
+
+"The old men have met to talk over the business of the commune,"
+replied the peasant, moving away.
+
+At that moment, on the road leading from the big house, two women
+and a man in a white hat were seen coming toward the officers.
+
+"The one in pink is mine, so keep off!" said Ilyin on seeing
+Dunyasha running resolutely toward him.
+
+"She'll be ours!" said Lavrushka to Ilyin, winking.
+
+"What do you want, my pretty?" said Ilyin with a smile.
+
+"The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your name."
+
+"This is Count Rostov, squadron commander, and I am your humble
+servant."
+
+"Co-o-om-pa-ny!" roared the tipsy peasant with a beatific smile as
+he looked at Ilyin talking to the girl. Following Dunyasha, Alpatych
+advanced to Rostov, having bared his head while still at a distance.
+
+"May I make bold to trouble your honor?" said he respectfully, but
+with a shade of contempt for the youthfulness of this officer and with
+a hand thrust into his bosom. "My mistress, daughter of General in
+Chief Prince Nicholas Bolkonski who died on the fifteenth of this
+month, finding herself in difficulties owing to the boorishness of
+these people"- he pointed to the peasants- "asks you to come up to the
+house.... Won't you, please, ride on a little farther," said
+Alpatych with a melancholy smile, "as it is not convenient in the
+presence of...?" He pointed to the two peasants who kept as close to
+him as horseflies to a horse.
+
+"Ah!... Alpatych... Ah, Yakov Alpatych... Grand! Forgive us for
+Christ's sake, eh?" said the peasants, smiling joyfully at him.
+
+Rostov looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.
+
+"Or perhaps they amuse your honor?" remarked Alpatych with a staid
+air, as he pointed at the old men with his free hand.
+
+"No, there's not much to be amused at here," said Rostov, and rode
+on a little way. "What's the matter?" he asked.
+
+"I make bold to inform your honor that the rude peasants here
+don't wish to let the mistress leave the estate, and threaten to
+unharness her horses, so that though everything has been packed up
+since morning, her excellency cannot get away."
+
+"Impossible!" exclaimed Rostov.
+
+"I have the honor to report to you the actual truth," said Alpatych.
+
+Rostov dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and followed
+Alpatych to the house, questioning him as to the state of affairs.
+It appeared that the princess' offer of corn to the peasants the
+previous day, and her talk with Dron and at the meeting, had
+actually had so bad an effect that Dron had finally given up the
+keys and joined the peasants and had not appeared when Alpatych sent
+for him; and that in the morning when the princess gave orders to
+harness for her journey, the peasants had come in a large crowd to the
+barn and sent word that they would not let her leave the village: that
+there was an order not to move, and that they would unharness the
+horses. Alpatych had gone out to admonish them, but was told (it was
+chiefly Karp who did the talking, Dron not showing himself in the
+crowd) that they could not let the princess go, that there was an
+order to the contrary, but that if she stayed they would serve her
+as before and obey her in everything.
+
+At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping along the road,
+Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpatych, her nurse, and the
+maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the
+cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran
+away, and the women in the house began to wail.
+
+"Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!" exclaimed deeply moved
+voices as Rostov passed through the anteroom.
+
+Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large
+sitting room, when Rostov was shown in. She could not grasp who he was
+and why he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his
+Russian face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered
+recognized him as a man of her own class, she glanced at him with
+her deep radiant look and began speaking in a voice that faltered
+and trembled with emotion. This meeting immediately struck Rostov as a
+romantic event. "A helpless girl overwhelmed with grief, left to the
+mercy of coarse, rioting peasants! And what a strange fate sent me
+here! What gentleness and nobility there are in her features and
+expression!" thought he as he looked at her and listened to her
+timid story.
+
+When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day
+after her father's funeral, her voiced trembled. She turned away,
+and then, as if fearing he might take her words as meant to move him
+to pity, looked at him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There
+were tears in Rostov's eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced
+gratefully at him with that radiant look which caused the plainness of
+her face to be forgotten.
+
+"I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride
+here and am able to show my readiness to serve you," said Rostov,
+rising. "Go when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no
+one shall dare to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act
+as your escort." And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal
+blood, he moved toward the door.
+
+Rostov's deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would
+consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to
+take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.
+
+Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.
+
+"I am very, very grateful to you," she said in French, "but I hope
+it was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to blame for it." She
+suddenly began to cry.
+
+"Excuse me!" she said.
+
+Rostov, knitting his brows, left the room with another low bow.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend- my pink one is delicious; her
+name is Dunyasha...."
+
+But on glancing at Rostov's face Ilyin stopped short. He saw that
+his hero and commander was following quite a different train of
+thought.
+
+Rostov glanced angrily at Ilyin and without replying strode off with
+rapid steps to the village.
+
+"I'll show them; I'll give it to them, the brigands!" said he to
+himself.
+
+Alpatych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run, kept up
+with him with difficulty.
+
+"What decision have you been pleased to come to?" said he.
+
+Rostov stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned
+on Alpatych.
+
+"Decision? What decision? Old dotard!..." cried he. "What have you
+been about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you can't manage them?
+You're a traitor youself! I know you. I'll flay you all alive!..." And
+as if afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alpatych and
+went rapidly forward. Alpatych, mastering his offended feelings,
+kept pace with Rostov at a gliding gait and continued to impart his
+views. He said the peasants were obdurate and that at the present
+moment it would be imprudent to "overresist" them without an armed
+force, and would it not be better first to send for the military?
+
+"I'll give them armed force... I'll 'overresist' them!" uttered
+Rostov meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal fury and the
+need to vent it.
+
+Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with
+quick, resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he drew to it
+the more Alpatych felt that this unreasonable action might produce
+good results. The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed
+when they saw Rostov's rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.
+
+After the hussars had come to the village and Rostov had gone to see
+the princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among
+the crowd. Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were
+Russians and might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained.
+Dron was of this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and
+others attacked their ex-Elder.
+
+"How many years have you been fattening on the commune?" Karp
+shouted at him. "It's all one to you! You'll dig up your pot of
+money and take it away with you.... What does it matter to you whether
+our homes are ruined or not?"
+
+"We've been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave their
+homes or take away a single grain, and that's all about it!" cried
+another.
+
+"It was your son's turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You
+begrudged your lump of a son," a little old man suddenly began
+attacking Dron- "and so they took my Vanka to be shaved for a soldier!
+But we all have to die."
+
+"To be sure, we all have to die. I'm not against the commune,"
+said Dron.
+
+"That's it- not against it! You've filled your belly...."
+
+The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostov, followed
+by Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to the crowd, Karp,
+thrusting his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked to
+the front. Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew
+closer together.
+
+"Who is your Elder here? Hey?" shouted Rostov, coming up to the
+crowd with quick steps.
+
+"The Elder? What do you want with him?..." asked Karp.
+
+But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew off
+and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side.
+
+"Caps off, traitors!" shouted Rostov in a wrathful voice. "Where's
+the Elder?" he cried furiously.
+
+"The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakharych, you!" meek and
+flustered voices here and there were heard calling and caps began to
+come off their heads.
+
+"We don't riot, we're following the orders," declared Karp, and at
+that moment several voices began speaking together.
+
+"It's as the old men have decided- there's too many of you giving
+orders."
+
+"Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!" cried Rostov unmeaningly
+in a voice not his own, gripping Karp by the collar. "Bind him, bind
+him!" he shouted, though there was no one to bind him but Lavrushka
+and Alpatych.
+
+Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by the arms from
+behind.
+
+"Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?" he called out.
+
+Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them by name to
+come and bind Karp. The men obediently came out of the crowd and began
+taking off their belts.
+
+"Where's the Elder?" demanded Rostov in a loud voice.
+
+With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the crowd.
+
+"Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrushka!" shouted Rostov, as if that
+order, too, could not possibly meet with any opposition.
+
+And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron, who took off his
+own belt and handed it to them, as if to aid them.
+
+"And you all listen to me!" said Rostov to the peasants. "Be off
+to your houses at once, and don't let one of your voices be heard!"
+
+"Why, we've not done any harm! We did it just out of foolishness.
+It's all nonsense... I said then that it was not in order," voices
+were heard bickering with one another.
+
+"There! What did I say?" said Alpatych, coming into his own again.
+"It's wrong, lads!"
+
+"All our stupidity, Yakov Alpatych," came the answers, and the
+crowd began at once to disperse through the village.
+
+The two bound men were led off to the master's house. The two
+drunken peasants followed them.
+
+"Aye, when I look at you!..." said one of them to Karp.
+
+"How can one talk to the masters like that? What were you thinking
+of, you fool?" added the other- "A real fool!"
+
+Two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard of the
+Bogucharovo house. The peasants were briskly carrying out the
+proprietor's goods and packing them on the carts, and Dron,
+liberated at Princess Mary's wish from the cupboard where he had
+been confined, was standing in the yard directing the men.
+
+"Don't put it in so carelessly," said one of the peasants, a man
+with a round smiling face, taking a casket from a housemaid. "You know
+it has cost money! How can you chuck it in like that or shove it under
+the cord where it'll get rubbed? I don't like that way of doing
+things. Let it all be done properly, according to rule. Look here, put
+it under the bast matting and cover it with hay- that's the way!"
+
+"Eh, books, books!" said another peasant, bringing out Prince
+Andrew's library cupboards. "Don't catch up against it! It's heavy,
+lads- solid books."
+
+"Yes, they worked all day and didn't play!" remarked the tall,
+round-faced peasant gravely, pointing with a significant wink at the
+dictionaries that were on the top.
+
+Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostov did not go back
+to the house but remained in the village awaiting her departure.
+When her carriage drove out of the house, he mounted and accompanied
+her eight miles from Bogucharovo to where the road was occupied by our
+troops. At the inn at Yankovo he respectfully took leave of her, for
+the first time permitting himself to kiss her hand.
+
+"How can you speak so!" he blushingly replied to Princess Mary's
+expressions of gratitude for her deliverance, as she termed what had
+occurred. "Any police officer would have done as much! If we had had
+only peasants to fight, we should not have let the enemy come so far,"
+said he with a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject. "I am
+only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance.
+Good-by, Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope to
+meet you again in happier circumstances. If you don't want to make
+me blush, please don't thank me!"
+
+But the princess, if she did not again thank him in words, thanked
+him with the whole expression of her face, radiant with gratitude
+and tenderness. She could not believe that there was nothing to
+thank him for. On the contrary, it seemed to her certain that had he
+not been there she would have perished at the hands of the mutineers
+and of the French, and that he had exposed himself to terrible and
+obvious danger to save her, and even more certain was it that he was a
+man of lofty and noble soul, able to understand her position and her
+sorrow. His kind, honest eyes, with the tears rising in them when
+she herself had begun to cry as she spoke of her loss, did leave her
+memory.
+
+When she had taken leave of him and remained alone she suddenly felt
+her eyes filling with tears, and then not for the first time the
+strange question presented itself to her: did she love him?
+
+On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess' position
+was not a cheerful one, Dunyasha, who went with her in the carriage,
+more than once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window
+and smiled at something with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow.
+
+"Well, supposing I do love him?" thought Princess Mary.
+
+Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that she had fallen
+in love with a man who would perhaps never love her, she comforted
+herself with the thought that no one would ever know it and that she
+would not be to blame if, without ever speaking of it to anyone, she
+continued to the end of her life to love the man with whom she had
+fallen in love for the first and last time in her life.
+
+Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy, and his
+words, happiness did not appear impossible to her. It was at those
+moments that Dunyasha noticed her smiling as she looked out of the
+carriage window.
+
+"Was it not fate that brought him to Bogucharovo, and at that very
+moment?" thought Princess Mary. "And that caused his sister to
+refuse my brother?" And in all this Princess Mary saw the hand of
+Providence.
+
+The impression the princess made on Rostov was a very agreeable one.
+To remember her gave him pleasure, and when his comrades, hearing of
+his adventure at Bogucharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for
+hay and having picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in Russia, he
+grew angry. It made him angry just because the idea of marrying the
+gentle Princess Mary, who was attractive to him and had an enormous
+fortune, had against his will more than once entered his head. For
+himself personally Nicholas could not wish for a better wife: by
+marrying her he would make the countess his mother happy, would be
+able to put his father's affairs in order, and would even- he felt it-
+ensure Princess Mary's happiness.
+
+But Sonya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostov grew angry
+when he was rallied about Princess Bolkonskaya.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+On receiving command of the armies Kutuzov remembered Prince
+Andrew and sent an order for him to report at headquarters.
+
+Prince Andrew arrived at Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the very day and at
+the very hour that Kutuzov was reviewing the troops for the first
+time. He stopped in the village at the priest's house in front of
+which stood the commander in chief's carriage, and he sat down on
+the bench at the gate awaiting his Serene Highness, as everyone now
+called Kutuzov. From the field beyond the village came now sounds of
+regimental music and now the roar of many voices shouting "Hurrah!" to
+the new commander in chief. Two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo,
+stood near by, some ten paces from Prince Andrew, availing
+themselves of Kutuzov's absence and of the fine weather. A short,
+swarthy lieutenant colonel of hussars with thick mustaches and
+whiskers rode up to the gate and, glancing at Prince Andrew,
+inquired whether his Serene Highness was putting up there and
+whether he would soon be back.
+
+Prince Andrew replied that he was not on his Serene Highness'
+staff but was himself a new arrival. The lieutenant colonel turned
+to a smart orderly, who, with the peculiar contempt with which a
+commander in chief's orderly speaks to officers, replied:
+
+"What? His Serene Highness? I expect he'll be here soon. What do you
+want?"
+
+The lieutenant colonel of hussars smiled beneath his mustache at the
+orderly's tone, dismounted, gave his horse to a dispatch runner, and
+approached Bolkonski with a slight bow. Bolkonski made room for him on
+the bench and the lieutenant colonel sat down beside him.
+
+"You're also waiting for the commander in chief?" said he. "They say
+he weceives evewyone, thank God!... It's awful with those sausage
+eaters! Ermolov had weason to ask to be pwomoted to be a German! Now
+p'waps Wussians will get a look in. As it was, devil only knows what
+was happening. We kept wetweating and wetweating. Did you take part in
+the campaign?" he asked.
+
+"I had the pleasure," replied Prince Andrew, "not only of taking
+part in the retreat but of losing in that retreat all I held dear- not
+to mention the estate and home of my birth- my father, who died of
+grief. I belong to the province of Smolensk."
+
+"Ah? You're Pwince Bolkonski? Vewy glad to make your acquaintance!
+I'm Lieutenant Colonel Denisov, better known as 'Vaska,'" said
+Denisov, pressing Prince Andrew's hand and looking into his face
+with a particularly kindly attention. "Yes, I heard," said he
+sympathetically, and after a short pause added: "Yes, it's Scythian
+warfare. It's all vewy well- only not for those who get it in the
+neck. So you are Pwince Andwew Bolkonski?" He swayed his head. "Vewy
+pleased, Pwince, to make your acquaintance!" he repeated again,
+smiling sadly, and he again pressed Prince Andrew's hand.
+
+Prince Andrew knew Denisov from what Natasha had told him of her
+first suitor. This memory carried him sadly and sweetly back to
+those painful feelings of which he had not thought lately, but which
+still found place in his soul. Of late he had received so many new and
+very serious impressions- such as the retreat from Smolensk, his visit
+to Bald Hills, and the recent news of his father's death- and had
+experienced so many emotions, that for a long time past those memories
+had not entered his mind, and now that they did, they did not act on
+him with nearly their former strength. For Denisov, too, the
+memories awakened by the name of Bolkonski belonged to a distant,
+romantic past, when after supper and after Natasha's singing he had
+proposed to a little girl of fifteen without realizing what he was
+doing. He smiled at the recollection of that time and of his love
+for Natasha, and passed at once to what now interested him
+passionately and exclusively. This was a plan of campaign he had
+devised while serving at the outposts during the retreat. He had
+proposed that plan to Barclay de Tolly and now wished to propose it to
+Kutuzov. The plan was based on the fact that the French line of
+operation was to extended, and it proposed that instead of, or
+concurrently with, action on the front to bar the advance of the
+French, we should attack their line of communication. He began
+explaining his plan to Prince Andrew.
+
+"They can't hold all that line. It's impossible. I will undertake to
+bweak thwough. Give me five hundwed men and I will bweak the line,
+that's certain! There's only one way- guewilla warfare!"
+
+Denisov rose and began gesticulating as he explained his plan to
+Bolkonski. In the midst of his explanation shouts were heard from
+the army, growing more incoherent and more diffused, mingling with
+music and songs and coming from the field where the review was held.
+Sounds of hoofs and shouts were nearing the village.
+
+"He's coming! He's coming!" shouted a Cossack standing at the gate.
+
+Bolkonski and Denisov moved to the gate, at which a knot of soldiers
+(a guard of honor) was standing, and they saw Kutuzov coming down
+the street mounted on a rather small sorrel horse. A huge suite of
+generals rode behind him. Barclay was riding almost beside him, and
+a crowd of officers ran after and around them shouting, "Hurrah!"
+
+His adjutants galloped into the yard before him. Kutuzov was
+impatiently urging on his horse, which ambled smoothly under his
+weight, and he raised his hand to his white Horse Guard's cap with a
+red band and no peak, nodding his head continually. When he came up to
+the guard of honor, a fine set of Grenadiers mostly wearing
+decorations, who were giving him the salute, he looked at them
+silently and attentively for nearly a minute with the steady gaze of a
+commander and then turned to the crowd of generals and officers
+surrounding him. Suddenly his face assumed a subtle expression, he
+shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity.
+
+"And with such fine fellows to retreat and retreat! Well, good-by,
+General," he added, and rode into the yard past Prince Andrew and
+Denisov.
+
+"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" shouted those behind him.
+
+Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutuzov had grown still more
+corpulent, flaccid, and fat. But the bleached eyeball, the scar, and
+the familiar weariness of his expression were still the same. He was
+wearing the white Horse Guard's cap and a military overcoat with a
+whip hanging over his shoulder by a thin strap. He sat heavily and
+swayed limply on his brisk little horse.
+
+"Whew... whew... whew!" he whistled just audibly as he rode into the
+yard. His face expressed the relief of relaxed strain felt by a man
+who means to rest after a ceremony. He drew his left foot out of the
+stirrup and, lurching with his whole body and puckering his face
+with the effort, raised it with difficulty onto the saddle, leaned
+on his knee, groaned, and slipped down into the arms of the Cossacks
+and adjutants who stood ready to assist him.
+
+He pulled himself together, looked round, screwing up his eyes,
+glanced at Prince Andrew, and, evidently not recognizing him, moved
+with his waddling gait to the porch. "Whew... whew... whew!" he
+whistled, and again glanced at Prince Andrew. As often occurs with old
+men, it was only after some seconds that the impression produced by
+Prince Andrew's face linked itself up with Kutuzov's remembrance of
+his personality.
+
+"Ah, how do you do, my dear prince? How do you do, my dear boy? Come
+along..." said he, glancing wearily round, and he stepped onto the
+porch which creaked under his weight.
+
+He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the porch.
+
+"And how's your father?"
+
+"I received news of his death, yesterday," replied Prince Andrew
+abruptly.
+
+Kutuzov looked at him with eyes wide open with dismay and then
+took off his cap and crossed himself:
+
+"May the kingdom of Heaven be his! God's will be done to us all!" He
+sighed deeply, his whole chest heaving, and was silent for a while. "I
+loved him and respected him, and sympathize with you with all my
+heart."
+
+He embraced Prince Andrew, pressing him to his fat breast, and for
+some time did not let him go. When he released him Prince Andrew saw
+that Kutuzov's flabby lips were trembling and that tears were in his
+eyes. He sighed and pressed on the bench with both hands to raise
+himself.
+
+"Come! Come with me, we'll have a talk," said he.
+
+But at that moment Denisov, no more intimidated by his superiors
+than by the enemy, came with jingling spurs up the steps of the porch,
+despite the angry whispers of the adjutants who tried to stop him.
+Kutuzov, his hands still pressed on the seat, glanced at him glumly.
+Denisov, having given his name, announced that he had to communicate
+to his Serene Highness a matter of great importance for their
+country's welfare. Kutuzov looked wearily at him and, lifting his
+hands with a gesture of annoyance, folded them across his stomach,
+repeating the words: "For our country's welfare? Well, what is it?
+Speak!" Denisov blushed like a girl (it was strange to see the color
+rise in that shaggy, bibulous, time-worn face) and boldly began to
+expound his plan of cutting the enemy's lines of communication between
+Smolensk and Vyazma. Denisov came from those parts and knew the
+country well. His plan seemed decidedly a good one, especially from
+the strength of conviction with which he spoke. Kutuzov looked down at
+his own legs, occasionally glancing at the door of the adjoining hut
+as if expecting something unpleasant to emerge from it. And from
+that hut, while Denisov was speaking, a general with a portfolio under
+his arm really did appear.
+
+"What?" said Kutuzov, in the midst of Denisov's explanations, "are
+you ready so soon?"
+
+"Ready, your Serene Highness," replied the general.
+
+Kutuzov swayed his head, as much as to say: "How is one man to
+deal with it all?" and again listened to Denisov.
+
+"I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer," said Denisov,
+"that I can bweak Napoleon's line of communication!"
+
+"What relation are you to Intendant General Kiril Andreevich
+Denisov?" asked Kutuzov, interrupting him.
+
+"He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness."
+
+"Ah, we were friends," said Kutuzov cheerfully. "All right, all
+right, friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow we'll have a talk."
+
+With a nod to Denisov he turned away and put out his hand for the
+papers Konovnitsyn had brought him.
+
+"Would not your Serene Highness like to come inside?" said the
+general on duty in a discontented voice, "the plans must be examined
+and several papers have to be signed."
+
+An adjutant came out and announced that everything was in
+readiness within. But Kutuzov evidently did not wish to enter that
+room till he was disengaged. He made a grimace...
+
+"No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear boy. I'll
+look at them here," said he. "Don't go away," he added, turning to
+Prince Andrew, who remained in the porch and listened to the general's
+report.
+
+While this was being given, Prince Andrew heard the whisper of a
+woman's voice and the rustle of a silk dress behind the door.
+Several times on glancing that way he noticed behind that door a
+plump, rosy, handsome woman in a pink dress with a lilac silk kerchief
+on her head, holding a dish and evidently awaiting the entrance of the
+commander in chief. Kutiizov's adjutant whispered to Prince Andrew
+that this was the wife of the priest whose home it was, and that she
+intended to offer his Serene Highness bread and salt. "Her husband has
+welcomed his Serene Highness with the cross at the church, and she
+intends to welcome him in the house.... She's very pretty," added
+the adjutant with a smile. At those words Kutuzov looked round. He was
+listening to the general's report- which consisted chiefly of a
+criticism of the position at Tsarevo-Zaymishche- as he had listened to
+Denisov, and seven years previously had listened to the discussion
+at the Austerlitz council of war. He evidently listened only because
+he had ears which, though there was a piece of tow in one of them,
+could not help hearing; but it was evident that nothing the general
+could say would surprise or even interest him, that he knew all that
+would be said beforehand, and heard it all only because he had to,
+as one has to listen to the chanting of a service of prayer. All
+that Denisov had said was clever and to the point. What the general
+was saying was even more clever and to the point, but it was evident
+that Kutuzov despised knowledge and cleverness, and knew of
+something else that would decide the matter- something independent
+of clever. ness and knowledge. Prince Andrew watched the commander
+in chief's face attentively, and the only expression he could see
+there was one of boredom, curiosity as to the meaning of the
+feminine whispering behind the door, and a desire to observe
+propriety. It was evident that Kutuzov despised cleverness and
+learning and even the patriotic feeling shown by Denisov, but despised
+them not because of his own intellect, feelings, or knowledge- he
+did not try to display any of these- but because of something else. He
+despised them because of his old age and experience of life. The
+only instruction Kutuzov gave of his own accord during that report
+referred to looting by the Russian troops. At the end of the report
+the general put before him for signature a paper relating to the
+recovery of payment from army commanders for green oats mown down by
+the soldiers, when landowners lodged petitions for compensation.
+
+After hearing the matter, Kutuzov smacked his lips together and
+shook his head.
+
+"Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for all,
+my dear fellow," said he, "into the fire with all such things! Let
+them cut the crops and burn wood to their hearts' content. I don't
+order it or allow it, but I don't exact compensation either. One can't
+get on without it. 'When wood is chopped the chips will fly.'" He
+looked at the paper again. "Oh, this German precision!" he muttered,
+shaking his head.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+"Well, that's all!" said Kutuzov as he signed the last of the
+documents, and rising heavily and smoothing out the folds in his fat
+white neck he moved toward the door with a more cheerful expression.
+
+The priest's wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish she had
+after all not managed to present at the right moment, though she had
+so long been preparing for it, and with a low bow offered it to
+Kutuzov.
+
+He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his hand, and
+said:
+
+"Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!"
+
+He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and put them on the
+dish for her. "Well, my dear, and how are we getting on?" he asked,
+moving to the door of the room assigned to him. The priest's wife
+smiled, and with dimples in her rosy cheeks followed him into the
+room. The adjutant came out to the porch and asked Prince Andrew to
+lunch with him. Half an hour later Prince Andrew was again called to
+Kutuzov. He found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same
+unbuttoned overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he
+closed as Prince Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife.
+Prince Andrew saw by the cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne
+by Madame de Genlis.
+
+"Well, sit down, sit down here. Let's have a talk," said Kutuzov.
+"It's sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that I am a
+father to you, a second father...."
+
+Prince Andrew told Kutuzov all he knew of his father's death, and
+what he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed through it.
+
+"What... what they have brought us to!" Kutuzov suddenly cried in an
+agitated voice, evidently picturing vividly to himself from Prince
+Andrew's story the condition Russia was in. "But give me time, give me
+time!" he said with a grim look, evidently not wishing to continue
+this agitating conversation, and added: "I sent for you to keep you
+with me."
+
+"I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am longer fit for the
+staff," replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutuzov noticed.
+
+Kutuzov glanced inquiringly at him.
+
+"But above all," added Prince Andrew, "I have grown used to my
+regiment, am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I
+should be sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of being
+with you, believe me..."
+
+A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up Kutuzov's
+podgy face. He cut Bolkonski short.
+
+"I am sorry, for I need you. But you're right, you're right! It's
+not here that men are needed. Advisers are always plentiful, but men
+are not. The regiments would not be what they are if the would-be
+advisers served there as you do. I remember you at Austerlitz.... I
+remember, yes, I remember you with the standard!" said Kutuzov, and
+a flush of pleasure suffused Prince Andrew's face at this
+recollection.
+
+Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutuzov offered his cheek
+to be kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man's
+eyes. Though Prince Andrew knew that Kutuzov's tears came easily,
+and that he was particularly tender to and considerate of him from a
+wish to show sympathy with his loss, yet this reminder of Austerlitz
+was both pleasant and flattering to him.
+
+"Go your way and God be with you. I know your path is the path of
+honor!" He paused. "I missed you at Bucharest, but I needed someone to
+send." And changing the subject, Kutuzov began to speak of the Turkish
+war and the peace that had been concluded. "Yes, I have been much
+blamed," he said, "both for that war and the peace... but everything
+came at the right time. Tout vient a point a celui qui sait attendre.~^
+And there were as many advisers there as here..." he went on,
+returning to the subject of "advisers" which evidently occupied him.
+"Ah, those advisers!" said he. "If we had listened to them all we
+should not have made peace with Turkey and should not have been
+through with that war. Everything in haste, but more haste, less
+speed. Kamenski would have been lost if he had not died. He stormed
+fortresses with thirty thousand men. It is not difficult to capture
+a fortress but it is difficult to win a campaign. For that, storming
+and attacking but patience and time are wanted. Kamenski sent soldiers
+to Rustchuk, but I only employed these two things and took more
+fortresses than Kamenski and made the but eat horseflesh!" He swayed
+his head. "And the French shall too, believe me," he went on,
+growing warmer and beating his chest, "I'll make them eat horseflesh!"
+And tears again dimmed his eyes.
+
+^~ "Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait."
+
+"But shan't we have to accept battle?" remarked Prince Andrew.
+
+"We shall if everybody wants it; it can't be helped.... But
+believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two:
+patience and time, they will do it all. But the advisers n'entendent
+pas de cette oreille, voila le mal.~^ Some want a thing- others
+don't. What's one to do?" he asked, evidently expecting an answer.
+"Well, what do you want us to do?" he repeated and his eye shone
+with a deep, shrewd look. "I'll tell you what to do," he continued, as
+Prince Andrew still did not reply: "I will tell you what to do, and
+what I do. Dans le doute, mon cher," he paused, "abstiens-toi"~^ he
+articulated the French proverb deliberately.
+
+^~ "Don't see it that way, that's the trouble."
+
+^~ "When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing."
+
+"Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with all my heart I
+share your sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor
+a prince, nor a commander in chief, but a father! If you want anything
+come straight to me. Good-by, my dear boy."
+
+Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter
+had left the room Kutuzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his
+unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.
+
+Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it was, but
+after that interview with Kutuzov he went back to his regiment
+reassured as to the general course of affairs and as to the man to
+whom it had been entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all
+personal motive in that old man- in whom there seemed to remain only
+the habit of passions, and in place of an intellect (grouping events
+and drawing conclusions) only the capacity calmly to contemplate the
+course of events- the more reassured he was that everything would be
+as it should. "He will not bring in any plan of his own. He will not
+devise or undertake anything," thought Prince Andrew, "but he will
+hear everything, remember everything, and put everything in its place.
+He will not hinder anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He
+understands that there is something stronger and more important than
+his own will- the inevitable course of events, and he can see them and
+grasp their significance, and seeing that significance can refrain
+from meddling and renounce his personal wish directed to something
+else. And above all," thought Prince Andrew, "one believes in him
+because he's Russian, despite the novel by Genlis and the French
+proverbs, and because his voice shook when he said: 'What they have
+brought us to!' and had a sob in it when he said he would 'make them
+eat horseflesh!'"
+
+On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the unanimity
+and general approval were founded with which, despite court
+influences, the popular choice of Kutuzov as commander in chief was
+received.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there in its usual
+course, and its course was so very usual that it was difficult to
+remember the recent days of patriotic elation and ardor, hard to
+believe that Russia was really in danger and that the members of the
+English Club were also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice
+everything for it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor
+everyone had displayed during the Emperor's stay was the call for
+contributions of men and money, a necessity that as soon as the
+promises had been made assumed a legal, official form and became
+unavoidable.
+
+With the enemy's approach to Moscow, the Moscovites' view of their
+situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even
+more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger
+approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices
+that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably
+tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of
+escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too
+depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in
+man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of
+events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till
+it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man
+generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second. So
+it was now with the inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people
+had been as gay in Moscow as that year.
+
+Rostopchin's broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a
+potman, and a Moscow burgher called Karpushka Chigirin, "who- having
+been a militiaman and having had rather too much at the pub- heard
+that Napoleon wished to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the
+French in very bad language, came out of the drink shop, and, under
+the sign of the eagle, began to address the assembled people," were
+read and discussed, together with the latest of Vasili Lvovich
+Pushkin's bouts rimes.
+
+In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these
+broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpushka jeered at the French,
+saying: "They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our
+buckwheat porridge, and choke themselves with cabbage soup. They are
+all dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of them with a
+hayfork." Others did not like that tone and said it was stupid and
+vulgar. It was said that Rostopchin had expelled all Frenchmen and
+even all foreigners from Moscow, and that there had been some spies
+and agents of Napoleon among them; but this was told chiefly to
+introduce Rostopchin's witty remark on that occasion. The foreigners
+were deported to Nizhni by boat, and Rostopchin had said to them in
+French: "Rentrez en vousmemes; entrez dans la barque, et n'en faites
+pas une barque de Charon."~^ There was talk of all the government
+offices having been already removed from Moscow, and to this
+Shinshin's witticism was added- that for that alone Moscow ought to be
+grateful to Napoleon. It was said that Mamonov's regiment would cost
+him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezukhov had spent even
+more on his, but that the best thing about Bezukhov's action was
+that he himself was going to don a uniform and ride at the head of his
+regiment without charging anything for the show.
+
+^~ "Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not to make it a
+barque of Charon."
+
+"You don't spare anyone," said Julie Drubetskaya as she collected
+and pressed together a bunch of raveled lint with her thin, beringed
+fingers.
+
+Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was giving a
+farewell soiree.
+
+"Bezukhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-natured. What
+pleasure is there to be so caustique?"
+
+"A forfeit!" cried a young man in militia uniform whom Julie
+called "mon chevalier," and who was going with her to Nizhni.
+
+In Julie's set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it had been
+agreed that they would speak nothing but Russian and that those who
+made a slip and spoke French should pay fines to the Committee of
+Voluntary Contributions.
+
+"Another forfeit for a Gallicism," said a Russian writer who was
+present. "'What pleasure is there to be' is not Russian!"
+
+"You spare no one," continued Julie to the young man without heeding
+the author's remark.
+
+"For caustique- I am guilty and will pay, and I am prepared to pay
+again for the pleasure of telling you the truth. For Gallicisms I
+won't be responsible," she remarked, turning to the author: "I have
+neither the money nor the time, like Prince Galitsyn, to engage a
+master to teach me Russian!"
+
+"Ah, here he is!" she added. "Quand on... No, no," she said to the
+militia officer, "you won't catch me. Speak of the sun and you see its
+rays!" and she smiled amiably at Pierre. "We were just talking of
+you," she said with the facility in lying natural to a society
+woman. "We were saying that your regiment would be sure to be better
+than Mamonov's."
+
+"Oh, don't talk to me of my regiment," replied Pierre, kissing his
+hostess' hand and taking a seat beside her. "I am so sick of it."
+
+"You will, of course, command it yourself?" said Julie, directing
+a sly, sarcastic glance toward the militia officer.
+
+The latter in Pierre's presence had ceased to be caustic, and his
+face expressed perplexity as to what Julie's smile might mean. In
+spite of his absent-mindedness and good nature, Pierre's personality
+immediately checked any attempt to ridicule him to his face.
+
+"No," said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big, stout body. "I
+should make too good a target for the French, besides I am afraid I
+should hardly be able to climb onto a horse."
+
+Among those whom Julie's guests happened to choose to gossip about
+were the Rostovs.
+
+"I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way," said Julie.
+"And he is so unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The
+Razumovskis wanted to buy his house and his estate near Moscow, but it
+drags on and on. He asks too much."
+
+"No, I think the sale will come off in a few days," said someone.
+"Though it is madness to buy anything in Moscow now."
+
+"Why?" asked Julie. "You don't think Moscow is in danger?"
+
+"Then why are you leaving?"
+
+"I? What a question! I am going because... well, because everyone is
+going: and besides- I am not Joan of Arc or an Amazon."
+
+"Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more strips of linen."
+
+"If he manages the business properly he will be able to pay off
+all his debts," said the militia officer, speaking of Rostov.
+
+"A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do they stay on so
+long in Moscow? They meant to leave for the country long ago.
+Natalie is quite well again now, isn't she?" Julie asked Pierre with a
+knowing smile.
+
+"They are waiting for their younger son," Pierre replied. "He joined
+Obolenski's Cossacks and went to Belaya Tserkov where the regiment
+is being formed. But now they have had him transferred to my
+regiment and are expecting him every day. The count wanted to leave
+long ago, but the countess won't on any account leave Moscow till
+her son returns."
+
+"I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs'. Natalie
+has recovered her looks and is brighter. She sang a song. How easily
+some people get over everything!"
+
+"Get over what?" inquired Pierre, looking displeased.
+
+Julie smiled.
+
+"You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de
+Souza's novels."
+
+"What knights? What do you mean?" demanded Pierre, blushing.
+
+"Oh, come, my dear count! C'est la fable de tout Moscou. Je vous
+admire, ma parole d'honneur!"~^
+
+^~ "It is the talk of all Moscow. My word, I admire you!"
+
+"Forfeit, forfeit!" cried the militia officer.
+
+"All right, one can't talk- how tiresome!"
+
+"What is 'the talk of all Moscow'?" Pierre asked angrily, rising
+to his feet.
+
+"Come now, Count, you know!"
+
+"I don't know anything about it," said Pierre.
+
+"I know you were friendly with Natalie, and so... but I was always
+more friendly with Vera- that dear Vera."
+
+"No, madame!" Pierre continued in a tone of displeasure, "I have not
+taken on myself the role of Natalie Rostova's knight at all, and
+have not been their house for nearly a month. But I cannot
+understand the cruelty..."
+
+"Qui s'excuse s'accuse,"~^ said Julie, smiling and waving the lint
+triumphantly, and to have the last word she promptly changed the
+subject. "Do you know what I heard today? Poor Mary Bolkonskaya
+arrived in Moscow yesterday. Do you know that she has lost her
+father?"
+
+^~ "Who excuses himself, accuses himself."
+
+"Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see her," said
+Pierre.
+
+"I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to their
+estate near Moscow either today or tomorrow morning, with her nephew."
+
+"Well, and how is she?" asked Pierre.
+
+"She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued her? It is
+quite a romance. Nicholas Rostov! She was surrounded, and they
+wanted to kill her and had wounded some of her people. He rushed in
+and saved her...."
+
+"Another romance," said the militia officer. "Really, this general
+flight has been arranged to get all the old maids married off. Catiche
+is one and Princess Bolkonskaya another."
+
+"Do you know, I really believe she is un petit peu amoureuse du
+jeune homme."~^
+
+^~ "A little bit in love with the young man."
+
+"Forfeit, forfeit, forfeit!"
+
+"But how could one say that in Russian?"
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+When Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchin's
+broadsheets that had been brought that day.
+
+The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchin had
+forbidden people to leave Moscow was false; on the contrary he was
+glad that ladies and tradesmen's wives were leaving the city. "There
+will be less panic and less gossip," ran the broadsheet "but I will
+stake my life on it that that will not enter Moscow." These words
+showed Pierre clearly for the first time that the French would enter
+Moscow. The second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at
+Vyazma, that Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that as
+many of the inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons were
+ready for them at the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and muskets which
+could be had at a low price. The tone of the proclamation was not as
+jocose as in the former Chigirin talks. Pierre pondered over these
+broadsheets. Evidently the terrible stormcloud he had desired with the
+whole strength of his soul but which yet aroused involuntary horror in
+him was drawing near.
+
+"Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?" he asked
+himself for the hundredth time. He took a pack of cards that lay on
+the table and began to lay them out for a game of patience.
+
+"If this patience comes out," he said to himself after shuffling the
+cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his head, "if it comes
+out, it means... what does it mean?"
+
+He had not decided what it should mean when he heard the voice of
+the eldest princess at the door asking whether she might come in.
+
+"Then it will mean that I must go to the army," said Pierre to
+himself. "Come in, come in!" he added to the princess.
+
+Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face and long
+waist, was still living in Pierre's house. The two younger ones had
+both married.
+
+"Excuse my coming to you, cousin," she said in a reproachful and
+agitated voice. "You know some decision must be come to. What is going
+to happen? Everyone has left Moscow and the people are rioting. How is
+it that we are staying on?"
+
+"On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma cousine," said Pierre
+in the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her, always feeling
+uncomfortable in the role of her benefactor.
+
+"Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara Ivanovna told me
+today how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It certainly
+does them credit! And the people too are quite mutinous- they no
+longer obey, even my maid has taken to being rude. At this rate they
+will soon begin beating us. One can't walk in the streets. But,
+above all, the French will be here any day now, so what are we waiting
+for? I ask just one thing of you, cousin," she went on, "arrange for
+me to be taken to Petersburg. Whatever I may be, I can't live under
+Bonaparte's rule."
+
+"Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your information from? On
+the contrary..."
+
+"I won't submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they please.... If
+you don't want to do this..."
+
+"But I will, I'll give the order at once."
+
+The princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone to be angry
+with. Muttering to herself, she sat down on a chair.
+
+"But you have been misinformed," said Pierre. "Everything is quiet
+in the city and there is not the slightest danger. See! I've just been
+reading..." He showed her the broadsheet. "Count Rostopchin writes
+that he will stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter
+Moscow."
+
+"Oh, that count of yours!" said the princess malevolently. "He is
+a hypocrite, a rascal who has himself roused the people to riot.
+Didn't he write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone, 'whoever
+it might be, should be dragged to the lockup by his hair'? (How
+silly!) 'And honor and glory to whoever captures him,' he says. This
+is what his cajolery has brought us to! Barbara Ivanovna told me the
+mob near killed her because she said something in French."
+
+"Oh, but it's so... You take everything so to heart," said Pierre,
+and began laying out his cards for patience.
+
+Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not join the army,
+but remained in deserted Moscow ever in the same state of agitation,
+irresolution, and alarm, yet at the same time joyfully expecting
+something terrible.
+
+Next day toward evening the princess set off, and Pierre's head
+steward came to inform him that the money needed for the equipment
+of his regiment could not be found without selling one of the estates.
+In general the head steward made out to Pierre that his project of
+raising a regiment would ruin him. Pierre listened to him, scarcely
+able to repress a smile.
+
+"Well then, sell it," said he. "What's to be done? I can't draw back
+now!"
+
+The worse everything became, especially his own affairs, the
+better was Pierre pleased and the more evident was it that the
+catastrophe he expected was approaching. Hardly anyone he knew was
+left in town. Julie had gone, and so had Princess Mary. Of his
+intimate friends only the Rostovs remained, but he did not go to see
+them.
+
+To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of
+Vorontsovo to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to
+destroy the foe, and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The
+balloon was not yet ready, but Pierre learned that it was being
+constructed by the Emperor's desire. The Emperor had written to
+Count Rostopchin as follows:
+
+As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of reliable and
+intelligent men for his car and send a courier to General Kutuzov to
+let him know. I have informed him of the matter.
+
+Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where he descends for
+the first time, that he may not make a mistake and fall into the
+enemy's hands. It is essential for him to combine his movements with
+those of the commander in chief.
+
+On his way home from Vorontsovo, as he was passing the Bolotnoe
+Place Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lobnoe Place, stopped and
+got out of his trap. A French cook accused of being a spy was being
+flogged. The flogging was only just over, and the executioner was
+releasing from the flogging bench a stout man with red whiskers, in
+blue stockings and a green jacket, who was moaning piteously.
+Another criminal, thin and pale, stood near. Judging by their faces
+they were both Frenchmen. With a frightened and suffering look
+resembling that on the thin Frenchman's face, Pierre pushed his way in
+through the crowd.
+
+"What is it? Who is it? What is it for?" he kept asking.
+
+But the attention of the crowd- officials, burghers, shopkeepers,
+peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisses- was so eagerly centered
+on what was passing in Lobnoe Place that no one answered him. The
+stout man rose, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and evidently
+trying to appear firm began to pull on his jacket without looking
+about him, but suddenly his lips trembled and he began to cry, in
+the way full-blooded grown-up men cry, though angry with himself for
+doing so. In the crowd people began talking loudly, to stifle their
+feelings of pity as it seemed to Pierre.
+
+"He's cook to some prince."
+
+"Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a Frenchman... sets
+his teeth on edge!" said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind
+Pierre, when the Frenchman began to cry.
+
+The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke would be
+appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others continued to watch
+in dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man.
+
+Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily away, went
+back to his trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took
+his seat. As they drove along he shuddered and exclaimed several times
+so audibly that the coachman asked him:
+
+"What is your pleasure?"
+
+"Where are you going?" shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to
+Lubyanka Street.
+
+"To the Governor's, as you ordered," answered the coachman.
+
+"Fool! Idiot!" shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman- a thing he
+rarely did. "Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!" "I must
+get away this very day," he murmured to himself.
+
+At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the
+Lobnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he
+could no longer remain in Moscow and would leave for the army that
+very day that it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman
+this or that the man ought to have known it for himself.
+
+On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstafey- his head coachman
+who knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow-
+that he would leave that night for the army at Mozhaysk, and that
+his saddle horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged
+that day, so on Evstafey's representation Pierre had to put off his
+departure till next day to allow time for the relay horses to be
+sent on in advance.
+
+On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain,
+and after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night
+in Perkhushkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that
+evening. (This was the battle of Shevardino.) He was told that there
+in Perkhushkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could
+answer his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was
+approaching Mozhaysk.
+
+Every house in Mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the
+hostel where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no
+room to be had. It was full of officers.
+
+Everywhere in Mozhaysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on
+the march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and
+cannon were everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and
+the farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into
+that sea of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation
+and a new and joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a
+feeling akin to what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the
+Emperor's visit- a sense of the necessity of undertaking something and
+sacrificing something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that
+everything that constitutes men's happiness- the comforts of life,
+wealth, even life itself- is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away,
+compared with something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did
+not try to determine for whom and for what he felt such particular
+delight in sacrificing everything. He was not occupied with the
+question of what to sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself
+afforded him a new and joyous sensation.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevardino
+Redoubt was fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either
+side, and on the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodino itself took
+place.
+
+Why and how were the battles of Shevardino and Borodino given and
+accepted? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? There was not the
+least sense in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate
+result for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were brought
+nearer to the destruction of Moscow- which we feared more than
+anything in the world; and for the French its immediate result was
+that they were brought nearer to the destruction of their whole
+army- which they feared more than anything in the world. What the
+result must be was quite obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov
+accepted that battle.
+
+If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that it
+must have been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen
+hundred miles and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarter
+of his army, he was advancing to certain destruction, and it must have
+been equally clear to Kutuzov that by accepting battle and risking the
+loss of a quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. For
+Kutuzov this was mathematically clear, as it is that if when playing
+draughts I have one man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainly
+lose, and therefore should not exchange. When my opponent has
+sixteen men and I have fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than
+he, but when I have exchanged thirteen more men he will be three times
+as strong as I am.
+
+Before the battle of Borodino our strength in proportion to the
+French was about as five to six, but after that battle it was little
+more than one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against a
+hundred and twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty
+thousand against a hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experienced
+Kutuzov accepted the battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be a
+commander of genius, gave it, losing a quarter of his army and
+lengthening his lines of communication still more. If it is said
+that he expected to end the campaign by occupying Moscow as he had
+ended a previous campaign by occupying Vienna, there is much
+evidence to the contrary. Napoleon's historians themselves tell us
+that from Smolensk onwards he wished to stop, knew the danger of his
+extended position, and knew that the occupation of Moscow would not be
+the end of the campaign, for he had seen at Smolensk the state in
+which Russian towns were left to him, and had not received a single
+reply to his repeated announcements of his wish to negotiate.
+
+In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov acted
+involuntarily and irrationally. But later on, to fit what had
+occurred, the historians provided cunningly devised evidence of the
+foresight and genius the generals who, of all the blind tools of
+history were the most enslaved and involuntary.
+
+The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes
+furnish the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to
+accustom ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that
+kind are meaningless.
+
+On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and the
+preceding battle of Shevardino were fought, there also exists a
+definite and well-known, but quite false, conception. All the
+historians describe the affair as follows:
+
+The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk sought
+out for itself the best position for a general engagement and found
+such a position at Borodino.
+
+The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the
+left of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolensk) and almost at a right
+angle to it, from Borodino to Utitsa, at the very place where the
+battle was fought.
+
+In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set
+up on the Shevardino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth,
+we are told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on
+the twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which was in
+position on the field of Borodino.
+
+So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who cares
+to look into the matter can easily convince himself.
+
+The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on the
+contrary, during the retreat passed many positions better than
+Borodino. They did not stop at any one of these positions because
+Kutuzov did not wish to occupy a position he had not himself chosen,
+because the popular demand for a battle had not yet expressed itself
+strongly enough, and because Miloradovich had not yet arrived with the
+militia, and for many other reasons. The fact is that other
+positions they had passed were stronger, and that the position at
+Borodino (the one where the battle was fought), far from being strong,
+was no more a position than any other spot one might find in the
+Russian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at hazard.
+
+Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field of
+Borodino to the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (that
+is, the position on which the battle took place), but never till the
+twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did they think that a battle might be
+fought there. This was shown first by the fact that there were no
+entrenchments there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the
+twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by the
+position of the Shevardino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senseless
+in front of the position where the battle was accepted. Why was it
+more strongly fortified than any other post? And why were all
+efforts exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till
+late at night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would have
+sufficed to observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position
+on which the battle was fought had not been foreseen and that the
+Shevardino Redoubt was not an advanced post of that position, we
+have the fact that up to the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and
+Bagration were convinced that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left
+flank of the position, and that Kutuzov himself in his report, written
+in hot haste after the battle, speaks of the Shevardino Redoubt as the
+left flank of the position. It was much later, when reports on the
+battle of Borodino were written at leisure, that the incorrect and
+extraordinary statement was invented (probably to justify the mistakes
+of a commander in chief who had to be represented as infallible)
+that the Shevardino Redoubt was an advanced post- whereas in reality
+it was simply a fortified point on the left flank- and that the battle
+of Borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position previously
+selected, where as it was fought on a quite unexpected spot which
+was almost unentrenched.
+
+The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river
+Kolocha- which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an
+acute angle- so that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right flank
+near the village of Novoe, and the center at Borodino at the
+confluence of the rivers Kolocha and Voyna.
+
+To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without thinking of how
+the battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the
+river Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was
+to prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow.
+
+Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as
+the history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utitsa
+to Borodino (he could not have seen that position because it did not
+exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while
+pursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the
+Russian position- at the Shevardino Redoubt- and unexpectedly for
+the Russians moved his army across the Kolocha. And the Russians,
+not having time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left
+wing from the position they had intended to occupy and took up a new
+position which had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By
+crossing to the other side of the Kolocha to the left of the highroad,
+Napoleon shifted the whole forthcoming battle from right to left
+(looking from the Russian side) and transferred it to the plain
+between Utitsa, Semenovsk, and Borodino- a plain no more
+advantageous as a position than any other plain in Russia- and there
+the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August took place.
+
+Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to
+the Kolocha, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the
+redoubt but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have
+doubted that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our and
+the battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that case
+we should probably have defended the Shevardino Redoubt- our left
+flank- still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in the
+center or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place on
+the twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But
+as the attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the
+retreat of our rea guard (that is, immediately after the fight at
+Gridneva), and as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not
+in time, to begin a general engagement then on the evening of the
+twenty-fourth, the first and chief action of the battle of Borodino
+was already lost on the twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss
+of the one fought on the twenty-sixth.
+
+After the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, we found ourselves on
+the morning of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank,
+and were forced to bend it back and hastily entrench it where it
+chanced to be.
+
+Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended by
+weak, unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that
+position was increased by the fact that the Russian commanders- not
+having fully realized what had happened, namely the loss of our
+position on the left flank and the shifting of the whole field of
+the forthcoming battle from right to left- maintained their extended
+position from the village of Novoe to Utitsa, and consequently had
+to move their forces from right to left during the battle. So it
+happened that throughout the whole battle the Russians opposed the
+entire French army launched against our left flank with but half as
+many men. (Poniatowski's action against Utitsa, and Uvarov's on the
+right flank against the French, were actions distinct from the main
+course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodino did not take place at
+all as (in an effort to conceal our commanders' mistakes even at the
+cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian army and people) it
+has been described. The battle of Borodino was not fought on a
+chosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly weaker than
+those of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss of the Shevardino
+Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle of Borodino on an open and
+almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous as the
+French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not merely
+unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive result,
+but unthinkable to keep an army even from complete disintegration
+and flight.
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving Mozhaysk. At
+the descent of the high steep hill, down which a winding road led
+out of the town past the cathedral on the right, where a service was
+being held and the bells were ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle
+and proceeded on foot. Behind him a cavalry regiment was coming down
+the hill preceded by its singers. Coming up toward him was a train
+of carts carrying men who had been wounded in the engagement the day
+before. The peasant drivers, shouting and lashing their horses, kept
+crossing from side to side. The carts, in each of which three or
+four wounded soldiers were lying or sitting, jolted over the stones
+that had been thrown on the steep incline to make it something like
+a road. The wounded, bandaged with rags, with pale cheeks,
+compressed lips, and knitted brows, held on to the sides of the
+carts as they were jolted against one another. Almost all of them
+stared with naive, childlike curiosity at Pierre's white hat and green
+swallow-tail coat.
+
+Pierre's coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of wounded to keep
+to one side of the road. The cavalry regiment, as it descended the
+hill with its singers, surrounded Pierre's carriage and blocked the
+road. Pierre stopped, being pressed against the side of the cutting in
+which the road ran. The sunshine from behind the hill did not
+penetrate into the cutting and there it was cold and damp, but above
+Pierre's head was the bright August sunshine and the bells sounded
+merrily. One of the carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road
+close to Pierre. The driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it,
+placed a stone under one of its tireless hind wheels, and began
+arranging the breech-band on his little horse.
+
+One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged arm who was
+following the cart on foot, caught hold of it with his sound hand
+and turned to look at Pierre.
+
+"I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here or take us
+on to Moscow?" he asked.
+
+Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the question.
+He was looking now at the cavalry regiment that had met the convoy
+of wounded, now at the cart by which he was standing, in which two
+wounded men were sitting and one was lying. One of those sitting up in
+the cart had probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was
+wrapped in rags and one cheek was swollen to the size of a baby's
+head. His nose and mouth were twisted to one side. This soldier was
+looking at the cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a young lad, a
+fair-haired recruit as white as though there was no blood in his
+thin face, looked at Pierre kindly, with a fixed smile. The third
+lay prone so that his face was not visible. The cavalry singers were
+passing close by:
+
+_1  Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen,<br>
+Living in a foreign land.
+
+they sang their soldiers' dance song.
+
+As if responding to them but with a different sort of merriment, the
+metallic sound of the bells reverberated high above and the hot rays
+of the sun bathed the top of the opposite slope with yet another
+sort of merriment. But beneath the slope, by the cart with the wounded
+near the panting little nag where Pierre stood, it was damp, somber,
+and sad.
+
+The soldier with the swollen cheek looked angrily at the cavalry
+singers.
+
+"Oh, the coxcombs!" he muttered reproachfully.
+
+"It's not the soldiers only, but I've seen peasants today, too....
+The peasants- even they have to go," said the soldier behind the cart,
+addressing Pierre with a sad smile. "No distinctions made nowadays....
+They want the whole nation to fall on them- in a word, it's Moscow!
+They want to make an end of it."
+
+In spite of the obscurity of the soldier's words Pierre understood
+what he wanted to say and nodded approval.
+
+The road was clear again; Pierre descended the hill and drove on.
+
+He kept looking to either side of the road for familiar faces, but
+only saw everywhere the unfamiliar faces of various military men of
+different branches of the service, who all looked with astonishment at
+his white hat and green tail coat.
+
+Having gone nearly three miles he at last met an acquaintance and
+eagerly addressed him. This was one of the head army doctors. He was
+driving toward Pierre in a covered gig, sitting beside a young
+surgeon, and on recognizing Pierre he told the Cossack who occupied
+the driver's seat to pull up.
+
+"Count! Your excellency, how come you to be here?" asked the doctor.
+
+"Well, you know, I wanted to see..."
+
+"Yes, yes, there will be something to see...."
+
+Pierre got out and talked to the doctor, explaining his intention of
+taking part in a battle.
+
+The doctor advised him to apply direct to Kutuzov.
+
+"Why should you be God knows where out of sight, during the battle?"
+he said, exchanging glances with his young companion. "Anyhow his
+Serene Highness knows you and will receive you graciously. That's what
+you must do."
+
+The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry.
+
+"You think so?... Ah, I also wanted to ask you where our position is
+exactly?" said Pierre.
+
+"The position?" repeated the doctor. "Well, that's not my line.
+Drive past Tatarinova, a lot of digging is going on there. Go up the
+hillock and you'll see."
+
+"Can one see from there?... If you would..."
+
+But the doctor interrupted him and moved toward his gig.
+
+"I would go with you but on my honor I'm up to here"- and he pointed
+to his throat. "I'm galloping to the commander of the corps. How do
+matters stand?... You know, Count, there'll be a battle tomorrow.
+Out of an army of a hundred thousand we must expect at least twenty
+thousand wounded, and we haven't stretchers, or bunks, or dressers, or
+doctors enough for six thousand. We have ten thousand carts, but we
+need other things as well- we must manage as best we can!"
+
+The strange thought that of the thousands of men, young and old, who
+had stared with merry surprise at his hat (perhaps the very men he had
+noticed), twenty thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death
+amazed Pierre.
+
+"They may die tomorrow; why are they thinking of anything but
+death?" And by some latent sequence of thought the descent of the
+Mozhaysk hill, the carts with the wounded, the ringing bells, the
+slanting rays of the sun, and the songs of the cavalrymen vividly
+recurred to his mind.
+
+"The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and do not for a
+moment think of what awaits them, but pass by, winking at the wounded.
+Yet from among these men twenty thousand are doomed to die, and they
+wonder at my hat! Strange!" thought Pierre, continuing his way to
+Tatarinova.
+
+In front of a landowner's house to the left of the road stood
+carriages, wagons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels. The
+commander in chief was putting up there, but just when Pierre
+arrived he was not in and hardly any of the staff were there- they had
+gone to the church service. Pierre drove on toward Gorki.
+
+When he had ascended the hill and reached the little village street,
+he saw for the first time peasant militiamen in their white shirts and
+with crosses on their caps, who, talking and laughing loudly, animated
+and perspiring, were at work on a huge knoll overgrown with grass to
+the right of the road.
+
+Some of them were digging, others were wheeling barrowloads of earth
+along planks, while others stood about doing nothing.
+
+Two officers were standing on the knoll, directing the men. On
+seeing these peasants, who were evidently still amused by the
+novelty of their position as soldiers, Pierre once more thought of the
+wounded men at Mozhaysk and understood what the soldier had meant when
+he said: "They want the whole nation to fall on them." The sight of
+these bearded peasants at work on the battlefield, with their queer,
+clumsy boots and perspiring necks, and their shirts opening from the
+left toward the middle, unfastened, exposing their sunburned
+collarbones, impressed Pierre more strongly with the solemnity and
+importance of the moment than anything he had yet seen or heard.
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the toiling
+militiamen, ascended the knoll from which, according to the doctor,
+the battlefield could be seen.
+
+It was about eleven o'clock. The sun shone somewhat to the left
+and behind him and brightly lit up the enormous panorama which, rising
+like an amphitheater, extended before him in the clear rarefied
+atmosphere.
+
+From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater, wound the
+Smolensk highroad, passing through a village with a white church
+some five hundred paces in front of the knoll and below it. This was
+Borodino. Below the village the road crossed the river by a bridge
+and, winding down and up, rose higher and higher to the village of
+Valuevo visible about four miles away, where Napoleon was then
+stationed. Beyond Valuevo the road disappeared into a yellowing forest
+on the horizon. Far in the distance in that birch and fir forest to
+the right of the road, the cross and belfry of the Kolocha Monastery
+gleamed in the sun. Here and there over the whole of that blue
+expanse, to right and left of the forest and the road, smoking
+campfires could be seen and indefinite masses of troops- ours and
+the enemy's. The ground to the right- along the course of the
+Kolocha and Moskva rivers- was broken and hilly. Between the hollows
+the villages of Bezubova and Zakharino showed in the distance. On
+the left the ground was more level; there were fields of grain, and
+the smoking ruins of Semenovsk, which had been burned down, could be
+seen.
+
+All that Pierre saw was so indefinite that neither the left nor
+the right side of the field fully satisfied his expectations.
+Nowhere could he see the battlefield he had expected to find, but only
+fields, meadows, troops, woods, the smoke of campfires, villages,
+mounds, and streams; and try as he would he could descry no military
+"position" in this place which teemed with life, nor could he even
+distinguish our troops from the enemy's.
+
+"I must ask someone who knows," he thought, and addressed an officer
+who was looking with curiosity at his huge unmilitary figure.
+
+"May I ask you," said Pierre, "what village that is in front?"
+
+"Burdino, isn't it?" said the officer, turning to his companion.
+
+"Borodino," the other corrected him.
+
+The officer, evidently glad of an opportunity for a talk, moved up
+to Pierre.
+
+"Are those our men there?" Pierre inquired.
+
+"Yes, and there, further on, are the French," said the officer.
+"There they are, there... you can see them."
+
+"Where? Where?" asked Pierre.
+
+"One can see them with the naked eye... Why, there!"
+
+The officer pointed with his hand to the smoke visible on the left
+beyond the river, and the same stern and serious expression that
+Pierre had noticed on many of the faces he had met came into his face.
+
+"Ah, those are the French! And over there?..." Pierre pointed to a
+knoll on the left, near which some troops could be seen.
+
+"Those are ours."
+
+"Ah, ours! And there?..." Pierre pointed to another knoll in the
+distance with a big tree on it, near a village that lay in a hollow
+where also some campfires were smoking and something black was
+visible.
+
+"That's his again," said the officer. (It was the Shevardino
+Redoubt.) "It was ours yesterday, but now it is his."
+
+"Then how about our position?"
+
+"Our position?" replied the officer with a smile of satisfaction. "I
+can tell you quite clearly, because I constructed nearly all our
+entrenchments. There, you see? There's our center, at Borodino, just
+there," and he pointed to the village in front of them with the
+white church. "That's where one crosses the Kolocha. You see down
+there where the rows of hay are lying in the hollow, there's the
+bridge. That's our center. Our right flank is over there"- he
+pointed sharply to the right, far away in the broken ground- "That's
+where the Moskva River is, and we have thrown up three redoubts there,
+very strong ones. The left flank..." here the officer paused. "Well,
+you see, that's difficult to explain.... Yesterday our left flank
+was there at Shevardino, you see, where the oak is, but now we have
+withdrawn our left wing- now it is over there, do you see that village
+and the smoke? That's Semenovsk, yes, there," he pointed to
+Raevski's knoll. "But the battle will hardly be there. His having
+moved his troops there is only a ruse; he will probably pass round
+to the right of the Moskva. But wherever it may be, many a man will be
+missing tomorrow!" he remarked.
+
+An elderly sergeant who had approached the officer while he was
+giving these explanations had waited in silence for him to finish
+speaking, but at this point, evidently not liking the officer's
+remark, interrupted him.
+
+"Gabions must be sent for," said he sternly.
+
+The officer appeared abashed, as though he understood that one might
+think of how many men would be missing tomorrow but ought not to speak
+to speak of it.
+
+"Well, send number three company again," the officer replied
+hurriedly.
+
+"And you, are you one of the doctors?"
+
+"No, I've come on my own," answered Pierre, and he went down the
+hill again, passing the militiamen.
+
+"Oh, those damned fellows!" muttered the officer who followed him,
+holding his nose as he ran past the men at work.
+
+"There they are... bringing her, coming... There they are... They'll
+be here in a minute..." voices were suddenly heard saying; and
+officers, soldiers, and militiamen began running forward along the
+road.
+
+A church procession was coming up the hill from Borodino. First
+along the dusty road came the infantry in ranks, bareheaded and with
+arms reversed. From behind them came the sound of church singing.
+
+Soldiers and militiamen ran bareheaded past Pierre toward the
+procession.
+
+"They are bringing her, our Protectress!... The Iberian Mother of
+God!" someone cried.
+
+"The Smolensk Mother of God," another corrected him.
+
+The militiamen, both those who had been in the village and those who
+had been at work on the battery, threw down their spades and ran to
+meet the church procession. Following the battalion that marched along
+the dusty road came priests in their vestments- one little old man
+in a hood with attendants and singers. Behind them soldiers and
+officers bore a large, dark-faced icon with an embossed metal cover.
+This was the icon that had been brought from and had since accompanied
+the army. Behind, before, and on both sides, crowds of militiamen with
+bared heads walked, ran, and bowed to the ground.
+
+At the summit of the hill they stopped with the icon; the men who
+had been holding it up by the linen bands attached to it were relieved
+by others, the chanters relit their censers, and service began. The
+hot rays of the sun beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind
+played with the hair of the bared heads and with the ribbons
+decorating the icon. The singing did not sound loud under the open
+sky. An immense crowd of bareheaded officers, soldiers, and militiamen
+surrounded the icon. Behind the priest and a chanter stood the
+notabilities on a spot reserved for them. A bald general with
+general with a St. George's Cross on his neck stood just behind the
+priest's back, and without crossing himself (he was evidently a
+German) patiently awaited the end of the service, which he
+considered it necessary to hear to the end, probably to arouse the
+patriotism of the Russian people. Another general stood in a martial
+pose, crossing himself by shaking his hand in front of his chest while
+looking about him. Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre
+recognized several acquaintances among these notables, but did not
+look at them- his whole attention was absorbed in watching the serious
+expression on the faces of the crowd of soldiers and militiamen who
+were all gazing eagerly at the icon. As soon as the tired chanters,
+who were singing the service for the twentieth time that day, began
+lazily and mechanically to sing: "Save from calamity Thy servants, O
+Mother of God," and the priest and deacon chimed in: "For to Thee
+under God we all flee as to an inviolable bulwark and protection,"
+there again kindled in all those faces the same expression of
+consciousness of the solemnity of the impending moment that Pierre had
+seen on the faces at the foot of the hill at Mozhaysk and
+momentarily on many and many faces he had met that morning; and
+heads were bowed more frequently and hair tossed back, and sighs and
+the sound men made as they crossed themselves were heard.
+
+The crowd round the icon suddenly parted and pressed against Pierre.
+Someone, a very important personage judging by the haste with which
+way was made for him, was approaching the icon.
+
+It was Kutuzov, who had been riding round the position and on his
+way back to Tatarinova had stopped where the service was being held.
+Pierre recognized him at once by his peculiar figure, which
+distinguished him from everybody else.
+
+With a long overcoat on his his exceedingly stout,
+round-shouldered body, with uncovered white head and puffy face
+showing the white ball of the eye he had lost, Kutuzov walked with
+plunging, swaying gait into the crowd and stopped behind the priest.
+He crossed himself with an accustomed movement, bent till he touched
+the ground with his hand, and bowed his white head with a deep sigh.
+Behind Kutuzov was Bennigsen and the suite. Despite the presence of
+the commander in chief, who attracted the attention of all the
+superior officers, the militiamen and soldiers continued their prayers
+without looking at him.
+
+When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the icon, sank
+heavily to his knees, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried
+vainly to rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and
+weight. His white head twitched with the effort. At last he rose,
+kissed the icon as a child does with naively pouting lips, and again
+bowed till he touched the ground with his hand. The other generals
+followed his example, then the officers, and after them with excited
+faces, pressing on one another, crowding, panting, and pushing,
+scrambled the soldiers and militiamen.
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Staggering amid the crush, Pierre looked about him.
+
+"Count Peter Kirilovich! How did you get here?" said a voice.
+
+Pierre looked round. Boris Drubetskoy, brushing his knees with his
+hand (he had probably soiled them when he, too, had knelt before the
+icon), came up to him smiling. Boris was elegantly dressed, with a
+slightly martial touch appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long
+coat and like Kutuzov had a whip slung across his shoulder.
+
+Meanwhile Kutuzov had reached the village and seated himself in
+the shade of the nearest house, on a bench which one Cossack had run
+to fetch and another had hastily covered with a rug. An immense and
+brilliant suite surrounded him.
+
+The icon was carried further, accompanied by the throng. Pierre
+stopped some thirty paces from Kutuzov, talking to Boris.
+
+He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to see the
+position.
+
+"This is what you must do," said Boris. "I will do the honors of the
+camp to you. You will see everything best from where Count Bennigsen
+will be. I am in attendance on him, you know; I'll mention it to
+him. But if you want to ride round the position, come along with us.
+We are just going to the left flank. Then when we get back, do spend
+the night with me and we'll arrange a game of cards. Of course you
+know Dmitri Sergeevich? Those are his quarters," and he pointed to the
+third house in the village of Gorki.
+
+"But I should like to see the right flank. They say it's very
+strong," said Pierre. "I should like to start from the Moskva River
+and ride round the whole position."
+
+"Well, you can do that later, but the chief thing is the left
+flank."
+
+"Yes, yes. But where is Prince Bolkonski's regiment? Can you point
+it out to me?"
+
+"Prince Andrew's? We shall pass it and I'll take you to him."
+
+What about the left flank?" asked Pierre
+
+"To tell you the truth, between ourselves, God only knows what state
+our left flank is in," said Boris confidentially lowering his voice.
+"It is not at all what Count Bennigsen intended. He meant to fortify
+that knoll quite differently, but..." Boris shrugged his shoulders,
+"his Serene Highness would not have it, or someone persuaded him.
+You see..." but Boris did not finish, for at that moment Kaysarov,
+Kutuzov's adjutant, came up to Pierre. "Ah, Kaysarov!" said Boris,
+addressing him with an unembarrassed smile, "I was just trying to
+explain our position to the count. It is amazing how his Serene
+Highness could so the intentions of the French!"
+
+"You mean the left flank?" asked Kaysarov.
+
+"Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong."
+
+Though Kutuzov had dismissed all unnecessary men from the staff,
+Boris had contrived to remain at headquarters after the changes. He
+had established himself with Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom
+Boris had been in attendance, considered young Prince Drubetskoy an
+invaluable man.
+
+In the higher command there were two sharply defined parties:
+Kutuzov's party and that of Bennigsen, the chief of staff. Boris
+belonged to the latter and no one else, while showing servile
+respect to Kutuzov, could so create an impression that the old
+fellow was not much good and that Bennigsen managed everything. Now
+the decisive moment of battle had come when Kutuzov would be destroyed
+and the power pass to Bennigsen, or even if Kutuzov won the battle
+it would be felt that everything was done by Bennigsen. In any case
+many great rewards would have to be given for tomorrow's action, and
+new men would come to the front. So Boris was full of nervous vivacity
+all day.
+
+After Kaysarov, others whom Pierre knew came up to him, and he had
+not time to reply to all the questions about Moscow that were showered
+upon him, or to listen to all that was told him. The faces all
+expressed animation and apprehension, but it seemed to Pierre that the
+cause of the excitement shown in some of these faces lay chiefly in
+questions of personal success; his mind, however, was occupied by
+the different expression he saw on other faces- an expression that
+spoke not of personal matters but of the universal questions of life
+and death. Kutuzov noticed Pierre's figure and the group gathered
+round him.
+
+"Call him to me," said Kutuzov.
+
+An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness' wish, and Pierre
+went toward Kutuzov's bench. But a militiaman got there before him. It
+was Dolokhov.
+
+"How did that fellow get here?" asked Pierre.
+
+"He's a creature that wriggles in anywhere!" was the answer. "He has
+been degraded, you know. Now he wants to bob up again. He's been
+proposing some scheme or other and has crawled into the enemy's picket
+line at night.... He's a brave fellow."
+
+Pierre took off his hat and bowed respectfully to Kutuzov.
+
+"I concluded that if I reported to your Serene Highness you might
+send me away or say that you knew what I was reporting, but then I
+shouldn't lose anything..." Dolokhov was saying.
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to my
+Fatherland for which I am ready to die."
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"And should your Serene Highness require a man who will not spare
+his skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I may prove useful to your
+Serene Highness."
+
+"Yes... Yes..." Kutuzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more
+and more as he looked at Pierre.
+
+Just then Boris, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped up to
+Pierre's side near Kutuzov and in a most natural manner, without
+raising his voice, said to Pierre, as though continuing an interrupted
+conversation:
+
+"The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready to die. What
+heroism, Count!"
+
+Boris evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by
+his Serene Highness. He knew Kutuzov's attention would be caught by
+those words, and so it was.
+
+"What are you saying about the militia?" he asked Boris.
+
+"Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness- for death- they
+have put on clean shirts."
+
+"Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!" said Kutuzov; and he closed
+his eyes and swayed his head. "A matchless people!" he repeated with a
+sigh.
+
+"So you want to smell gunpowder?" he said to Pierre. "Yes, it's a
+pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of your wife's adorers.
+Is she well? My quarters are at your service."
+
+And as often happens with old people, Kutuzov began looking about
+absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he wanted to say or do.
+
+Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he beckoned to Andrew
+Kaysarov, his adjutant's brother.
+
+"Those verses... those verses of Marin's... how do they go, eh?
+Those he wrote about Gerakov: 'Lectures for the corps inditing'...
+Recite them, recite them!" said he, evidently preparing to laugh.
+
+Kaysarov recited.... Kutuzov smilingly nodded his head to the rhythm
+of the verses.
+
+When Pierre had left Kutuzov, Dolokhov came up to him and took his
+hand.
+
+"I am very glad to meet you here, Count," he said aloud,
+regardless of the presence of strangers and in a particularly resolute
+and solemn tone. "On the eve of a day when God alone knows who of us
+is fated to survive, I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that
+I regret the misunderstandings that occurred between us and should
+wish you not to have any ill feeling for me. I beg you to forgive me."
+
+Pierre looked at Dolokhov with a smile, not knowing what to say to
+him. With tears in his eyes Dolokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him.
+
+Boris said a few words to his general, and Count Bennigsen turned to
+Pierre and proposed that he should ride with him along the line.
+
+"It will interest you," said he.
+
+"Yes, very much," replied Pierre.
+
+Half an hour later Kutuzov left for Tatarinova, and Bennigsen and
+his suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the
+line.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+From Gorki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the bridge which,
+when they had looked it from the hill, the officer had pointed out
+as being the center of our position and where rows of fragrant
+new-mown hay lay by the riverside. They rode across that bridge into
+the village of Borodino and thence turned to the left, passing an
+enormous number of troops and guns, and came to a high knoll where
+militiamen were digging. This was the redoubt, as yet unnamed, which
+afterwards became known as the Raevski Redoubt, or the Knoll
+Battery, but Pierre paid no special attention to it. He did not know
+that it would become more memorable to him than any other spot on
+the plain of Borodino.
+
+They then crossed the hollow to Semenovsk, where the soldiers were
+dragging away the last logs from the huts and barns. Then they rode
+downhill and uphill, across a ryefield trodden and beaten down as if
+by hail, following a track freshly made by the artillery over the
+furrows of the plowed land, and reached some fleches~^ which were still
+being dug.
+
+^~ A kind of entrenchment.
+
+At the fleches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the Shevardino
+Redoubt opposite, which had been ours the day before and where several
+horsemen could be descried. The officers said that either Napoleon
+or Murat was there, and they all gazed eagerly at this little group of
+horsemen. Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess which of the
+scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon. At last those mounted men
+rode away from the mound and disappeared.
+
+Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him, and began
+explaining the whole position of our troops. Pierre listened to him,
+straining each faculty to understand the essential points of the
+impending battle, but was mortified to feel that his mental capacity
+was inadequate for the task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen
+stopped speaking and, noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly
+said to him:
+
+"I don't think this interests you?"
+
+"On the contrary it's very interesting!" replied Pierre not quite
+truthfully.
+
+From the fleches they rode still farther to the left, along a road
+winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood. In the middle of
+the wood a brown hare with white feet sprang out and, scared by the
+tramp of the many horses, grew so confused that it leaped along the
+road in front of them for some time, arousing general attention and
+laughter, and only when several voices shouted at it did it dart to
+one side and disappear in the thicket. After going through the wood
+for about a mile and a half they came out on a glade where troops of
+Tuchkov's corps were stationed to defend the left flank.
+
+Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a great deal and
+with much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre, gave orders of great
+military importance. In front of Tuchkov's troops was some high ground
+not occupied by troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake,
+saying that it was madness to leave a height which commanded the
+country around unoccupied and to place troops below it. Some of the
+generals expressed the same opinion. One in particular declared with
+martial heat that they were put there to be slaughtered. Bennigsen
+on his own authority ordered the troops to occupy the high ground.
+This disposition on the left flank increased Pierre's doubt of his own
+capacity to understand military matters. Listening to Bennigsen and
+the generals criticizing the position of the troops behind the hill,
+he quite understood them and shared their opinion, but for that very
+reason he could not understand how the man who put them there behind
+the hill could have made so gross and palpable a blunder.
+
+Pierre did not know that these troops were not, as Bennigsen
+supposed, put there to defend the position, but were in a concealed
+position as an ambush, that they should not be seen and might be
+able to strike an approaching enemy unexpectedly. Bennigsen did not
+know this and moved the troops forward according to his own ideas
+without mentioning the matter to the commander in chief.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lay leaning on
+his elbow in a broken-down shed in the village of Knyazkovo at the
+further end of his regiment's encampment. Through a gap in the
+broken wall he could see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty
+year-old birches with their lower branches lopped off, a field on
+which shocks of oats were standing, and some bushes near which rose
+the smoke of campfires- the soldiers' kitchens.
+
+Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life now seemed
+to him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt agitated and irritable
+as he had done seven years before at Austerlitz.
+
+He had received and given the orders for next day's battle and had
+nothing more to do. But his thoughts- the simplest, clearest, and
+therefore most terrible thoughts- would give him no peace. He knew
+that tomorrow's battle would be the most terrible of all he had
+taken part in, and for the first time in his life the possibility of
+death presented itself to him- not in relation to any worldly matter
+or with reference to its effect on others, but simply in relation to
+himself, to his own soul- vividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as
+a certainty. And from the height of this perception all that had
+previously tormented and preoccupied him suddenly became illumined
+by a cold white light without shadows, without perspective, without
+distinction of outline. All life appeared to him like magic-lantern
+pictures at which he had long been gazing by artificial light
+through a glass. Now he suddenly saw those badly daubed pictures in
+clear daylight and without a glass. "Yes, yes! There they are, those
+false images that agitated, enraptured, and tormented me," said he
+to himself, passing in review the principal pictures of the magic
+lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold white daylight of
+his clear perception of death. "There they are, those rudely painted
+figures that once seemed splendid and mysterious. Glory, the good of
+society, love of a woman, the Fatherland itself- how important these
+pictures appeared to me, with what profound meaning they seemed to
+be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the cold
+white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for me." The three
+great sorrows of his life held his attention in particular: his love
+for a woman, his father's death, and the French invasion which had
+overrun half Russia. "Love... that little girl who seemed to me
+brimming over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved her. I made
+romantic plans of love and happiness with her! Oh, what a boy I
+was!" he said aloud bitterly. "Ah me! I believed in some ideal love
+which was to keep her faithful to me for the whole year of my absence!
+Like the gentle dove in the fable she was to pine apart from me....
+But it was much simpler really.... It was all very simple and
+horrible."
+
+"When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place was his: his
+land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came and swept him aside,
+unconscious of his existence, as he might brush a chip from his
+path, and his Bald Hills and his whole life fell to pieces. Princess
+Mary says it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, when
+he is not here and will never return? He is not here! For whom then is
+the trial intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And
+tomorrow I shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one
+of our own men, by a soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as
+one of them did yesterday, and the French will come and take me by
+head and heels and fling me into a hole that I may not stink under
+their noses, and new conditions of life will arise, which will seem
+quite ordinary to others and about which I shall know nothing. I shall
+not exist..."
+
+He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine, with
+their motionless green and yellow foliage and white bark. "To die...
+to be killed tomorrow... That I should not exist... That all this
+should still be, but no me...."
+
+And the birches with their light and shade, the curly clouds, the
+smoke of the campfires, and all that was around him changed and seemed
+terrible and menacing. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose
+quickly, went out of the shed, and began to walk about.
+
+After he had returned, voices were heard outside the shed. "Who's
+that?" he cried.
+
+The red-nosed Captain Timokhin, formerly Dolokhov's squadron
+commander, but now from lack of officers a battalion commander,
+shyly entered the shed followed by an adjutant and the regimental
+paymaster.
+
+Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business they had come
+about, gave them some further instructions, and was about to dismiss
+them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.
+
+"Devil take it!" said the voice of a man stumbling over something.
+
+Prince Andrew looked out of the shed and saw Pierre, who had tripped
+over a pole on the ground and had nearly fallen, coming his way. It
+was unpleasant to Prince Andrew to meet people of his own set in
+general, and Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful
+moments of his last visit to Moscow.
+
+"You? What a surprise!" said he. "What brings you here? This is
+unexpected!"
+
+As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than coldness- they
+expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached
+the shed full of animation, but on seeing Prince Andrew's face he felt
+constrained and ill at ease.
+
+"I have come... simply... you know... come... it interests me," said
+Pierre, who had so often that day senselessly repeated that word
+"interesting." "I wish to see the battle."
+
+"Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about war? How would
+they stop it?" said Prince Andrew sarcastically. "Well, and how's
+Moscow? And my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?" he asked
+seriously.
+
+"Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskaya told me so. I went to see them,
+but missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow."
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andrew, apparently
+reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked them to stay and
+have tea. Seats were brought in and so was the tea. The officers gazed
+with surprise at Pierre's huge stout figure and listened to his talk
+of Moscow and the position of our army, round which he had ridden.
+Prince Andrew remained silent, and his expression was so forbidding
+that Pierre addressed his remarks chiefly to the good-natured
+battalion commander.
+
+"So you understand the whole position of our troops?" Prince
+Andrew interrupted him.
+
+"Yes- that is, how do you mean?" said Pierre. "Not being a
+military man I can't say I have understood it fully, but I
+understand the general position."
+
+"Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it who it may," said
+Prince Andrew.
+
+"Oh!" said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in perplexity at
+Prince Andrew. "Well, and what do think of Kutuzov's appointment?"
+he asked.
+
+"I was very glad of his appointment, that's all I know," replied
+Prince Andrew.
+
+"And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow they are
+saying heaven knows what about him.... What do you think of him?"
+
+"Ask them," replied Prince Andrew, indicating the officers.
+
+Pierre looked at Timokhin with the condescendingly interrogative
+smile with which everybody involuntarily addressed that officer.
+
+"We see light again, since his Serenity has been appointed, your
+excellency," said Timokhin timidly, and continually turning to
+glance at his colonel.
+
+"Why so?" asked Pierre.
+
+"Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me inform you.
+Why, when we were retreating from Sventsyani we dare not touch a stick
+or a wisp of hay or anything. You see, we were going away, so he would
+get it all; wasn't it so, your excellency?" and again Timokhin
+turned to the prince. "But we daren't. In our regiment two officers
+were court-martialed for that kind of thing. But when his Serenity
+took command everything became straight forward. Now we see light..."
+
+"Then why was it forbidden?"
+
+Timokhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what or how to
+answer such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andrew.
+
+"Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the
+enemy," said Prince Andrew with venomous irony. "It is very sound: one
+can't permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to
+marauding. At Smolensk too he judged correctly that the French might
+outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could not understand
+this," cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice that seemed to escape him
+involuntarily: "he could not understand that there, for the first
+time, we were fighting for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit
+in the men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the
+French for two days, and that that success had increased our
+strength tenfold. He ordered us to retreat, and all our efforts and
+losses went for nothing. He had no thought of betraying us, he tried
+to do the best he could, he thought out everything, and that is why he
+is unsuitable. He is unsuitable now, just because he plans out
+everything very thoroughly and accurately as every German has to.
+How can I explain?... Well, say your father has a German valet, and he
+is a splendid valet and satisfies your father's requirements better
+than you could, then it's all right to let him serve. But if your
+father is mortally sick you'll send the valet away and attend to
+your father with your own unpracticed, awkward hands, and will
+soothe him better than a skilled man who is a stranger could. So it
+has been with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could
+serve her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is in
+danger she needs one of her own kin. But in your Club they have been
+making him out a traitor! They slander him as a traitor, and the
+only result will be that afterwards, ashamed of their false
+accusations, they will make him out a hero or a genius instead of a
+traitor, and that will be still more unjust. He is an honest and
+very punctilious German."
+
+"And they say he's a skillful commander," rejoined Pierre.
+
+"I don't understand what is meant by 'a skillful commander,'"
+replied Prince Andrew ironically.
+
+"A skillful commander?" replied Pierre. "Why, one who foresees all
+contingencies... and foresees the adversary's intentions."
+
+"But that's impossible," said Prince Andrew as if it were a matter
+settled long ago.
+
+Pierre looked at him in surprise.
+
+"And yet they say that war is like a game of chess?" he remarked.
+
+"Yes," replied Prince Andrew, "but with this little difference, that
+in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are
+not limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is
+always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than
+one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division
+and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies
+of troops can never be known to anyone. Believe me," he went on, "if
+things depended on arrangements made by the staff, I should be there
+making arrangements, but instead of that I have the honor to serve
+here in the regiment with these gentlemen, and I consider that on us
+tomorrow's battle will depend and not on those others.... Success
+never depends, and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or
+even on numbers, and least of all on position."
+
+"But on what then?"
+
+"On the feeling that is in me and in him," he pointed to Timokhin,
+"and in each soldier."
+
+Prince Andrew glanced at Timokhin, who looked at his commander in
+alarm and bewilderment. In contrast to his former reticent taciturnity
+Prince Andrew now seemed excited. He could apparently not refrain from
+expressing the thoughts that had suddenly occurred to him.
+
+"A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it! Why did we
+lose the battle at Austerlitz? The French losses were almost equal
+to ours, but very early we said to ourselves that we were losing the
+battle, and we did lose it. And we said so because we had nothing to
+fight for there, we wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon as
+we could. 'We've lost, so let us run,' and we ran. If we had not
+said that till the evening, heaven knows what might not have happened.
+But tomorrow we shan't say it! You talk about our position, the left
+flank weak and the right flank too extended," he went on. "That's
+all nonsense, there's nothing of the kind. But what awaits us
+tomorrow? A hundred million most diverse chances which will be decided
+on the instant by the fact that our men or theirs run or do not run,
+and that this man or that man is killed, but all that is being done at
+present is only play. The fact is that those men with whom you have
+ridden round the position not only do not help matters, but hinder.
+They are only concerned with their own petty interests."
+
+"At such a moment?" said Pierre reproachfully.
+
+"At such a moment!" Prince Andrew repeated. "To them it is only a
+moment affording opportunities to undermine a rival and obtain an
+extra cross or ribbon. For me tomorrow means this: a Russian army of a
+hundred thousand and a French army of a hundred thousand have met to
+fight, and the thing is that these two hundred thousand men will fight
+and the side that fights more fiercely and spares itself least will
+win. And if you like I will tell you that whatever happens and
+whatever muddles those at the top may make, we shall win tomorrow's
+battle. Tomorrow, happen what may, we shall win!"
+
+"There now, your excellency! That's the truth, the real truth," said
+Timokhin. "Who would spare himself now? The soldiers in my
+battalion, believe me, wouldn't drink their vodka! 'It's not the day
+for that!' they say."
+
+All were silent. The officers rose. Prince Andrew went out of the
+shed with them, giving final orders to the adjutant. After they had
+gone Pierre approached Prince Andrew and was about to start a
+conversation when they heard the clatter of three horses' hoofs on the
+road not far from the shed, and looking in that direction Prince
+Andrew recognized Wolzogen and Clausewitz accompanied by a Cossack.
+They rode close by continuing to converse, and Prince Andrew
+involuntarily heard these words:
+
+"Der Krieg muss in Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht kann ich nicht
+genug Preis geben,"~^ said one of them.
+
+^~ "The war must be extended widely. I cannot sufficiently commend
+that view."
+
+"Oh, ja," said the other, "der Zweck ist nur den Feind zu schwachen,
+so kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der Privat-Personen in Achtung
+nehmen."~^
+
+^~ "Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of course one
+cannot take into account the loss of private individuals."
+
+"Oh, no," agreed the other.
+
+"Extend widely!" said Prince Andrew with an angry snort, when they
+had ridden past. "In that 'extend' were my father, son, and sister, at
+Bald Hills. That's all the same to him! That's what I was saying to
+you- those German gentlemen won't win the battle tomorrow but will
+only make all the mess they can, because they have nothing in their
+German heads but theories not worth an empty eggshell and haven't in
+their hearts the one thing needed tomorrow- that which Timokhin has.
+They have yielded up all Europe to him, and have now come to teach us.
+Fine teachers!" and again his voice grew shrill.
+
+"So you think we shall win tomorrow's battle?" asked Pierre.
+
+"Yes, yes," answered Prince Andrew absently. "One thing I would do
+if I had the power," he began again, "I would not take prisoners.
+Why take prisoners? It's chivalry! The French have destroyed my home
+and are on their way to destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are
+outraging me every moment. They are my enemies. In my opinion they are
+all criminals. And so thinks Timokhin and the whole army. They
+should be executed! Since they are my foes they cannot be my
+friends, whatever may have been said at Tilsit."
+
+"Yes, yes," muttered Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince
+Andrew. "I quite agree with you!"
+
+The question that had perturbed Pierre on the Mozhaysk hill and
+all that day now seemed to him quite clear and completely solved. He
+now understood the whole meaning and importance of this war and of the
+impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the significant and
+stern expressions on the faces he had seen in passing, were lit up for
+him by a new light. He understood that latent heat (as they say in
+physics) of patriotism which was present in all these men he had seen,
+and this explained to him why they all prepared for death calmly,
+and as it were lightheartedly.
+
+"Not take prisoners," Prince Andrew continued: "That by itself would
+quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have
+played at war- that's what's vile! We play at magnanimity and all that
+stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and
+sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed:
+she is so kind-hearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating
+the calf served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of
+chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on.
+It's all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they
+humbugged us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people's
+houses, issue false paper money, and worst of all they kill my
+children and my father, and then talk of rules of war and
+magnanimity to foes! Take no prisoners, but kill and be killed! He who
+has come to this as I have through the same sufferings..."
+
+Prince Andrew, who had thought it was all the same to him whether or
+not Moscow was taken as Smolensk had been, was suddenly checked in his
+speech by an unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a
+few times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips
+quivered as he began speaking.
+
+"If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should go to war
+only when it was worth while going to certain death, as now. Then
+there would not be war because Paul Ivanovich had offended Michael
+Ivanovich. And when there was a war, like this one, it would be war!
+And then the determination of the troops would be quite different.
+Then all these Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon is leading
+would not follow him into Russia, and we should not go to fight in
+Austria and Prussia without knowing why. War is not courtesy but the
+most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that and not
+play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and
+seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be
+war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favorite pastime of the
+idle and frivolous. The military calling is the most highly honored.
+
+"But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are
+the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of
+war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a
+country's inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army,
+and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the
+military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline,
+idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in
+spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone.
+All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms, and he
+who kills most people receives the highest rewards.
+
+"They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they
+kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services
+for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number),
+and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they
+have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look
+at them and hear them?" exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill,
+piercing voice. "Ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to
+live. I see that I have begun to understand too much. And it doesn't
+do for man to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil....
+Ah, well, it's not for long!" he added.
+
+"However, you're sleepy, and it's time for me to sleep. Go back to
+Gorki!" said Prince Andrew suddenly.
+
+"Oh no!" Pierre replied, looking at Prince Andrew with frightened,
+compassionate eyes.
+
+"Go, go! Before a battle one must have one's sleep out," repeated
+Prince Andrew.
+
+He came quickly up to Pierre and embraced and kissed him.
+"Good-by, be off!" he shouted. "Whether we meet again or not..."
+and turning away hurriedly he entered the shed.
+
+It was already dark, and Pierre could not make out whether the
+expression of Prince Andrew's face was angry or tender.
+
+For some time he stood in silence considering whether he should
+follow him or go away. "No, he does not want it!" Pierre concluded.
+"And I know that this is our last meeting!" He sighed deeply and
+rode back to Gorki.
+
+On re-entering the shed Prince Andrew lay down on a rug, but he
+could not sleep.
+
+He closed his eyes. One picture succeeded another in his
+imagination. On one of them he dwelt long and joyfully. He vividly
+recalled an evening in Petersburg. Natasha with animated and excited
+face was telling him how she had gone to look for mushrooms the
+previous summer and had lost her way in the big forest. She
+incoherently described the depths of the forest, her feelings, and a
+talk with a beekeeper she met, and constantly interrupted her story to
+say: "No, I can't! I'm not telling it right; no, you don't
+understand," though he encouraged her by saying that he did
+understand, and he really had understood all she wanted to say. But
+Natasha was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that they did
+not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced that
+day and wished to convey. "He was such a delightful old man, and it
+was so dark in the forest... and he had such kind... No, I can't
+describe it," she had said, flushed and excited. Prince Andrew
+smiled now the same happy smile as then when he had looked into her
+eyes. "I understood her," he thought. "I not only understood her,
+but it was just that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity, that
+frankness of soul- that very soul of hers which seemed to be
+fettered by her body- it was that soul I loved in her... loved so
+strongly and happily..." and suddenly he remembered how his love had
+ended. "He did not need anything of that kind. He neither saw nor
+understood anything of the sort. He only saw in her a pretty and fresh
+young girl, with whom he did not deign to unite his fate. And I?...
+and he is still alive and gay!"
+
+Prince Andrew jumped up as if someone had burned him, and again
+began pacing up and down in front of the shed.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+On August 25, the eve of the battle of Borodino, M. de Beausset,
+prefect of the French Emperor's palace, arrived at Napoleon's quarters
+at Valuevo with Colonel Fabvier, the former from Paris and the
+latter from Madrid.
+
+Donning his court uniform, M. de Beausset ordered a box he had
+brought for the Emperor to be carried before him and entered the first
+compartment of Napoleon's tent, where he began opening the box while
+conversing with Napoleon's aides-de-camp who surrounded him.
+
+Fabvier, not entering the tent, remained at the entrance talking
+to some generals of his acquaintance.
+
+The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom and was
+finishing his toilet. Slightly snorting and grunting, he presented now
+his back and now his plump hairy chest to the brush with which his
+valet was rubbing him down. Another valet, with his finger over the
+mouth of a bottle, was sprinkling Eau de Cologne on the Emperor's
+pampered body with an expression which seemed to say that he alone
+knew where and how much Eau de Cologne should be sprinkled. Napoleon's
+short hair was wet and matted on the forehead, but his face, though
+puffy and yellow, expressed physical satisfaction. "Go on, harder,
+go on!" he muttered to the valet who was rubbing him, slightly
+twitching and grunting. An aide-de-camp, who had entered the bedroom
+to report to the Emperor the number of prisoners taken in
+yesterday's action, was standing by the door after delivering his
+message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon, frowning, looked
+at him from under his brows.
+
+"No prisoners!" said he, repeating the aide-de-camp's words. "They
+are forcing us to exterminate them. So much the worse for the
+Russian army.... Go on... harder, harder!" he muttered, hunching his
+back and presenting his fat shoulders.
+
+"All right. Let Monsieur de Beausset enter, and Fabvier too," he
+said, nodding to the aide-de-camp.
+
+"Yes, sire," and the aide-de-camp disappeared through the door of
+the tent.
+
+Two valets rapidly dressed His Majesty, and wearing the blue uniform
+of the Guards he went with firm quick steps to the reception room.
+
+De Beausset's hands meanwhile were busily engaged arranging the
+present he had brought from the Empress, on two chairs directly in
+front of the entrance. But Napoleon had dressed and come out with such
+unexpected rapidity that he had not time to finish arranging the
+surprise.
+
+Napoleon noticed at once what they were about and guessed that
+they were not ready. He did not wish to deprive them of the pleasure
+of giving him a surprise, so he pretended not to see de Beausset and
+called Fabvier to him, listening silently and with a stern frown to
+what Fabvier told him of the heroism and devotion of his troops
+fighting at Salamanca, at the other end of Europe, with but one
+thought- to be worthy of their Emperor- and but one fear- to fail to
+please him. The result of that battle had been deplorable. Napoleon
+made ironic remarks during Fabvier's account, as if he had not
+expected that matters could go otherwise in his absence.
+
+"I must make up for that in Moscow," said Napoleon. "I'll see you
+later," he added, and summoned de Beausset, who by that time had
+prepared the surprise, having placed something on the chairs and
+covered it with a cloth.
+
+De Beausset bowed low, with that courtly French bow which only the
+old retainers of the Bourbons knew how to make, and approached him,
+presenting an envelope.
+
+Napoleon turned to him gaily and pulled his ear.
+
+"You have hurried here. I am very glad. Well, what is Paris saying?"
+he asked, suddenly changing his former stern expression for a most
+cordial tone.
+
+"Sire, all Paris regrets your absence," replied de Beausset as was
+proper.
+
+But though Napoleon knew that de Beausset had to say something of
+this kind, and though in his lucid moments he knew it was untrue, he
+was pleased to hear it from him. Again he honored him by touching
+his ear.
+
+"I am very sorry to have made you travel so far," said he.
+
+"Sire, I expected nothing less than to find you at the gates of
+Moscow," replied de Beausset.
+
+Napoleon smiled and, lifting his head absentmindedly, glanced to the
+right. An aide-de-camp approached with gliding steps and offered him a
+gold snuffbox, which he took.
+
+"Yes, it has happened luckily for you," he said, raising the open
+snuffbox to his nose. "You are fond of travel, and in three days you
+will see Moscow. You surely did not expect to see that Asiatic
+capital. You will have a pleasant journey."
+
+De Beausset bowed gratefully at this regard for his taste for travel
+(of which he had not till then been aware).
+
+"Ha, what's this?" asked Napoleon, noticing that all the courtiers
+were looking at something concealed under a cloth.
+
+With courtly adroitness de Beausset half turned and without
+turning his back to the Emperor retired two steps, twitching off the
+cloth at the same time, and said:
+
+"A present to Your Majesty from the Empress."
+
+It was a portrait, painted in bright colors by Gerard, of the son
+borne to Napoleon by the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, the boy
+whom for some reason everyone called "The King of Rome."
+
+A very pretty curly-headed boy with a look of the Christ in the
+Sistine Madonna was depicted playing at stick and ball. The ball
+represented the terrestrial globe and the stick in his other hand a
+scepter.
+
+Though it was not clear what the artist meant to express by
+depicting the so-called King of Rome spiking the earth with a stick,
+the allegory apparently seemed to Napoleon, as it had done to all
+who had seen it in Paris, quite clear and very pleasing.
+
+"The King of Rome!" he said, pointing to the portrait with a
+graceful gesture. "Admirable!"
+
+With the natural capacity of an Italian for changing the
+expression of his face at will, he drew nearer to the portrait and
+assumed a look of pensive tenderness. He felt that what he now said
+and did would be historical, and it seemed to him that it would now be
+best for him- whose grandeur enabled his son to play stick and ball
+with the terrestrial globe- to show, in contrast to that grandeur, the
+simplest paternal tenderness. His eyes grew dim, he moved forward,
+glanced round at a chair (which seemed to place itself under him), and
+sat down on it before the portrait. At a single gesture from him
+everyone went out on tiptoe, leaving the great man to himself and
+his emotion.
+
+Having sat still for a while he touched- himself not knowing why-
+the thick spot of paint representing the highest light in the
+portrait, rose, and recalled de Beausset and the officer on duty. He
+ordered the portrait to be carried outside his tent, that the Old
+Guard, stationed round it, might not be deprived of the pleasure of
+seeing the King of Rome, the son and heir of their adored monarch.
+
+And while he was doing M. de Beausset the honor of breakfasting with
+him, they heard, as Napoleon had anticipated, the rapturous cries of
+the officers and men of the Old Guard who had run up to see the
+portrait.
+
+"Vive l'Empereur! Vive le roi de Rome! Vive l'Empereur!" came
+those ecstatic cries.
+
+After breakfast Napoleon in de Beausset's presence dictated his
+order of the day to the army.
+
+"Short and energetic!" he remarked when he had read over the
+proclamation which he had dictated straight off without corrections.
+It ran:
+
+Soldiers! This is the battle you have so longed for. Victory depends
+on you. It is essential for us; it will give us all we need:
+comfortable quarters and a speedy return to our country. Behave as you
+did at Austerlitz, Friedland, Vitebsk, and Smolensk. Let our
+remotest posterity recall your achievements this day with pride. Let
+it be said of each of you: "He was in the great battle before Moscow!"
+
+"Before Moscow!" repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de Beausset, who
+was so fond of travel, to accompany him on his ride, he went out of
+the tent to where the horses stood saddled.
+
+"Your Majesty is too kind!" replied de Beausset to the invitation to
+accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep, did not know how to ride
+and was afraid of doing so.
+
+But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset had to mount.
+When Napoleon came out of the tent the shouting of the Guards before
+his son's portrait grew still louder. Napoleon frowned.
+
+"Take him away!" he said, pointing with a gracefully majestic
+gesture to the portrait. "It is too soon for him to see a field of
+battle."
+
+De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and sighed deeply, to
+indicate how profoundly he valued and comprehended the Emperor's
+words.
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+On the twenty-fifth of August, so his historians tell us, Napoleon
+spent the whole day on horseback inspecting the locality,
+considering plans submitted to him by his marshals, and personally
+giving commands to his generals.
+
+The original line of the Russian forces along the river Kolocha
+had been dislocated by the capture of the Shevardino Redoubt on the
+twenty-fourth, and part of the line- the left flank- had been drawn
+back. That part of the line was not entrenched and in front of it
+the ground was more open and level than elsewhere. It was evident to
+anyone, military or not, that it was here the French should attack. It
+would seem that not much consideration was needed to reach this
+conclusion, nor any particular care or trouble on the part of the
+Emperor and his marshals, nor was there any need of that special and
+supreme quality called genius that people are so apt to ascribe to
+Napoleon; yet the historians who described the event later and the men
+who then surrounded Napoleon, and he himself, thought otherwise.
+
+Napoleon rode over the plain and surveyed the locality with a
+profound air and in silence, nodded with approval or shook his head
+dubiously, and without communicating to the generals around him the
+profound course of ideas which guided his decisions merely gave them
+his final conclusions in the form of commands. Having listened to a
+suggestion from Davout, who was now called Prince d'Eckmuhl, to turn
+the Russian left wing, Napoleon said it should not be done, without
+explaining why not. To a proposal made by General Campan (who was to
+attack the fleches) to lead his division through the woods, Napoleon
+agreed, though the so-called Duke of Elchingen (Ney) ventured to
+remark that a movement through the woods was dangerous and might
+disorder the division.
+
+Having inspected the country opposite the Shevardino Redoubt,
+Napoleon pondered a little in silence and then indicated the spots
+where two batteries should be set up by the morrow to act against
+the Russian entrenchments, and the places where, in line with them,
+the field artillery should be placed.
+
+After giving these and other commands he returned to his tent, and
+the dispositions for the battle were written down from his dictation.
+
+These dispositions, of which the French historians write with
+enthusiasm and other historians with profound respect, were as
+follows:
+
+At dawn the two new batteries established during the night on the
+plain occupied by the Prince d'Eckmuhl will open fire on the
+opposing batteries of the enemy.
+
+At the same time the commander of the artillery of the 1st Corps,
+General Pernetti, with thirty cannon of Campan's division and all
+the howitzers of Dessaix's and Friant's divisions, will move
+forward, open fire, and overwhelm with shellfire the enemy's
+battery, against which will operate:
+
+_1 24 guns of the artillery of the Guards<br>
+30 guns of Campan's division
+
+and   8 guns of Friant's and Dessaix's divisions
+    --
+
+in all 62 guns.
+
+The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, General Fouche,
+will place the howitzers of the 3rd and 8th Corps, sixteen in all,
+on the flanks of the battery that is to bombard the entrenchment on
+the left, which will have forty guns in all directed against it.
+
+General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all
+the howitzers of the Guard's artillery against either one or other
+of the entrenchments.
+
+During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance through the
+wood on the village and turn the enemy's position.
+
+General Campan will move through the wood to seize the first
+fortification.
+
+After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will be given
+in accordance with the enemy's movements.
+
+The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as the guns of
+the right wing are heard. The sharpshooters of Morand's division and
+of the vice-King's division will open a heavy fire on seeing the
+attack commence on the right wing.
+
+The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its three
+bridges, advancing to the same heights as Morand's and Gibrard's
+divisions, which under his leadership will be directed against the
+redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces.
+
+All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera avec ordre et
+methode) as far as possible retaining troops in reserve.
+
+_1 The Imperial Camp near Mozhaysk,<br>
+September, 6, 1812.
+
+These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused if one
+allows oneself to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his
+genius, related to Napoleon's orders to deal with four points- four
+different orders. Not one of these was, or could be, carried out.
+
+In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed on the
+spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouche; which
+were to come in line with them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and
+shower shells on the Russian fleches and redoubts. This could not be
+done, as from the spots selected by Napoleon the projectiles did not
+carry to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot into the air until
+the nearest commander, contrary to Napoleon's instructions, moved them
+forward.
+
+The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the village through
+the wood, should turn the Russian left flank. This could not be done
+and was not done, because Poniatowski, advancing on the village
+through the wood, met Tuchkov there barring his way, and could not and
+did not turn the Russian position.
+
+The third order was: General Campan will move through the wood to
+seize the first fortification. General Campan's division did not seize
+the first fortification but was driven back, for on emerging from
+the wood it had to reform under grapeshot, of which Napoleon was
+unaware.
+
+The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the village
+(Borodino) and cross by its three bridges, advancing to the same
+heights as Morand's and Gdrard's divisions (for whose movements no
+directions are given), which under his leadership will be directed
+against the redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces.
+
+As far as one can make out, not so much from this unintelligible
+sentence as from the attempts the vice-King made to execute the orders
+given him, he was to advance from the left through Borodino to the
+redoubt while the divisions of Morand and Gerard were to advance
+simultaneously from the front.
+
+All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not and could
+not be executed. After passing through Borodino the vice-King was
+driven back to the Kolocha and could get no farther; while the
+divisions of Morand and Gerard did not take the redoubt but were
+driven back, and the redoubt was only taken at the end of the battle
+by the cavalry (a thing probably unforeseen and not heard of by
+Napoleon). So not one of the orders in the disposition was, or could
+be, executed. But in the disposition it is said that, after the
+fight has commenced in this manner, orders will be given in accordance
+with the enemy's movements, and so it might be supposed that all
+necessary arrangements would be made by Napoleon during the battle.
+But this was not and could not be done, for during the whole battle
+Napoleon was so far away that, as appeared later, he could not know
+the course of the battle and not one of his orders during the fight
+could be executed.
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of
+Borodino because Napoleon had a cold, and that if he had not had a
+cold the orders he gave before and during the battle would have been
+still more full of genius and Russia would have been lost and the face
+of the world have been changed. To historians who believe that
+Russia was shaped by the will of one man- Peter the Great- and that
+France from a republic became an empire and French armies went to
+Russia at the will of one man- Napoleon- to say that Russia remained a
+power because Napoleon had a bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August
+may seem logical and convincing.
+
+If it had depended on Napoleon's will to fight or not to fight the
+battle of Borodino, and if this or that other arrangement depended
+on his will, then evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of
+his will might have saved Russia, and consequently the valet who
+omitted to bring Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth
+would have been the savior of Russia. Along that line of thought
+such a deduction is indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction
+Voltaire made in jest (without knowing what he was jesting at) when he
+saw that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX's
+stomach being deranged. But to men who do not admit that Russia was
+formed by the will of one man, Peter I, or that the French Empire
+was formed and the war with Russia begun by the will of one man,
+Napoleon, that argument seems not merely untrue and irrational, but
+contrary to all human reality. To the question of what causes historic
+events another answer presents itself, namely, that the course of
+human events is predetermined from on high- depends on the coincidence
+of the wills of all who take part in the events, and that a Napoleon's
+influence on the course of these events is purely external and
+fictitious.
+
+Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the
+Massacre of St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX's will, though
+he gave the order for it and thought it was done as a result of that
+order; and strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of
+eighty thousand men at Borodino was not due to Napoleon's will, though
+he ordered the commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it
+was done because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions
+appear, yet human dignity- which tells me that each of us is, if not
+more at least not less a man than the great Napoleon- demands the
+acceptance of that solution of the question, and historic
+investigation abundantly confirms it.
+
+At the battle of Borodino Napoleon shot at no one and killed no one.
+That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore it was not he who
+killed people.
+
+The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of
+Borodino not because of Napoleon's orders but by their own volition.
+The whole army- French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch- hungry,
+ragged, and weary of the campaign, felt at the sight of an army
+blocking their road to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be
+drunk. Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight the Russians, they
+would have killed him and have proceeded to fight the Russians because
+it was inevitable.
+
+When they heard Napoleon's proclamation offering them, as
+compensation for mutilation and death, the words of posterity about
+their having been in the battle before Moscow, they cried "Vive
+l'Empereur!" just as they had cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at the sight of
+the portrait of the boy piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy
+stick, and just as they would have cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at any
+nonsense that might be told them. There was nothing left for them to
+do but cry "Vive l'Empereur!" and go to fight, in order to get food
+and rest as conquerors in Moscow. So it was not because of
+Napoleon's commands that they killed their fellow men.
+
+And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for
+none of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know
+what was going on before him. So the way in which these people
+killed one another was not decided by Napoleon's will but occurred
+independently of him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands
+of people who took part in the common action. It only seemed to
+Napoleon that it all took place by his will. And so the question
+whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than
+the cold of the least of the transport soldiers.
+
+Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was
+the cause of his dispositions not being as well planned as on former
+occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as
+previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon's
+cold on the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.
+
+The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even
+better, than previous dispositions by which he had won victories.
+His pseudo-orders during the battle were also no worse than
+formerly, but much the same as usual. These dispositions and orders
+only seem worse than previous ones because the battle of Borodino
+was the first Napoleon did not win. The profoundest and most excellent
+dispositions and orders seem very bad, and every learned militarist
+criticizes them with looks oks importance, when they relate to a
+battle that has been lost, and the very worst dispositions and
+orders seem very good, and serious people fill whole volumes to
+demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a battle that has been
+won.
+
+The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of
+Austerlitz were a model of perfection for that kind of composition,
+but still they were criticized- criticized for their very
+perfection, for their excessive minuteness.
+
+Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office as
+representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other
+battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he
+inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he made no confusion, did
+not contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the
+field of battle, but with his great tact and military experience
+carried out his role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon
+remarked:
+
+"The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!"
+
+Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to
+him about Paris and about some changes he meant to make the Empress'
+household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details
+relating to the court.
+
+He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset's love
+of travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon
+who knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on
+his apron while a patient is being strapped to the operating table.
+"The matter is in my hands and is clear and definite in my head.
+When the times comes to set to work I shall do it as no one else
+could, but now I can jest, and the more I jest and the calmer I am the
+more tranquil and confident you ought to be, and the more amazed at my
+genius."
+
+Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon went to rest
+before the serious business which, he considered, awaited him next
+day. He was so much interested in that task that he was unable to
+sleep, and in spite of his cold which had grown worse from the
+dampness of the evening, he went into the large division of the tent
+at three o'clock in the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He asked
+whether the Russians had not withdrawn, and was told that the
+enemy's fires were still in the same places. He nodded approval.
+
+The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.
+
+"Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?" Napoleon
+asked him.
+
+"Without doubt, sire," replied Rapp.
+
+Napoleon looked at him.
+
+"Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to say at
+Smolensk?" continued Rapp. "The wine is drawn and must be drunk."
+
+Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning his head
+on his hand.
+
+"This poor army!" he suddenly remarked. "It has diminished greatly
+since Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always
+said so and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the
+Guards are intact?" he remarked interrogatively.
+
+"Yes, sire," replied Rapp.
+
+Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced at his
+watch. He was not sleepy and it was still not nearly morning. It was
+impossible to give further orders for the sake of killing time, for
+the orders had all been given and were now being executed.
+
+"Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of
+the Guards?" asked Napoleon sternly.
+
+"Yes, sire."
+
+"The rice too?"
+
+Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor's order about the rice,
+but Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as if not believing
+that his order had been executed. An attendant came in with punch.
+Napoleon ordered another glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently
+sipped his own.
+
+"I have neither taste nor smell," he remarked, sniffing at his
+glass. "This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicine- what is the
+good of medicine when it can't cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these
+lozenges but they don't help at all. What can doctors cure? One
+can't cure anything. Our body is a machine for living. It is organized
+for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it
+defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by
+encumbering it with remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch that
+should go for a certain time; watchmaker cannot open it, he can only
+adjust it by fumbling, and that blindfold.... Yes, our body is just
+a machine for living, that is all."
+
+And having entered on the path of definition, of which he was
+fond, Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a new one.
+
+"Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?" asked he. "It is the
+art of being stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That's all."
+
+Rapp made no reply.
+
+"Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutuzov!" said Napoleon. "We
+shall see! Do you remember at Braunau he commanded an army for three
+weeks and did not once mount a horse to inspect his
+entrenchments.... We shall see!"
+
+He looked at his watch. It was still only four o'clock. He did not
+feel sleepy. The punch was finished and there was still nothing to do.
+He rose, walked to and fro, put on a warm overcoat and a hat, and went
+out of the tent. The night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible
+moisture was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were
+dimly burning among the French Guards, and in the distance those of
+the Russian line shone through the smoke. The weather was calm, and
+the rustle and tramp of the French troops already beginning to move to
+take up their positions were clearly audible.
+
+Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the fires
+and listened to these sounds, and as he was passing a tall guardsman
+in a shaggy cap, who was standing sentinel before his tent and had
+drawn himself up like a black pillar at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon
+stopped in front of him.
+
+"What year did you enter the service?" he asked with that
+affectation of military bluntness and geniality with which he always
+addressed the soldiers.
+
+The man answered the question.
+
+"Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its rice?"
+
+"It has, Your Majesty."
+
+Napoleon nodded and walked away.
+
+At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of Shevardino.
+
+It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a single cloud
+lay in the east. The abandoned campfires were burning themselves out
+in the faint morning light.
+
+On the right a single deep report of a cannon resounded and died
+away in the prevailing silence. Some minutes passed. A second and a
+third report shook the air, then a fourth and a fifth boomed
+solemnly near by on the right.
+
+The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before others rang
+out and yet more were heard mingling with and overtaking one another.
+
+Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino Redoubt where he
+dismounted. The game had begun.
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre
+ordered his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early in the
+morning, and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a
+corner Boris had given up to him.
+
+Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had already
+left the hut. The panes were rattling in the little windows and his
+groom was shaking him.
+
+"Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!" he kept
+repeating pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the shoulder without
+looking at him, having apparently lost hope of getting him to wake up.
+
+"What? Has it begun? Is it time?" Pierre asked, waking up.
+
+"Hear the firing," said the groom, a discharged soldier. "All the
+gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene Highness himself rode past
+long ago."
+
+Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was
+bright, fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting forth from
+behind a cloud that had concealed it, was shining, with rays still
+half broken by the clouds, over the roofs of the street opposite, on
+the dew-besprinkled dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on
+the windows, the fence, and on Pierre's horses standing before the
+hut. The roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant
+accompanied by a Cossack passed by at a sharp trot.
+
+"It's time, Count; it's time!" cried the adjutant.
+
+Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went down
+the street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field of
+battle the day before. A crowd of military men was assembled there,
+members of the staff could be heard conversing in French, and
+Kutuzov's gray head in a white cap with a red band was visible, his
+gray nape sunk between his shoulders. He was looking through a field
+glass down the highroad before him.
+
+Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene before
+him, spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama he had admired
+from that spot the day before, but now the whole place was full of
+troops and covered by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting
+rays of the bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre,
+cast upon it through the clear morning air penetrating streaks of
+rosy, golden tinted light and long dark shadows. The forest at the
+farthest extremity of the panorama seemed carved in some precious
+stone of a yellowish-green color; its undulating outline was
+silhouetted against the horizon and was pierced beyond Valuevo by
+the Smolensk highroad crowded with troops. Nearer at hand glittered
+golden cornfields interspersed with copses. There were troops to be
+seen everywhere, in front and to the right and left. All this was
+vivid, majestic, and unexpected; but what impressed Pierre most of all
+was the view of the battlefield itself, of Borodino and the hollows on
+both sides of the Kolocha.
+
+Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of it, especially
+to the left where the Voyna flowing between its marshy banks falls
+into the Kolocha, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve,
+and to become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and
+magically colored and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns
+mingled with this mist, and over the whole expanse and through that
+mist the rays of the morning sun were reflected, flashing back like
+lightning from the water, from the dew, and from the bayonets of the
+troops crowded together by the riverbanks and in Borodino. A white
+church could be seen through the mist, and here and there the roofs of
+huts in Borodino as well as dense masses of soldiers, or green
+ammunition chests and ordnance. And all this moved, or seemed to move,
+as the smoke and mist spread out over the whole space. Just as in
+the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so along the entire line
+outside and above it and especially in the woods and fields to the
+left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high ground, clouds
+of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of nothing, now
+singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others dense,
+which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over the
+whole expanse.
+
+These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of sound of
+the firing produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.
+
+"Puff!"- suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging
+from violet into gray and milky white, and "boom!" came the report a
+second later.
+
+"Puff! puff!"- and two clouds arose pushing one another and blending
+together; and "boom, boom!" came the sounds confirming what the eye
+had seen.
+
+Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen as a
+round compact ball, and in its place already were balloons of smoke
+floating to one side, and- "puff" (with a pause)- "puff, puff!"
+three and then four more appeared and then from each, with the same
+interval- "boom- boom, boom!" came the fine, firm, precise sounds in
+reply. It seemed as if those smoke clouds sometimes ran and
+sometimes stood still while woods, fields, and glittering bayonets ran
+past them. From the left, over fields and bushes, those large balls of
+smoke were continually appearing followed by their solemn reports,
+while nearer still, in the hollows and woods, there burst from the
+muskets small cloudlets that had no time to become balls, but had
+their little echoes in just the same way. "Trakh-ta-ta-takh!" came the
+frequent crackle of musketry, but it was irregular and feeble in
+comparison with the reports of the cannon.
+
+Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets,
+that movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and
+his suite, to compare his impressions with those of others. They
+were all looking at the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed
+to him, with the same feelings. All their faces were now shining
+with that latent warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before
+and had fully understood after his talk with Prince Andrew.
+
+"Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!" Kutuzov was
+saying to a general who stood beside him, not taking his eye from
+the battlefield.
+
+Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on his way
+down the knoll.
+
+"To the crossing!" said the general coldly and sternly in reply to
+one of the staff who asked where he was going.
+
+"I'll go there too, I too!" thought Pierre, and followed the
+general.
+
+The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre went
+to his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the
+quietest, clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and turning out
+his toes pressed his heels against its sides and, feeling that his
+spectacles were slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and
+reins, he galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to
+smile as they watched him from the knoll.
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was
+galloping turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him,
+galloped in among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He
+tried to pass either in front of them or to the right or left, but
+there were soldiers everywhere, all with expression and busy with some
+unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same
+dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white
+hat, who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under
+his horse's hoofs.
+
+"Why ride into the middle of the battalion?" one of them shouted
+at him.
+
+Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre,
+bending over his saddlebow and hardly able to control his shying
+horse, galloped ahead of the soldiers where there was a free space.
+
+There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers stood
+firing. Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware of it he had
+come to the bridge across the Kolocha between Gorki and Borodino,
+which the French (having occupied Borodino) were attacking in the
+first phase of the battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front
+of him and that soldiers were doing something on both sides of it
+and in the meadow, among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken
+no notice of amid the smoke of the campfires the day before; but
+despite the incessant firing going on there he had no idea that this
+was the field of battle. He did not notice the sound of the bullets
+whistling from every side, or the projectiles that flew over him,
+did not see the enemy on the other side of the river, and for a long
+time did not notice the killed and wounded, though many fell near him.
+He looked about him with a smile which did not leave his face.
+
+"Why's that fellow in front of the line?" shouted somebody at him
+again.
+
+"To the left!... Keep to the right!" the men shouted to him.
+
+Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered one of
+Raevski's adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant looked angrily at
+him, evidently also intending to shout at him, but on recognizing
+him he nodded.
+
+"How have you got here?" he said, and galloped on.
+
+Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do, and afraid
+of getting in someone's way again, galloped after the adjutant.
+
+"What's happening here? May I come with you?" he asked.
+
+"One moment, one moment!" replied the adjutant, and riding up to a
+stout colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message
+and then addressed Pierre.
+
+"Why have you come here, Count?" he asked with a smile. "Still
+inquisitive?"
+
+"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.
+
+But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.
+
+"Here it's tolerable," said he, "but with Bagration on the left
+flank they're getting it frightfully hot."
+
+"Really?" said Pierre. "Where is that?"
+
+"Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and
+in our battery it is still bearable," said the adjutant. "Will you
+come?"
+
+"Yes, I'll come with you," replied Pierre, looking round for his
+groom.
+
+It was only now that he noticed wounded men staggering along or
+being carried on stretchers. On that very meadow he had ridden over
+the day before, a soldier was lying athwart the rows of scented hay,
+with his head thrown awkwardly back and his shako off.
+
+"Why haven't they carried him away?" Pierre was about to ask, but
+seeing the stern expression of the adjutant who was also looking
+that way, he checked himself.
+
+Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow with the
+adjutant to Raevski's Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the
+adjutant's and jolted him at every step.
+
+"You don't seem to be used to riding, Count?" remarked the adjutant.
+
+"No it's not that, but her action seems so jerky," said Pierre in
+a puzzled tone.
+
+"Why... she's wounded!" said the adjutant. "In the off foreleg above
+the knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you, Count, on your
+baptism of fire!"
+
+Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind the
+artillery which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening
+them with the noise of firing, they came to a small wood. There it was
+cool and quiet, with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant
+dismounted and walked up the hill on foot.
+
+"Is the general here?" asked the adjutant on reaching the knoll.
+
+"He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way," someone
+told him, pointing to the right.
+
+The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do with him now.
+
+"Don't trouble about me," said Pierre. "I'll go up onto the knoll if
+I may?"
+
+"Yes, do. You'll see everything from there and it's less
+dangerous, and I'll come for you."
+
+Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They did not
+meet again, and only much later did Pierre learn that he lost an arm
+that day.
+
+The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one afterwards
+known to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or Raevski's Redoubt, and
+to the French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du
+centre, around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French
+regarded as the key to the whole position.
+
+This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which
+trenches had been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that
+were being fired through openings in the earthwork.
+
+In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns which also
+fired incessantly. A little behind the guns stood infantry. When
+ascending that knoll Pierre had no notion that this spot, on which
+small trenches had been dug and from which a few guns were firing, was
+the most important point of the battle.
+
+On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he thought
+it one of the least significant parts of the field.
+
+Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end of a trench
+surrounding the battery and gazed at what was going on around him with
+an unconsciously happy smile. Occasionally he rose and walked about
+the battery still with that same smile, trying not to obstruct the
+soldiers who were loading, hauling the guns, and continually running
+past him with bags and charges. The guns of that battery were being
+fired continually one after another with a deafening roar,
+enveloping the whole neighborhood in powder smoke.
+
+In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed in
+support, here in the battery where a small number of men busy at their
+work were separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced
+a common and as it were family feeling of animation.
+
+The intrusion of Pierre's nonmilitary figure in a white hat made
+an unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at
+him with surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior
+artillery officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over
+to Pierre as if to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at
+him with curiosity.
+
+A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only
+just out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two
+guns entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.
+
+"Sir," he said, "permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not
+be here."
+
+The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at
+Pierre. But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the
+white hat was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of
+the trench with a shy smile or, politely making way for the
+soldiers, paced up and down the battery under fire as calmly as if
+he were on a boulevard, their feeling of hostile distrust gradually
+began to change into a kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers
+feel for their dogs, cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that
+live with the regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their
+family, adopted him, gave him a nickname ("our gentleman"), and made
+kindly fun of him among themselves.
+
+A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around
+with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown
+up.
+
+"And how's it you're not afraid, sir, really now?" a red-faced,
+broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a
+set of sound, white teeth.
+
+"Are you afraid, then?" said Pierre.
+
+"What else do you expect?" answered the soldier. "She has no
+mercy, you know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards.
+One can't help being afraid," he said laughing.
+
+Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre.
+They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and
+the discovery that he did so delighted them.
+
+"It's the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it's
+wonderful! There's a gentleman for you!"
+
+"To your places!" cried the young officer to the men gathered
+round Pierre.
+
+The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the
+first or second time and therefore treated both his superiors and
+the men with great precision and formality.
+
+The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing
+more intense over the whole field, especially to the left where
+Bagration's fleches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing
+made it almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole
+attention was engrossed by watching the family circle- separated
+from all else- formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious
+feeling of joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the
+battlefield was now replaced by another, especially since he had
+seen that soldier lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the
+slope of the trench, he observed the faces of those around him.
+
+By ten o'clock some twenty men had already been carried away from
+the battery; two guns were smashed and cannon balls fell more and more
+frequently on the battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled
+around. But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and
+merry voices and jokes were heard on all sides.
+
+"A live one!" shouted a man as a whistling shell approached.
+
+"Not this way! To the infantry!" added another with loud laughter,
+seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of the supports.
+
+"Are you bowing to a friend, eh?" remarked another, chaffing a
+peasant who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over.
+
+Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out
+to see what was happening in front.
+
+"They've withdrawn the front line, it has retired," said they,
+pointing over the earthwork.
+
+"Mind your own business," an old sergeant shouted at them. "If
+they've retired it's because there's work for them to do farther
+back."
+
+And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a
+shove with his knee. This was followed by a burst of laughter.
+
+"To the fifth gun, wheel it up!" came shouts from one side.
+
+"Now then, all together, like bargees!" rose the merry voices of
+those who were moving the gun.
+
+"Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman's hat off!" cried the
+red-faced humorist, showing his teeth chaffing Pierre. "Awkward
+baggage!" he added reproachfully to a cannon ball that struck a cannon
+wheel and a man's leg.
+
+"Now then, you foxes!" said another, laughing at some militiamen
+who, stooping low, entered the battery to carry away the wounded man.
+
+"So this gruel isn't to your taste? Oh, you crows! You're scared!"
+they shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man
+whose leg had been torn off.
+
+"There, lads... oh, oh!" they mimicked the peasants, "they don't
+like it at all!"
+
+Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt, and after
+every loss, the liveliness increased more and more.
+
+As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly
+and rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in
+opposition to what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire
+growing more and more intense glowed in the faces of these men.
+
+Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not concerned
+to know what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching
+this fire which burned ever more brightly and which he felt was
+flaming up in the same way in his own soul.
+
+At ten o'clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in
+front of the battery and along the Kamenka streamlet retreated. From
+the battery they could be seen running back past it carrying their
+wounded on their muskets. A general with his suite came to the
+battery, and after speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look
+and went away again having ordered the infantry supports behind the
+battery to lie down, so as to be less exposed to fire. After this from
+amid the ranks of infantry to the right of the battery came the
+sound of a drum and shouts of command, and from the battery one saw
+how those ranks of infantry moved forward.
+
+Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly
+struck by a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was
+walking backwards and kept glancing uneasily around.
+
+The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke but their
+long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could still be heard. A few
+minutes later crowds of wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back
+from that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently
+in the battery. Several men were lying about who had not been removed.
+Around the cannon the men moved still more briskly and busily. No
+one any longer took notice of Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted
+at for being in the way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid
+strides from one gun to another with a frowning face. The young
+officer, with his face still more flushed, commanded the men more
+scrupulously than ever. The soldiers handed up the charges, turned,
+loaded, and did their business with strained smartness. They gave
+little jumps as they walked, as though they were on springs.
+
+The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face the fire
+which Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly. Pierre standing
+beside the commanding officer. The young officer, his hand to his
+shako, ran up to his superior.
+
+"I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are left.
+Are we to continue firing?" he asked.
+
+"Grapeshot!" the senior shouted, without answering the question,
+looking over the wall of the trench.
+
+Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave a gasp and
+bending double sat down on the ground like a bird shot on the wing.
+Everything became strange, confused, and misty in Pierre's eyes.
+
+One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck the
+earthwork, a soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these
+sounds before, now heard nothing else. On the right of the battery
+soldiers shouting "Hurrah!" were running not forwards but backwards,
+it seemed to Pierre.
+
+A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by which he
+was standing, crumbling down the earth; a black ball flashed before
+his eyes and at the same instant plumped into something. Some
+militiamen who were entering the battery ran back.
+
+"All with grapeshot!" shouted the officer.
+
+The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened whisper
+informed him (as a butler at dinner informs his master that there is
+no more of some wine asked for) that there were no more charges.
+
+"The scoundrels! What are they doing?" shouted the officer,
+turning to Pierre.
+
+The officer's face was red and perspiring and his eyes glittered
+under his frowning brow.
+
+"Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition boxes!" he
+yelled, angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes and speaking to his men.
+
+"I'll go," said Pierre.
+
+The officer, without answering him, strode across to the opposite
+side.
+
+"Don't fire.... Wait!" he shouted.
+
+The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition stumbled against
+Pierre.
+
+"Eh, sir, this is no place for you," said he, and ran down the
+slope.
+
+Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young officer
+was sitting.
+
+One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him, falling in
+front, beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down the slope. "Where am
+I going?" he suddenly asked himself when he was already near the green
+ammunition wagons. He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to
+return or go on. Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him backwards to
+the ground. At the same instant he was dazzled by a great flash of
+flame, and immediately a deafening roar, crackling, and whistling made
+his ears tingle.
+
+When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground leaning on
+his hands; the ammunition wagons he had been approaching no longer
+existed, only charred green boards and rags littered the scorched
+grass, and a horse, dangling fragments of its shaft behind it,
+galloped past, while another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground,
+uttering prolonged and piercing cries.
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran back to the
+battery, as to the only refuge from the horrors that surrounded him.
+
+On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were men doing
+something there but that no shots were being fired from the battery.
+He had no time to realize who these men were. He saw the senior
+officer lying on the earth wall with his back turned as if he were
+examining something down below and that one of the soldiers he had
+noticed before was struggling forward shouting "Brothers!" and
+trying to free himself from some men who were holding him by the
+arm. He also saw something else that was strange.
+
+But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been killed,
+that the soldier shouting "Brothers!" was a prisoner, and that another
+man had been bayoneted in the back before his eyes, for hardly had
+he run into the redoubt before a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in
+a blue uniform rushed on him sword in hand, shouting something.
+Instinctively guarding against the shock- for they had been running
+together at full speed before they saw one another- Pierre put out his
+hands and seized the man (a French officer) by the shoulder with one
+hand and by the throat with the other. The officer, dropping his
+sword, seized Pierre by his collar.
+
+For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one another's
+unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what they had done and
+what they were to do next. "Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him
+prisoner?" each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently
+more inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre's
+strong hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever
+tighter and tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when
+just above their heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled,
+and it seemed to Pierre that the French officer's head had been torn
+off, so swiftly had he ducked it.
+
+Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without further
+thought as to who had taken whom prisoner, the Frenchman ran back to
+the battery and Pierre ran down the slope stumbling over the dead
+and wounded who, it seemed to him, caught at his feet. But before he
+reached the foot of the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of Russian
+soldiers who, stumbling, tripping up, and shouting, ran merrily and
+wildly toward the battery. (This was the attack for which Ermolov
+claimed the credit, declaring that only his courage and good luck made
+such a feat possible: it was the attack in which he was said to have
+thrown some St. George's Crosses he had in his pocket into the battery
+for the first soldiers to take who got there.)
+
+The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our troops
+shouting "Hurrah!" pursued them so far beyond the battery that it
+was difficult to call them back.
+
+The prisoners were brought down from the battery and among them
+was a wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded. Crowds
+of wounded- some known to Pierre and some unknown- Russians and
+French, with faces distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were
+carried on stretchers from the battery. Pierre again went up onto
+the knoll where he had spent over an hour, and of that family circle
+which had received him as a member he did not find a single one. There
+were many dead whom he did not know, but some he recognized. The young
+officer still sat in the same way, bent double, in a pool of blood
+at the edge of the earth wall. The red-faced man was still
+twitching, but they did not carry him away.
+
+Pierre ran down the slope once more.
+
+"Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have
+done!" he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd of stretcher bearers
+moving from the battlefield.
+
+But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and in front
+and especially to the left, near Semenovsk, something seemed to be
+seething in the smoke, and the roar of cannon and musketry did not
+diminish, but even increased to desperation like a man who,
+straining himself, shrieks with all his remaining strength.
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+The chief action of the battle of Borodino was fought within the
+seven thousand feet between Borodino and Bagration's fleches. Beyond
+that space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the
+Russians with Uvarov's cavalry at midday, and on the other side,
+beyond Utitsa, Poniatowski's collision with Tuchkov; but these two
+were detached and feeble actions in comparison with what took place in
+the center of the battlefield. On the field between Borodino and the
+fleches, beside the wood, the chief action of the day took place on an
+open space visible from both sides and was fought in the simplest
+and most artless way.
+
+The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from several hundred
+guns.
+
+Then when the whole field was covered with smoke, two divisions,
+Campan's and Dessaix's, advanced from the French right, while
+Murat's troops advanced on Borodino from their left.
+
+From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the
+fleches were two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as
+the crow flies to Borodino, so that Napoleon could not see what was
+happening there, especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid
+the whole locality. The soldiers of Dessaix's division advancing
+against the fleches could only be seen till they had entered the
+hollow that lay between them and the fleches. As soon as they had
+descended into that hollow, the smoke of the guns and musketry on
+the fleches grew so dense that it covered the whole approach on that
+side of it. Through the smoke glimpses could be caught of something
+black- probably men- and at times the glint of bayonets. But whether
+they were moving or stationary, whether they were French or Russian,
+could not be discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt.
+
+The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck straight
+into Napoleon's face as, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked
+at the fleches. The smoke spread out before them, and at times it
+looked as if the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved.
+Sometimes shouts were heard through the firing, but it was
+impossible to tell what was being done there.
+
+Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field glass, and
+in its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and
+sometimes Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he
+could not tell where what he had seen was.
+
+He descended the knoll and began walking up and down before it.
+
+Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed
+intently at the battlefield.
+
+But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from
+where he was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which
+some of his generals had taken their stand, but even from the
+fleches themselves- in which by this time there were now Russian and
+now French soldiers, alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive,
+frightened, or maddened- even at those fleches themselves it was
+impossible to make out what was taking place. There for several
+hours amid incessant cannon and musketry fire, now Russians were
+seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now infantry, and now cavalry: they
+appeared, fired, fell, collided, not knowing what to do with one
+another, screamed, and ran back again.
+
+From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from
+his marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the
+progress of the action, but all these reports were false, both because
+it was impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening at
+any given moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the
+actual place of conflict but reported what they had heard from others;
+and also because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to
+Napoleon circumstances changed and the news he brought was already
+becoming false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings
+that Borodino had been occupied and the bridge over the Kolocha was in
+the hands of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished
+the troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should
+form up on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given-
+almost as soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino- the bridge
+had been retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at
+which Pierre had been present at the beginning of the battle.
+
+An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale and
+frightened face and reported to Napoleon that their attack had been
+repulsed, Campan wounded, and Davout killed; yet at the very time
+the adjutant had been told that the French had been repulsed, the
+fleches had in fact been recaptured by other French troops, and Davout
+was alive and only slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily
+untrustworthy reports Napoleon gave his orders, which had either
+been executed before he gave them or could not be and were not
+executed.
+
+The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle
+but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and
+only occasionally went within musket range, made their own
+arrangements without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in
+what direction to fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry
+should run. But even their orders, like Napoleon's, were seldom
+carried out, and then but partially. For the most part things happened
+contrary to their orders. Soldiers ordered to advance ran back on
+meeting grapeshot; soldiers ordered to remain where they were,
+suddenly, seeing Russians unexpectedly before them, sometimes rushed
+back and sometimes forward, and the cavalry dashed without orders in
+pursuit of the flying Russians. In this way two cavalry regiments
+galloped through the Semenovsk hollow and as soon as they reached
+the top of the incline turned round and galloped full speed back
+again. The infantry moved in the same way, sometimes running to
+quite other places than those they were ordered to go to. All orders
+as to where and when to move the guns, when to send infantry to
+shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantry- all such orders
+were given by the officers on the spot nearest to the units concerned,
+without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less Napoleon.
+They did not fear getting into trouble for not fulfilling orders or
+for acting on their own initiative, for in battle what is at stake
+is what is dearest to man- his own life- and it sometimes seems that
+safety lies in running back, sometimes in running forward; and these
+men who were right in the heat of the battle acted according to the
+mood of the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward
+and backward did not improve or alter the position of the troops.
+All their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the
+harm of disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets that
+flew over the fields on which these men were floundering about. As
+soon as they left the place where the balls and bullets were flying
+about, their superiors, located in the background, re-formed them
+and brought them under discipline and under the influence of that
+discipline led them back to the zone of fire, where under the
+influence of fear of death they lost their discipline and rushed about
+according to the chance promptings of the throng.
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+Napoleon's generals- Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near that
+region of fire and sometimes even entered it- repeatedly led into it
+huge masses of well-ordered troops. But contrary to what had always
+happened in their former battles, instead of the news they expected of
+the enemy's flight, these orderly masses returned thence as
+disorganized and terrified mobs. The generals re-formed them, but
+their numbers constantly decreased. In the middle of the day Murat
+sent his adjutant to Napoleon to demand reinforcements.
+
+Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch, when
+Murat's adjutant galloped up with an assurance that the Russians would
+be routed if His Majesty would let him have another division.
+
+"Reinforcements?" said Napoleon in a tone of stern surprise, looking
+at the adjutant- a handsome lad with long black curls arranged like
+Murat's own- as though he did not understand his words.
+
+"Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon to himself. "How can they need
+reinforcements when they already have half the army directed against a
+weak, unentrenched Russian wing?"
+
+"Tell the King of Naples," said he sternly, "that it is not noon
+yet, and I don't yet see my chessboard clearly. Go!..."
+
+The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed deeply without
+removing his hand from his hat and galloped back to where men were
+being slaughtered.
+
+Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier began
+talking to them about matters unconnected with the battle.
+
+In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning to interest
+Napoleon, Berthier's eyes turned to look at a general with a suite,
+who was galloping toward the knoll on a lathering horse. It was
+Belliard. Having dismounted he went up to the Emperor with rapid
+strides and in a loud voice began boldly demonstrating the necessity
+of sending reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the Russians
+were lost if the Emperor would give another division.
+
+Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace up and down
+without replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly to the
+generals of the suite around him.
+
+"You are very fiery, Belliard," said Napoleon, when he again came up
+to the general. "In the heat of a battle it is easy to make a mistake.
+Go and have another look and then come back to me."
+
+Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another part of
+the battlefield galloped up.
+
+"Now then, what do you want?" asked Napoleon in the tone of a man
+irritated at being continually disturbed.
+
+"Sire, the prince..." began the adjutant.
+
+"Asks for reinforcements?" said Napoleon with an angry gesture.
+
+The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report, but
+the Emperor turned from him, took a couple of steps, stopped, came
+back, and called Berthier.
+
+"We must give reserves," he said, moving his arms slightly apart.
+"Who do you think should be sent there?" he asked of Berthier (whom he
+subsequently termed "that gosling I have made an eagle").
+
+"Send Claparede's division, sire," replied Berthier, who knew all
+the divisions regiments, and battalions by heart.
+
+Napoleon nodded assent.
+
+The adjutant galloped to Claparede's division and a few minutes
+later the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward.
+Napoleon gazed silently in that direction.
+
+"No!" he suddenly said to Berthier. "I can't send Claparede. Send
+Friant's division."
+
+Though there was no advantage in sending Friant's division instead
+of Claparede's, and even in obvious inconvenience and delay in
+stopping Claparede and sending Friant now, the order was carried out
+exactly. Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he was
+playing the part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines- a role he
+so justly understood and condemned.
+
+Friant's division disappeared as the others had done into the
+smoke of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued to arrive
+at a gallop and as if by agreement all said the same thing. They all
+asked for reinforcements and all said that the Russians were holding
+their positions and maintaining a hellish fire under which the
+French army was melting away.
+
+Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.
+
+M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since
+morning, came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest
+lunch to His Majesty.
+
+"I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?" said he.
+
+Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming the
+negation to refer only to the victory and not to the lunch, M. de
+Beausset ventured with respectful jocularity to remark that there is
+no reason for not having lunch when one can get it.
+
+"Go away..." exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely, and turned
+aside.
+
+A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy beamed on M.
+de Beausset's face and he glided away to the other generals.
+
+Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an
+ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money about and
+always winning, suddenly just when he has calculated all the chances
+of the game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely
+he loses.
+
+His troops were the same, his generals the same, the same
+preparations had been made, the same dispositions, and the same
+proclamation courte et energique, he himself was still the same: he
+knew that and knew that he was now even more experienced and
+skillful than before. Even the enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and
+Friedland- yet the terrible stroke of his arm had supernaturally
+become impotent.
+
+All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned with
+success: the concentration of batteries on one point, an attack by
+reserves to break the enemy's line, and a cavalry attack by "the men
+of iron," all these methods had already been employed, yet not only
+was there no victory, but from all sides came the same news of
+generals killed and wounded, of reinforcements needed, of the
+impossibility of driving back the Russians, and of disorganization
+among his own troops.
+
+Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered a few
+phrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up with
+congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, the
+corps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannon
+and stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry to
+gather in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola,
+Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something strange was
+happening to his troops.
+
+Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that this
+was not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in his
+former battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all the
+men about him experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked
+dejected, and they all shunned one another's eyes- only a de
+Beausset could fail to grasp the meaning of what was happening.
+
+But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaning
+of a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after all
+efforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle and
+that the least accident might now- with the fight balanced on such a
+strained center- destroy him and his army.
+
+When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian campaign
+in which not one battle had been won, and in which not a flag, or
+cannon, or army corps had been captured in two months, when he
+looked at the concealed depression on the faces around him and heard
+reports of the Russians still holding their ground- a terrible feeling
+like a nightmare took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents
+that might destroy him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall
+on his left wing, might break through his center, he himself might
+be killed by a stray cannon ball. All this was possible. In former
+battles he had only considered the possibilities of success, but now
+innumerable unlucky chances presented themselves, and he expected them
+all. Yes, it was like a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is
+coming to attack him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a
+terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels
+that his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror of
+unavoidable destruction seizes him in his helplessness.
+
+The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of the
+French army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat silently on a
+campstool below the knoll, with head bowed and elbows on his knees.
+Berthier approached and suggested that they should ride along the line
+to ascertain the position of affairs.
+
+"What? What do you say?" asked Napoleon. "Yes, tell them to bring me
+my horse."
+
+He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk.
+
+Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the whole space
+through which Napoleon rode, horses and men were lying in pools of
+blood, singly or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals
+had ever before seen such horrors or so many slain in such a small
+area. The roar of guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the
+ear and gave a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does
+to tableaux vivants. Napoleon rode up the high ground at Semenovsk,
+and through the smoke saw ranks of men in uniforms of a color
+unfamiliar to him. They were Russians.
+
+The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk village and its
+knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly along their line and sent
+forth clouds of smoke. It was no longer a battle: it was a
+continuous slaughter which could be of no avail either to the French
+or the Russians. Napoleon stopped his horse and again fell into the
+reverie from which Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop what
+was going on before him and around him and was supposed to be directed
+by him and to depend on him, and from its lack of success this affair,
+for the first time, seemed to him unnecessary and horrible.
+
+One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured to offer to
+lead the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier, standing near
+Napoleon, exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at this
+general's senseless offer.
+
+Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long time.
+
+"At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have my Guard
+destroyed!" he said, and turning his horse rode back to Shevardino.
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in the morning
+sat Kutuzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy body relaxed. He gave no
+orders, but only assented to or dissented from what others suggested.
+
+"Yes, yes, do that," he replied to various proposals. "Yes, yes: go,
+dear boy, and have a look," he would say to one or another of those
+about him; or, "No, don't, we'd better wait!" He listened to the
+reports that were brought him and gave directions when his
+subordinates demanded that of him; but when listening to the reports
+it seemed as if he were not interested in the import of the words
+spoken, but rather in something else- in the expression of face and
+tone of voice of those who were reporting. By long years of military
+experience he knew, and with the wisdom of age understood, that it
+is impossible for one man to direct hundreds of thousands of others
+struggling with death, and he knew that the result of a battle is
+decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where
+the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of
+slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the
+army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in
+his power.
+
+Kutuzov's general expression was one of concentrated quiet
+attention, and his face wore a strained look as if he found it
+difficult to master the fatigue of his old and feeble body.
+
+At eleven o'clock they brought him news that the fleches captured by
+the French had been retaken, but that Prince Bagration was wounded.
+Kutuzov groaned and swayed his head.
+
+"Ride over to Prince Peter Ivanovich and find out about it exactly,"
+he said to one of his adjutants, and then turned to the Duke of
+Wurttemberg who was standing behind him.
+
+"Will Your Highness please take command of the first army?"
+
+Soon after the duke's departure- before he could possibly have
+reached Semenovsk- his adjutant came back from him and told Kutuzov
+that the duke asked for more troops.
+
+Kutuzov made a grimace and sent an order to Dokhturov to take over
+the command of the first army, and a request to the duke- whom he said
+he could not spare at such an important moment- to return to him. When
+they brought him news that Murat had been taken prisoner, and the
+staff officers congratulated him, Kutuzov smiled.
+
+"Wait a little, gentlemen," said he. "The battle is won, and there
+is nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat. Still, it is
+better to wait before we rejoice."
+
+But he sent an adjutant to take the news round the army.
+
+When Scherbinin came galloping from the left flank with news that
+the French had captured the fleches and the village of Semenovsk,
+Kutuzov, guessing by the sounds of the battle and by Scherbinin's
+looks that the news was bad, rose as if to stretch his legs and,
+taking Scherbinin's arm, led him aside.
+
+"Go, my dear fellow," he said to Ermolov, "and see whether something
+can't be done."
+
+Kutuzov was in Gorki, near the center of the Russian position. The
+attack directed by Napoleon against our left flank had been several
+times repulsed. In the center the French had not got beyond
+Borodino, and on their left flank Uvarov's cavalry had put the
+French to flight.
+
+Toward three o'clock the French attacks ceased. On the faces of
+all who came from the field of battle, and of those who stood around
+him, Kutuzov noticed an expression of extreme tension. He was
+satisfied with the day's success- a success exceeding his
+expectations, but the old man's strength was failing him. Several
+times his head dropped low as if it were falling and he dozed off.
+Dinner was brought him.
+
+Adjutant General Wolzogen, the man who when riding past Prince
+Andrew had said, "the war should be extended widely," and whom
+Bagration so detested, rode up while Kutuzov was at dinner. Wolzogen
+had come from Barclay de Tolly to report on the progress of affairs on
+the left flank. The sagacious Barclay de Tolly, seeing crowds of
+wounded men running back and the disordered rear of the army,
+weighed all the circumstances, concluded that the battle was lost, and
+sent his favorite officer to the commander in chief with that news.
+
+Kutuzov was chewing a piece of roast chicken with difficulty and
+glanced at Wolzogen with eyes that brightened under their puckering
+lids.
+
+Wolzogen, nonchalantly stretching his legs, approached Kutuzov
+with a half-contemptuous smile on his lips, scarcely touching the peak
+of his cap.
+
+He treated his Serene Highness with a somewhat affected
+nonchalance intended to show that, as a highly trained military man,
+he left it to Russians to make an idol of this useless old man, but
+that he knew whom he was dealing with. "Der alte Herr" (as in their
+own set the Germans called Kutuzov) "is making himself very
+comfortable," thought Wolzogen, and looking severely at the dishes
+in front of Kutuzov he began to report to "the old gentleman" the
+position of affairs on the left flank as Barclay had ordered him to
+and as he himself had seen and understood it.
+
+"All the points of our position are in the enemy's hands and we
+cannot dislodge them for lack of troops, the men are running away
+and it is impossible to stop them," he reported.
+
+Kutuzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze on Wolzogen,
+as if not understand what was said to him. Wolzogen, noticing "the old
+gentleman's" agitation, said with a smile:
+
+"I have not considered it right to conceal from your Serene Highness
+what I have seen. The troops are in complete disorder..."
+
+"You have seen? You have seen?..." Kutuzov shouted frowning, and
+rising quickly he went up to Wolzogen.
+
+"How... how dare you!..." he shouted, choking and making a
+threatening gesture with his trembling arms: "How dare you, sir, say
+that to me? You know nothing about it. Tell General Barclay from me
+that his information is incorrect and that the real course of the
+battle is better known to me, the commander in chief, than to him."
+
+Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutuzov interrupted him.
+
+"The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated on the right
+flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not allow yourself to say
+what you don't know! Be so good as to ride to General Barclay and
+inform him of my firm intention to attack the enemy tomorrow," said
+Kutuzov sternly.
+
+All were silent, and the only sound audible was the heavy
+breathing of the panting old general.
+
+"They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God and our brave
+army! The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow we shall drive him from the
+sacred soil of Russia," said Kutuzov crossing himself, and he suddenly
+sobbed as his eyes filled with tears.
+
+Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his lips, stepped
+silently aside, marveling at "the old gentleman's" conceited
+stupidity.
+
+"Ah, here he is, my hero!" said Kutuzov to a portly, handsome,
+dark-haired general who was just ascending the knoll.
+
+This was Raevski, who had spent the whole day at the most
+important part of the field of Borodino.
+
+Raevski reported that the troops were firmly holding their ground
+and that the French no longer ventured to attack.
+
+After hearing him, Kutuzov said in French:
+
+"Then you do not think, like some others, that we must retreat?"
+
+"On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions it is
+always the most stubborn who remain victors," replied Raevski, "and in
+my opinion..."
+
+"Kaysarov!" Kutuzov called to his adjutant. "Sit down and write
+out the order of the day for tomorrow. And you," he continued,
+addressing another, "ride along the line and that tomorrow we attack."
+
+While Kutuzov was talking to Raevski and dictating the order of
+the day, Wolzogen returned from Barclay and said that General
+Barclay wished to have written confirmation of the order the field
+marshal had given.
+
+Kutuzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave directions for the
+order to be written out which the former commander in chief, to
+avoid personal responsibility, very judiciously wished to receive.
+
+And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond which maintains
+throughout an army one and the same temper, known as "the spirit of
+the army," and which constitutes the sinew of war, Kutuzov's words,
+his order for a battle next day, immediately became known from one end
+of the army to the other.
+
+It was far from being the same words or the same order that
+reached the farthest links of that chain. The tales passing from mouth
+to mouth at different ends of the army did not even resemble what
+Kutuzov had said, but the sense of his words spread everywhere because
+what he said was not the outcome of cunning calculations, but of a
+feeling that lay in the commander in chief's soul as in that of
+every Russian.
+
+And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the enemy, and
+hearing from the highest quarters a confirmation of what they wanted
+to believe, the exhausted, wavering men felt comforted and inspirited.
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+Prince Andrew's regiment was among the reserves which till after one
+o'clock were stationed inactive behind Semenovsk, under heavy
+artillery fire. Toward two o'clock the regiment, having already lost
+more than two hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled
+oatfield in the gap between Semenovsk and the Knoll Battery, where
+thousands of men perished that day and on which an intense,
+concentrated fire from several hundred enemy guns was directed between
+one and two o'clock.
+
+Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot the regiment
+here lost another third of its men. From in front and especially
+from the right, in the unlifting smoke the guns boomed, and out of the
+mysterious domain of smoke that overlay the whole space in front,
+quick hissing cannon balls and slow whistling shells flew unceasingly.
+At times, as if to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour passed
+during which the cannon balls and shells all flew overhead, but
+sometimes several men were torn from the regiment in a minute and
+the slain were continually being dragged away and the wounded
+carried off.
+
+With each fresh blow less and less chance of life remained for those
+not yet killed. The regiment stood in columns of battalion, three
+hundred paces apart, but nevertheless the men were always in one and
+the same mood. All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely
+heard in the ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the thud of
+a successful shot and the cry of "stretchers!" was heard. Most of
+the time, by their officers' order, the men sat on the ground. One,
+having taken off his shako, carefully loosened the gathers of its
+lining and drew them tight again; another, rubbing some dry clay
+between his palms, polished his bayonet; another fingered the strap
+and pulled the buckle of his bandolier, while another smoothed and
+refolded his leg bands and put his boots on again. Some built little
+houses of the tufts in the plowed ground, or plaited baskets from
+the straw in the cornfield. All seemed fully absorbed in these
+pursuits. When men were killed or wounded, when rows of stretchers
+went past, when some troops retreated, and when great masses of the
+enemy came into view through the smoke, no one paid any attention to
+these things. But when our artillery or cavalry advanced or some of
+our infantry were seen to move forward, words of approval were heard
+on all sides. But the liveliest attention was attracted by occurrences
+quite apart from, and unconnected with, the battle. It was as if the
+minds of these morally exhausted men found relief in everyday,
+commonplace occurrences. A battery of artillery was passing in front
+of the regiment. The horse of an ammunition cart put its leg over a
+trace. "Hey, look at the trace horse!... Get her leg out! She'll
+fall.... Ah, they don't see it!" came identical shouts from the
+ranks all along the regiment. Another time, general attention was
+attracted by a small brown dog, coming heaven knows whence, which
+trotted in a preoccupied manner in front of the ranks with tail
+stiffly erect till suddenly a shell fell close by, when it yelped,
+tucked its tail between its legs, and darted aside. Yells and
+shrieks of laughter rose from the whole regiment. But such
+distractions lasted only a moment, and for eight hours the men had
+been inactive, without food, in constant fear of death, and their pale
+and gloomy faces grew ever paler and gloomier.
+
+Prince Andrew, pale and gloomy like everyone in the regiment,
+paced up and down from the border of one patch to another, at the edge
+of the meadow beside an oatfield, with head bowed and arms behind
+his back. There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be given.
+Everything went on of itself. The killed were dragged from the
+front, the wounded carried away, and the ranks closed up. If any
+soldiers ran to the rear they returned immediately and hastily. At
+first Prince Andrew, considering it his duty to rouse the courage of
+the men and to set them an example, walked about among the ranks,
+but he soon became convinced that this was unnecessary and that
+there was nothing he could teach them. All the powers of his soul,
+as of every soldier there, were unconsciously bent on avoiding the
+contemplation of the horrors of their situation. He walked along the
+meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the grass, and gazing at the
+dust that covered his boots; now he took big strides trying to keep to
+the footprints left on the meadow by the mowers, then he counted his
+steps, calculating how often he must walk from one strip to another to
+walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers from the wormwood that
+grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his palms, and smelled their
+pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained of the previous
+day's thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened with weary ears
+to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle of flying
+projectiles from the booming of the reports, glanced at the tiresomely
+familiar faces of the men of the first battalion, and waited. "Here it
+comes... this one is coming our way again!" he thought, listening to
+an approaching whistle in the hidden region of smoke. "One, another!
+Again! It has hit...." He stopped and looked at the ranks. "No, it has
+gone over. But this one has hit!" And again he started trying to reach
+the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud! Five paces
+from him, a cannon ball tore up the dry earth and disappeared. A chill
+ran down his back. Again he glanced at the ranks. Probably many had
+been hit- a large crowd had gathered near the second battalion.
+
+"Adjutant!" he shouted. "Order them not to crowd together."
+
+The adjutant, having obeyed this instruction, approached Prince
+Andrew. From the other side a battalion commander rode up.
+
+"Look out!" came a frightened cry from a soldier and, like a bird
+whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell
+dropped with little noise within two steps of Prince Andrew and
+close to the battalion commander's horse. The horse first,
+regardless of whether it was right or wrong to show fear, snorted,
+reared almost throwing the major, and galloped aside. The horse's
+terror infected the men.
+
+"Lie down!" cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on the ground.
+
+Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a top between
+him and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the
+field and the meadow.
+
+"Can this be death?" thought Prince Andrew, looking with a quite
+new, envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of
+smoke that curled up from the rotating black ball. "I cannot, I do not
+wish to die. I love life- I love this grass, this earth, this air...."
+He thought this, and at the same time remembered that people were
+looking at him.
+
+"It's shameful, sir!" he said to the adjutant. "What..."
+
+He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment came the
+sound of an explosion, a whistle of splinters as from a breaking
+window frame, a suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started
+to one side, raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several
+officers ran up to him. From the right side of his abdomen, blood
+was welling out making a large stain on the grass.
+
+The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood behind the
+officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest with his face in the grass,
+breathing heavily and noisily.
+
+"What are you waiting for? Come along!"
+
+The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and legs, but
+he moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they set him down again.
+
+"Pick him up, lift him, it's all the same!" cried someone.
+
+They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on the stretcher.
+
+"Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That means death! My
+God!"- voices among the officers were heard saying.
+
+"It flew a hair's breadth past my ear," said the adjutant.
+
+The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders, started
+hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to the dressing
+station.
+
+"Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!" shouted an officer, seizing by
+their shoulders and checking the peasants, who were walking unevenly
+and jolting the stretcher.
+
+"Get into step, Fedor... I say, Fedor!" said the foremost peasant.
+
+"Now that's right!" said the one behind joyfully, when he had got
+into step.
+
+"Your excellency! Eh, Prince!" said the trembling voice of Timokhin,
+who had run up and was looking down on the stretcher.
+
+Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker from
+the stretcher into which his head had sunk deep and again his
+eyelids drooped.
+
+The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to dressing station by the
+wood, where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of
+three tents with flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch
+wood. In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were
+eating oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and
+pecked the grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew among
+the birch trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over more than
+five acres, bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay.
+Around the wounded stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with
+dismal and attentive faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in
+vain to drive from the spot. Disregarding the officers' orders, the
+soldiers stood leaning against their stretchers and gazing intently,
+as if trying to comprehend the difficult problem of what was taking
+place before them. From the tents came now loud angry cries and now
+plaintive groans. Occasionally dressers ran out to fetch water, or
+to point out those who were to be brought in next. The wounded men
+awaiting their turn outside the tents groaned, sighed, wept, screamed,
+swore, or asked for vodka. Some were delirious. Prince Andrew's
+bearers, stepping over the wounded who had not yet been bandaged, took
+him, as a regimental commander, close up to one of the tents and there
+stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince Andrew opened his eyes and
+for a long time could not make out what was going on around him. He
+remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the whirling black
+ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life. Two steps from
+him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and attracting
+general attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired
+noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He had been wounded in
+the head and leg by bullets. Around him, eagerly listening to his
+talk, a crowd of wounded and stretcher-bearers was gathered.
+
+"We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we
+grabbed the King himself!" cried he, looking around him with eyes that
+glittered with fever. "If only reserves had come up just then, lads,
+there wouldn't have been nothing left of him! I tell you surely..."
+
+Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew looked at him
+with shining eyes and experienced a sense of comfort. "But isn't it
+all the same now?" thought he. "And what will be there, and what has
+there been here? Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was
+something in this life I did not and do not understand."
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron,
+holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his
+small bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it. He raised his head
+and looked about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He
+evidently wanted a little respite. After turning his head from right
+to left for some time, he sighed and looked down.
+
+"All right, immediately," he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince
+Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.
+
+Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.
+
+"It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are to have
+a chance!" remarked one.
+
+Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that had only
+just been cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince
+Andrew could not make out distinctly what was in that tent. The
+pitiful groans from all sides and the torturing pain in his thigh,
+stomach, and back distracted him. All he saw about him merged into a
+general impression of naked, bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill
+the whole of the low tent, as a few weeks previously, on that hot
+August day, such bodies had filled the dirty pond beside the
+Smolensk road. Yes, it was the same flesh, the same chair a canon, the
+sight of which had even then filled him with horror, as by a
+presentiment.
+
+There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were occupied,
+and on the third they placed Prince Andrew. For a little while he
+was left alone and involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on
+the other two tables. On the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a
+Cossack, judging by the uniform thrown down beside him. Four
+soldiers were holding him, and a spectacled doctor was cutting into
+his muscular brown back.
+
+"Ooh, ooh, ooh!" grunted the Tartar, and suddenly lifting up his
+swarthy snub-nosed face with its high cheekbones, and baring his white
+teeth, he began to wriggle and twitch his body and utter piercing,
+ringing, and prolonged yells. On the other table, round which many
+people were crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on his back with his
+head thrown back. His curly hair, its color, and the shape of his head
+seemed strangely familiar to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were
+pressing on his chest to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg
+twitched rapidly all the time with a feverish tremor. The man was
+sobbing and choking convulsively. Two doctors- one of whom was pale
+and trembling- were silently doing something to this man's other, gory
+leg. When he had finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an
+overcoat, the spectacled doctor came up to Prince Andrew, wiping his
+hands.
+
+He glanced at Prince Andrew's face and quickly turned away.
+
+"Undress him! What are you waiting for?" he cried angrily to the
+dressers.
+
+His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came back to
+Prince Andrew's mind when the dresser with sleeves rolled up began
+hastily to undo the buttons of his clothes and undressed him. The
+doctor bent down over the wound, felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he
+made a sign to someone, and the torturing pain in his abdomen caused
+Prince Andrew to lose consciousness. When he came to himself the
+splintered portions of his thighbone had been extracted, the torn
+flesh cut away, and the wound bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on
+his face. As soon as Prince Andrew opened his eyes, the doctor bent
+over, kissed him silently on the lips, and hurried away.
+
+After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrew enjoyed a
+blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All
+the best and happiest moments of his life- especially his earliest
+childhood, when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when
+leaning over him his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his
+head in the pillow, felt happy in the mere consciousness of life-
+returned to his memory, not merely as something past but as
+something present.
+
+The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of
+whose head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew: they were lifting him
+up and trying to quiet him.
+
+"Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!" his frightened moans
+could be heard, subdued by suffering and broken by sobs.
+
+Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted Andrew wanted to weep.
+Whether because he was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to
+part with life, or because of those memories of a childhood that could
+not return, or because he was suffering and others were suffering
+and that man near him was groaning so piteously- he felt like
+weeping childlike, kindly, and almost happy tears.
+
+The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted
+blood and with the boot still on.
+
+"Oh! Oh, ooh!" he sobbed, like a woman.
+
+The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince
+Andrew from seeing his face, moved away.
+
+"My God! What is this? Why is he here?" said Prince Andrew to
+himself.
+
+In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been
+amputated, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. Men were supporting him in
+their arms and offering him a glass of water, but his trembling,
+swollen lips could not grasp its rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully.
+"Yes, it is he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully
+connected with me," thought Prince Andrew, not yet clearly grasping
+what he saw before him. "What is the connection of that man with my
+childhood and life?" he asked himself without finding an answer. And
+suddenly a new unexpected memory from that realm of pure and loving
+childhood presented itself to him. He remembered Natasha as he had
+seen her for the first time at the ball in 1810, with her slender neck
+and arms and with a frightened happy face ready for rapture, and
+love and tenderness for her, stronger and more vivid than ever,
+awoke in his soul. He now remembered the connection that existed
+between himself and this man who was dimly gazing at him through tears
+that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered everything, and ecstatic
+pity and love for that man overflowed his happy heart.
+
+Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender
+loving tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and
+their errors.
+
+"Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us and for
+those who hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love which God
+preached on earth and which Princess Mary taught me and I did not
+understand- that is what made me sorry to part with life, that is what
+remained for me had I lived. But now it is too late. I know it!"
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with dead and
+wounded, together with the heaviness of his head and the news that
+some twenty generals he knew personally had been killed or wounded,
+and the consciousness of the impotence of his once mighty arm,
+produced an unexpected impression on Napoleon who usually liked to
+look at the killed and wounded, thereby, he considered, testing his
+strength of mind. This day the horrible appearance of the
+battlefield overcame that strength of mind which he thought
+constituted his merit and his greatness. He rode hurriedly from the
+battlefield and returned to the Shevardino knoll, where he sat on
+his campstool, his sallow face swollen and heavy, his eyes dim, his
+nose red, and his voice hoarse, involuntarily listening, with downcast
+eyes, to the sounds of firing. With painful dejection he awaited the
+end of this action, in which he regarded himself as a participant
+and which he was unable to arrest. A personal, human feeling for a
+brief moment got the better of the artificial phantasm of life he
+had served so long. He felt in his own person the sufferings and death
+he had witnessed on the battlefield. The heaviness of his head and
+chest reminded him of the possibility of suffering and death for
+himself. At that moment he did not desire Moscow, or victory, or glory
+(what need had he for any more glory?). The one thing he wished for
+was rest, tranquillity, and freedom. But when he had been on the
+Semenovsk heights the artillery commander had proposed to him to bring
+several batteries of artillery up to those heights to strengthen the
+fire on the Russian troops crowded in front of Knyazkovo. Napoleon had
+assented and had given orders that news should be brought to him of
+the effect those batteries produced.
+
+An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of two hundred guns
+had been concentrated on the Russians, as he had ordered, but that
+they still held their ground.
+
+"Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they hold on," said
+the adjutant.
+
+"They want more!..." said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.
+
+"Sire?" asked the adjutant who had not heard the remark.
+
+"They want more!" croaked Napoleon frowning. "Let them have it!"
+
+Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and
+for which he gave the order only because he thought it was expected of
+him, was being done. And he fell back into that artificial realm of
+imaginary greatness, and again- as a horse walking a treadmill
+thinks it is doing something for itself- he submissively fulfilled the
+cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him.
+
+And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and conscience
+darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening
+lay more than on all the others who took part in it. Never to the
+end of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the
+significance of his actions which were too contrary to goodness and
+truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able to
+grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as
+they were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth,
+goodness, and all humanity.
+
+Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield strewn with
+men killed and maimed (by his will as he believed), did he reckon as
+he looked at them how many Russians there were for each Frenchman and,
+deceiving himself, find reason for rejoicing in the calculation that
+there were five Russians for every Frenchman. Not on that day alone
+did he write in a letter to Paris that "the battle field was
+superb," because fifty thousand corpses lay there, but even on the
+island of St. Helena in the peaceful solitude where he said he
+intended to devote his leisure to an account of the great deeds he had
+done, he wrote:
+
+The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern
+times: it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the
+tranquillity and security of all; it was purely pacific and
+conservative.
+
+It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the
+beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening
+out, full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system
+was already founded; all that remained was to organize it.
+
+Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I
+too should have had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. Those ideas were
+stolen from me. In that reunion of great sovereigns we should have
+discussed our interests like one family, and have rendered account
+to the peoples as clerk to master.
+
+Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people,
+and anyone who traveled anywhere would have found himself always in
+the common fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all
+navigable rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all,
+and that the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to
+mere guards for the sovereigns.
+
+On returning to France, to the bosom of the great, strong,
+magnificent, peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I should have
+proclaimed her frontiers immutable; all future wars purely
+defensive, all aggrandizement antinational. I should have associated
+my son in the Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and
+his constitutional reign would have begun.
+
+Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the
+envy of the nations!
+
+My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company
+with the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to
+leisurely visiting, with our own horses and like a true country
+couple, every corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing
+wrongs, and scattering public buildings and benefactions on all
+sides and everywhere.
+
+Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of
+executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his
+actions had been the peoples' welfare and that he could control the
+fate of millions and by the employment of power confer benefactions.
+
+"Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula," he wrote further
+of the Russian war, "half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles,
+Bavarians, Wurttembergers, Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and
+Neapolitans. The Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third
+composed of Dutch, Belgians, men from the borders of the Rhine,
+Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans, Romans, inhabitants of the
+Thirty-second Military Division, of Bremen, of Hamburg, and so on:
+it included scarcely a hundred and forty thousand who spoke French.
+The Russian expedition actually cost France less than fifty thousand
+men; the Russian army in its retreat from Vilna to Moscow lost in
+the various battles four times more men than the French army; the
+burning of Moscow cost the lives of a hundred thousand Russians who
+died of cold and want in the woods; finally, in its march from
+Moscow to the Oder the Russian army also suffered from the severity of
+the season; so that by the the time it reached Vilna it numbered
+only fifty thousand, and at Kalisch less than eighteen thousand."
+
+He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his will, and the
+horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul. He boldly took the
+whole responsibility for what happened, and his darkened mind found
+justification in the belief that among the hundreds of thousands who
+perished there were fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and Bavarians.
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures and
+various uniforms on the fields and meadows belonging to the Davydov
+family and to the crown serfs- those fields and meadows where for
+hundreds of years the peasants of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, and
+Semenovsk had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. At
+the dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood for a
+space of some three acres around. Crowds of men of various arms,
+wounded and unwounded, with frightened faces, dragged themselves
+back to Mozhaysk from the one army and back to Valuevo from the other.
+Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, went forward led by their
+officers. Others held their ground and continued to fire.
+
+Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitter
+of bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now
+spread a mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell of
+saltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fall
+on the dead and wounded, on the frightened, exhausted, and
+hesitating men, as if to say: "Enough, men! Enough! Cease... bethink
+yourselves! What are you doing?"
+
+To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest,
+it began equally to appear doubtful whether they should continue to
+slaughter one another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and the
+question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and
+be killed?... You may go and kill whom you please, but I don't want to
+do so anymore!" By evening this thought had ripened in every soul.
+At any moment these men might have been seized with horror at what
+they were doing and might have thrown up everything and run away
+anywhere.
+
+But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all the
+horror of what they were doing, though they would have been glad to
+leave off, some incomprehensible, mysterious power continued to
+control them, and they still brought up the charges, loaded, aimed,
+and applied the match, though only one artilleryman survived out of
+every three, and though they stumbled and panted with fatigue,
+perspiring and stained with blood and powder. The cannon balls flew
+just as swiftly and cruelly from both sides, crushing human bodies,
+and that terrible work which was not done by the will of a man but
+at the will of Him who governs men and worlds continued.
+
+Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army would
+have said that, if only the French made one more slight effort, it
+would disappear; and anyone looking at the rear of the French army
+would have said that the Russians need only make one more slight
+effort and the French would be destroyed. But neither the French nor
+the Russians made that effort, and the flame of battle burned slowly
+out.
+
+The Russians did not make that effort because they were not
+attacking the French. At the beginning of the battle they stood
+blocking the way to Moscow and they still did so at the end of the
+battle as at the beginning. But even had the aim of the Russians
+been to drive the French from their positions, they could not have
+made this last effort, for all the Russian troops had been broken
+up, there was no part of the Russian army that had not suffered in the
+battle, and though still holding their positions they had lost ONE
+HALF of their army.
+
+The French, with the memory of all their former victories during
+fifteen years, with the assurance of Napoleon's invincibility, with
+the consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield and
+had lost only a quarter of their men and still had their Guards
+intact, twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that effort.
+The French had attacked the Russian army in order to drive it from its
+position ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians
+continued to block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the French
+had not been attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain.
+But the French did not make that effort. Some historians say that
+Napoleon need only have used his Old Guards, who were intact, and
+the battle would have been won. To speak of what would have happened
+had Napoleon sent his Guards is like talking of what would happen if
+autumn became spring. It could not be. Napoleon did not give his
+Guards, not because he did not want to, but because it could not be
+done. All the generals, officers. and soldiers of the French army knew
+it could not be done, because the flagging spirit of the troops
+would not permitit.
+
+It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling
+of the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and
+soldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the battle or not,
+after all their experience of previous battles- when after one tenth
+of such efforts the enemy had fled- experienced a similar feeling of
+terror before an enemy who, after losing HALF his men, stood as
+threateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The
+moral force of the attacking French army was exhausted. Not that
+sort of victory which is defined by the capture of pieces of
+material fastened to sticks, called standards, and of the ground on
+which the troops had stood and were standing, but a moral victory that
+convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his opponent and of
+his own impotence was gained by the Russians at Borodino. The French
+invaders, like an infuriated animal that has in its onslaught received
+a mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but could not stop, any
+more than the Russian army, weaker by one half, could help swerving.
+By impetus gained, the French army was still able to roll forward to
+Moscow, but there, without further effort on the part of the Russians,
+it had to perish, bleeding from the mortal wound it had received at
+Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle of Borodino was
+Napoleon's senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along the old
+Smolensk road, the destruction of the invading army of five hundred
+thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at
+Borodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit
+had been laid.
+
+BOOK ELEVEN: 1812
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human
+mind. Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only
+when he examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but
+at the same time, a large proportion of human error comes from the
+arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements.
+There is a well known, so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in
+this, that Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was
+following, in spite of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast
+as the tortoise. By the time Achilles has covered the distance that
+separated him from the tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of
+that distance ahead of him: when Achilles has covered that tenth,
+the tortoise has covered another one hundredth, and so on forever.
+This problem seemed to the ancients insoluble. The absurd answer (that
+Achilles could never overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that
+motion was arbitrarily divided into discontinuous elements, whereas
+the motion both of Achilles and of the tortoise was continuous.
+
+By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we only
+approach a solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only when we
+have admitted the conception of the infinitely small, and the
+resulting geometrical progression with a common ratio of one tenth,
+and have found the sum of this progression to infinity, do we reach
+a solution of the problem.
+
+A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing
+with the infinitely small can now yield solutions in other more
+complex problems of motion which used to appear insoluble.
+
+This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when
+dealing with problems of motion admits the conception of the
+infinitely small, and so conforms to the chief condition of motion
+(absolute continuity) and thereby corrects the inevitable error
+which the human mind cannot avoid when it deals with separate elements
+of motion instead of examining continuous motion.
+
+In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing
+happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable
+arbitrary human wills, is continuous.
+
+To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of
+history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting from the sum of all
+those human wills, man's mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected
+units. The first method of history is to take an arbitrarily
+selected series of continuous events and examine it apart from others,
+though there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event
+always flows uninterruptedly from another.
+
+The second method is to consider the actions of some one man- a king
+or a commander- as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills;
+whereas the sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity
+of a single historic personage.
+
+Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth
+continually takes smaller and smaller units for examination. But
+however small the units it takes, we feel that to take any unit
+disconnected from others, or to assume a beginning of any
+phenomenon, or to say that the will of many men is expressed by the
+actions of any one historic personage, is in itself false.
+
+It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any
+deductions drawn from history. It is merely necessary to select some
+larger or smaller unit as the subject of observation- as criticism has
+every right to do, seeing that whatever unit history observes must
+always be arbitrarily selected.
+
+Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the
+differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men)
+and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum
+of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.
+
+The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe
+present an extraordinary movement of millions of people. Men leave
+their customary pursuits, hasten from one side of Europe to the other,
+plunder and slaughter one another, triumph and are plunged in despair,
+and for some years the whole course of life is altered and presents an
+intensive movement which first increases and then slackens. What was
+the cause of this movement, by what laws was it governed? asks the
+mind of man.
+
+The historians, replying to this question, lay before us the sayings
+and doings of a few dozen men in a building in the city of Paris,
+calling these sayings and doings "the Revolution"; then they give a
+detailed biography of Napoleon and of certain people favorable or
+hostile to him; tell of the influence some of these people had on
+others, and say: that is why this movement took place and those are
+its laws.
+
+But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this explanation,
+but plainly says that this method of explanation is fallacious,
+because in it a weaker phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger.
+The sum of human wills produced the Revolution and Napoleon, and
+only the sum of those wills first tolerated and then destroyed them.
+
+"But every time there have been conquests there have been
+conquerors; every time there has been a revolution in any state
+there have been great men," says history. And, indeed, human reason
+replies: every time conquerors appear there have been wars, but this
+does not prove that the conquerors caused the wars and that it is
+possible to find the laws of a war in the personal activity of a
+single man. Whenever I look at my watch and its hands point to ten,
+I hear the bells of the neighboring church; but because the bells
+begin to ring when the hands of the clock reach ten, I have no right
+to assume that the movement of the bells is caused by the position
+of the hands of the watch.
+
+Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear the whistle and
+see the valves opening and wheels turning; but I have no right to
+conclude that the whistling and the turning of wheels are the cause of
+the movement of the engine.
+
+The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the
+oaks are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when
+the oak is budding. But though I do not know what causes the cold
+winds to blow when the oak buds unfold, I cannot agree with the
+peasants that the unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold
+wind, for the force of the wind is beyond the influence of the buds. I
+see only a coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all the
+phenomena of life, and I see that however much and however carefully I
+observe the hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the
+engine, and the oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells
+ringing, the engine moving, or of the winds of spring. To that I
+must entirely change my point of view and study the laws of the
+movement of steam, of the bells, and of the wind. History must do
+the same. And attempts in this direction have already been made.
+
+To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject
+of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals,
+and the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are
+moved. No one can say in how far it is possible for man to advance
+in this way toward an understanding of the laws of history; but it
+is evident that only along that path does the possibility of
+discovering the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a millionth
+part as much mental effort has been applied in this direction by
+historians as has been devoted to describing the actions of various
+kings, commanders, and ministers and propounding the historians' own
+reflections concerning these actions.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The
+Russian army and people avoided a collision till Smolensk was reached,
+and again from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army pushed on to
+Moscow, its goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim,
+just as the velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches
+the earth. Behind it were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken,
+hostile country; ahead were a few dozen miles separating it from its
+goal. Every soldier in Napoleon's army felt this and the invasion
+moved on by its own momentum.
+
+The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of
+hatred of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army
+increased and consolidated. At Borodino a collision took place.
+Neither army was broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately
+after the collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding
+with another having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability
+the ball of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on
+for some distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its
+force.
+
+The Russians retreated eighty miles- to beyond Moscow- and the
+French reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks
+after that there was not a single battle. The French did not move.
+As a bleeding, mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained
+inert in Moscow for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh
+reason, fled back: they made a dash for the Kaluga road, and (after
+a victory- for at Malo-Yaroslavets the field of conflict again
+remained theirs) without undertaking a single serious battle, they
+fled still more rapidly back to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond
+the Berezina, beyond Vilna, and farther still.
+
+On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutuzov and the
+whole Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodino was a
+victory. Kutuzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare
+for a fresh conflict to finish the enemy and did this not to deceive
+anyone, but because he knew that the enemy was beaten, as everyone who
+had taken part in the battle knew it.
+
+But all that evening and next day reports came in one after
+another of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and a
+fresh battle proved physically impossible.
+
+It was impossible to give battle before information had been
+collected, the wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition
+replenished, the slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to
+replace those who had been killed, and before the men had had food and
+sleep. And meanwhile, the very next morning after the battle, the
+French army advanced of itself upon the Russians, carried forward by
+the force of its own momentum now seemingly increased in inverse
+proportion to the square of the distance from its aim. Kutuzov's
+wish was to attack next day, and the whole army desired to do so.
+But to make an attack the wish to do so is not sufficient, there
+must also be a possibility of doing it, and that possibility did not
+exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day's march, and then in the
+same way it was impossible not to retreat another and a third day's
+march, and at last, on the first of September when the army drew
+near Moscow- despite the strength of the feeling that had arisen in
+all ranks- the force of circumstances compelled it to retire beyond
+Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last, day's march, and
+abandoned Moscow to the enemy.
+
+For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles
+are made by generals- as any one of us sitting over a map in his study
+may imagine how he would have arranged things in this or that
+battle- the questions present themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the
+retreat not do this or that? Why did he not take up a position
+before reaching Fili? Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga
+road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed to think in that
+way forget, or do not know, the inevitable conditions which always
+limit the activities of any commander in chief. The activity of a
+commander in chief does not all resemble the activity we imagine to
+ourselves when we sit at case in our studies examining some campaign
+on the map, with a certain number of troops on this and that side in a
+certain known locality, and begin our plans from some given moment.
+A commander in chief is never dealing with the beginning of any event-
+the position from which we always contemplate it. The commander in
+chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events and so
+he never can at any moment consider the whole import of an event
+that is occurring. Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping
+itself, and at every moment of this continuous, uninterrupted
+shaping of events the commander in chief is in the midst of a most
+complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities,
+projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is continually obliged
+to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly
+conflict with one another.
+
+Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that Kutuzov
+should have moved his army to the Kaluga road long before reaching
+Fili, and that somebody actually submitted such a proposal to him. But
+a commander in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always
+before him not one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these
+proposals, based on strategics and tactics, contradict each other.
+
+A commander in chief's business, it would seem, is simply to
+choose one of these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events and
+time do not wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested
+to him to cross to the Kaluga road, but just then an adjutant
+gallops up from Miloradovich asking whether he is to engage the French
+or retire. An order must be given him at once, that instant. And the
+order to retreat carries us past the turn to the Kaluga road. And
+after the adjutant comes the commissary general asking where the
+stores are to be taken, and the chief of the hospitals asks where
+the wounded are to go, and a courier from Petersburg brings a letter
+from the sovereign which does not admit of the possibility of
+abandoning Moscow, and the commander in chief's rival, the man who
+is undermining him (and there are always not merely one but several
+such), presents a new project diametrically opposed to that of turning
+to the Kaluga road, and the commander in chief himself needs sleep and
+refreshment to maintain his energy and a respectable general who has
+been overlooked in the distribution of rewards comes to complain,
+and the inhabitants of the district pray to be defended, and an
+officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and gives a report quite
+contrary to what was said by the officer previously sent; and a spy, a
+prisoner, and a general who has been on reconnaissance, all describe
+the position of the enemy's army differently. People accustomed to
+misunderstand or to forget these inevitable conditions of a
+commander in chief's actions describe to us, for instance, the
+position of the army at Fili and assume that the commander in chief
+could, on the first of September, quite freely decide whether to
+abandon Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army less
+than four miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had that
+question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolensk and most palpably
+of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevardino and on the
+twenty-sixth at Borodino, and each day and hour and minute of the
+retreat from Borodino to Fili.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+When Ermolov, having been sent by Kutuzov to inspect the position,
+told the field marshal that it was impossible to fight there before
+Moscow and that they must retreat, Kutuzov looked at him in silence.
+
+"Give me your hand," said he and, turning it over so as to feel
+the pulse, added: "You are not well, my dear fellow. Think what you
+are saying!"
+
+Kutuzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond
+Moscow without a battle.
+
+On the Poklonny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomilov gate of
+Moscow, Kutuzov got out of his carriage and sat down on a bench by the
+roadside. A great crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count
+Rostopchin, who had come out from Moscow, joined them. This
+brilliant company separated into several groups who all discussed
+the advantages and disadvantages of the position, the state of the
+army, the plans suggested, the situation of Moscow, and military
+questions generally. Though they had not been summoned for the
+purpose, and though it was not so called, they all felt that this
+was really a council of war. The conversations all dealt with public
+questions. If anyone gave or asked for personal news, it was done in a
+whisper and they immediately reverted to general matters. No jokes, or
+laughter, or smiles even, were seen among all these men. They
+evidently all made an effort to hold themselves at the height the
+situation demanded. And all these groups, while talking among
+themselves, tried to keep near the commander in chief (whose bench
+formed the center of the gathering) and to speak so that he might
+overhear them. The commander in chief listened to what was being
+said and sometimes asked them to repeat their remarks, but did not
+himself take part in the conversations or express any opinion. After
+hearing what was being said by one or other of these groups he
+generally turned away with an air of disappointment, as though they
+were not speaking of anything he wished to hear. Some discussed the
+position that had been chosen, criticizing not the position itself
+so much as the mental capacity of those who had chosen it. Others
+argued that a mistake had been made earlier and that a battle should
+have been fought two days before. Others again spoke of the battle
+of Salamanca, which was described by Crosart, a newly arrived
+Frenchman in a Spanish uniform. (This Frenchman and one of the
+German princes serving with the Russian army were discussing the siege
+of Saragossa and considering the possibility of defending Moscow in
+a similar manner.) Count Rostopchin was telling a fourth group that he
+was prepared to die with the city train bands under the walls of the
+capital, but that he still could not help regretting having been
+left in ignorance of what was happening, and that had he known it
+sooner things would have been different.... A fifth group,
+displaying the profundity of their strategic perceptions, discussed
+the direction the troops would now have to take. A sixth group was
+talking absolute nonsense. Kutuzov's expression grew more and more
+preoccupied and gloomy. From all this talk he saw only one thing: that
+to defend Moscow was a physical impossibility in the full meaning of
+those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if any
+senseless commander were to give orders to fight, confusion would
+result but the battle would still not take place. It would not take
+place because the commanders not merely all recognized the position to
+be impossible, but in their conversations were only discussing what
+would happen after its inevitable abandonment. How could the
+commanders lead their troops to a field of battle they considered it
+impossible to hold? The lower-grade officers and even the soldiers
+(who too reason) also considered the position impossible and therefore
+could not go to fight, fully convinced as they were of defeat. If
+Bennigsen insisted on the position being defended and others still
+discussed it, the question was no longer important in itself but
+only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue. This Kutuzov knew well.
+
+Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian
+patriotism (Kutuzov could not listen to this without wincing) by
+insisting that Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as
+daylight to Kutuzov: if the defense failed, to throw the blame on
+Kutuzov who had brought the army as far as the Sparrow Hills without
+giving battle; if it succeeded, to claim the success as his own; or if
+battle were not given, to clear himself of the crime of abandoning
+Moscow. But this intrigue did not now occupy the old man's mind. One
+terrible question absorbed him and to that question he heard no
+reply from anyone. The question for him now was: "Have I really
+allowed Napoleon to reach Moscow, and when did I do so? When was it
+decided? Can it have been yesterday when I ordered Platov to
+retreat, or was it the evening before, when I had a nap and told
+Bennigsen to issue orders? Or was it earlier still?... When, when
+was this terrible affair decided? Moscow must be abandoned. The army
+must retreat and the order to do so must be given." To give that
+terrible order seemed to him equivalent to resigning the command of
+the army. And not only did he love power to which he was accustomed
+(the honours awarded to Prince Prozorovski, under whom he had served
+in Turkey, galled him), but he was convinced that he was destined to
+save Russia and that that was why, against the Emperor's wish and by
+the will of the people, he had been chosen commander in chief. He
+was convinced that he alone could maintain command of the army in
+these difficult circumstances, and that in all the world he alone
+could encounter the invincible Napoleon without fear, and he was
+horrified at the thought of the order he had to issue. But something
+had to be decided, and these conversations around him which were
+assuming too free a character must be stopped.
+
+He called the most important generals to him.
+
+"My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself," said he, rising
+from the bench, and he rode to Fili where his carriages were waiting.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The Council of War began to assemble at two in the afternoon in
+the better and roomier part of Andrew Savostyanov's hut. The men,
+women, and children of the large peasant family crowded into the
+back room across the passage. Only Malasha, Andrew's six-year-old
+granddaughter whom his Serene Highness had petted and to whom he had
+given a lump of sugar while drinking his tea, remained on the top of
+the brick oven in the larger room. Malasha looked down from the oven
+with shy delight at the faces, uniforms, and decorations of the
+generals, who one after another came into the room and sat down on the
+broad benches in the corner under the icons. "Granddad" himself, as
+Malasha in her own mind called Kutuzov, sat apart in a dark corner
+behind the oven. He sat, sunk deep in a folding armchair, and
+continually cleared his throat and pulled at the collar of his coat
+which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed to pinch his neck. Those
+who entered went up one by one to the field marshal; he pressed the
+hands of some and nodded to others. His adjutant Kaysarov was about to
+draw back the curtain of the window facing Kutuzov, but the latter
+moved his hand angrily and Kaysarov understood that his Serene
+Highness did not wish his face to be seen.
+
+Round the peasant's deal table, on which lay maps, plans, pencils,
+and papers, so many people gathered that the orderlies brought in
+another bench and put it beside the table. Ermolov, Kaysarov, and
+Toll, who had just arrived, sat down on this bench. In the foremost
+place, immediately under the icons, sat Barclay de Tolly, his high
+forehead merging into his bald crown. He had a St. George's Cross
+round his neck and looked pale and ill. He had been feverish for two
+days and was now shivering and in pain. Beside him sat Uvarov, who
+with rapid gesticulations was giving him some information, speaking in
+low tones as they all did. Chubby little Dokhturov was listening
+attentively with eyebrows raised and arms folded on his stomach. On
+the other side sat Count Ostermann-Tolstoy, seemingly absorbed in
+his own thoughts. His broad head with its bold features and glittering
+eyes was resting on his hand. Raevski, twitching forward the black
+hair on his temples as was his habit, glanced now at Kutuzov and now
+at the door with a look of impatience. Konovnitsyn's firm, handsome,
+and kindly face was lit up by a tender, sly smile. His glance met
+Malasha's, and the expression of his eyes caused the little girl to
+smile.
+
+They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext of
+inspecting the position was finishing his savory dinner. They waited
+for him from four till six o'clock and did not begin their
+deliberations all that time talked in low tones of other matters.
+
+Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutuzov leave his corner
+and draw toward the table, but not near enough for the candles that
+had been placed there to light up his face.
+
+Bennigsen opened the council with the question: "Are we to abandon
+Russia's ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or are we to
+defend it?" A prolonged and general silence followed. There was a
+frown on every face and only Kutuzov's angry grunts and occasional
+cough broke the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malasha too
+looked at "Granddad." She was nearest to him and saw how his face
+puckered; he seemed about to cry, but this did not last long.
+
+"Russia's ancient and sacred capital!" he suddenly said, repeating
+Bennigsen's words in an angry voice and thereby drawing attention to
+the false note in them. "Allow me to tell you, your excellency, that
+that question has no meaning for a Russian." (He lurched his heavy
+body forward.) "Such a question cannot be put; it is senseless! The
+question I have asked these gentlemen to meet to discuss is a military
+one. The question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to give up
+Moscow without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the
+army as well as Moscow? That is the question on which I want your
+opinion," and he sank back in his chair.
+
+The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider his game
+lost. Admitting the view of Barclay and others that a defensive battle
+at Fili was impossible, but imbued with Russian patriotism and the
+love of Moscow, he proposed to move troops from the right to the
+left flank during the night and attack the French right flank the
+following day. Opinions were divided, and arguments were advanced
+for and against that project. Ermolov, Dokhturov, and Raevski agreed
+with Bennigsen. Whether feeling it necessary to make a sacrifice
+before abandoning the capital or guided by other, personal
+considerations, these generals seemed not to understand that this
+council could not alter the inevitable course of events and that
+Moscow was in effect already abandoned. The other generals, however,
+understood it and, leaving aside the question of Moscow, of the
+direction the army should take in its retreat. Malasha, who kept her
+eyes fixed on what was going on before her, understood the meaning
+of the council differently. It seemed to her that it was only a
+personal struggle between "Granddad" and "Long-coat" as she termed
+Bennigsen. She saw that they grew spiteful when they spoke to one
+another, and in her heart she sided with "Granddad." In the midst of
+the conversation she noticed "Granddad" give Bennigsen a quick, subtle
+glance, and then to her joys he saw that "Granddad" said something
+to "Long-coat" which settled him. Bennigsen suddenly reddened and
+paced angrily up and down the room. What so affected him was Kutuzov's
+calm and quiet comment on the advantage or disadvantage of Bennigsen's
+proposal to move troops by night from the right to the left flank to
+attack the French right wing.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Kutuzov, "I cannot approve of the count's plan.
+Moving troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous,
+and military history supports that view. For instance..." Kutuzov
+seemed to reflect, searching for an example, then with a clear,
+naive look at Bennigsen he added: "Oh yes; take the battle of
+Friedland, which I think the count well remembers, and which was...
+not fully successful, only because our troops were rearranged too near
+the enemy..."
+
+There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very long to them
+all.
+
+The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently occurred and
+they all felt that there was no more to be said.
+
+During one of these pauses Kutuzov heaved a deep sigh as if
+preparing to speak. They all looked at him.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the
+broken crockery," said he, and rising slowly he moved to the table.
+"Gentlemen, I have heard your views. Some of you will not agree with
+me. But I," he paused, "by the authority entrusted to me by my
+Sovereign and country, order a retreat."
+
+After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and
+circumspect silence of people who are leaving, after a funeral.
+
+Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very different
+from the way they had spoken during the council, communicated
+something to their commander in chief.
+
+Malasha, who had long been expected for supper, climbed carefully
+backwards down from the oven, her bare little feet catching at its
+projections, and slipping between the legs of the generals she
+darted out of the room.
+
+When he had dismissed the generals Kutuzov sat a long time with
+his elbows on the table, thinking always of the same terrible
+question: "When, when did the abandonment of Moscow become inevitable?
+When was that done which settled the matter? And who was to blame
+for it?"
+
+"I did not expect this," said he to his adjutant Schneider when
+the latter came in late that night. "I did not expect this! I did
+not think this would happen."
+
+"You should take some rest, your Serene Highness," replied
+Schneider.
+
+"But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!" exclaimed
+Kutuzov without replying, striking the table with his podgy fist.
+"They shall too, if only..."
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+At that very time, in circumstances even more important than
+retreating without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of
+Moscow, Rostopchin, who is usually represented as being the instigator
+of that event, acted in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov.
+
+After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscow
+was as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow without
+fighting.
+
+Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the
+feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.
+
+The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all the
+towns and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk, without
+the participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. The
+people awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited
+or tear anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it the
+strength to find what it should do at that most difficult moment.
+And as soon as the enemy drew near the wealthy classes went away
+abandoning their property, while the poorer remained and burned and
+destroyed what was left.
+
+The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was
+and is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness of
+this, and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present in
+Russian Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already
+in July and at the beginning of August showed that they expected this.
+Those who went away, taking what they could and abandoning their
+houses and half their belongings, did so from the latent patriotism
+which expresses itself not by phrases or by giving one's children to
+save the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively,
+simply, organically, and therefore in the way that always produces the
+most powerful results.
+
+"It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running
+away from Moscow," they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchin
+impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed
+to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing
+it had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose that
+Rostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had
+committed in conquered countries. The first people to go away were the
+rich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had
+remained intact and that during Napoleon's occupation the
+inhabitants had spent their time pleasantly in the company of the
+charming Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the Russian
+ladies, then liked so much.
+
+They went away because for Russians there could be no question as to
+whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It
+was out of the question to be under French rule, it would be the worst
+thing that could happen. They went away even before the battle of
+Borodino and still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin's calls
+to defend Moscow or the announcement of his intention to take the
+wonder-working icon of the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, or
+of the balloons that were to destroy the French, and despite all the
+nonsense Rostopchin wrote in his broadsheets. They knew that it was
+for the army to fight, and that if it could not succeed it would not
+do to take young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarter
+of Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that they must go away, sorry as they
+were to abandon their property to destruction. They went away
+without thinking of the tremendous significance of that immense and
+wealthy city being given over to destruction, for a great city with
+wooden buildings was certain when abandoned by its inhabitants to be
+burned. They went away each on his own account, and yet it was only in
+consequence of their going away that the momentous event was
+accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russian
+people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count Rostopchin's
+orders, had already in June moved with her Negroes and her women
+jesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with a vague
+consciousness that she was not Bonaparte's servant, was really,
+simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia.
+But Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now
+had the government offices removed; now distributed quite useless
+weapons to the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying the
+icons, and now forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics
+of saints; now seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one
+hundred and thirty-six of them removed the balloon that was being
+constructed by Leppich; now hinted that he would burn Moscow and
+related how he had set fire to his own house; now wrote a proclamation
+to the French solemnly upbraiding them for having destroyed his
+Orphanage; now claimed the glory of having hinted that he would burn
+Moscow and now repudiated the deed; now ordered the people to catch
+all spies and bring them to him, and now reproached them for doing so;
+now expelled all the French residents from Moscow, and now allowed
+Madame Aubert-Chalme (the center of the whole French colony in Moscow)
+to remain, but ordered the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev to be
+arrested and exiled for no particular offense; now assembled the
+people at the Three Hills to fight the French and now, to get rid of
+them, handed over to them a man to be killed and himself drove away by
+a back gate; now declared that he would not survive the fall of
+Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums concerning his share
+in the affair- this man did not understand the meaning of what was
+happening but merely wanted to do something himself that would
+astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like a
+child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable event- the
+abandonment and burning of Moscow- and tried with his puny hand now to
+speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him along
+with it.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Helene, having returned with the court from Vilna to Petersburg,
+found herself in a difficult position.
+
+In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a grandee
+who occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire. In Vilna she
+had formed an intimacy with a young foreign prince. When she
+returned to Petersburg both the magnate and the prince were there, and
+both claimed their rights. Helene was faced by a new problem- how to
+preserve her intimacy with both without offending either.
+
+What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to another woman
+did not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezukhova, who
+evidently deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman. Had
+she attempted concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her
+awkward position by cunning, she would have spoiled her case by
+acknowledging herself guilty. But Helene, like a really great man
+who can do whatever he pleases, at once assumed her own position to be
+correct, as she sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone else
+was to blame.
+
+The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach
+her, she lifted her beautiful head and, half turning to him, said
+firmly: "That's just like a man- selfish and cruel! I expected nothing
+else. A woman sacrifices herself for you, she suffers, and this is her
+reward! What right have you, monseigneur, to demand an account of my
+attachments and friendships? He is a man who has been more than a
+father to me!" The prince was about to say something, but Helene
+interrupted him.
+
+"Well, yes," said she, "it may be that he has other sentiments for
+me than those of a father, but that is not a reason for me to shut
+my door on him. I am not a man, that I should repay kindness with
+ingratitude! Know, monseigneur, that in all that relates to my
+intimate feelings I render account only to God and to my
+conscience," she concluded, laying her hand on her beautiful, fully
+expanded bosom and looking up to heaven.
+
+"But for heaven's sake listen to me!"
+
+"Marry me, and I will be your slave!"
+
+"But that's impossible."
+
+"You won't deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you..." said
+Helene, beginning to cry.
+
+The prince tried to comfort her, but Helene, as if quite distraught,
+said through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying,
+that there were precedents (there were up to that time very few, but
+she mentioned Napoleon and some other exalted personages), that she
+had never been her husband's wife, and that she had been sacrificed.
+
+"But the law, religion..." said the prince, already yielding.
+
+"The law, religion... What have they been invented for if they can't
+arrange that?" said Helene.
+
+The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred
+to him, and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the
+Society of Jesus, with whom he was on intimate terms.
+
+A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which Helene
+gave at her country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur
+de Jobert, a man no longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant
+black eyes, a Jesuit a robe courte~^ was presented to her, and in the
+garden by the light of the illuminations and to the sound of music
+talked to her for a long time of the love of God, of Christ, of the
+Sacred Heart, and of the consolations the one true Catholic religion
+affords in this world and the next. Helene was touched, and more
+than once tears rose to her eyes and to those of Monsieur de Jobert
+and their voices trembled. A dance, for which her partner came to seek
+her, put an end to her discourse with her future directeur de
+conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de Jobert came to see Helene
+when she was alone, and after that often came again.
+
+^~ Lay member of the Society of Jesus.
+
+One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church, where she
+knelt down before the altar to which she was led. The enchanting,
+middle-aged Frenchman laid his hands on her head and, as she herself
+afterward described it, she felt something like a fresh breeze
+wafted into her soul. It was explained to her that this was la grace.
+
+After that a long-frocked abbe was brought to her. She confessed
+to him, and he absolved her from her sins. Next day she received a box
+containing the Sacred Host, which was left at her house for her to
+partake of. A few days later Helene learned with pleasure that she had
+now been admitted to the true Catholic Church and that in a few days
+the Pope himself would hear of her and would send her a certain
+document.
+
+All that was done around her and to her at this time, all the
+attention devoted to her by so many clever men and expressed in such
+pleasant, refined ways, and the state of dove-like purity she was
+now in (she wore only white dresses and white ribbons all that time)
+gave her pleasure, but her pleasure did not cause her for a moment
+to forget her aim. And as it always happens in contests of cunning
+that a stupid person gets the better of cleverer ones, Helene-
+having realized that the main object of all these words and all this
+trouble was, after converting her to Catholicism, to obtain money from
+her for Jesuit institutions (as to which she received indications)-
+before parting with her money insisted that the various operations
+necessary to free her from her husband should be performed. In her
+view the aim of every religion was merely to preserve certain
+proprieties while affording satisfaction to human desires. And with
+this aim, in one of her talks with her Father Confessor, she
+insisted on an answer to the question, in how far was she bound by her
+marriage?
+
+They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing room.
+The scent of flowers came in at the window. Helene was wearing a white
+dress, transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbe, a
+well-fed man with a plump, clean-shaven chin, a pleasant firm mouth,
+and white hands meekly folded on his knees, sat close to Helene and,
+with a subtle smile on his lips and a peaceful look of delight at
+her beauty, occasionally glanced at her face as he explained his
+opinion on the subject. Helene with an uneasy smile looked at his
+curly hair and his plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every
+moment expected the conversation to take a fresh turn. But the abbe,
+though he evidently enjoyed the beauty of his companion, was
+absorbed in his mastery of the matter.
+
+The course of the Father Confessor's arguments ran as follows:
+"Ignorant of the import of what you were undertaking, you made a vow
+of conjugal fidelity to a man who on his part, by entering the married
+state without faith in the religious significance of marriage,
+committed an act of sacrilege. That marriage lacked the dual
+significance it should have had. Yet in spite of this your vow was
+binding. You swerved from it. What did you commit by so acting? A
+venial, or a mortal, sin? A venial sin, for you acted without evil
+intention. If now you married again with the object of bearing
+children, your sin might be forgiven. But the question is again a
+twofold one: firstly..."
+
+But suddenly Helene, who was getting bored, said with one of her
+bewitching smiles: "But I think that having espoused the true religion
+I cannot be bound by what a false religion laid upon me."
+
+The director of her conscience was astounded at having the case
+presented to him thus with the simplicity of Columbus' egg. He was
+delighted at the unexpected rapidity of his pupil's progress, but
+could not abandon the edifice of argument he had laboriously
+constructed.
+
+"Let us understand one another, Countess," said he with a smile, and
+began refuting his spiritual daughter's arguments.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Helene understood that the question was very simple and easy from
+the ecclesiastical point of view, and that her directors were making
+difficulties only because they were apprehensive as to how the
+matter would be regarded by the secular authorities.
+
+So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion of
+society. She provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate and told him
+what she had told her other suitor; that is, she put the matter so
+that the only way for him to obtain a right over her was to marry her.
+The elderly magnate was at first as much taken aback by this
+suggestion of marriage with a woman whose husband was alive, as the
+younger man had been, but Helene's imperturbable conviction that it
+was as simple and natural as marrying a maiden had its effect on him
+too. Had Helene herself shown the least sign of hesitation, shame,
+or secrecy, her cause would certainly have been lost; but not only did
+she show no signs of secrecy or shame, on the contrary, with
+good-natured naivete she told her intimate friends (and these were all
+Petersburg) that both the prince and the magnate had proposed to her
+and that she loved both and was afraid of grieving either.
+
+A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Helene wanted
+to be divorced from her husband (had such a report spread many would
+have opposed so illegal an intention) but simply that the
+unfortunate and interesting Helene was in doubt which of the two men
+she should marry. The question was no longer whether this was
+possible, but only which was the better match and how the matter would
+be regarded at court. There were, it is true, some rigid individuals
+unable to rise to the height of such a question, who saw in the
+project a desecration of the sacrament of marriage, but there were not
+many such and they remained silent, while the majority were interested
+in Helene's good fortune and in the question which match would be
+the more advantageous. Whether it was right or wrong to remarry
+while one had a husband living they did not discuss, for that question
+had evidently been settled by people "wiser than you or me," as they
+said, and to doubt the correctness of that decision would be to risk
+exposing one's stupidity and incapacity to live in society.
+
+Only Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, had come to Petersburg that
+summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express an
+opinion contrary to the general one. Meeting Helene at a ball she
+stopped her in the middle of the room and, amid general silence,
+said in her gruff voice: "So wives of living men have started marrying
+again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been
+forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all
+the brothels," and with these words Marya Dmitrievna, turning up her
+wide sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly
+round, moved across the room.
+
+Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitrievna she was regarded in
+Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only
+noticed, and repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had
+used, supposing the whole sting of her remark to lie in that word.
+
+Prince Vasili, who of late very often forgot what he had said and
+repeated one and the same thing a hundred times, remarked to his
+daughter whenever he chanced to see her:
+
+"Helene, I have a word to say to you," and he would lead her
+aside, drawing her hand downward. "I have heard of certain projects
+concerning... you know. Well my dear child, you know how your father's
+heart rejoices to know that you... You have suffered so much....
+But, my dear child, consult only your own heart. That is all I have to
+say," and concealing his unvarying emotion he would press his cheek
+against his daughter's and move away.
+
+Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever
+man, and who was one of one of the disinterested friends so
+brilliant a woman as Helene always has- men friends who can never
+change into lovers- once gave her his view of the matter at a small
+and intimate gathering.
+
+"Listen, Bilibin," said Helene (she always called friends of that
+sort by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her
+white, beringed fingers. "Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought
+to do. Which of the two?"
+
+Bilibin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with
+a smile on his lips.
+
+"You are not taking me unawares, you know," said he. "As a true
+friend, I have thought and thought again about your affair. You see,
+if you marry the prince"- he meant the younger man- and he crooked one
+finger, "you forever lose the chance of marrying the other, and you
+will displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind of
+connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last
+days happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would no longer be
+making a mesalliance by marrying you," and Bilibin smoothed out his
+forehead.
+
+"That's a true friend!" said Helene beaming, and again touching
+Bilibin's sleeve. "But I love them, you know, and don't want to
+distress either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of
+them both."
+
+Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he
+could help in that difficulty.
+
+"Une maitresse-femme!~^ That's what is called putting things
+squarely. She would like to be married to all three at the same time,"
+thought he.
+
+^~ A masterly woman.
+
+"But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?" Bilibin
+asked, his reputation being so well established that he did not fear
+to ask so naive a question. "Will he agree?"
+
+"Oh, he loves me so!" said Helene, who for some reason imagined that
+Pierre too loved her. "He will do anything for me."
+
+Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.
+
+"Even divorce you?" said he.
+
+Helene laughed.
+
+Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed
+marriage was Helene's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was continually
+tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned
+a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to
+the idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of
+divorce and remarriage during a husband's lifetime, and the priest
+told her that it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a
+text in the Gospel which (as it seemed to him) plainly remarriage
+while the husband is alive.
+
+Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable,
+she drove to her daughter's early one morning so as to find her alone.
+
+Having listened to her mother's objections, Helene smiled blandly
+and ironically.
+
+"But it says plainly: 'Whosoever shall marry her that is
+divorced...'" said the old princess.
+
+"Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rein. Dans ma
+position j'ai des devoirs,"~^ said Helene changing from Russian, in
+which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite
+clear, into French which suited it better.
+
+^~ "Oh, Mamma, don't talk nonsense! You don't understand anything.
+In my position I have obligations.
+
+"But, my dear...."
+
+"Oh, Mamma, how is it you don't understand that the Holy Father, who
+has the right to grant dispensations..."
+
+Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene came in to
+announce that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.
+
+"Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse
+contre lui, parce qu'il m' a manque parole."~^
+
+^~ "No, tell him I don't wish to see him, I am furious with him for
+not keeping his word to me."
+
+"Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde,"~^ said a fair-haired young
+man with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.
+
+^~ "Countess, there is mercy for every sin."
+
+The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who
+had entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter
+and sidled out of the room.
+
+"Yes, she is right," thought the old princess, all her convictions
+dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. "She is right, but how
+is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so
+simple," she thought as she got into her carriage.
+
+By the beginning of August Helene's affairs were clearly defined and
+she wrote a letter to her husband- who, as she imagined, loved her
+very much- informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her
+having embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all
+the formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to
+him by the bearer of the letter.
+
+And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful
+keeping- Your friend Helene.
+
+This letter was brought to Pierre's house when he was on the field
+of Borodino.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre, having run down
+from Raevski's battery a second time, made his way through a gully
+to Knyazkovo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station,
+and seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still
+entangled in the crowds of soldiers.
+
+The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away
+quickly from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that
+day and return to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a
+room in his own bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of
+life would he be able to understand himself and all he had seen and
+felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.
+
+Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along
+which he was going, still on all sides there was what there had been
+on the field of battle. There were still the same suffering,
+exhausted, and sometimes strangely indifferent faces, the same
+blood, the same soldiers' overcoats, the same sounds of firing
+which, though distant now, still aroused terror, and besides this
+there were the foul air and the dust.
+
+Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk road, Pierre sat
+down by the roadside.
+
+Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay
+leaning on his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved
+past him in the darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon
+ball was flying toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he
+shuddered and sat up. He had no idea how long he had been there. In
+the middle of the night three soldiers, having brought some
+firewood, settled down near him and began lighting a fire.
+
+The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got the fire
+to burn and placed an iron pot on it into which they broke some
+dried bread and put a little dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy
+viands mingled with the smell of smoke. Pierre sat up and sighed.
+The three soldiers were eating and talking among themselves, taking no
+notice of him.
+
+"And who may you be?" one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently
+meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: "If you want to eat
+we'll give you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest
+man."
+
+"I, I..." said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his social
+position as much as possible so as to be nearer to the soldiers and
+better understood by them. "By rights I am a militia officer, but my
+men are not here. I came to the battle and have lost them."
+
+"There now!" said one of the soldiers.
+
+Another shook his head.
+
+"Would you like a little mash?" the first soldier asked, and
+handed Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.
+
+Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they
+called the food in the cauldron, and he thought it more delicious than
+any food he had ever tasted. As he sat bending greedily over it,
+helping himself to large spoonfuls and chewing one after another,
+his was lit up by the fire and the soldiers looked at him in silence.
+
+"Where have you to go to? Tell us!" said one of them.
+
+"To Mozhaysk."
+
+"You're a gentleman, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what's your name?"
+
+"Peter Kirilych."
+
+"Well then, Peter Kirilych, come along with us, we'll take you
+there."
+
+In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozhaysk.
+
+By the time they got near Mozhaysk and began ascending the steep
+hill into the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on
+with the soldiers, quite forgetting that his inn was at the bottom
+of the hill and that he had already passed it. He would not soon
+have remembered this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had he
+not halfway up the hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to
+look for him in the town and was returning to the inn. The groom
+recognized Pierre in the darkness by his white hat.
+
+"Your excellency!" he said. "Why, we were beginning to despair!
+How is it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Pierre.
+
+The soldiers stopped.
+
+"So you've found your folk?" said one of them. "Well, good-by, Peter
+Kirilych- isn't it?"
+
+"Good-by, Peter Kirilych!" Pierre heard the other voices repeat.
+
+"Good-by!" he said and turned with his groom toward the inn.
+
+"I ought to give them something!" he thought, and felt in his
+pocket. "No, better not!" said another, inner voice.
+
+There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied.
+Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all,
+lay down in his carriage.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt
+himself falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness
+of reality, he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of
+projectiles, groans and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a
+feeling of horror and dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he
+opened his eyes and lifted his head from under his cloak. All was
+tranquil in the yard. Only someone's orderly passed through the
+gateway, splashing through the mud, and talked to the innkeeper. Above
+Pierre's head some pigeons, disturbed by the movement he had made in
+sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof of the penthouse. The
+whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful smell of stable
+yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see the clear
+starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.
+
+"Thank God, there is no more of that!" he thought, covering up his
+head again. "Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I
+yielded to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time,
+to the end..." thought he.
+
+They, in Pierre's mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the
+battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before
+the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood
+out clearly and sharply from everyone else.
+
+"To be a soldier, just a soldier!" thought Pierre as he fell asleep,
+"to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them
+what they are. But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden
+of my outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could
+have run away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been
+sent to serve as a soldier after the duel with Dolokhov." And the
+memory of the dinner at the English Club when he had challenged
+Dolokhov flashed through Pierre's mind, and then he remembered his
+benefactor at Torzhok. And now a picture of a solemn meeting of the
+lodge presented itself to his mind. It was taking place at the English
+Club and someone near and dear to him sat at the end of the table.
+"Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor. But he died!" thought Pierre.
+"Yes, he died, and I did not know he was alive. How sorry I am that he
+died, and how glad I am that he is alive again!" On one side of the
+table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitski, Denisov, and others like
+them (in his dream the category to which these men belonged was as
+clearly defined in his mind as the category of those he termed
+they), and he heard those people, Anatole and Dolokhov, shouting and
+singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his benefactor
+was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words was as
+weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but
+pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor
+was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite
+distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the
+possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind,
+firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they
+were kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him.
+Wishing to speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at
+that moment his legs grew cold and bare.
+
+He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his
+cloak had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his
+cloak Pierre opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs,
+posts, and yard, but now they were all bluish, lit up, and
+glittering with frost or dew.
+
+"It is dawn," thought Pierre. "But that's not what I want. I want to
+hear and understand my benefactor's words." Again he covered himself
+up with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was
+there. There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts
+that someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating.
+
+Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that
+someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of
+that day had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to
+think and express his thoughts like that when awake.
+
+"To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man's
+freedom to the law of God," the voice had said. "Simplicity is
+submission to the will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they
+are simple. They do not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but
+the unspoken is golden. Man can be master of nothing while he fears
+death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no
+suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself.
+The hardest thing [Pierre went on thinking, or hearing, in his
+dream] is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To
+unite all?" he asked himself. "No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be
+united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need!
+Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!" he repeated to himself
+with inward rapture, feeling that these words and they alone expressed
+what he wanted to say and solved the question that tormented him.
+
+"Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness."
+
+"Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your
+excellency!" some voice was repeating. "We must harness, it is time to
+harness...."
+
+It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone
+straight into Pierre's face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the
+middle of which soldiers were watering their lean horses at the pump
+while carts were passing out of the gate. Pierre turned away with
+repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back on the carriage
+seat. "No, I don't want that, I don't want to see and understand that.
+I want to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream.
+One second more and I should have understood it all! But what am I
+to do? Harness, but how can I harness everything?" and Pierre felt
+with horror that the meaning of all he had seen and thought in the
+dream had been destroyed.
+
+The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an
+officer had come with news that the French were already near
+Mozhaysk and that our men were leaving it.
+
+Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him,
+went on foot through the town.
+
+The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind
+them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses,
+and the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts
+that were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and
+blows could be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which
+had overtaken him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove with him to
+Moscow. On the way Pierre was told of the death of his
+brother-in-law Anatole and of that of Prince Andrew.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+On the thirteenth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the
+gates of the city he was met by Count Rostopchin's adjutant.
+
+"We have been looking for you everywhere," said the adjutant. "The
+count wants to see you particularly. He asks you to come to him at
+once on a very important matter."
+
+Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see the Moscow
+commander in chief.
+
+Count Rostopchin had only that morning returned to town from his
+summer villa at Sokolniki. The anteroom and reception room of his
+house were full of officials who had been summoned or had come for
+orders. Vasilchikov and Platov had already seen the count and
+explained to him that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it
+would have to be surrendered. Though this news was being concealed
+from the inhabitants, the officials- the heads of the various
+government departments- knew that Moscow would soon be in the
+enemy's hands, just as Count Rostopchin himself knew it, and to escape
+personal responsibility they had all come to the governor to ask how
+they were to deal with their various departments.
+
+As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from the army
+came out of Rostopchin's private room.
+
+In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the courier made a
+despairing gesture with his hand and passed through the room.
+
+While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary eyes watched
+the various officials, old and young, military and civilian, who
+were there. They all seemed dissatisfied and uneasy. Pierre went up to
+a group of men, one of whom he knew. After greeting Pierre they
+continued their conversation.
+
+"If they're sent out and brought back again later on it will do no
+harm, but as things are now one can't answer for anything."
+
+"But you see what he writes..." said another, pointing to a
+printed sheet he held in his hand.
+
+"That's another matter. That's necessary for the people," said the
+first.
+
+"What is it?" asked Pierre.
+
+"Oh, it's a fresh broadsheet."
+
+Pierre took it and began reading.
+
+His Serene Highness has passed through Mozhaysk in order to join
+up with the troops moving toward him and has taken up a strong
+position where the enemy will not soon attack him. Forty eight guns
+with ammunition have been sent him from here, and his Serene
+Highness says he will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is
+even ready to fight in the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that
+the law courts are closed; things have to be put in order, and we will
+deal with villains in our own way! When the time comes I shall want
+both town and peasant lads and will raise the cry a day or two
+beforehand, but they are not wanted yet so I hold my peace. An ax will
+be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a three-pronged fork will be
+best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow
+after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the Mother of God to the
+wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will have some water
+blessed. That will help them to get well quicker. I, too, am well now:
+one of my eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout with both.
+
+"But military men have told me that it is impossible to fight in the
+town," said Pierre, "and that the position..."
+
+"Well, of course! That's what we were saying," replied the first
+speaker.
+
+"And what does he mean by 'One of my eyes was sore but now I am on
+the lookout with both'?" asked Pierre.
+
+"The count had a sty," replied the adjutant smiling, "and was very
+much upset when I told him people had come to ask what was the
+matter with him. By the by, Count," he added suddenly, addressing
+Pierre with a smile, "we heard that you have family troubles and
+that the countess, your wife..."
+
+"I have heard nothing," Pierre replied unconcernedly. "But what have
+you heard?"
+
+"Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only say what I
+heard."
+
+"But what did you hear?"
+
+"Well, they say," continued the adjutant with the same smile,
+"that the countess, your wife, is preparing to go abroad. I expect
+it's nonsense...."
+
+"Possibly," remarked Pierre, looking about him absent-mindedly. "And
+who is that?" he asked, indicating a short old man in a clean blue
+peasant overcoat, with a big snow-white beard and eyebrows and a ruddy
+face.
+
+"He? That's a tradesman, that is to say, he's the restaurant keeper,
+Vereshchagin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair with the
+proclamation."
+
+"Oh, so that is Vereshchagin!" said Pierre, looking at the firm,
+calm face of the old man and seeking any indication of his being a
+traitor.
+
+"That's not he himself, that's the father of the fellow who wrote
+the proclamation," said the adjutant. "The young man is in prison
+and I expect it will go hard with him."
+
+An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a German
+wearing a cross round his neck, approached the speaker.
+
+"It's a complicated story, you know," said the adjutant. "That
+proclamation appeared about two months ago. The count was informed
+of it. He gave orders to investigate the matter. Gabriel Ivanovich
+here made the inquiries. The proclamation had passed through exactly
+sixty-three hands. He asked one, 'From whom did you get it?' 'From
+so-and-so.' He went to the next one. 'From whom did you get it?' and
+so on till he reached Vereshchagin, a half educated tradesman, you
+know, 'a pet of a trader,'" said the adjutant smiling. "They asked
+him, 'Who gave it you?' And the point is that we knew whom he had it
+from. He could only have had it from the Postmaster. But evidently
+they had come to some understanding. He replied: 'From no one; I
+made it up myself.' They threatened and questioned him, but he stuck
+to that: 'I made it up myself.' And so it was reported to the count,
+who sent for the man. 'From whom did you get the proclamation?' 'I
+wrote it myself.' Well, you know the count," said the adjutant
+cheerfully, with a smile of pride, "he flared up dreadfully- and
+just think of the fellow's audacity, lying, and obstinacy!"
+
+"And the count wanted him to say it was from Klyucharev? I
+understand!" said Pierre.
+
+"Not at all," rejoined the adjutant in dismay. "Klyucharev had his
+own sins to answer for without that and that is why he has been
+banished. But the point is that the count was much annoyed. 'How could
+you have written it yourself?' said he, and he took up the Hamburg
+Gazette that was lying on the table. 'Here it is! You did not write it
+yourself but translated it, and translated it abominably, because
+you don't even know French, you fool.' And what do you think? 'No,'
+said he, 'I have not read any papers, I made it up myself.' 'If that's
+so, you're a traitor and I'll have you tried, and you'll be hanged!
+Say from whom you had it.' 'I have seen no papers, I made it up
+myself.' And that was the end of it. The count had the father fetched,
+but the fellow stuck to it. He was sent for trial and condemned to
+hard labor, I believe. Now the father has come to intercede for him.
+But he's a good-for-nothing lad! You know that sort of tradesman's
+son, a dandy and lady-killer. He attended some lectures somewhere
+and imagines that the devil is no match for him. That's the sort of
+fellow he is. His father keeps a cookshop here by the Stone Bridge,
+and you know there was a large icon of God Almighty painted with a
+scepter in one hand and an orb in the other. Well, he took that icon
+home with him for a few days and what did he do? He found some
+scoundrel of a painter..."
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to the
+commander in chief.
+
+When he entered the private room Count Rostopchin, puckering his
+face, was rubbing his forehead and eyes with his hand. A short man was
+saying something, but when Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went
+out.
+
+"Ah, how do you do, great warrior?" said Rostopchin as soon as the
+short man had left the room. "We have heard of your prowess. But
+that's not the point. Between ourselves, mon cher, do you belong to
+the Masons?" he went on severely, as though there were something wrong
+about it which he nevertheless intended to pardon. Pierre remained
+silent. "I am well informed, my friend, but I am aware that there
+are Masons and Masons and I hope that you are not one of those who
+on pretense of saving mankind wish to ruin Russia."
+
+"Yes, I am a Mason," Pierre replied.
+
+"There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that Messrs.
+Speranski and Magnitski have been deported to their proper place.
+Mr. Klyucharev has been treated in the same way, and so have others
+who on the plea of building up the temple of Solomon have tried to
+destroy the temple of their fatherland. You can understand that
+there are reasons for this and that I could not have exiled the
+Postmaster had he not been a harmful person. It has now come to my
+knowledge that you lent him your carriage for his removal from town,
+and that you have even accepted papers from him for safe custody. I
+like you and don't wish you any harm and- as you are only half my age-
+I advise you, as a father would, to cease all communication with men
+of that stamp and to leave here as soon as possible."
+
+"But what did Klyucharev do wrong, Count?" asked Pierre.
+
+"That is for me to know, but not for you to ask," shouted
+Rostopchin.
+
+"If he is accused of circulating Napoleon's proclamation it is not
+proved that he did so," said Pierre without looking at Rostopchin,
+"and Vereshchagin..."
+
+"There we are!" Rostopchin shouted at Pierre louder than before,
+frowning suddenly. "Vereshchagin is a renegade and a traitor who
+will be punished as he deserves," said he with the vindictive heat
+with which people speak when recalling an insult. "But I did not
+summon you to discuss my actions, but to give you advice- or an
+order if you prefer it. I beg you to leave the town and break off
+all communication with such men as Klyucharev. And I will knock the
+nonsense out of anybody"- but probably realizing that he was
+shouting at Bezukhov who so far was not guilty of anything, he
+added, taking Pierre's hand in a friendly manner, "We are on the eve
+of a public disaster and I haven't time to be polite to everybody
+who has business with me. My head is sometimes in a whirl. Well, mon
+cher, what are you doing personally?"
+
+"Why, nothing," answered Pierre without raising his eyes or changing
+the thoughtful expression of his face.
+
+The count frowned.
+
+"A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon as you can,
+that's all I have to tell you. Happy he who has ears to hear. Good-by,
+my dear fellow. Oh, by the by!" he shouted through the doorway after
+Pierre, "is it true that the countess has fallen into the clutches
+of the holy fathers of the Society of Jesus?"
+
+Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchin's room more sullen and
+angry than he had ever before shown himself.
+
+When he reached home it was already getting dark. Some eight
+people had come to see him that evening: the secretary of a committee,
+the colonel of his battalion, his steward, his major-domo, and various
+petitioners. They all had business with Pierre and wanted decisions
+from him. Pierre did not understand and was not interested in any of
+these questions and only answered them in order to get rid of these
+people. When left alone at last he opened and read his wife's letter.
+
+"They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew killed... that old
+man... Simplicity is submission to God. Suffering is necessary...
+the meaning of all... one must harness... my wife is getting
+married... One must forget and understand..." And going to his bed
+he threw himself on it without undressing and immediately fell asleep.
+
+When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to inform him that
+a special messenger, a police officer, had come from Count
+Rostopchin to know whether Count Bezukhov had left or was leaving
+the town.
+
+A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were awaiting him in
+the drawing room. Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to
+see them, went to the back porch and out through the gate.
+
+From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow no one of
+Bezukhov's household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre
+again or knew where he was.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The Rostovs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is,
+till the eve of the enemy's entry into the city.
+
+After Petya had joined Obolenski's regiment of Cossacks and left for
+Belaya Tserkov where that regiment was forming, the countess was
+seized with terror. The thought that both her sons were at the war,
+had both gone from under her wing, that today or tomorrow either or
+both of them might be killed like the three sons of one of her
+acquaintances, struck her that summer for the first time with cruel
+clearness. She tried to get Nicholas back and wished to go herself
+to join Petya, or to get him an appointment somewhere in Petersburg,
+but neither of these proved possible. Petya could not return unless
+his regiment did so or unless he was transferred to another regiment
+on active service. Nicholas was somewhere with the army and had not
+sent a word since his last letter, in which he had given a detailed
+account of his meeting with Princess Mary. The countess did not
+sleep at night, or when she did fall asleep dreamed that she saw her
+sons lying dead. After many consultations and conversations, the count
+at last devised means to tranquillize her. He got Petya transferred
+from Obolenski's regiment to Bezukhov's, which was in training near
+Moscow. Though Petya would remain in the service, this transfer
+would give the countess the consolation of seeing at least one of
+her sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters for her
+Petya so as not to let him go again, but always get him appointed to
+places where he could not possibly take part in a battle. As long as
+Nicholas alone was in danger the countess imagined that she loved
+her first-born more than all her other children and even reproached
+herself for it; but when her youngest: the scapegrace who had been bad
+at lessons, was always breaking things in the house and making himself
+a nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Petya with his merry black
+eyes and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was just beginning to show-
+when he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men who were
+fighting somewhere about something and apparently finding pleasure
+in it- then his mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all
+her other children. The nearer the time came for Petya to return,
+the more uneasy grew the countess. She began to think she would
+never live to see such happiness. The presence of Sonya, of her
+beloved Natasha, or even of her husband irritated her. "What do I want
+with them? I want no one but Petya," she thought.
+
+At the end of August the Rostovs received another letter from
+Nicholas. He wrote from the province of Voronezh where he had been
+sent to procure remounts, but that letter did not set the countess
+at ease. Knowing that one son was out of danger she became the more
+anxious about Petya.
+
+Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostovs'
+acquaintances had left Moscow, and though everybody tried to
+persuade the countess to get away as quickly as possible, she would
+not bear of leaving before her treasure, her adored Petya, returned.
+On the twenty-eighth of August he arrived. The passionate tenderness
+with which his mother received him did not please the sixteen-year-old
+officer. Though she concealed from him her intention of keeping him
+under her wing, Petya guessed her designs, and instinctively fearing
+that he might give way to emotion when with her- might "become
+womanish" as he termed it to himself- he treated her coldly, avoided
+her, and during his stay in Moscow attached himself exclusively to
+Natasha for whom he had always had a particularly brotherly
+tenderness, almost lover-like.
+
+Owing to the count's customary carelessness nothing was ready for
+their departure by the twenty-eighth of August and the carts that were
+to come from their Ryazan and Moscow estates to remove their household
+belongings did not arrive till the thirtieth.
+
+From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow was in a
+bustle and commotion. Every day thousands of men wounded at Borodino
+were brought in by the Dorogomilov gate and taken to various parts
+of Moscow, and thousands of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their
+possessions out by the other gates. In spite of Rostopchin's
+broadsheets, or because of them or independently of them, the
+strangest and most contradictory rumors were current in the town. Some
+said that no one was to be allowed to leave the city, others on the
+contrary said that all the icons had been taken out of the churches
+and everybody was to be ordered to leave. Some said there had been
+another battle after Borodino at which the French had been routed,
+while others on the contrary reported that the Russian army bad been
+destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia which, preceded by the
+clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others whispered that Augustin
+had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had been seized, that the
+peasants were rioting and robbing people on their way from Moscow, and
+so on. But all this was only talk; in reality (though the Council of
+Fili, at which it was decided to abandon Moscow, had not yet been
+held) both those who went away and those who remained behind felt,
+though they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly be abandoned,
+and that they ought to get away as quickly as possible and save
+their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly break
+up and change, but up to the first of September nothing had done so.
+As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die
+immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is
+awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life,
+though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the
+conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would
+be completely upset.
+
+During the three days preceding the occupation of Moscow the whole
+Rostov family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the
+family, Count Ilya Rostov, continually drove about the city collecting
+the current rumors from all sides and gave superficial and hasty
+orders at home about the preparations for their departure.
+
+The countess watched the things being packed, was dissatisfied
+with everything, was constantly in pursuit of Petya who was always
+running away from her, and was jealous of Natasha with whom he spent
+all his time. Sonya alone directed the practical side of matters by
+getting things packed. But of late Sonya had been particularly sad and
+silent. Nicholas' letter in which he mentioned Princess Mary had
+elicited, in her presence, joyous comments from the countess, who
+saw an intervention of Providence in this meeting of the princess
+and Nicholas.
+
+"I was never pleased at Bolkonski's engagement to Natasha," said the
+countess, "but I always wanted Nicholas to marry the princess, and had
+a presentiment that it would happen. What a good thing it would be!"
+
+Sonya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of
+retrieving the Rostovs' affairs was by Nicholas marrying a rich woman,
+and that the princess was a good match. It was very bitter for her.
+But despite her grief, or perhaps just because of it, she took on
+herself all the difficult work of directing the storing and packing of
+their things and was busy for whole days. The count and countess
+turned to her when they had any orders to give. Petya and Natasha on
+the contrary, far from helping their parents, were generally a
+nuisance and a hindrance to everyone. Almost all day long the house
+resounded with their running feet, their cries, and their
+spontaneous laughter. They laughed and were gay not because there
+was any reason to laugh, but because gaiety and mirth were in their
+hearts and so everything that happened was a cause for gaiety and
+laughter to them. Petya was in high spirits because having left home a
+boy he had returned (as everybody told him) a fine young man,
+because he was at home, because he had left Belaya Tserkov where there
+was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and had come to Moscow
+where there was to be fighting in a few days, and chiefly because
+Natasha, whose lead he always followed, was in high spirits. Natasha
+was gay because she had been sad too long and now nothing reminded her
+of the cause of her sadness, and because she was feeling well. She was
+also happy because she had someone to adore her: the adoration of
+others was a lubricant the wheels of her machine needed to make them
+run freely- and Petya adored her. Above all, they were gay because
+there was a war near Moscow, there would be fighting at the town
+gates, arms were being given out, everybody was escaping- going away
+somewhere, and in general something extraordinary was happening, and
+that is always exciting, especially to the young.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in the
+Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the
+furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and
+pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay,
+wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house
+serfs carrying out the things were treading heavily on the parquet
+floors. The yard was crowded with peasant carts, some loaded high
+and already corded up, others still empty.
+
+The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of the peasants
+who had come with the carts resounded as they shouted to one another
+in the yard and in the house. The count bad been out since morning.
+The countess had a headache brought on by all the noise and turmoil
+and was lying down in the new sitting room with a vinegar compress
+on her head. Petya was not at home, he had gone to visit a friend with
+whom he meant to obtain a transfer from the militia to the active
+army. Sonya was in the ballroom looking after the packing of the glass
+and china. Natasha was sitting on the floor of her dismantled room
+with dresses, ribbons, and scarves strewn all about her, gazing
+fixedly at the floor and holding in her hands the old ball dress
+(already out of fashion) which she had worn at her first Petersburg
+ball.
+
+Natasha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone else was so busy,
+and several times that morning had tried to set to work, but her heart
+was not in it, and she could not and did not know how to do anything
+except with all her heart and all her might. For a while she had stood
+beside Sonya while the china was being packed and tried to help, but
+soon gave it up and went to her room to pack her own things. At
+first she found it amusing to give away dresses and ribbons to the
+maids, but when that was done and what was left had still to be
+packed, she found it dull.
+
+"Dunyasha, you pack! You will, won't you, dear?" And when Dunyasha
+willingly promised to do it all for her, Natasha sat down on the
+floor, took her old ball dress, and fell into a reverie quite
+unrelated to what ought to have occupied her thoughts now. She was
+roused from her reverie by the talk of the maids in the next room
+(which was theirs) and by the sound of their hurried footsteps going
+to the back porch. Natasha got up and looked out of the window. An
+enormously long row of carts full of wounded men had stopped in the
+street.
+
+The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen, maids, footmen,
+postilions, and scullions stood at the gate, staring at the wounded.
+
+Natasha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over her hair and
+holding an end of it in each hand, went out into the street.
+
+The former housekeeper, old Mavra Kuzminichna, had stepped out of
+the crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart with a hood constructed of
+bast mats, and was speaking to a pale young officer who lay inside.
+Natasha moved a few steps forward and stopped shyly, still holding her
+handkerchief, and listened to what the housekeeper was saying.
+
+"Then you have nobody in Moscow?" she was saying. "You would be more
+comfortable somewhere in a house... in ours, for instance... the
+family are leaving."
+
+"I don't know if it would be allowed," replied the officer in a weak
+voice. "Here is our commanding officer... ask him," and he pointed
+to a stout major who was walking back along the street past the row of
+carts.
+
+Natasha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the wounded
+officer and at once went to meet the major.
+
+"May the wounded men stay in our house?" she asked.
+
+The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile.
+
+"Which one do you want, Ma'am'selle?" said he, screwing up his
+eyes and smiling.
+
+Natasha quietly repeated her question, and her face and whole manner
+were so serious, though she was still holding the ends of her
+handkerchief, that the major ceased smiling and after some reflection-
+as if considering in how far the thing was possible- replied in the
+affirmative.
+
+"Oh yes, why not? They may," he said.
+
+With a slight inclination of her head, Natasha stepped back
+quickly to Mavra Kuzminichna, who stood talking compassionately to the
+officer.
+
+"They may. He says they may!" whispered Natasha.
+
+The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostovs' yard,
+and dozens of carts with wounded men began at the invitation of the
+townsfolk to turn into the yards and to draw up at the entrances of
+the houses in Povarskaya Street. Natasha was evidently pleased to be
+dealing with new people outside the ordinary routine of her life.
+She and Mavra Kuzminichna tried to get as many of the wounded as
+possible into their yard.
+
+"Your Papa must be told, though," said Mavra Kuzminichna.
+
+"Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one day we can
+move into the drawing room. They can have all our half of the house."
+
+"There now, young lady, you do take things into your head! Even if
+we put them into the wing, the men's room, or the nurse's room, we
+must ask permission."
+
+"Well, I'll ask."
+
+Natasha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through the
+half-open door into the sitting room, where there was a smell of
+vinegar and Hoffman's drops.
+
+"Are you asleep, Mamma?"
+
+"Oh, what sleep-?" said the countess, waking up just as she was
+dropping into a doze.
+
+"Mamma darling!" said Natasha, kneeling by her mother and bringing
+her face close to her mother's, "I am sorry, forgive me, I'll never do
+it again; I woke you up! Mavra Kuzminichna has sent me: they have
+brought some wounded here- officers. Will you let them come? They have
+nowhere to go. I knew you'd let them come!" she said quickly all in
+one breath.
+
+"What officers? Whom have they brought? I don't understand
+anything about it," said the countess.
+
+Natasha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.
+
+"I knew you'd give permission... so I'll tell them," and, having
+kissed her mother, Natasha got up and went to the door.
+
+In the hall she met her father, who had returned with bad news.
+
+"We've stayed too long!" said the count with involuntary vexation.
+"The Club is closed and the police are leaving."
+
+"Papa, is it all right- I've invited some of the wounded into the
+house?" said Natasha.
+
+"Of course it is," he answered absently. "That's not the point. I
+beg you not to indulge in trifles now, but to help to pack, and
+tomorrow we must go, go, go!...."
+
+And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo and the
+servants.
+
+At dinner Petya having returned home told them the news he had
+heard. He said the people had been getting arms in the Kremlin, and
+that though Rostopchin's broadsheet had said that he would sound a
+call two or three days in advance, the order had certainly already
+been given for everyone to go armed to the Three Hills tomorrow, and
+that there would be a big battle there.
+
+The countess looked with timid horror at her son's eager, excited
+face as he said this. She realized that if she said a word about his
+not going to the battle (she knew he enjoyed the thought of the
+impending engagement) he would say something about men, honor, and the
+fatherland- something senseless, masculine, and obstinate which
+there would be no contradicting, and her plans would be spoiled; and
+so, hoping to arrange to leave before then and take Petya with her
+as their protector and defender, she did not answer him, but after
+dinner called the count aside and implored him with tears to take
+her away quickly, that very night if possible. With a woman's
+involuntary loving cunning she, who till then had not shown any alarm,
+said that she would die of fright if they did not leave that very
+night. Without any pretense she was now afraid of everything.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter, increased the
+countess' fears still more by telling what she had seen at a spirit
+dealer's in Myasnitski Street. When returning by that street she had
+been unable to pass because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of the
+shop. She had taken a cab and driven home by a side street and the
+cabman had told her that the people were breaking open the barrels
+at the drink store, having received orders to do so.
+
+After dinner the whole Rostov household set to work with
+enthusiastic haste packing their belongings and preparing for their
+departure. The old count, suddenly setting to work, kept passing
+from the yard to the house and back again, shouting confused
+instructions to the hurrying people, and flurrying them still more.
+Petya directed things in the yard. Sonya, owing to the count's
+contradictory orders, lost her head and did not know what to do. The
+servants ran noisily about the house and yard, shouting and disputing.
+Natasha, with the ardor characteristic of all she did suddenly set
+to work too. At first her intervention in the business of packing
+was received skeptically. Everybody expected some prank from her and
+did not wish to obey her; but she resolutely and passionately demanded
+obedience, grew angry and nearly cried because they did not heed
+her, and at last succeeded in making them believe her. Her first
+exploit, which cost her immense effort and established her
+authority, was the packing of the carpets. The count had valuable
+Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the house. When Natasha
+set to work two cases were standing open in the ballroom, one almost
+full up with crockery, the other with carpets. There was also much
+china standing on the tables, and still more was being brought in from
+the storeroom. A third case was needed and servants had gone to
+fetch it.
+
+"Sonya, wait a bit- we'll pack everything into these," said Natasha.
+
+"You can't, Miss, we have tried to," said the butler's assistant.
+
+"No, wait a minute, please."
+
+And Natasha began rapidly taking out of the case dishes and plates
+wrapped in paper.
+
+"The dishes must go in here among the carpets," said she.
+
+"Why, it's a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into three
+cases," said the butler's assistant.
+
+"Oh, wait, please!" And Natasha began rapidly and deftly sorting out
+the things. "These aren't needed," said she, putting aside some plates
+of Kiev ware. "These- yes, these must go among the carpets," she said,
+referring to the Saxony china dishes.
+
+"Don't, Natasha! Leave it alone! We'll get it all packed," urged
+Sonya reproachfully.
+
+"What a young lady she is!" remarked the major-domo.
+
+But Natasha would not give in. She turned everything out and began
+quickly repacking, deciding that the inferior Russian carpets and
+unnecessary crockery should not be taken at all. When everything had
+been taken out of the cases, they recommenced packing, and it turned
+out that when the cheaper things not worth taking had nearly all
+been rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into the two cases.
+Only the lid of the case containing the carpets would not shut down. A
+few more things might have been taken out, but Natasha insisted on
+having her own way. She packed, repacked, pressed, made the butler's
+assistant and Petya- whom she had drawn into the business of
+packing- press on the lid, and made desperate efforts herself.
+
+"That's enough, Natasha," said Sonya. "I see you were right, but
+just take out the top one."
+
+"I won't!" cried Natasha, with one hand bolding back the hair that
+hung over her perspiring face, while with the other she pressed down
+the carpets. "Now press, Petya! Press, Vasilich, press hard!" she
+cried.
+
+The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natasha, clapping her hands,
+screamed with delight and tears fell from her eyes. But this only
+lasted a moment. She at once set to work afresh and they now trusted
+her completely. The count was not angry even when they told him that
+Natasha had countermanded an order of his, and the servants now came
+to her to ask whether a cart was sufficiently loaded, and whether it
+might be corded up. Thanks to Natasha's directions the work now went
+on expeditiously, unnecessary things were left, and the most
+valuable packed as compactly as possible.
+
+But hard as they all worked till quite late that night, they could
+not get everything packed. The countess had fallen asleep and the
+count, having put off their departure till next morning, went to bed.
+
+Sonya and Natasha slept in the sitting room without undressing.
+
+That night another wounded man was driven down the Povarskaya, and
+Mavra Kuzminichna, who was standing at the gate, had him brought
+into the Rostovs' yard. Mavra Kuzminichna concluded that he was a very
+important man. He was being conveyed in a caleche with a raised
+hood, and was quite covered by an apron. On the box beside the
+driver sat a venerable old attendant. A doctor and two soldiers
+followed the carriage in a cart.
+
+"Please come in here. The masters are going away and the whole house
+will be empty," said the old woman to the old attendant.
+
+"Well, perhaps," said he with a sigh. "We don't expect to get him
+home alive! We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it's a long
+way from here, and there's nobody living in it."
+
+"Do us the honor to come in, there's plenty of everything in the
+master's house. Come in," said Mavra Kuzminichna. "Is he very ill?"
+she asked.
+
+The attendant made a hopeless gesture.
+
+"We don't expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor."
+
+And the old servant got down from the box and went up to the cart.
+
+"All right!" said the doctor.
+
+The old servant returned to the caleche, looked into it, shook his
+head disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and
+stopped beside Mavra Kuzminichna.
+
+"O, Lord Jesus Christ!" she murmured.
+
+She invited them to take the wounded man into the house.
+
+"The masters won't object..." she said.
+
+But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so they took
+him into the wing and put him in the room that had been Madame
+Schoss'.
+
+This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkonski.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Moscow's last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn day, a
+Sunday. The church bells everywhere were ringing for service, just
+as usual on Sundays. Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the
+city.
+
+Only two things indicated the social condition of Moscow- the
+rabble, that is the poor people, and the price of commodities. An
+enormous crowd of factory hands, house serfs, and peasants, with
+whom some officials, seminarists, and gentry were mingled, had gone
+early that morning to the Three Hills. Having waited there for
+Rostopchin who did not turn up, they became convinced that Moscow
+would be surrendered, and then dispersed all about the town to the
+public houses and cookshops. Prices too that day indicated the state
+of affairs. The price of weapons, of gold, of carts and horses, kept
+rising, but the value of paper money and city articles kept falling,
+so that by midday there were instances of carters removing valuable
+goods, such as cloth, and receiving in payment a half of what they
+carted, while peasant horses were fetching five hundred rubles each,
+and furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being given away for nothing.
+
+In the Rostovs' staid old-fashioned house the dissolution of
+former conditions of life was but little noticeable. As to the serfs
+the only indication was that three out of their huge retinue
+disappeared during the night, but nothing was stolen; and as to the
+value of their possessions, the thirty peasant carts that had come
+in from their estates and which many people envied proved to be
+extremely valuable and they were offered enormous sums of money for
+them. Not only were huge sums offered for the horses and carts, but on
+the previous evening and early in the morning of the first of
+September, orderlies and servants sent by wounded officers came to the
+Rostovs' and wounded men dragged themselves there from the Rostovs'
+and from neighboring houses where they were accommodated, entreating
+the servants to try to get them a lift out of Moscow. The major-domo
+to whom these entreaties were addressed, though he was sorry for the
+wounded, resolutely refused, saying that he dare not even mention
+the matter to the count. Pity these wounded men as one might, it was
+evident that if they were given one cart there would be no reason to
+refuse another, or all the carts and one's own carriages as well.
+Thirty carts could not save all the wounded and in the general
+catastrophe one could not disregard oneself and one's own family. So
+thought the major-domo on his master's behalf.
+
+On waking up that morning Count Ilya Rostov left his bedroom softly,
+so as not to wake the countess who had fallen asleep only toward
+morning, and came out to the porch in his lilac silk dressing gown. In
+the yard stood the carts ready corded. The carriages were at the front
+porch. The major-domo stood at the porch talking to an elderly orderly
+and to a pale young officer with a bandaged arm. On seeing the count
+the major-domo made a significant and stern gesture to them both to go
+away.
+
+"Well, Vasilich, is everything ready?" asked the count, and stroking
+his bald head he looked good-naturedly at the officer and the
+orderly and nodded to them. (He liked to see new faces.)
+
+"We can harness at once, your excellency."
+
+"Well, that's right. As soon as the countess wakes we'll be off, God
+willing! What is it, gentlemen?" he added, turning to the officer.
+"Are you staying in my house?"
+
+The officer came nearer and suddenly his face flushed crimson.
+
+"Count, be so good as to allow me... for God's sake, to get into
+some corner of one of your carts! I have nothing here with me.... I
+shall be all right on a loaded cart..."
+
+Before the officer had finished speaking the orderly made the same
+request on behalf of his master.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes,yes!" said the count hastily. "I shall be very
+pleased, very pleased. Vasilich, you'll see to it. Just unload one
+or two carts. Well, what of it... do what's necessary..." said the
+count, muttering some indefinite order.
+
+But at the same moment an expression of warm gratitude on the
+officer's face had already sealed the order. The count looked around
+him. In the yard, at the gates, at the window of the wings, wounded
+officers and their orderlies were to be seen. They were all looking at
+the count and moving toward the porch.
+
+"Please step into the gallery, your excellency," said the
+major-domo. "What are your orders about the pictures?"
+
+The count went into the house with him, repeating his order not to
+refuse the wounded who asked for a lift.
+
+"Well, never mind, some of the things can be unloaded," he added
+in a soft, confidential voice, as though afraid of being overheard.
+
+At nine o'clock the countess woke up, and Matrena Timofeevna, who
+had been her lady's maid before her marriage and now performed a
+sort of chief gendarme's duty for her, came to say that Madame
+Schoss was much offended and the young ladies' summer dresses could
+not be left behind. On inquiry, the countess learned that Madame
+Schoss was offended because her trunk had been taken down from its
+cart, and all the loads were being uncorded and the luggage taken
+out of the carts to make room for wounded men whom the count in the
+simplicity of his heart had ordered that they should take with them.
+The countess sent for her husband.
+
+"What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being unloaded."
+
+"You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess dear... an officer
+came to me to ask for a few carts for the wounded. After all, ours are
+things that can be bought but think what being left behind means to
+them!... Really now, in our own yard- we asked them in ourselves and
+there are officers among them.... You know, I think, my dear... let
+them be taken... where's the hurry?"
+
+The count spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money
+matters. The countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of
+news of something detrimental to the children's interests, such as the
+building of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a
+private theater or an orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose
+anything announced in that timid tone and considered it her duty to do
+so.
+
+She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said to her husband:
+"Listen to me, Count, you have managed matters so that we are
+getting nothing for the house, and now you wish to throw away all our-
+all the children's property! You said yourself that we have a
+hundred thousand rubles' worth of things in the house. I don't
+consent, my dear, I don't! Do as you please! It's the government's
+business to look after the wounded; they know that. Look at the
+Lopukhins opposite, they cleared out everything two days ago. That's
+what other people do. It's only we who are such fools. If you have
+no pity on me, have some for the children."
+
+Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room without
+replying.
+
+"Papa, what are you doing that for?" asked Natasha, who had followed
+him into her mother's room.
+
+"Nothing! What business is it of yours?" muttered the count angrily.
+
+"But I heard," said Natasha. "Why does Mamma object?"
+
+"What business is it of yours?" cried the count.
+
+Natasha stepped up to the window and pondered.
+
+"Papa! Here's Berg coming to see us," said she, looking out of the
+window.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Berg, the Rostovs' son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the
+orders of Vladimir and Anna, and he still filled the quiet and
+agreeable post of assistant to the head of the staff of the
+assistant commander of the first division of the Second Army.
+
+On the first of September he had come to Moscow from the army.
+
+He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed that everyone
+in the army was asking for leave to visit Moscow and had something
+to do there. So he considered it necessary to ask for leave of absence
+for family and domestic reasons.
+
+Berg drove up to his father-in-law's house in his spruce little trap
+with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like those of a certain prince. He
+looked attentively at the carts in the yard and while going up to
+the porch took out a clean pocket handkerchief and tied a knot in it.
+
+From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though impatient steps into
+the drawing room, where he embraced the count, kissed the hands of
+Natasha and Sonya, and hastened to inquire after "Mamma's" health.
+
+"Health, at a time like this?" said the count. "Come, tell us the
+news! Is the army retreating or will there be another battle?"
+
+"God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our fatherland, Papa,"
+said Berg. "The army is burning with a spirit of heroism and the
+leaders, so to say, have now assembled in council. No one knows what
+is coming. But in general I can tell you, Papa, that such a heroic
+spirit, the truly antique valor of the Russian army, which they- which
+it" (he corrected himself) "has shown or displayed in the battle of
+the twenty-sixth- there are no words worthy to do it justice! I tell
+you, Papa" (he smote himself on the breast as a general he had heard
+speaking had done, but Berg did it a trifle late for he should have
+struck his breast at the words "Russian army"), "I tell you frankly
+that we, the commanders, far from having to urge the men on or
+anything of that kind, could hardly restrain those... those... yes,
+those exploits of antique valor," he went on rapidly. "General Barclay
+de Tolly risked his life everywhere at the head of the troops, I can
+assure you. Our corps was stationed on a hillside. You can imagine!"
+
+And Berg related all that he remembered of the various tales he
+had heard those days. Natasha watched him with an intent gaze that
+confused him, as if she were trying to find in his face the answer
+to some question.
+
+"Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the Russian warriors
+cannot be imagined or adequately praised!" said Berg, glancing round
+at Natasha, and as if anxious to conciliate her, replying to her
+intent look with a smile. "'Russia is not in Moscow, she lives in
+the hearts of her sons!' Isn't it so, Papa?" said he.
+
+Just then the countess came in from the sitting room with a weary
+and dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly jumped up, kissed her
+hand, asked about her health, and, swaying his head from side to
+side to express sympathy, remained standing beside her.
+
+"Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard and sad
+times for every Russian. But why are you so anxious? You have still
+time to get away...."
+
+"I can't think what the servants are about," said the countess,
+turning to her husband. "I have just been told that nothing is ready
+yet. Somebody after all must see to things. One misses Mitenka at such
+times. There won't be any end to it."
+
+The count was about to say something, but evidently restrained
+himself. He got up from his chair and went to the door.
+
+At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to blow his nose
+and, seeing the knot in it, pondered, shaking his head sadly and
+significantly.
+
+"And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa," said he.
+
+"Hm..." said the count, and stopped.
+
+"I was driving past Yusupov's house just now," said Berg with a
+laugh, "when the steward, a man I know, ran out and asked me whether I
+wouldn't buy something. I went in out of curiosity, you know, and
+there is a small chiffonier and a dressing table. You know how dear
+Vera wanted a chiffonier like that and how we had a dispute about it."
+(At the mention of the chiffonier and dressing table Berg
+involuntarily changed his tone to one of pleasure at his admirable
+domestic arrangements.) "And it's such a beauty! It pulls out and
+has a secret English drawer, you know! And dear Vera has long wanted
+one. I wish to give her a surprise, you see. I saw so many of those
+peasant carts in your yard. Please let me have one, I will pay the man
+well, and..."
+
+The count frowned and coughed.
+
+"Ask the countess, I don't give orders."
+
+"If it's inconvenient, please don't," said Berg. "Only I so wanted
+it, for dear Vera's sake."
+
+"Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the
+devil..." cried the old count. "My head's in a whirl!"
+
+And he left the room. The countess began to cry.
+
+"Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!" said Berg.
+
+Natasha left the room with her father and, as if finding it
+difficult to reach some decision, first followed him and then ran
+downstairs.
+
+Petya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the
+servants who were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still
+standing in the yard. Two of them had been uncorded and a wounded
+officer was climbing into one of them helped by an orderly.
+
+"Do you know what it's about?" Petya asked Natasha.
+
+She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling
+about. She did not answer.
+
+"It's because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the
+wounded," said Petya. "Vasilich told me. I consider..."
+
+"I consider," Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry
+face to Petya, "I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I
+don't know what. Are we despicable Germans?"
+
+Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening
+and letting the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed
+headlong up the stairs.
+
+Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the
+respectful attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was
+pacing up and down the room, when Natasha, her face distorted by
+anger, burst in like a tempest and approached her mother with rapid
+steps.
+
+"It's horrid! It's abominable! she screamed. "You can't possibly
+have ordered it!"
+
+Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The
+count stood still at the window and listened.
+
+"Mamma, it's impossible: see what is going on in the yard!" she
+cried. "They will be left!..."
+
+"What's the matter with you? Who are 'they'? What do you want?"
+
+"Why, the wounded! It's impossible, Mamma. It's monstrous!... No,
+Mamma darling, it's not the thing. Please forgive me, darling....
+Mamma, what does it matter what we take away? Only look what is
+going on in the yard... Mamma!... It's impossible!"
+
+The count stood by the window and listened without turning round.
+Suddenly he sniffed and put his face closer to the window.
+
+The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full of shame for
+her mother, saw her agitation, and understood why her husband did
+not turn to look at her now, and she glanced round quite disconcerted.
+
+"Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?" she said, not
+surrendering at once.
+
+"Mamma, darling, forgive me!"
+
+But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up to her
+husband.
+
+"My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don't understand
+about it," said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly.
+
+"The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen," muttered the count
+through tears of joy, and he embraced his wife who was glad to hide
+her look of shame on his breast.
+
+"Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?..." asked Natasha. "We will
+still take all the most necessary things."
+
+The count nodded affirmatively, and Natasha, at the rapid pace at
+which she used to run when playing at tag, ran through the ballroom to
+the anteroom and downstairs into the yard.
+
+The servants gathered round Natasha, but could not believe the
+strange order she brought them until the count himself, in his
+wife's name, confirmed the order to give up all the carts to the
+wounded and take the trunks to the storerooms. When they understood
+that order the servants set to work at this new task with pleasure and
+zeal. It no longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it
+seemed the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter of an hour
+before it had not seemed strange to anyone that the wounded should
+be left behind and the goods carted away but that had seemed the
+only thing to do.
+
+The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner,
+set eagerly to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the
+carts. The wounded dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood
+with pale but happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to
+be had spread to the neighboring houses, from which wounded men
+began to come into the Rostovs' yard. Many of the wounded asked them
+not to unload the carts but only to let them sit on the top of the
+things. But the work of unloading, once started, could not be
+arrested. It seemed not to matter whether all or only half the
+things were left behind. Cases full of china, bronzes, pictures, and
+mirrors that had been so carefully packed the night before now lay
+about the yard, and still they went on searching for and finding
+possibilities of unloading this or that and letting the wounded have
+another and yet another cart.
+
+"We can take four more men," said the steward. "They can have my
+trap, or else what is to become of them?"
+
+"Let them have my wardrobe cart," said the countess. "Dunyasha can
+go with me in the carriage."
+
+They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take wounded men from
+a house two doors off. The whole household, servants included, was
+bright and animated. Natasha was in a state of rapturous excitement
+such as she had not known for a long time.
+
+"What could we fasten this onto?" asked the servants, trying to
+fix a trunk on the narrow footboard behind a carriage. "We must keep
+at least one cart."
+
+"What's in it?" asked Natasha.
+
+"The count's books."
+
+"Leave it, Vasilich will put it away. It's not wanted."
+
+The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt as to where
+Count Peter could sit.
+
+"On the box. You'll sit on the box, won't you, Petya?" cried
+Natasha.
+
+Sonya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was
+quite different from Natasha's. She was putting away the things that
+had to be left behind and making a list of them as the countess
+wished, and she tried to get as much taken away with them as possible.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Before two o'clock in the afternoon the Rostovs' four carriages,
+packed full and with the horses harnessed, stood at the front door.
+One by one the carts with the wounded had moved out of the yard.
+
+The caleche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sonya's
+attention as it passed the front porch. With the help of a maid she
+was arranging a seat for the countess in the huge high coach that
+stood at the entrance.
+
+"Whose caleche is that?" she inquired, leaning out of the carriage
+window.
+
+"Why, didn't you know, Miss?" replied the maid. "The wounded prince:
+he spent the night in our house and is going with us."
+
+"But who is it? What's his name?"
+
+"It's our intended that was- Prince Bolkonski himself! They say he
+is dying," replied the maid with a sigh.
+
+Sonya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess. The countess,
+tired out and already dressed in shawl and bonnet for her journey, was
+pacing up and down the drawing room, waiting for the household to
+assemble for the usual silent prayer with closed doors before
+starting. Natasha was not in the room.
+
+"Mamma," said Sonya, "Prince Andrew is here, mortally wounded. He is
+going with us."
+
+The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sonya's arm,
+glanced around.
+
+"Natasha?" she murmured.
+
+At that moment this news had only one significance for both of them.
+They knew their Natasha, and alarm as to what would happen if she
+heard this news stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked.
+
+"Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us," said Sonya.
+
+"You say he is dying?"
+
+Sonya nodded.
+
+The countess put her arms around Sonya and began to cry.
+
+"The ways of God are past finding out!" she thought, feeling that
+the Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was becoming manifest in all
+that was now taking place.
+
+"Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What's the matter?" asked
+Natasha, as with animated face she ran into the room.
+
+"Nothing," answered the countess. "If everything is ready let us
+start."
+
+And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face.
+Sonya embraced Natasha and kissed her.
+
+Natasha looked at her inquiringly.
+
+"What is it? What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing... No..."
+
+"Is it something very bad for me? What is it?" persisted Natasha
+with her quick intuition.
+
+Sonya sighed and made no reply. The count, Petya, Madame Schoss,
+Mavra Kuzminichna, and Vasilich came into the drawing room and, having
+closed the doors, they all sat down and remained for some moments
+silently seated without looking at one another.
+
+The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh crossed
+himself before the icon. All the others did the same. Then the count
+embraced Mavra Kuzminichna and Vasilich, who were to remain in Moscow,
+and while they caught at his hand and kissed his shoulder he patted
+their backs lightly with some vaguely affectionate and comforting
+words. The countess went into the oratory and there Sonya found her on
+her knees before the icons that had been left here and there hanging
+on the wall. (The most precious ones, with which some family tradition
+was connected, were being taken with them.)
+
+In the porch and in the yard the men whom Petya had armed with
+swords and daggers, with trousers tucked inside their high boots and
+with belts and girdles tightened, were taking leave of those remaining
+behind.
+
+As is always the case at a departure, much had been forgotten or put
+in the wrong place, and for a long time two menservants stood one on
+each side of the open door and the carriage steps waiting to help
+the countess in, while maids rushed with cushions and bundles from the
+house to the carriages, the caleche, the phaeton, and back again.
+
+"They always will forget everything!" said the countess. "Don't
+you know I can't sit like that?"
+
+And Dunyasha, with clenched teeth, without replying but with an
+aggrieved look on her face, hastily got into the coach to rearrange
+the seat.
+
+"Oh, those servants!" said the count, swaying his head.
+
+Efim, the old coachman, who was the only one the countess trusted to
+drive her, sat perched up high on the box and did not so much as
+glance round at what was going on behind him. From thirty years'
+experience he knew it would be some time yet before the order, "Be
+off, in God's name!" would be given him: and he knew that even when it
+was said he would be stopped once or twice more while they sent back
+to fetch something that had been forgotten, and even after that he
+would again be stopped and the countess herself would lean out of
+the window and beg him for the love of heaven to drive carefully
+down the hill. He knew all this and therefore waited calmly for what
+would happen, with more patience than the horses, especially the
+near one, the chestnut Falcon, who was pawing the ground and
+champing his bit. At last all were seated, the carriage steps were
+folded and pulled up, the door was shut, somebody was sent for a
+traveling case, and the countess leaned out and said what she had to
+say. Then Efim deliberately doffed his hat and began crossing himself.
+The postilion and all the other servants did the same. "Off, in
+God's name!" said Efim, putting on his hat. "Start!" The postilion
+started the horses, the off pole horse tugged at his collar, the
+high springs creaked, and the body of the coach swayed. The footman
+sprang onto the box of the moving coach which jolted as it passed
+out of the yard onto the uneven roadway; the other vehicles jolted
+in their turn, and the procession of carriages moved up the street. In
+the carriages, the caleche, and the phaeton, all crossed themselves as
+they passed the church opposite the house. Those who were to remain in
+Moscow walked on either side of the vehicles seeing the travelers off.
+
+Rarely had Natasha experienced so joyful a feeling as now, sitting
+in the carriage beside the countess and gazing at the slowly
+receding walls of forsaken, agitated Moscow. Occasionally she leaned
+out of the carriage window and looked back and then forward at the
+long train of wounded in front of them. Almost at the head of the line
+she could see the raised hood of Prince Andrew's caleche. She did
+not know who was in it, but each time she looked at the procession her
+eyes sought that caleche. She knew it was right in front.
+
+In Kudrino, from the Nikitski, Presnya, and Podnovinsk Streets
+came several other trains of vehicles similar to the Rostovs', and
+as they passed along the Sadovaya Street the carriages and carts
+formed two rows abreast.
+
+As they were going round the Sukharev water tower Natasha, who was
+inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the people driving or walking
+past, suddenly cried out in joyful surprise:
+
+"Dear me! Mamma, Sonya, look, it's he!"
+
+"Who? Who?"
+
+"Look! Yes, on my word, it's Bezukhov!" said Natasha, putting her
+head out of the carriage and staring at a tall, stout man in a
+coachman's long coat, who from his manner of walking and moving was
+evidently a gentleman in disguise, and who was passing under the
+arch of the Sukharev tower accompanied by a small, sallow-faced,
+beardless old man in a frieze coat.
+
+"Yes, it really is Bezukhov in a coachman's coat, with a
+queer-looking old boy. Really," said Natasha, "look, look!"
+
+"No, it's not he. How can you talk such nonsense?"
+
+"Mamma," screamed Natasha, "I'll stake my head it's he! I assure
+you! Stop, stop!" she cried to the coachman.
+
+But the coachman could not stop, for from the Meshchanski Street
+came more carts and carriages, and the Rostovs were being shouted at
+to move on and not block the way.
+
+In fact, however, though now much farther off than before, the
+Rostovs all saw Pierre- or someone extraordinarily like him- in a
+coachman's coat, going down the street with head bent and a serious
+face beside a small, beardless old man who looked like a footman. That
+old man noticed a face thrust out of the carriage window gazing at
+them, and respectfully touching Pierre's elbow said something to him
+and pointed to the carriage. Pierre, evidently engrossed in thought,
+could not at first understand him. At length when he had understood
+and looked in the direction the old man indicated, he recognized
+Natasha, and following his first impulse stepped instantly and rapidly
+toward the coach. But having taken a dozen steps he seemed to remember
+something and stopped.
+
+Natasha's face, leaning out of the window, beamed with quizzical
+kindliness.
+
+"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you! This is
+wonderful!" she cried, holding out her hand to him. "What are you
+doing? Why are you like this?"
+
+Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it awkwardly as he
+walked along beside her while the coach still moved on.
+
+"What is the matter, Count?" asked the countess in a surprised and
+commiserating tone.
+
+"What? What? Why? Don't ask me," said Pierre, and looked round at
+Natasha whose radiant, happy expression- of which he was conscious
+without looking at her- filled him with enchantment.
+
+"Are you remaining in Moscow, then?"
+
+Pierre hesitated.
+
+"In Moscow?" he said in a questioning tone. "Yes, in Moscow.
+Goodby!"
+
+"Ah, if only I were a man? I'd certainly stay with you. How
+splendid!" said Natasha. "Mamma, if you'll let me, I'll stay!"
+
+Pierre glanced absently at Natasha and was about to say something,
+but the countess interrupted him.
+
+"You were at the battle, we heard."
+
+"Yes, I was," Pierre answered. "There will be another battle
+tomorrow..." he began, but Natasha interrupted him.
+
+"But what is the matter with you, Count? You are not like
+yourself...."
+
+"Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me! I don't know myself. Tomorrow...
+But no! Good-by, good-by!" he muttered. "It's an awful time!" and
+dropping behind the carriage he stepped onto the pavement.
+
+Natasha continued to lean out of the window for a long time, beaming
+at him with her kindly, slightly quizzical, happy smile.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+For the last two days, ever since leaving home, Pierre had been
+living in the empty house of his deceased benefactor, Bazdeev. This is
+how it happened.
+
+When he woke up on the morning after his return to Moscow and his
+interview with Count Rostopchin, he could not for some time make out
+where he was and what was expected of him. When he was informed that
+among others awaiting him in his reception room there was a
+Frenchman who had brought a letter from his wife, the Countess Helene,
+he felt suddenly overcome by that sense of confusion and
+hopelessness to which he was apt to succumb. He felt that everything
+was now at an end, all was in confusion and crumbling to pieces,
+that nobody was right or wrong, the future held nothing, and there was
+no escape from this position. Smiling unnaturally and muttering to
+himself, he first sat down on the sofa in an attitude of despair, then
+rose, went to the door of the reception room and peeped through the
+crack, returned flourishing his arms, and took up a book. His
+major-domo came in a second time to say that the Frenchman who had
+brought the letter from the countess was very anxious to see him if
+only for a minute, and that someone from Bazdeev's widow had called to
+ask Pierre to take charge of her husband's books, as she herself was
+leaving for the country.
+
+"Oh, yes, in a minute; wait... or no! No, of course... go and say
+I will come directly," Pierre replied to the major-domo.
+
+But as soon as the man had left the room Pierre took up his hat
+which was lying on the table and went out of his study by the other
+door. There was no one in the passage. He went along the whole
+length of this passage to the stairs and, frowning and rubbing his
+forehead with both hands, went down as far as the first landing. The
+hall porter was standing at the front door. From the landing where
+Pierre stood there was a second staircase leading to the back
+entrance. He went down that staircase and out into the yard. No one
+had seen him. But there were some carriages waiting, and as soon as
+Pierre stepped out of the gate the coachmen and the yard porter
+noticed him and raised their caps to him. When he felt he was being
+looked at he behaved like an ostrich which hides its head in a bush in
+order not to be seen: he hung his head and quickening his pace went
+down the street.
+
+Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of Joseph
+Bazdeev's books and papers appeared to him the most necessary.
+
+He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go to the
+Patriarch's Ponds, where the widow Bazdeev's house was.
+
+Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded carts that
+were making their way from all sides out of Moscow, and balancing
+his bulky body so as not to slip out of the ramshackle old vehicle,
+Pierre, experiencing the joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school,
+began to talk to his driver.
+
+The man told him that arms were being distributed today at the
+Kremlin and that tomorrow everyone would be sent out beyond the
+Three Hills gates and a great battle would be fought there.
+
+Having reached the Patriarch's Ponds Pierre found the Bazdeevs'
+house, where he had not been for a long time past. He went up to the
+gate. Gerasim, that sallow beardless old man Pierre had seen at
+Torzhok five years before with Joseph Bazdeev, came out in answer to
+his knock.
+
+"At home?" asked Pierre.
+
+"Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danilovna has gone to
+the Torzhok estate with the children, your excellency."
+
+"I will come in all the same, I have to look through the books,"
+said Pierre.
+
+"Be so good as to step in. Makar Alexeevich, the brother of my
+late master- may the kingdom of heaven be his- has remained here,
+but he is in a weak state as you know," said the old servant.
+
+Pierre knew that Makar Alexeevich was Joseph Bazdeev's half-insane
+brother and a hard drinker.
+
+"Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in..." said Pierre and entered the
+house.
+
+A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a dressing gown
+and with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in the anteroom. On seeing
+Pierre he muttered something angrily and went away along the passage.
+
+"He was a very clever man but has now grown quite feeble, as your
+honor sees," said Gerasim. "Will you step into the study?" Pierre
+nodded. "As it was sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia
+Danilovna gave orders that if anyone should come from you they were to
+have the books."
+
+Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had entered with such
+trepidation in his benefactor's lifetime. The room, dusty and
+untouched since the death of Joseph Bazdeev was now even gloomier.
+
+Gerasim opened one of the shutters and left the room on tiptoe.
+Pierre went round the study, approached the cupboard in which the
+manuscripts were kept, and took out what had once been one of the most
+important, the holy of holies of the order. This was the authentic
+Scotch Acts with Bazdeev's notes and explanations. He sat down at
+the dusty writing table, and, having laid the manuscripts before
+him, opened them out, closed them, finally pushed them away, and
+resting his head on his hand sank into meditation.
+
+Gerasim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw
+Pierre always sitting in the same attitude.
+
+More than two hours passed and Gerasim took the liberty of making
+a slight noise at the door to attract his attention, but Pierre did
+not hear him.
+
+"Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?"
+
+"Oh yes!" said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly. "Look
+here," he added, taking Gerasim by a button of his coat and looking
+down at the old man with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, "I say, do
+you know that there is going to be a battle tomorrow?"
+
+"We heard so," replied the man.
+
+"I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you."
+
+"Yes, your excellency," replied Gerasim. "Will you have something to
+eat?"
+
+"No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a
+pistol," said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.
+
+"Yes, your excellency," said Gerasim after thinking for a moment.
+
+All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor's
+study, and Gerasim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to
+another and talking to himself. And he spent the night on a bed made
+up for him there.
+
+Gerasim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange
+things, accepted Pierre's taking up his residence in the house without
+surprise, and seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same
+evening- without even asking himself what they were wanted for- he
+procured a coachman's coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him
+the pistol next day. Makar Alexeevich came twice that evening
+shuffling along in his galoshes as far as the door and stopped and
+looked ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward
+him he wrapped his dressing gown around him with a shamefaced and
+angry look and hurried away. It was when Pierre (wearing the
+coachman's coat which Gerasim had procured for him and had disinfected
+by steam) was on his way with the old man to buy the pistol at the
+Sukharev market that he met the Rostovs.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Kutuzov's order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road was
+issued at night on the first of September.
+
+The first troops started at once, and during the night they
+marched slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those
+nearing the town at the Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of them masses of
+soldiers crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the
+opposite side and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless
+masses of troops were bearing down on them from behind, and an
+unreasoning hurry and alarm overcame them. They all rushed forward
+to the bridge, onto it, and to the fords and the boats. Kutuzov
+himself had driven round by side streets to the other side of Moscow.
+
+By ten o'clock in the morning of the second of September, only the
+rear guard remained in the Dorogomilov suburb, where they had ample
+room. The main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.
+
+At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September,
+Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklonny Hill looking at
+the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August to
+the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodino to the
+entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating,
+memorable week, there had been the extraordinary autumn weather that
+always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat
+than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear
+atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and
+refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights
+are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and
+delight us continually by falling from the sky.
+
+At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather
+still held.
+
+The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the
+Poklonny Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens,
+and her churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her
+cupolas glittering like stars in the sunlight.
+
+The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as
+he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious
+and uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that
+has no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full
+force of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a
+distance, distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the
+Poklonny Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as
+it were, the breathing of that great and beautiful body.
+
+Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every
+foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the
+mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.
+
+"Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises, Moscou la sainte.
+La voila done enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il etait temps,"~^ said he,
+and dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before
+him, and summoned Lelorgne d'Ideville, the interpreter.
+
+^~ "That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy Moscow! Here
+it is then at last, that famous city. It was high time."
+
+"A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her
+honor," thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at Smolensk). From
+that point of view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen
+before. It seemed strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had
+seemed unattainable, had at last been realized. In the clear morning
+light he gazed now at the city and now at the plan, considering its
+details, and the assurance of possessing it agitated and awed him.
+
+"But could it be otherwise?" he thought. "Here is this capital at my
+feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange,
+beautiful, and majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In
+what light must I appear to them!" thought he, thinking of his troops.
+"Here she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men," he
+reflected, glancing at those near him and at the troops who were
+approaching and forming up. "One word from me, one movement of my
+hand, and that ancient capital of the Tsars would perish. But my
+clemency is always ready to descend upon the vanquished. I must be
+magnanimous and truly great. But no, it can't be true that I am in
+Moscow," he suddenly thought. "Yet here she is lying at my feet,
+with her golden domes and crosses scintillating and twinkling in the
+sunshine. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism
+and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy....
+It is just this which Alexander will feel most painfully, I know him."
+(It seemed to Napoleon that the chief import of what was taking
+place lay in the personal struggle between himself and Alexander.)
+"From the height of the Kremlin- yes, there is the Kremlin, yes- I
+will give them just laws; I will teach them the meaning of true
+civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember their
+conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not, and do
+not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false policy
+of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and that in Moscow I
+will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people. I do not
+wish to utilize the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored monarch.
+'Boyars,' I will say to them, 'I do not desire war, I desire the peace
+and welfare of all my subjects.' However, I know their presence will
+inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do: clearly,
+impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in
+Moscow? Yes, there she lies."
+
+"Qu'on m'amene les boyars,"~^ said he to his suite.
+
+^~ "Bring the boyars to me."
+
+A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch the
+boyars.
+
+Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing in the
+same place on the Poklonny Hill awaiting the deputation. His speech to
+the boyars had already taken definite shape in his imagination. That
+speech was full of dignity and greatness as Napoleon understood it.
+
+He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended
+to adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed days for
+assemblies at the palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and
+his own would mingle. He mentally appointed a governor, one who
+would win the hearts of the people. Having learned that there were
+many charitable institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that he
+would shower favors on them all. He thought that, as in Africa he
+had to put on a burnoose and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must
+be beneficent like the Tsars. And in order finally to touch the hearts
+of the Russians- and being like all Frenchmen unable to imagine
+anything sentimental without a reference to ma chere, ma tendre, ma
+pauvre mere~^ - he decided that he would place an inscription on all
+these establishments in large letters: "This establishment is
+dedicated to my dear mother." Or no, it should be simply: Maison de ma
+Mere,~^ he concluded. "But am I really in Moscow? Yes, here it
+lies before me, but why is the deputation from the city so long in
+appearing?" he wondered.
+
+^~ "My dear, my tender, my poor mother."
+
+^~ "House of my Mother."
+
+Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried on in
+whispers among his generals and marshals at the rear of his suite.
+Those sent to fetch the deputation had returned with the news that
+Moscow was empty, that everyone had left it. The faces of those who
+were not conferring together were pale and perturbed. They were not
+alarmed by the fact that Moscow had been abandoned by its
+inhabitants (grave as that fact seemed), but by the question how to
+tell the Emperor- without putting him in the terrible position of
+appearing ridiculous- that he had been awaiting the boyars so long
+in vain: that there were drunken mobs left in Moscow but no one
+else. Some said that a deputation of some sort must be scraped
+together, others disputed that opinion and maintained that the Emperor
+should first be carefully and skillfully prepared, and then told the
+truth.
+
+"He will have to be told, all the same," said some gentlemen of
+the suite. "But, gentlemen..."
+
+The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating
+upon his magnanimous plans, was pacing patiently up and down before
+the outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from
+under his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.
+
+"But it's impossible..." declared the gentlemen of the suite,
+shrugging their shoulders but not venturing to utter the implied word-
+le ridicule...
+
+At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor's
+instinct suggesting to him that the sublime moment having been too
+long drawn out was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a sign with
+his hand. A single report of a signaling gun followed, and the troops,
+who were already spread out on different sides of Moscow, moved into
+the city through Tver, Kaluga, and Dorogomilov gates. Faster and
+faster, vying with one another, they moved at the double or at a trot,
+vanishing amid the clouds of dust they raised and making the air
+ring with a deafening roar of mingling shouts.
+
+Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode with them as
+far as the Dorogomilov gate, but there again stopped and,
+dismounting from his horse, paced for a long time by the
+Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting the deputation.
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a
+fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was
+empty. It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.
+
+In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance
+it seems as much alive as other hives.
+
+The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the
+midday sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it
+smells of honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same
+way. But one has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no
+longer any life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the
+smell and the sound that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the
+beekeeper's tap on the wall of the sick hive, instead of the former
+instant unanimous humming of tens of thousands of bees with their
+abdomens threateningly compressed, and producing by the rapid
+vibration of their wings an aerial living sound, the only reply is a
+disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted hive. From
+the alighting board, instead of the former spirituous fragrant smell
+of honey and venom, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor
+of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are
+no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and
+ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no longer the measured
+quiet sound of throbbing activity, like the sound of boiling water,
+but diverse discordant sounds of disorder. In and out of the hive long
+black robber bees smeared with honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do
+not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly only bees laden with
+honey flew into the hive, and they flew out empty; now they fly out
+laden. The beekeeper opens the lower part of the hive and peers in.
+Instead of black, glossy bees- tamed by toil, clinging to one
+another's legs and drawing out the wax, with a ceaseless hum of labor-
+that used to hang in long clusters down to the floor of the hive,
+drowsy shriveled bees crawl about separately in various directions
+on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a neatly glued floor,
+swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings, there is a floor
+littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees scarcely moving their
+legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared away.
+
+The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the
+super. Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up every gap in the
+combs and keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex
+structures of the combs, but no longer in their former state of
+purity. All is neglected and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and
+stealthily prowling about the combs, and the short home bees,
+shriveled and listless as if they were old, creep slowly about without
+trying to hinder the robbers, having lost all motive and all sense
+of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies knock awkwardly
+against the walls of the hive in their flight. Here and there among
+the cells containing dead brood and honey an angry buzzing can
+sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of bees, by force of habit
+and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with efforts beyond their
+strength laboriously drag away a dead bee or bumblebee without knowing
+why they do it. In another corner two old bees are languidly fighting,
+or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another, without themselves
+knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile intent. In a third
+place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack some victim and
+fight and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or killed, drops
+from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap of corpses.
+The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine the brood cells.
+In place of the former close dark circles formed by thousands of
+bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery of generation,
+he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of bees. They
+have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they had
+guarded and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death. Only a
+few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the
+enemy's hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are
+dead and fall as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the
+hive, chalks a mark on it, and when he has time tears out its contents
+and burns it clean.
+
+So in the same way Moscow was empty when Napoleon, weary, uneasy,
+and morose, paced up and down in front of the Kammer-Kollezski
+rampart, awaiting what to his mind was a necessary, if but formal,
+observance of the proprieties- a deputation.
+
+In various corners of Moscow there still remained a few people
+aimlessly moving about, following their old habits and hardly aware of
+what they were doing.
+
+When with due circumspection Napoleon was informed that Moscow was
+empty, he looked angrily at his informant, turned away, and silently
+continued to walk to and fro.
+
+"My carriage!" he said.
+
+He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into
+the suburb. "Moscow deserted!" he said to himself. "What an incredible
+event!"
+
+He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in the
+Dorogomilov suburb.
+
+The coup de theatre had not come off.
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o'clock at
+night till two in the afternoon and bore away with them the wounded
+and the last of the inhabitants who were leaving.
+
+The greatest crush during the movement of the troops took place at
+the Stone, Moskva, and Yauza bridges.
+
+While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around the
+Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the Stone bridges, a great many
+soldiers, taking advantage of the stoppage and congestion, turned back
+from the bridges and slipped stealthily and silently past the church
+of Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski gate, back up the
+hill to the Red Square where some instinct told them they could easily
+take things not belonging to them. Crowds of the kind seen at cheap
+sales filled all the passages and alleys of the Bazaar. But there were
+no dealers with voices of ingratiating affability inviting customers
+to enter; there were no hawkers, nor the usual motley crowd of
+female purchasers- but only soldiers, in uniforms and overcoats though
+without muskets, entering the Bazaar empty-handed and silently
+making their way out through its passages with bundles. Tradesmen
+and their assistants (of whom there were but few) moved about among
+the soldiers quite bewildered. They unlocked their shops and locked
+them up again, and themselves carried goods away with the help their
+assistants. On the square in front of the Bazaar were drummers beating
+the muster call. But the roll of the drums did not make the looting
+soldiers run in the direction of the drum as formerly, but made
+them, on the contrary, run farther away. Among the soldiers in the
+shops and passages some men were to be seen in gray coats, with
+closely shaven heads. Two officers, one with a scarf over his
+uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse, the other in an
+overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyinka Street,
+talking. A third officer galloped up to them.
+
+"The general orders them all to be driven out at once, without fail.
+This is outrageous! Half the men have dispersed."
+
+"Where are you off to?... Where?..." he shouted to three infantrymen
+without muskets who, holding up the skirts of their overcoats, were
+slipping past him into the Bazaar passage. "Stop, you rascals!"
+
+"But how are you going to stop them?" replied another officer.
+"There is no getting them together. The army should push on before the
+rest bolt, that's all!"
+
+"How can one push on? They are stuck there, wedged on the bridge,
+and don't move. Shouldn't we put a cordon round to prevent the rest
+from running away?"
+
+"Come, go in there and drive them out!" shouted the senior officer.
+
+The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer, and went
+with him into the arcade. Some soldiers started running away in a
+group. A shopkeeper with red pimples on his cheeks near the nose,
+and a calm, persistent, calculating expression on his plump face,
+hurriedly and ostentatiously approached the officer, swinging his
+arms.
+
+"Your honor!" said he. "Be so good as to protect us! We won't grudge
+trifles, you are welcome to anything- we shall be delighted!
+Pray!... I'll fetch a piece of cloth at once for such an honorable
+gentleman, or even two pieces with pleasure. For we feel how it is;
+but what's all this- sheer robbery! If you please, could not guards be
+placed if only to let us close the shop...."
+
+Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.
+
+"Eh, what twaddle!" said one of them, a thin, stern-looking man.
+"When one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's hair! Take what
+any of you like!" And flourishing his arm energetically he turned
+sideways to the officer.
+
+"It's all very well for you, Ivan Sidorych, to talk," said the first
+tradesman angrily. "Please step inside, your honor!"
+
+"Talk indeed!" cried the thin one. "In my three shops here I have
+a hundred thousand rubles' worth of goods. Can they be saved when
+the army has gone? Eh, what people! 'Against God's might our hands
+can't fight.'"
+
+"Come inside, your honor!" repeated the tradesman, bowing.
+
+The officer stood perplexed and his face showed indecision.
+
+"It's not my business!" he exclaimed, and strode on quickly down one
+of the passages.
+
+From one open shop came the sound of blows and vituperation, and
+just as the officer came up to it a man in a gray coat with a shaven
+head was flung out violently.
+
+This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and the officer.
+The officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shops, but at that
+moment fearful screams reached them from the huge crowd on the
+Moskva bridge and the officer ran out into the square.
+
+"What is it? What is it?" he asked, but his comrade was already
+galloping off past Vasili the Beatified in the direction from which
+the screams came.
+
+The officer mounted his horse and rode after him. When he reached
+the bridge he saw two unlimbered guns, the infantry crossing the
+bridge, several overturned carts, and frightened and laughing faces
+among the troops. Beside the cannon a cart was standing to which two
+horses were harnessed. Four borzois with collars were pressing close
+to the wheels. The cart was loaded high, and at the very top, beside a
+child's chair with its legs in the air, sat a peasant woman uttering
+piercing and desperate shrieks. He was told by his fellow officers
+that the screams of the crowd and the shrieks of the woman were due to
+the fact that General Ermolov, coming up to the crowd and learning
+that soldiers were dispersing among the shops while crowds of
+civilians blocked the bridge, had ordered two guns to be unlimbered
+and made a show of firing at the bridge. The crowd, crushing one
+another, upsetting carts, and shouting and squeezing desperately,
+had cleared off the bridge and the troops were now moving forward.
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Meanwhile, the city itself was deserted. There was hardly anyone
+in the streets. The gates and shops were all closed, only here and
+there round the taverns solitary shouts or drunken songs could be
+heard. Nobody drove through the streets and footsteps were rarely
+heard. The Povarskaya was quite still and deserted. The huge courtyard
+of the Rostovs' house was littered with wisps of hay and with dung
+from the horses, and not a soul was to be seen there. In the great
+drawing room of the house, which had been left with all it
+contained, were two people. They were the yard porter Ignat, and the
+page boy Mishka, Vasilich's grandson who had stayed in Moscow with his
+grandfather. Mishka had opened the clavichord and was strumming on
+it with one finger. The yard porter, his arms akimbo, stood smiling
+with satisfaction before the large mirror.
+
+"Isn't it fine, eh, Uncle Ignat?" said the boy, suddenly beginning
+to strike the keyboard with both hands.
+
+"Only fancy!" answered Ignat, surprised at the broadening grin on
+his face in the mirror.
+
+"Impudence! Impudence!" they heard behind them the voice of Mavra
+Kuzminichna who had entered silently. "How he's grinning, the fat mug!
+Is that what you're here for? Nothing's cleared away down there and
+Vasilich is worn out. Just you wait a bit!"
+
+Ignat left off smiling, adjusted his belt, and went out of the
+room with meekly downcast eyes.
+
+"Aunt, I did it gently," said the boy.
+
+"I'll give you something gently, you monkey you!" cried Mavra
+Kuzminichna, raising her arm threateningly. "Go and get the samovar to
+boil for your grandfather."
+
+Mavra Kuzminichna flicked the dust off the clavichord and closed it,
+and with a deep sigh left the drawing room and locked its main door.
+
+Going out into the yard she paused to consider where she should go
+next- to drink tea in the servants' wing with Vasilich, or into the
+storeroom to put away what still lay about.
+
+She heard the sound of quick footsteps in the quiet street.
+Someone stopped at the gate, and the latch rattled as someone tried to
+open it. Mavra Kuzminichna went to the gate.
+
+"Who do you want?"
+
+"The count- Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov."
+
+"And who are you?"
+
+"An officer, I have to see him," came the reply in a pleasant,
+well-bred Russian voice.
+
+Mavra Kuzminichna opened the gate and an officer of eighteen, with
+the round face of a Rostov, entered the yard.
+
+"They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at vespertime,"
+said Mavra Kuzminichna cordially.
+
+The young officer standing in the gateway, as if hesitating
+whether to enter or not, clicked his tongue.
+
+"Ah, how annoying!" he muttered. "I should have come yesterday....
+Ah, what a pity."
+
+Meanwhile, Mavra Kuzminichna was attentively and sympathetically
+examining the familiar Rostov features of the young man's face, his
+tattered coat and trodden-down boots.
+
+"What did you want to see the count for?" she asked.
+
+"Oh well... it can't be helped!" said he in a tone of vexation and
+placed his hand on the gate as if to leave.
+
+He again paused in indecision.
+
+"You see," he suddenly said, "I am a kinsman of the count's and he
+has been very kind to me. As you see" (he glanced with an amused air
+and good-natured smile at his coat and boots) "my things are worn
+out and I have no money, so I was going to ask the count..."
+
+Mavra Kuzminichna did not let him finish.
+
+"Just wait a minute, sir. One little moment," said she.
+
+And as soon as the officer let go of the gate handle she turned and,
+hurrying away on her old legs, went through the back yard to the
+servants' quarters.
+
+While Mavra Kuzminichna was running to her room the officer walked
+about the yard gazing at his worn-out boots with lowered head and a
+faint smile on his lips. "What a pity I've missed Uncle! What a nice
+old woman! Where has she run off to? And how am I to find the
+nearest way to overtake my regiment, which must by now be getting near
+the Rogozhski gate?" thought he. Just then Mavra Kuzminichna
+appeared from behind the corner of the house with a frightened yet
+resolute look, carrying a rolled-up check kerchief in her hand.
+While still a few steps from the officer she unfolded the kerchief and
+took out of it a white twenty-five-ruble assignat and hastily handed
+it to him.
+
+"If his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he would of
+course... but as it is..."
+
+Mavra Kuzminichna grew abashed and confused. The officer did not
+decline, but took the note quietly and thanked her.
+
+"If the count had been at home..." Mavra Kuzminichna went on
+apologetically. "Christ be with you, sir! May God preserve you!"
+said she, bowing as she saw him out.
+
+Swaying his head and smiling as if amused at himself, the officer
+ran almost at a trot through the deserted streets toward the Yauza
+bridge to overtake his regiment.
+
+But Mavra Kuzminichna stood at the closed gate for some time with
+moist eyes, pensively swaying her head and feeling an unexpected
+flow of motherly tenderness and pity for the unknown young officer.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground floor of
+which was a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches
+round the tables in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands.
+Tipsy and perspiring, with dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they were
+all laboriously singing some song or other. They were singing
+discordantly, arduously, and with great effort, evidently not
+because they wished to sing, but because they wanted to show they were
+drunk and on a spree. One, a tall, fair-haired lad in a clean blue
+coat, was standing over the others. His face with its fine straight
+nose would have been handsome had it not been for his thin,
+compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed eyes. Evidently
+possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were singing, and
+solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads his white arm with
+the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread out
+his dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he
+always carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it
+were most important that the sinewy white arm he was flourishing
+should be bare. In the midst of the song cries were heard, and
+fighting and blows in the passage and porch. The tall lad waved his
+arm.
+
+"Stop it!" he exclaimed peremptorily. "There's a fight, lads!"
+And, still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the porch.
+
+The factory hands followed him. These men, who under the
+leadership of the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop that morning,
+had brought the publican some skins from the factory and for this
+had had drink served them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring
+smithy, hearing the sounds of revelry in the tavern and supposing it
+to have been broken into, wished to force their way in too and a fight
+in the porch had resulted.
+
+The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door, and when
+the workmen came out the smith, wrenching himself free from the tavern
+keeper, fell face downward on the pavement.
+
+Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing against the
+publican with his chest.
+
+The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a blow in the
+face and cried wildly: "They're fighting us, lads!"
+
+At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching his bruised
+face to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful voice: "Police! Murder!...
+They've killed a man, lads!"
+
+"Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to death- killed!..." screamed a
+woman coming out of a gate close by.
+
+A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith.
+
+"Haven't you robbed people enough- taking their last shirts?" said a
+voice addressing the publican. "What have you killed a man for, you
+thief?"
+
+The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared eyes from
+the publican to the smith and back again as if considering whom he
+ought to fight now.
+
+"Murderer!" he shouted suddenly to the publican. "Bind him, lads!"
+
+"I daresay you would like to bind me!" shouted the publican, pushing
+away the men advancing on him, and snatching his cap from his head
+he flung it on the ground.
+
+As if this action had some mysterious and menacing significance, the
+workmen surrounding the publican paused in indecision.
+
+"I know the law very well, mates! I'll take the matter to the
+captain of police. You think I won't get to him? Robbery is not
+permitted to anybody now a days!" shouted the publican, picking up his
+cap.
+
+"Come along then! Come along then!" the publican and the tall
+young fellow repeated one after the other, and they moved up the
+street together.
+
+The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory hands and
+others followed behind, talking and shouting.
+
+At the corner of the Moroseyka, opposite a large house with closed
+shutters and bearing a bootmaker's signboard, stood a score of thin,
+worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers, wearing overalls and long
+tattered coats.
+
+"He should pay folks off properly," a thin workingman, with frowning
+brows and a straggly beard, was saying.
+
+"But he's sucked our blood and now he thinks he's quit of us. He's
+been misleading us all the week and now that he's brought us to this
+pass he's made off."
+
+On seeing the crowd and the bloodstained man the workman ceased
+speaking, and with eager curiosity all the bootmakers joined the
+moving crowd.
+
+"Where are all the folks going?"
+
+"Why, to the police, of course!"
+
+"I say, is it true that we have been beaten?" "And what did you
+think? Look what folks are saying."
+
+Questions and answers were heard. The publican, taking advantage
+of the increased crowd, dropped behind and returned to his tavern.
+
+The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his foe, waved his
+bare arm and went on talking incessantly, attracting general attention
+to himself. It was around him that the people chiefly crowded,
+expecting answers from him to the questions that occupied all their
+minds.
+
+"He must keep order, keep the law, that's what the government is
+there for. Am I not right, good Christians?" said the tall youth, with
+a scarcely perceptible smile. "He thinks there's no government! How
+can one do without government? Or else there would be plenty who'd rob
+us."
+
+"Why talk nonsense?" rejoined voices in the crowd. "Will they give
+up Moscow like this? They told you that for fun, and you believed
+it! Aren't there plenty of troops on the march? Let him in, indeed!
+That's what the government is for. You'd better listen to what
+people are saying," said some of the mob pointing to the tall youth.
+
+By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people were gathered
+round a man in a frieze coat who held a paper in his hand.
+
+"An ukase, they are reading an ukase! Reading an ukase!" cried
+voices in the crowd, and the people rushed toward the reader.
+
+The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet of August 31
+When the crowd collected round him he seemed confused, but at the
+demand of the tall lad who had pushed his way up to him, he began in a
+rather tremulous voice to read the sheet from the beginning.
+
+"Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness," he read
+("Sirin Highness," said the tall fellow with a triumphant smile on his
+lips and a frown on his brow), "to consult with him to act, and to aid
+the army to exterminate these scoundrels. We too will take part..."
+the reader went on, and then paused ("Do you see," shouted the youth
+victoriously, "he's going to clear up the whole affair for
+you...."), "in destroying them, and will send these visitors to the
+devil. I will come back to dinner, and we'll set to work. We will
+do, completely do, and undo these scoundrels."
+
+The last words were read out in the midst of complete silence. The
+tall lad hung his head gloomily. It was evident that no one had
+understood the last part. In particular, the words "I will come back
+to dinner," evidently displeased both reader and audience. The
+people's minds were tuned to a high pitch and this was too simple
+and needlessly comprehensible- it was what any one of them might
+have said and therefore was what an ukase emanating from the highest
+authority should not say.
+
+They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth moved his
+lips and swayed from side to side.
+
+"We should ask him... that's he himself?"... "Yes, ask him
+indeed!... Why not? He'll explain"... voices in the rear of the
+crowd were suddenly heard saying, and the general attention turned
+to the police superintendent's trap which drove into the square
+attended by two mounted dragoons.
+
+The superintendent of police, who had that morning by Count
+Rostopchin's orders to burn the barges and had in connection with that
+matter acquired a large sum of money which was at that moment in his
+pocket, on seeing a crowd bearing down upon him told his coachman to
+stop.
+
+"What people are these?" he shouted to the men, who were moving
+singly and timidly in the direction of his trap.
+
+"What people are these?" he shouted again, receiving no answer.
+
+"Your honor..." replied the shopman in the frieze coat, "your honor,
+in accord with the proclamation of his highest excellency the count,
+they desire to serve, not sparing their lives, and it is not any
+kind of riot, but as his highest excellence said..."
+
+"The count has not left, he is here, and an order will be issued
+concerning you," said the superintendent of police. "Go on!" he
+ordered his coachman.
+
+The crowd halted, pressing around those who had heard what the
+superintendent had said, and looking at the departing trap.
+
+The superintendent of police turned round at that moment with a
+scared look, said something to his coachman, and his horses
+increased their speed.
+
+"It's a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!" shouted the tall
+youth. "Don't let him go, lads! Let him answer us! Keep him!"
+shouted different people and the people dashed in pursuit of the trap.
+
+Following the superintendent of police and talking loudly the
+crowd went in the direction of the Lubyanka Street.
+
+"There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away and left us to
+perish. Do they think we're dogs?" voices in the crowd were heard
+saying more and more frequently.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+On the evening of the first of September, after his interview with
+Kutuzov, Count Rostopchin had returned to Moscow mortified and
+offended because he had not been invited to attend the council of war,
+and because Kutuzov had paid no attention to his offer to take part in
+the defense of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook revealed
+to him at the camp, which treated the tranquillity of the capital
+and its patriotic fervor as not merely secondary but quite
+irrelevant and unimportant matters. Distressed, offended, and
+surprised by all this, Rostopchin had returned to Moscow. After supper
+he lay down on a sofa without undressing, and was awakened soon
+after midnight by a courier bringing him a letter from Kutuzov. This
+letter requested the count to send police officers to guide the troops
+through the town, as the army was retreating to the Ryazan road beyond
+Moscow. This was not news to Rostopchin. He had known that Moscow
+would be abandoned not merely since his interview the previous day
+with Kutuzov on the Poklonny Hill but ever since the battle of
+Borodino, for all the generals who came to Moscow after that battle
+had said unanimously that it was impossible to fight another battle,
+and since then the government property had been removed every night,
+and half the inhabitants had left the city with Rostopchin's own
+permission. Yet all the same this information astonished and irritated
+the count, coming as it did in the form of a simple note with an order
+from Kutuzov, and received at night, breaking in on his beauty sleep.
+
+When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchin explained his
+actions at this time, he repeatedly says that he was then actuated
+by two important considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow
+and expedite the departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this
+twofold aim all Rostopchin's actions appear irreproachable. "Why
+were the holy relics, the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores of
+corn not removed? Why were thousands of inhabitants deceived into
+believing that Moscow would not be given up- and thereby ruined?"
+"To presence the tranquillity of the city," explains Count Rostopchin.
+"Why were bundles of useless papers from the government offices, and
+Leppich's balloon and other articles removed?" "To leave the town
+empty," explains Count Rostopchin. One need only admit that public
+tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification.
+
+All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude
+for public tranquillity.
+
+On what, then, was Count Rostopchin's fear for the tranquillity of
+Moscow based in 1812? What reason was there for assuming any
+probability of an uprising in the city? The inhabitants were leaving
+it and the retreating troops were filling it. Why should that cause
+the masses to riot?
+
+Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did anything resembling
+an insurrection ever occur when the enemy entered a town. More than
+ten thousand people were still in Moscow on the first and second of
+September, and except for a mob in the governor's courtyard, assembled
+there at his bidding, nothing happened. It is obvious that there would
+have been even less reason to expect a disturbance among the people if
+after the battle of Borodino, when the surrender of Moscow became
+certain or at least probable, Rostopchin instead of exciting the
+people by distributing arms and broadsheets had taken steps to
+remove all the holy relics, the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and
+had told the population plainly that the town would be abandoned.
+
+Rostopchin, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a sanguine and
+impulsive man who had always moved in the highest administrative
+circles and had no understanding at all of the people he supposed
+himself to be guiding. Ever since the enemy's entry into Smolensk he
+had in imagination been playing the role of director of the popular
+feeling of "the heart of Russia." Not only did it seem to him (as to
+all administrators) that he controlled the external actions of
+Moscow's inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental
+attitude by means of his broadsheets and posters, written in a
+coarse tone which the people despise in their own class and do not
+understand from those in authority. Rostopchin was so pleased with the
+fine role of leader of popular feeling, and had grown so used to it,
+that the necessity of relinquishing that role and abandoning Moscow
+without any heroic display took him unawares and he suddenly felt
+the ground slip away from under his feet, so that he positively did
+not know what to do. Though he knew it was coming, he did not till the
+last moment wholeheartedly believe that Moscow would be abandoned, and
+did not prepare for it. The inhabitants left against his wishes. If
+the government offices were removed, this was only done on the
+demand of officials to whom the count yielded reluctantly. He was
+absorbed in the role he had created for himself. As is often the
+case with those gifted with an ardent imagination, though he had
+long known that Moscow would be abandoned he knew it only with his
+intellect, he did not believe it in his heart and did not adapt
+himself mentally to this new position of affairs.
+
+All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far it was useful
+and had any effect on the people is another question) had been
+simply directed toward arousing in the masses his own feeling of
+patriotic hatred of the French.
+
+But when events assumed their true historical character, when
+expressing hatred for the French in words proved insufficient, when it
+was not even possible to express that hatred by fighting a battle,
+when self-confidence was of no avail in relation to the one question
+before Moscow, when the whole population streamed out of Moscow as one
+man, abandoning their belongings and proving by that negative action
+all the depth of their national feeling, then the role chosen by
+Rostopchin suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt himself
+ridiculous, weak, and alone, with no ground to stand on.
+
+When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold, peremptory
+note from Kutuzov, he felt the more irritated the more he felt himself
+to blame. All that he had been specially put in charge of, the state
+property which he should have removed, was still in Moscow and it
+was no longer possible to take the whole of it away.
+
+"Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to such a pass?" he
+ruminated. "Not I, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow
+firmly in hand. And this is what they have let it come to! Villains!
+Traitors!" he thought, without clearly defining who the villains and
+traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever
+they might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous
+position in which he found himself.
+
+All that night Count Rostopchin issued orders, for which people came
+to him from all parts of Moscow. Those about him had never seen the
+count so morose and irritable.
+
+"Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar's Department has
+sent for instructions... From the Consistory, from the Senate, from
+the University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent...
+asking for information.... What are your orders about the Fire
+Brigade? From the governor of the prison... from the superintendent of
+the lunatic asylum..." All night long such announcements were
+continually being received by the count.
+
+To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating
+that orders from him were not now needed, that the whole affair,
+carefully prepared by him, had now been ruined by somebody, and that
+that somebody would have to bear the whole responsibility for all that
+might happen.
+
+"Oh, tell that blockhead," he said in reply to the question from the
+Registrar's Department, "that he should remain to guard his documents.
+Now why are you asking silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They
+have horses, let them be off to Vladimir, and not leave them to the
+French."
+
+"Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come:
+what are your commands?"
+
+"My commands? Let them go away, that's all.... And let the
+lunatics out into the town. When lunatics command our armies God
+evidently means these other madmen to be free."
+
+In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison, Count
+Rostopchin shouted angrily at the governor:
+
+"Do you expect me to give you two battalions- which we have not got-
+for a convoy? Release them, that's all about it!"
+
+"Your excellency, there are some political prisoners, Meshkov,
+Vereshchagin..."
+
+"Vereshchagin! Hasn't he been hanged yet?" shouted Rostopchin.
+"Bring him to me!"
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Toward nine o'clock in the morning, when the troops were already
+moving through Moscow, nobody came to the count any more for
+instructions. Those who were able to get away were going of their
+own accord, those who remained behind decided for themselves what they
+must do.
+
+The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokolniki, and
+sat in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn.
+
+In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that
+it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule
+is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable
+every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts.
+While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his
+frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people
+and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the
+ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea
+begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer
+possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion,
+the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the
+administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power,
+becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.
+
+Rostopchin felt this, and it was this which exasperated him.
+
+The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had stopped, went in to
+see him at the same time as an adjutant who informed the count that
+the horses were harnessed. They were both pale, and the superintendent
+of police, after reporting that he had executed the instructions he
+had received, informed the count that an immense crowd had collected
+in the courtyard and wished to see him.
+
+Without saying a word Rostopchin rose and walked hastily to his
+light, luxurious drawing room, went to the balcony door, took hold
+of the handle, let it go again, and went to the window from which he
+had a better view of the whole crowd. The tall lad was standing in
+front, flourishing his arm and saying something with a stern look. The
+blood stained smith stood beside him with a gloomy face. A drone of
+voices was audible through the closed window.
+
+"Is my carriage ready?" asked Rostopchin, stepping back from the
+window.
+
+"It is, your excellency," replied the adjutant.
+
+Rostopchin went again to the balcony door.
+
+"But what do they want?" he asked the superintendent of police.
+
+"Your excellency, they say they have got ready, according to your
+orders, to go against the French, and they shouted something about
+treachery. But it is a turbulent crowd, your excellency- I hardly
+managed to get away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest..."
+
+"You may go. I don't need you to tell me what to do!" exclaimed
+Rostopchin angrily.
+
+He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd.
+
+"This is what they have done with Russia! This is what they have
+done with me!" thought he, full of an irrepressible fury that welled
+up within him against the someone to whom what was happening might
+be attributed. As often happens with passionate people, he was
+mastered by anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it.
+"Here is that mob, the dregs of the people," he thought as he gazed at
+the crowd: "this rabble they have roused by their folly! They want a
+victim," he thought as he looked at the tall lad flourishing his
+arm. And this thought occurred to him just because he himself
+desired a victim, something on which to vent his rage.
+
+"Is the carriage ready?" he asked again.
+
+"Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about Vereshchagin? He
+is waiting at the porch," said the adjutant.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Rostopchin, as if struck by an unexpected
+recollection.
+
+And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out onto the
+balcony. The talking instantly ceased, hats and caps were doffed,
+and all eyes were raised to the count.
+
+"Good morning, lads!" said the count briskly and loudly. "Thank
+you for coming. I'll come out to you in a moment, but we must first
+settle with the villain. We must punish the villain who has caused the
+ruin of Moscow. Wait for me!"
+
+And the count stepped as briskly back into the room and slammed
+the door behind him.
+
+A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through the crowd.
+"He'll settle with all the villains, you'll see! And you said the
+French... He'll show you what law is!" the mob were saying as if
+reproving one another for their lack of confidence.
+
+A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the front door,
+gave an order, and the dragoons formed up in line. The crowd moved
+eagerly from the balcony toward the porch. Rostopchin, coming out
+there with quick angry steps, looked hastily around as if seeking
+someone.
+
+"Where is he?" he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a young man
+coming round the corner of the house between two dragoons. He had a
+long thin neck, and his head, that had been half shaved, was again
+covered by short hair. This young man was dressed in a threadbare blue
+cloth coat lined with fox fur, that had once been smart, and dirty
+hempen convict trousers, over which were pulled his thin, dirty,
+trodden-down boots. On his thin, weak legs were heavy chains which
+hampered his irresolute movements.
+
+"Ah!" said Rostopchin, hurriedly turning away his eyes from the
+young man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to the bottom step of the
+porch. "Put him there."
+
+The young man in his clattering chains stepped clumsily to the
+spot indicated, holding away with one finger the coat collar which
+chafed his neck, turned his long neck twice this way and that, sighed,
+and submissively folded before him his thin hands, unused to work.
+
+For several seconds while the young man was taking his place on
+the step the silence continued. Only among the back rows of the
+people, who were all pressing toward the one spot, could sighs,
+groans, and the shuffling of feet be heard.
+
+While waiting for the young man to take his place on the step
+Rostopchin stood frowning and rubbing his face with his hand.
+
+"Lads!" said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. "This man,
+Vereshchagin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing."
+
+The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little, stood in a
+submissive attitude, his fingers clasped before him. His emaciated
+young face, disfigured by the half-shaven head, hung down
+hopelessly. At the count's first words he raised it slowly and
+looked up at him as if wishing to say something or at least to meet
+his eye. But Rostopchin did not look at him. A vein in the young man's
+long thin neck swelled like a cord and went blue behind the ear, and
+suddenly his face flushed.
+
+All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd, and rendered
+more hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled
+sadly and timidly, and lowering his head shifted his feet on the step.
+
+"He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he had gone over to
+Bonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has disgraced the Russian
+name, he has caused Moscow to perish," said Rostopchin in a sharp,
+even voice, but suddenly he glanced down at Vereshchagin who continued
+to stand in the same submissive attitude. As if inflamed by the sight,
+he raised his arm and addressed the people, almost shouting:
+
+"Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you."
+
+The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and closer to
+one another. To keep one another back, to breathe in that stifling
+atmosphere, to be unable to stir, and to await something unknown,
+uncomprehended, and terrible, was becoming unbearable. Those
+standing in front, who had seen and heard what had taken place
+before them, all stood with wide open eyes and mouths, straining
+with all their strength, and held back the crowd that was pushing
+behind them.
+
+"Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the Russian
+name!" shouted Rostopchin. "Cut him down. I command it."
+
+Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchin's
+voice, the crowd moaned and heaved forward, but again paused.
+
+"Count!" exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of Vereshchagin in
+the midst of the momentary silence that ensued, "Count! One God is
+above us both...." He lifted his head and again the thick vein in
+his thin neck filled with blood and the color rapidly came and went in
+his face.
+
+He did not finish what he wished to say.
+
+"Cut him down! I command it..." shouted Rostopchin, suddenly growing
+pale like Vereshchagin.
+
+"Draw sabers!" cried the dragoon officer, drawing his own.
+
+Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd and reaching
+the front ranks carried it swaying to the very steps of the porch. The
+tall youth, with a stony look on his face, and rigid and uplifted arm,
+stood beside Vereshchagin.
+
+"Saber him!" the dragoon officer almost whispered.
+
+And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury,
+struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side of his saber.
+
+"Ah!" cried Vereshchagin in meek surprise, looking round with a
+frightened glance as if not understanding why this was done to him.
+A similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd. "O Lord!"
+exclaimed a sorrowful voice.
+
+But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped from
+Vereshchagin he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and that cry was
+fatal. The barrier of human feeling, strained to the utmost, that
+had held the crowd in check suddenly broke. The crime had begun and
+must now be completed. The plaintive moan of reproach was drowned by
+the threatening and angry roar of the crowd. Like the seventh and last
+wave that shatters a ship, that last irresistible wave burst from
+the rear and reached the front ranks, carrying them off their feet and
+engulfing them all. The dragoon was about to repeat his blow.
+Vereshchagin with a cry of horror, covering his head with his hands,
+rushed toward the crowd. The tall youth, against whom he stumbled,
+seized his thin neck with his hands and, yelling wildly, fell with him
+under the feet of the pressing, struggling crowd.
+
+Some beat and tore at Vereshchagin, others at the tall youth. And
+the screams of those that were being trampled on and of those who
+tried to rescue the tall lad only increased the fury of the crowd.
+It was a long time before the dragoons could extricate the bleeding
+youth, beaten almost to death. And for a long time, despite the
+feverish haste with which the mob tried to end the work that had
+been begun, those who were hitting, throttling, and tearing at
+Vereshchagin were unable to kill him, for the crowd pressed from all
+sides, swaying as one mass with them in the center and rendering it
+impossible for them either to kill him or let him go.
+
+"Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he sold
+Christ.... Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Torture
+serves a thief right. Use the hatchet!... What- still alive?"
+
+Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries changed to a
+long-drawn, measured death rattle did the crowd around his
+prostrate, bleeding corpse begin rapidly to change places. Each one
+came up, glanced at what had been done, and with horror, reproach, and
+astonishment pushed back again.
+
+"O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could he be alive?"
+voices in the crowd could be heard saying. "Quite a young fellow
+too... must have been a merchant's son. What men!... and they say he's
+not the right one.... How not the right one?... O Lord! And there's
+another has been beaten too- they say he's nearly done for.... Oh, the
+people... Aren't they afraid of sinning?..." said the same mob now,
+looking with pained distress at the dead body with its long, thin,
+half-severed neck and its livid face stained with blood and dust.
+
+A painstaking police officer, considering the presence of a corpse
+in his excellency's courtyard unseemly, told the dragoons to take it
+away. Two dragoons took it by its distorted legs and dragged it
+along the ground. The gory, dust-stained, half-shaven head with its
+long neck trailed twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back
+from it.
+
+At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd closed in with
+savage yells and swayed about him, Rostopchin suddenly turned pale
+and, instead of going to the back entrance where his carriage
+awaited him, went with hurried steps and bent head, not knowing
+where and why, along the passage leading to the rooms on the ground
+floor. The count's face was white and he could not control the
+feverish twitching of his lower jaw.
+
+"This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This way,
+please..." said a trembling, frightened voice behind him.
+
+Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went
+in the direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his caleche.
+The distant roar of the yelling crowd was audible even there. He
+hastily took his seat and told the coachman to drive him to his
+country house in Sokolniki.
+
+When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no longer hear the
+shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with
+dissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before his
+subordinates. "The mob is terrible- disgusting," he said to himself in
+French. "They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease."
+"Count! One God is above us both!"- Vereshchagin's words suddenly
+recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this
+was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchin smiled
+disdainfully at himself. "I had other duties," thought he. "The people
+had to be appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing
+for the public good"- and he began thinking of his social duties to
+his family and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself- not
+himself as Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that Theodore
+Vasilyevich Rostopchin was sacrificing himself for the public good)
+but himself as governor, the representative of authority and of the
+Tsar. "Had I been simply Theodore Vasilyevich my course of action
+would have been quite different, but it was my duty to safeguard my
+life and dignity as commander in chief."
+
+Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and no
+longer hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grew
+physically calm and, as always happens, as soon as he became
+physically tranquil his mind devised reasons why he should be mentally
+tranquil too. The thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new
+one. Since the world began and men have killed one another no one
+has ever committed such a crime against his fellow man without
+comforting himself with this same idea. This idea is le bien public,
+the hypothetical welfare of other people.
+
+To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but he
+who commits such a crime always knows just where that welfare lies.
+And Rostopchin now knew it.
+
+Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he had done, but
+he even found cause for self-satisfaction in having so successfully
+contrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish a
+criminal and at the same time pacify the mob.
+
+"Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death," thought
+Rostopchin (though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin to
+hard labor), "he was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him go
+unpunished and so I have killed two birds with one stone: to appease
+the mob I gave them a victim and at the same time punished a
+miscreant."
+
+Having reached his country house and begun to give orders about
+domestic arrangements, the count grew quite tranquil.
+
+Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses across the
+Sokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred but
+considering what was to come. He was driving to the Yauza bridge where
+he had heard that Kutuzov was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparing
+the angry and stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutuzov for
+his deception. He would make that foxy old courtier feel that the
+responsibility for all the calamities that would follow the
+abandonment of the city and the ruin of Russia (as Rostopchin regarded
+it) would fall upon his doting old head. Planning beforehand what he
+would say to Kutuzov, Rostopchin turned angrily in his caleche and
+gazed sternly from side to side.
+
+The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it, in front of
+the almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people in
+white and others like them walking singly across the field shouting
+and gesticulating.
+
+One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchin's
+carriage, and the count himself, his coachman, and his dragoons looked
+with vague horror and curiosity at these released lunatics and
+especially at the one running toward them.
+
+Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his fluttering
+dressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed on
+Rostopchin, shouting something in a hoarse voice and making signs to
+him to stop. The lunatic's solemn, gloomy face was thin and yellow,
+with its beard growing in uneven tufts. His black, agate pupils with
+saffron-yellow whites moved restlessly near the lower eyelids.
+
+"Stop! Pull up, I tell you!" he cried in a piercing voice, and again
+shouted something breathlessly with emphatic intonations and gestures.
+
+Coming abreast of the caleche he ran beside it.
+
+"Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the dead.
+They stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall rise... shall
+rise. They have torn my body. The kingdom of God will be overthrown...
+Thrice will I overthrow it and thrice re-establish it!" he cried,
+raising his voice higher and higher.
+
+Count Rostopchin suddenly grew pale as he had done when the crowd
+closed in on Vereshchagin. He turned away. "Go fas... faster!" he
+cried in a trembling voice to his coachman. The caleche flew over
+the ground as fast as the horses could draw it, but for a long time
+Count Rostopchin still heard the insane despairing screams growing
+fainter in the distance, while his eyes saw nothing but the
+astonished, frightened, bloodstained face of "the traitor" in the
+fur-lined coat.
+
+Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchin already felt that it
+had cut deep into his heart and drawn blood. Even now he felt
+clearly that the gory trace of that recollection would not pass with
+time, but that the terrible memory would, on the contrary, dwell in
+his heart ever more cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. He
+seemed still to hear the sound of his own words: "Cut him down! I
+command it...."
+
+"Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I said
+them.... I need not have said them," he thought. "And then nothing
+would have happened." He saw the frightened and then infuriated face
+of the dragoon who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid
+reproach that boy in the fur-lined coat had turned upon him. "But I
+did not do it for my own sake. I was bound to act that way.... The
+mob, the traitor... the public welfare," thought he.
+
+Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was hot. Kutuzov,
+dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his
+whip in the sand when a caleche dashed up noisily. A man in a
+general's uniform with plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and said
+something in French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told Kutuzov that
+he had come because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the army
+remained.
+
+"Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not
+told me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle;
+all this would not have happened," he said.
+
+Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what was said to
+him, he was trying to read something peculiar written at that moment
+on the face of the man addressing him. Rostopchin grew confused and
+became silent. Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking his
+penetrating gaze from Rostopchin's face muttered softly:
+
+"No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!"
+
+Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely different when he
+spoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be
+meaningless, at any rate Rostopchin made no reply and hastily left
+him. And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count
+Rostopchin, took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where he
+began with shouts to drive on the carts that blocked the way.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Murat's troops were entering
+Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind
+them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.
+
+About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of the
+Miraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the
+advanced detachment as to the condition in which they had found the
+citadel, le Kremlin.
+
+Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow.
+They all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired
+commander dressed up in feathers and gold.
+
+"Is that their Tsar himself? He's not bad!" low voices could be
+heard saying.
+
+An interpreter rode up to the group.
+
+"Take off your cap... your caps!" These words went from one to
+another in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and
+asked if it was far to the Kremlin. The porter, listening in
+perplexity to the unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that
+the interpreter was speaking Russian, did not understand what was
+being said to him and slipped behind the others.
+
+Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the
+Russian army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and
+several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French
+officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat
+and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and
+that there was probably an ambuscade there.
+
+"Good!" said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his
+suite, ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the
+gates.
+
+The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat and
+advanced up the Arbat. When they reached the end of the Vozdvizhenka
+Street they halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers
+superintended the placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlin
+through field glasses.
+
+The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound
+troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few
+infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had
+been put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate as
+soon as an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was
+standing by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and
+the latter ran back again with his men.
+
+The sound of three more shots came from the gate.
+
+One shot struck a French soldier's foot, and from behind the screens
+came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a
+word of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of
+the French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined
+concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from
+the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka,
+Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar
+in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove
+sanguinary. And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the
+gates ceased. The guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash
+off their linstocks, and an officer gave the word "Fire!" This was
+followed by two whistling sounds of canister shot, one after
+another. The shot rattled against the stone of the gate and upon the
+wooden beams and screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose over
+the Square.
+
+A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the
+stone-built Kremlin had died away the French heard a strange sound
+above their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and
+circled in the air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings.
+Together with that sound came a solitary human cry from the gateway
+and amid the smoke appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in a
+peasant's coat. He grasped a musket and took aim at the French.
+"Fire!" repeated the officer once more, and the reports of a musket
+and of two cannon shots were heard simultaneously. The gate again
+hidden by smoke.
+
+Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry
+soldiers and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three
+wounded and four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot
+of the wall, toward the Znamenka.
+
+"Clear that away!" said the officer, pointing to the beams and the
+corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw
+the corpses over the parapet.
+
+Who these men were nobody knew. "Clear that away!" was all that
+was said of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed
+later on that they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few
+eloquent lines to their memory: "These wretches had occupied the
+sacred citadel, having supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal,
+and fired" (the wretches) "at the French. Some of them were sabered
+and the Kremlin was purged of their presence."
+
+Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French entered
+the gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out of
+the windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the
+Square for fuel and kindled fires there.
+
+Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped along
+the Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka Streets. Others quartered
+themselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy
+Streets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French
+were not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in
+it as in a camp.
+
+Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their
+original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order.
+It was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army.
+But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into
+their different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various
+regiments began to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the
+army was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript,
+neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When
+five weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed
+an army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of
+articles which seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man
+when he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but
+merely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its
+paw into the narrow neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts
+will not open its fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore
+perishes, the French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish
+because they carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they
+had stolen was as impossible for them as it is for the monkey to
+open its paw and let go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment
+had entered a Moscow district, not a soldier or officer was left.
+Men in military uniforms and Hessian boots could be seen through the
+windows, laughing and walking through the rooms. In cellars and
+storerooms similar men were busy among the provisions, and in the
+yards unlocking or breaking open coach house and stable doors,
+lighting fires in kitchens and kneading and baking bread with
+rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening, amusing, or
+caressing women and children. There were many such men both in the
+shops and houses- but there was no army.
+
+Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day
+forbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding
+any violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a
+roll call for that very evening. But despite all these measures the
+men, who had till then constituted an army, flowed all over the
+wealthy, deserted city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. As
+a hungry herd of cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren
+field, but gets out of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as
+soon as it reaches rich pastures, so did the army disperse all over
+the wealthy city.
+
+No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers- like water
+percolating through sand- spread irresistibly through the city in
+all directions from the Kremlin into which they had first marched. The
+cavalry, on entering a merchant's house that had been abandoned and
+finding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on,
+all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of
+them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and
+quarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before they
+had had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the
+streets to see the city and, hearing that everything had been
+abandoned, rushed to places where valuables were to be had for the
+taking. The officers followed to check the soldiers and were
+involuntarily drawn into doing the same. In Carriage Row carriages had
+been left in the shops, and generals flocked there to select
+caleches and coaches for themselves. The few inhabitants who had
+remained invited commanding officers to their houses, hoping thereby
+to secure themselves from being plundered. There were masses of wealth
+and there seemed no end to it. All around the quarters occupied by the
+French were other regions still unexplored and unoccupied where,
+they thought, yet greater riches might be found. And Moscow engulfed
+the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is spilled on dry ground
+both the dry ground and the water disappear and mud results; and in
+the same way the entry of the famished army into the rich and deserted
+city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction of both the
+army and the wealthy city.
+
+The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de
+Rostopchine,~^ the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,
+however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning
+of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people,
+responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a
+position in which any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite
+apart from whether it had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior
+fire engines. Deserted Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of
+shavings has to burn on which sparks continually fall for several
+days. A town built of wood, where scarcely a day passes without
+conflagrations when the house owners are in residence and a police
+force is present, cannot help burning when its inhabitants have left
+it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires of
+the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves meals
+twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to billet troops in the
+villages of any district and the number of fires in that district
+immediately increases. How much then must the probability of fire be
+increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops are
+quartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity of
+the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire
+by the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the
+carelessness of enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even
+if there was any arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any
+reason to burn the houses- in any case a troublesome and dangerous
+thing to do), arson cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same
+thing would have happened without any incendiarism.
+
+^~ To Rostopchin's ferocious patriotism.
+
+However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchin's
+ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later
+on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is
+impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of
+the fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house
+must burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are
+allowed to live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its
+inhabitants, it is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not
+by those who remained in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not
+remain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its
+inhabitants abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and
+salt, nor bring them the keys of the city.
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it
+did, only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the
+evening of the second of September.
+
+After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances,
+Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely
+obsessed by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this
+thought had taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of
+the past, understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and
+heard appeared to him like a dream.
+
+He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of life's
+demands that enmeshed him, and which in his present condition he was
+unable to unravel. He had gone to Joseph Alexeevich's house, on the
+plea of sorting the deceased's books and papers, only in search of
+rest from life's turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph
+Alexeevich was connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm
+thoughts, quite contrary to the restless confusion into which he
+felt himself being drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph
+Alexeevich's study he really found it. When he sat with his elbows
+on the dusty writing table in the deathlike stillness of the study,
+calm and significant memories of the last few days rose one after
+another in his imagination, particularly of the battle of Borodino and
+of that vague sense of his own insignificance and insincerity compared
+with the truth, simplicity, and strength of the class of men he
+mentally classed as they. When Gerasim roused him from his reverie the
+idea occurred to him of taking part in the popular defense of Moscow
+which he knew was projected. And with that object he had asked Gerasim
+to get him a peasant's coat and a pistol, confiding to him his
+intentions of remaining in Joseph Alexeevich's house and keeping his
+name secret. Then during the first day spent in inaction and
+solitude (he tried several times to fix his attention on the Masonic
+manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea that had previously
+occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of his name in
+connection with Bonaparte's more than once vaguely presented itself.
+But the idea that he, L'russe Besuhof, was destined to set a limit
+to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that
+often passed through his mind and left no trace behind.
+
+When, having bought the coat merely with the object of taking part
+among the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the
+Rostovs and Natasha had said to him: "Are you remaining in
+Moscow?... How splendid!" the thought flashed into his mind that it
+really would be a good thing, even if Moscow were taken, for him to
+remain there and do what he was predestined to do.
+
+Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not
+lagging in any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate.
+But when he returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be
+defended, he suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely a
+possibility had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He
+must remain in Moscow, concealing his name, and must meet Napoleon and
+kill him, and either perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe-
+which it seemed to him was solely due to Napoleon.
+
+Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte's life in
+1809 by a German student in Vienna, and knew that the student had been
+shot. And the risk to which he would expose his life by carrying out
+his design excited him still more.
+
+Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to this
+purpose. The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and
+suffering in view of the common calamity, the same feeling that had
+
+caused him to go to Mozhaysk on the twenty-fifth and to make his way
+to the very thick of the battle and had now caused him to run away
+from his home and, in place of the luxury and comfort to which he
+was accustomed, to sleep on a hard sofa without undressing and eat the
+same food as Gerasim. The other was that vague and quite Russian
+feeling of contempt for everything conventional, artificial, and
+human- for everything the majority of men regard as the greatest
+good in the world. Pierre had first experienced this strange and
+fascinating feeling at the Sloboda Palace, when he had suddenly felt
+that wealth, power, and life- all that men so painstakingly acquire
+and guard- if it has any worth has so only by reason the joy with
+which it can all be renounced.
+
+It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend his
+last penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for
+no apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money
+he possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions
+which from an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it
+were, his personal power and strength, affirming the existence of a
+higher, nonhuman criterion of life.
+
+From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for the
+first time at the Sloboda Palace he had been continuously under its
+influence, but only now found full satisfaction for it. Moreover, at
+this moment Pierre was supported in his design and prevented from
+renouncing it by what he had already done in that direction. If he
+were now to leave Moscow like everyone else, his flight from home, the
+peasant coat, the pistol, and his announcement to the Rostovs that
+he would remain in Moscow would all become not merely meaningless
+but contemptible and ridiculous, and to this Pierre was very
+sensitive.
+
+Pierre's physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded
+to his mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he
+drank during those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty
+unchanged linen, two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa
+without bedding- all this kept him in a state of excitement
+bordering on insanity.
+
+It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The French had already
+entered Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of acting he only
+thought about his undertaking, going over its minutest details in
+his mind. In his fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either
+the striking of the blow or the death of Napoleon, but with
+extraordinary vividness and melancholy enjoyment imagined his own
+destruction and heroic endurance.
+
+"Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!" he
+thought. "Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with pistol
+or dagger? But that is all the same! 'It is not I but the hand of
+Providence that punishes thee,' I shall say," thought he, imagining
+what he would say when killing Napoleon. "Well then, take me and
+execute me!" he went on, speaking to himself and bowing his head
+with a sad but firm expression.
+
+While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to
+himself in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold
+appeared the figure of Makar Alexeevich, always so timid before but
+now quite transformed.
+
+His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He was
+obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew confused at first, but
+noticing embarrassment on Pierre's face immediately grew bold and,
+staggering on his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room.
+
+"They're frightened," he said confidentially in a hoarse voice. "I
+say I won't surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?"
+
+He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the table seized it
+with unexpected rapidity and ran out into the corridor.
+
+Gerasim and the porter, who had followed Makar Alexeevich, stopped
+him in the vestibule and tried to take the pistol from him. Pierre,
+coming out into the corridor, looked with pity and repulsion at the
+half-crazy old man. Makar Alexeevich, frowning with exertion, held
+on to the pistol and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic
+fancy in his head.
+
+"To arms! Board them! No, you shan't get it," he yelled.
+
+"That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness- please, sir,
+to let go! Please, sir..." pleaded Gerasim, trying carefully to
+steer Makar Alexeevich by the elbows back to the door.
+
+"Who are you? Bonaparte!..." shouted Makar Alexeevich.
+
+"That's not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and rest. Allow
+me to have the pistol."
+
+"Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?" shouted Makar
+Alexeevich, brandishing the pistol. "Board them!"
+
+"Catch hold!" whispered Gerasim to the porter.
+
+They seized Makar Alexeevich by the arms and dragged him to the
+door.
+
+The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of a struggle
+and of a tipsy, hoarse voice.
+
+Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream, reverberated
+from the porch and the cook came running into the vestibule.
+
+"It's them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them, horsemen!" she
+cried.
+
+Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and in the now
+silent corridor the sound of several hands knocking at the front
+door could be heard.
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his design he
+would disclose neither his identity nor his knowledge of French, stood
+at the half-open door of the corridor, intending to conceal himself as
+soon as the French entered. But the French entered and still Pierre
+did not retire- an irresistible curiosity kept him there.
+
+There were two of them. One was an officer- a tall, soldierly,
+handsome man- the other evidently a private or an orderly,
+sunburned, short, and thin, with sunken cheeks and a dull
+expression. The officer walked in front, leaning on a stick and
+slightly limping. When he had advanced a few steps he stopped,
+having apparently decided that these were good quarters, turned
+round to the soldiers standing at the entrance, and in a loud voice of
+command ordered them to put up the horses. Having done that, the
+officer, lifting his elbow with a smart gesture, stroked his
+mustache and lightly touched his hat.
+
+"Bonjour, la compagnie!"~^ said he gaily, smiling and looking about
+him.
+
+^~ "Good day, everybody!"
+
+No one gave any reply.
+
+"Vous etes le bourgeois?"~^ the officer asked Gerasim.
+
+^~ "Are you the master here?"
+
+Gerasim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and inquiring look.
+
+"Quartier, quartier, logement!" said the officer, looking down at
+the little man with a condescending and good-natured smile. "Les
+francais sont de bons enfants. Que diable! Voyons! Ne nous fachons
+pas, mon vieux!"~^ added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerasim
+on the shoulder. "Well, does no one speak French in this
+establishment?" he asked again in French, looking around and meeting
+Pierre's eyes. Pierre moved away from the door.
+
+^~ "Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good fellows. What
+the devil! There, don't let us be cross, old fellow!"
+
+Again the officer turned to Gerasim and asked him to show him the
+rooms in the house.
+
+"Master, not here- don't understand... me, you..." said Gerasim,
+trying to render his words more comprehensible by contorting them.
+
+Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before
+Gerasim's nose, intimating that he did not understand him either,
+and moved, limping, to the door at which Pierre was standing. Pierre
+wished to go away and conceal himself, but at that moment he saw Makar
+Alexeevich appearing at the open kitchen door with the pistol in his
+hand. With a madman's cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman,
+raised his pistol, and took aim.
+
+"Board them!" yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger.
+Hearing the yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment
+Pierre threw himself on the drunkard. Just when Pierre snatched at and
+struck up the pistol Makar Alexeevich at last got his fingers on the
+trigger, there was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a
+cloud of smoke. The Frenchman turned pale and rushed to the door.
+
+Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French,
+Pierre, snatching away the pistol and throwing it down, ran up to
+the officer and addressed him in French.
+
+"You are not wounded?" he asked.
+
+"I think not," answered the Frenchman, feeling himself over. "But
+I have had a lucky escape this time," he added, pointing to the
+damaged plaster of the wall. "Who is that man?" said he, looking
+sternly at Pierre.
+
+"Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred," said Pierre
+rapidly, quite forgetting the part he had intended to play. "He is
+an unfortunate madman who did not know what he was doing."
+
+The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him by the collar.
+
+Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about
+to fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall.
+
+"Brigand! You shall pay for this," said the Frenchman, letting go of
+him. "We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon
+traitors," he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine
+energetic gesture.
+
+Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold
+that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence
+with the same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with
+a smile. For a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome
+face assumed a melodramatically gentle expression and he held out
+his hand.
+
+"You have saved my life. You are French," said he.
+
+For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman
+could perform a great deed, and to save his life- the life of M.
+Ramballe, captain of the 13th Light Regiment- was undoubtedly a very
+great deed.
+
+But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer's conviction
+based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.
+
+"I am Russian," he said quickly.
+
+"Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others," said the officer, waving his
+finger before his nose and smiling. "You shall tell me all about
+that presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot. Well, and what
+are we to do with this man?" he added, addressing himself to Pierre as
+to a brother.
+
+Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that
+loftiest of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the
+officer's look and tone. In reply to his last question Pierre again
+explained who Makar Alexeevich was and how just before their arrival
+that drunken imbecile had seized the loaded pistol which they had
+not had time to recover from him, and begged the officer to let the
+deed go unpunished.
+
+The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with
+his arm.
+
+"You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant
+it you. Lead that man away!" said he quickly and energetically, and
+taking the arm of Pierre whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for
+saving his life, he went with him into the room.
+
+The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the passage
+asking what had happened, and expressed their readiness to punish
+the culprits, but the officer sternly checked them.
+
+"You will be called in when you are wanted," he said.
+
+The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had meanwhile
+had time to visit the kitchen, came up to his officer.
+
+"Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen," said
+he. "Shall I serve them up?"
+
+"Yes, and some wine," answered the captain.
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+When the French officer went into the room with Pierre the latter
+again thought it his duty to assure him that he was not French and
+wished to go away, but the officer would not hear of it. He was so
+very polite, amiable, good-natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre
+for saving his life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat
+down with him in the parlor- the first room they entered. To
+Pierre's assurances that he was not a Frenchman, the captain,
+evidently not understanding how anyone could decline so flattering
+an appellation, shrugged his shoulders and said that if Pierre
+absolutely insisted on passing for a Russian let it be so, but for all
+that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude for saving his
+life.
+
+Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving
+the feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre's
+feelings were, the latter would probably have left him, but the
+man's animated obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed
+Pierre.
+
+"A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito," said the officer,
+looking at Pierre's fine though dirty linen and at the ring on his
+finger. "I owe my life to you and offer you my friendship. A Frenchman
+never forgets either an insult or a service. I offer you my
+friendship. That is all I can say."
+
+There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of
+the word) in the officer's voice, in the expression of his face and in
+his gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the
+Frenchman's smile, pressed the hand held out to him.
+
+"Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the
+Legion of Honor for the affair on the seventh of September," he
+introduced himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his
+lips under his mustache. "Will you now be so good as to tell me with
+whom I have the honor of conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in
+the ambulance with that maniac's bullet in my body?"
+
+Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing,
+began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason
+for concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him.
+
+"Oh, please!" said he. "I understand your reasons. You are an
+officer... a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us.
+That's not my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am
+quite at your service. You belong to the gentry?" he concluded with
+a shade of inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. "Your
+baptismal name, if you please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you
+say.... That's all I want to know."
+
+When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and
+vodka brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a
+Russian cellar and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share
+his dinner, and himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a
+healthy and hungry man, munching his food rapidly with his strong
+teeth, continually smacking his lips, and repeating- "Excellent!
+Delicious!" His face grew red and was covered with perspiration.
+Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner with pleasure. Morel, the
+orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan and placed a bottle of
+claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the
+kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known to the French
+and had been given a special name. They called it limonade de cochon
+(pig's lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de cochon he
+had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they had
+taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and
+applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up to
+its neck in a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for
+Pierre. The satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered the
+captain still more lively and he chatted incessantly all through
+dinner.
+
+"Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for
+saving me from that maniac.... You see, I have bullets enough in my
+body already. Here is one I got at Wagram" (he touched his side)
+"and a second at Smolensk"- he showed a scar on his cheek- "and this
+leg which as you see does not want to march, I got that on the seventh
+at the great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It was splendid! That
+deluge of fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us
+there, my word! You may be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of
+the cough I caught there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity
+those who did not see it."
+
+"I was there," said Pierre.
+
+"Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave foes.
+The great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!" continued the Frenchman.
+"And you made us pay dear for it. I was at it three times- sure as I
+sit here. Three times we reached the guns and three times we were
+thrown back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur
+Pierre! Your grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw them close
+up their ranks six times in succession and march as if on parade. Fine
+fellows! Our King of Naples, who knows what's what, cried 'Bravo!' Ha,
+ha! So you are one of us soldiers!" he added, smiling, after a
+momentary pause. "So much the better, so much the better, Monsieur
+Pierre! Terrible in battle... gallant... with the fair" (he winked and
+smiled), "that's what the French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren't they?"
+
+The captain was so naively and good-humoredly gay, so real, and so
+pleased with himself that Pierre almost winked back as he looked
+merrily at him. Probably the word "gallant" turned the captain's
+thoughts to the state of Moscow.
+
+"Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have all left
+Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be afraid of?"
+
+"Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians entered
+it?" asked Pierre.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine chuckle,
+patting Pierre on the shoulder. "What a thing to say!" he exclaimed.
+"Paris?... But Paris, Paris..."
+
+"Paris- the capital of the world," Pierre finished his remark for
+him.
+
+The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping short in
+the middle of his talk and gazing intently with his laughing, kindly
+eyes.
+
+"Well, if you hadn't told me you were Russian, I should have wagered
+that you were Parisian! You have that... I don't know what, that..."
+and having uttered this compliment, he again gazed at him in silence.
+
+"I have been in Paris. I spent years there," said Pierre.
+
+"Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn't know
+Paris is a savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues off. Paris is
+Talma, la Duchenois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards," and
+noticing that his conclusion was weaker than what had gone before,
+he added quickly: "There is only one Paris in the world. You have been
+to Paris and have remained Russian. Well, I don't esteem you the
+less for it."
+
+Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after the days
+he had spent alone with his depressing thoughts, Pierre
+involuntarily enjoyed talking with this cheerful and good-natured man.
+
+"To return to your ladies- I hear they are lovely. What a wretched
+idea to go and bury themselves in the steppes when the French army
+is in Moscow. What a chance those girls have missed! Your peasants,
+now- that's another thing; but you civilized people, you ought to know
+us better than that. We took Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome,
+Warsaw, all the world's capitals.... We are feared, but we are
+loved. We are nice to know. And then the Emperor..." he began, but
+Pierre interrupted him.
+
+"The Emperor," Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly became sad and
+embarrassed, "is the Emperor...?"
+
+"The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius-
+that's what the Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who tell you so.... I
+assure you I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an
+emigrant count.... But that man has vanquished me. He has taken hold
+of me. I could not resist the sight of the grandeur and glory with
+which he has covered France. When I understood what he wanted- when
+I saw that he was preparing a bed of laurels for us, you know, I
+said to myself: 'That is a monarch,' and I devoted myself to him! So
+there! Oh yes, mon cher, he is the greatest man of the ages past or
+future."
+
+"Is he in Moscow?" Pierre stammered with a guilty look.
+
+The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.
+
+"No, he will make his entry tomorrow," he replied, and continued his
+talk.
+
+Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at
+the gate and by Morel, who came to say that some Wurttemberg hussars
+had come and wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the
+captain's horses were. This difficulty had arisen chiefly because
+the hussars did not understand what was said to them in French.
+
+The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a stern
+voice asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding
+officer, and by what right he allowed himself to claim quarters that
+were already occupied. The German who knew little French, answered the
+two first questions by giving the names of his regiment and of his
+commanding officer, but in reply to the third question which he did
+not understand said, introducing broken French into his own German,
+that he was the quartermaster of the regiment and his commander had
+ordered him to occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who
+knew German, translated what the German said to the captain and gave
+the captain's reply to the Wurttemberg hussar in German. When he had
+understood what was said to him, the German submitted and took his men
+elsewhere. The captain went out into the porch and gave some orders in
+a loud voice.
+
+When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the same place as
+before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He
+really was suffering at that moment. When the captain went out and
+he was left alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the
+position he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken or that
+the happy conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing him.
+Painful as that was it was not that which tormented Pierre at the
+moment. He was tormented by the consciousness of his own weakness. The
+few glasses of wine he had drunk and the conversation with this
+good-natured man had destroyed the mood of concentrated gloom in which
+he had spent the last few days and which was essential for the
+execution of his design. The pistol, dagger, and peasant coat were
+ready. Napoleon was to enter the town next day. Pierre still
+considered that it would be a useful and worthy action to slay the
+evildoer, but now he felt that he would not do it. He did not know
+why, but he felt a foreboding that he would not carry out his
+intention. He struggled against the confession of his weakness but
+dimly felt that he could not overcome it and that his former gloomy
+frame of mind, concerning vengeance, killing, and self-sacrifice,
+had been dispersed like dust by contact with the first man he met.
+
+The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and whistling a
+tune.
+
+The Frenchman's chatter which had previously amused Pierre now
+repelled him. The tune he was whistling, his gait, and the gesture
+with which he twirled his mustache, all now seemed offensive. "I
+will go away immediately. I won't say another word to him," thought
+Pierre. He thought this, but still sat in the same place. A strange
+feeling of weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go
+away, but could not do so.
+
+The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful. He paced up
+and down the room twice. His eyes shone and his mustache twitched as
+if he were smiling to himself at some amusing thought.
+
+"The colonel of those Wurttembergers is delightful," he suddenly
+said. "He's a German, but a nice fellow all the same.... But he's a
+German." He sat down facing Pierre. "By the way, you know German,
+then?"
+
+Pierre looked at him in silence.
+
+"What is the German for 'shelter'?"
+
+"Shelter?" Pierre repeated. "The German for shelter is Unterkunft."
+
+"How do you say it?" the captain asked quickly and doubtfully.
+
+"Unterkunft," Pierre repeated.
+
+"Onterkoff," said the captain and looked at Pierre for some
+seconds with laughing eyes. "These Germans are first-rate fools, don't
+you think so, Monsieur Pierre?" he concluded.
+
+"Well, let's have another bottle of this Moscow Bordeaux, shall
+we? Morel will warm us up another little bottle. Morel!" he called out
+gaily.
+
+Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at
+Pierre by the candlelight and was evidently struck by the troubled
+expression on his companion's face. Ramballe, with genuine distress
+and sympathy in his face, went up to Pierre and bent over him.
+
+"There now, we're sad," said he, touching Pierre's hand. "Have I
+upset you? No, really, have you anything against me?" he asked Pierre.
+"Perhaps it's the state of affairs?"
+
+Pierre did not answer, but looked cordially into the Frenchman's
+eyes whose expression of sympathy was pleasing to him.
+
+"Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel friendship for
+you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and
+death. I say it with my hand on my heart!" said he, striking his
+chest.
+
+"Thank you," said Pierre.
+
+The captain gazed intently at him as he had done when he learned
+that "shelter" was Unterkunft in German, and his face suddenly
+brightened.
+
+"Well, in that case, I drink to our friendship!" he cried gaily,
+filling two glasses with wine.
+
+Pierre took one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe emptied
+his too, again pressed Pierre's hand, and leaned his elbows on the
+table in a pensive attitude.
+
+"Yes, my dear friend," he began, "such is fortune's caprice. Who
+would have said that I should be a soldier and a captain of dragoons
+in the service of Bonaparte, as we used to call him? Yet here I am
+in Moscow with him. I must tell you, mon cher," he continued in the
+sad and measured tones of a man who intends to tell a long story,
+"that our name is one of the most ancient in France."
+
+And with a Frenchman's easy and naive frankness the captain told
+Pierre the story of his ancestors, his childhood, youth, and
+manhood, and all about his relations and his financial and family
+affairs, "ma pauvre mere" playing of course an important part in the
+story.
+
+"But all that is only life's setting, the real thing is love-
+love! Am I not right, Monsieur Pierre?" said he, growing animated.
+"Another glass?"
+
+Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a third.
+
+"Oh, women, women!" and the captain, looking with glistening eyes at
+Pierre, began talking of love and of his love affairs.
+
+There were very many of these, as one could easily believe,
+looking at the officer's handsome, self-satisfied face, and noting the
+eager enthusiasm with which he spoke of women. Though all Ramballe's
+love stories had the sensual character which Frenchmen regard as the
+special charm and poetry of love, yet he told his story with such
+sincere conviction that he alone had experienced and known all the
+charm of love and he described women so alluringly that Pierre
+listened to him with curiosity.
+
+It was plain that l'amour which the Frenchman was so fond of was not
+that low and simple kind that Pierre had once felt for his wife, nor
+was it the romantic love stimulated by himself that he experienced for
+Natasha. (Ramballe despised both these kinds of love equally: the
+one he considered the "love of clodhoppers" and the other the "love of
+simpletons.") L'amour which the Frenchman worshiped consisted
+principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to the woman and in a
+combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling.
+
+Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his love for a
+fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the same time for a
+charming, innocent child of seventeen, daughter of the bewitching
+marquise. The conflict of magnanimity between the mother and the
+daughter, ending in the mother's sacrificing herself and offering
+her daughter in marriage to her lover, even now agitated the
+captain, though it was the memory of a distant past. Then he recounted
+an episode in which the husband played the part of the lover, and
+he- the lover- assumed the role of the husband, as well as several
+droll incidents from his recollections of Germany, where "shelter"
+is called Unterkunft and where the husbands eat sauerkraut and the
+young girls are "too blonde."
+
+Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the captain's
+memory, and which he narrated with rapid gestures and glowing face,
+was of how he had saved the life of a Pole (in general, the saving
+of life continually occurred in the captain's stories) and the Pole
+had entrusted to him his enchanting wife (parisienne de coeur) while
+himself entering the French service. The captain was happy, the
+enchanting Polish lady wished to elope with him, but, prompted by
+magnanimity, the captain restored the wife to the husband, saying as
+he did so: "I have saved your life, and I save your honor!" Having
+repeated these words the captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a
+shake, as if driving away the weakness which assailed him at this
+touching recollection.
+
+Listening to the captain's tales, Pierre- as often happens late in
+the evening and under the influence of wine- followed all that was
+told him, understood it all, and at the same time followed a train
+of personal memories which, he knew not why, suddenly arose in his
+mind. While listening to these love stories his own love for Natasha
+unexpectedly rose to his mind, and going over the pictures of that
+love in his imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe's
+tales. Listening to the story of the struggle between love and duty,
+Pierre saw before his eyes every minutest detail of his last meeting
+with the object of his love at the Sukharev water tower. At the time
+of that meeting it had not produced an effect upon him- he had not
+even once recalled it. But now it seemed to him that that meeting
+had had in it something very important and poetic.
+
+"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you," he now seemed
+to hear the words she had uttered and to see before him her eyes,
+her smile, her traveling hood, and a stray lock of her hair... and
+there seemed to him something pathetic and touching in all this.
+
+Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish lady, the
+captain asked Pierre if he had ever experienced a similar impulse to
+sacrifice himself for love and a feeling of envy of the legitimate
+husband.
+
+Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and felt a need
+to express the thoughts that filled his mind. He began to explain that
+he understood love for a women somewhat differently. He said that in
+all his life he had loved and still loved only one woman, and that she
+could never be his.
+
+"Tiens!" said the captain.
+
+Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman from his earliest
+years, but that he had not dared to think of her because she was too
+young, and because he had been an illegitimate son without a name.
+Afterwards when he had received a name and wealth he dared not think
+of her because he loved her too well, placing her far above everything
+in the world, and especially therefore above himself.
+
+When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the captain whether
+he understood that.
+
+The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did not
+understand it he begged Pierre to continue.
+
+"Platonic love, clouds..." he muttered.
+
+Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse of frankness, or
+the thought that this man did not, and never would, know any of
+those who played a part in his story, or whether it was all these
+things together, something loosened Pierre's tongue. Speaking
+thickly and with a faraway look in his shining eyes, he told the whole
+story of his life: his marriage, Natasha's love for his best friend,
+her betrayal of him, and all his own simple relations with her.
+Urged on by Ramballe's questions he also told what he had at first
+concealed- his own position and even his name.
+
+More than anything else in Pierre's story the captain was
+impressed by the fact that Pierre was very rich, had two mansions in
+Moscow, and that he had abandoned everything and not left the city,
+but remained there concealing his name and station.
+
+When it was late at night they went out together into the street.
+The night was warm and light. To the left of the house on the Pokrovka
+a fire glowed- the first of those that were beginning in Moscow. To
+the right and high up in the sky was the sickle of the waning moon and
+opposite to it hung that bright comet which was connected in
+Pierre's heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerasim, the cook, and
+two Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible
+remarks in two languages could be heard. They were looking at the glow
+seen in the town.
+
+There was nothing terrible in the one small, distant fire in the
+immense city.
+
+Gazing at the high starry sky, at the moon, at the comet, and at the
+glow from the fire, Pierre experienced a joyful emotion. "There now,
+how good it is, what more does one need?" thought he. And suddenly
+remembering his intention he grew dizzy and felt so faint that he
+leaned against the fence to save himself from falling.
+
+Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the gate with
+unsteady steps and returning to his room lay down on the sofa and
+immediately fell asleep.
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was
+watched from the various roads by the fugitive Muscovites and by the
+retreating troops, with many different feelings.
+
+The Rostov party spent the night at Mytishchi, fourteen miles from
+Moscow. They had started so late on the first of September, the road
+had been so blocked by vehicles and troops, so many things had been
+forgotten for which servants were sent back, that they had decided
+to spend that night at a place three miles out of Moscow. The next
+morning they woke late and were again delayed so often that they
+only got as far as Great Mytishchi. At ten o'clock that evening the
+Rostov family and the wounded traveling with them were all distributed
+in the yards and huts of that large village. The Rostovs' servants and
+coachmen and the orderlies of the wounded officers, after attending to
+their masters, had supper, fed the horses, and came out into the
+porches.
+
+In a neighboring hut lay Raevski's adjutant with a fractured
+wrist. The awful pain he suffered made him moan incessantly and
+piteously, and his moaning sounded terrible in the darkness of the
+autumn night. He had spent the first night in the same yard as the
+Rostovs. The countess said she had been unable to close her eyes on
+account of his moaning, and at Mytishchi she moved into a worse hut
+simply to be farther away from the wounded man.
+
+In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed, above
+the high body of a coach standing before the porch, the small glow
+of another fire. One glow had long been visible and everybody knew
+that it was Little Mytishchi burning- set on fire by Mamonov's
+Cossacks.
+
+"But look here, brothers, there's another fire!" remarked an
+orderly.
+
+All turned their attention to the glow.
+
+"But they told us Little Mytishchi had been set on fire by Mamonov's
+Cossacks."
+
+"But that's not Mytishchi, it's farther away."
+
+"Look, it must be in Moscow!"
+
+Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the coach and
+sat down on its steps.
+
+"It's more to the left, why, Little Mytishchi is over there, and
+this is right on the other side."
+
+Several men joined the first two.
+
+"See how it's flaring," said one. "That's a fire in Moscow: either
+in the Sushchevski or the Rogozhski quarter."
+
+No one replied to this remark and for some time they all gazed
+silently at the spreading flames of the second fire in the distance.
+
+Old Daniel Terentich, the count's valet (as he was called), came
+up to the group and shouted at Mishka.
+
+"What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The count will be
+calling and there's nobody there; go and gather the clothes together."
+
+"I only ran out to get some water," said Mishka.
+
+"But what do you think, Daniel Terentich? Doesn't it look as if that
+glow were in Moscow?" remarked one of the footmen.
+
+Daniel Terentich made no reply, and again for a long time they
+were all silent. The glow spread, rising and failing, farther and
+farther still.
+
+"God have mercy.... It's windy and dry..." said another voice.
+
+"Just look! See what it's doing now. O Lord! You can even see the
+crows flying. Lord have mercy on us sinners!"
+
+"They'll put it out, no fear!"
+
+"Who's to put it out?" Daniel Terentich, who had hitherto been
+silent, was heard to say. His voice was calm and deliberate. "Moscow
+it is, brothers," said he. "Mother Moscow, the white..." his voice
+faltered, and he gave way to an old man's sob.
+
+And it was as if they had all only waited for this to realize the
+significance for them of the glow they were watching. Sighs were
+heard, words of prayer, and the sobbing of the count's old valet.
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that
+Moscow was burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to
+look. Sonya and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out
+with him. Only Natasha and the countess remained in the room. Petya
+was no longer with the family, he had gone on with his regiment
+which was making for Troitsa.
+
+The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry.
+Natasha, pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the
+icons just where she had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to
+her father's words. She was listening to the ceaseless moaning of
+the adjutant, three houses off.
+
+"Oh, how terrible," said Sonya returning from the yard chilled and
+frightened. "I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there's an awful
+glow! Natasha, do look! You can see it from the window," she said to
+her cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind.
+
+But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to
+her and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had
+been in this condition of stupor since the morning, when Sonya, to the
+surprise and annoyance of the countess, had for some unaccountable
+reason found it necessary to tell Natasha of Prince Andrew's wound and
+of his being with their party. The countess had seldom been so angry
+with anyone as she was with Sonya. Sonya had cried and begged to be
+forgiven and now, as if trying to atone for her fault, paid
+unceasing attention to her cousin.
+
+"Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!" said she.
+
+"What's burning?" asked Natasha. "Oh, yes, Moscow."
+
+And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of her, she
+turned her face to the window, looked out in such a way that it was
+evident that she could not see anything, and again settled down in her
+former attitude.
+
+"But you didn't see it!"
+
+"Yes, really I did," Natasha replied in a voice that pleaded to be
+left in peace.
+
+Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither
+Moscow nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of
+importance to Natasha.
+
+The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess
+went up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand
+as she was wont to do when Natasha was ill, then touched her
+forehead with her lips as if to feel whether she was feverish, and
+finally kissed her.
+
+"You are cold. You are trembling all over. You'd better lie down,"
+said the countess.
+
+"Lie down? All right, I will. I'll lie down at once," said Natasha.
+
+When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was
+seriously wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first
+asked many questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it
+serious? And could she see him? But after she had been told that she
+could not see him, that he was seriously wounded but that his life was
+not in danger, she ceased to ask questions or to speak at all,
+evidently disbelieving what they told her, and convinced that say what
+she might she would still be told the same. All the way she had sat
+motionless in a corner of the coach with wide open eyes, and the
+expression in them which the countess knew so well and feared so much,
+and now she sat in the same way on the bench where she had seated
+herself on arriving. She was planning something and either deciding or
+had already decided something in her mind. The countess knew this, but
+what it might be she did not know, and this alarmed and tormented her.
+
+"Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed."
+
+A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame
+Schoss and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor.
+
+"No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor," Natasha replied
+irritably and she went to the window and opened it. Through the open
+window the moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She
+put her head out into the damp night air, and the countess saw her
+slim neck shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame.
+Natasha knew it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning. She knew Prince
+Andrew was in the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut
+across the passage; but this dreadful incessant moaning made her
+sob. The countess exchanged a look with Sonya.
+
+"Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet," said the countess, softly
+touching Natasha's shoulders. "Come, lie down."
+
+"Oh, yes... I'll lie down at once," said Natasha, and began
+hurriedly undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.
+
+When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket,
+she sat down with her foot under her on the bed that had been made
+up on the floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the
+front, and began replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers
+rapidly unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved
+from side to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked
+fixedly before her. When her toilet for the night was finished she
+sank gently onto the sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the
+door.
+
+"Natasha, you'd better lie in the middle," said Sonya.
+
+"I'll stay here," muttered Natasha. "Do lie down," she added
+crossly, and buried her face in the pillow.
+
+The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed hastily and lay
+down. The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left
+in the room. But in the yard there was a light from the fire at Little
+Mytishchi a mile and a half away, and through the night came the noise
+of people shouting at a tavern Mamonov's Cossacks had set up across
+the street, and the adjutant's unceasing moans could still be heard.
+
+For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the sounds that
+reached her from inside and outside the room and did not move. First
+she heard her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed
+under her, then Madame Schoss' familiar whistling snore and Sonya's
+gentle breathing. Then the countess called to Natasha. Natasha did not
+answer.
+
+"I think she's asleep, Mamma," said Sonya softly.
+
+After short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one
+replied.
+
+Soon after that Natasha heard her mother's even breathing. Natasha
+did not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the
+quilt, was growing cold on the bare floor.
+
+As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in
+a crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near
+by. The shouting in the tavern had died down; only the moaning of
+the adjutant was heard. Natasha sat up.
+
+"Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?" she whispered.
+
+No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully, crossed
+herself, and stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her
+slim, supple, bare feet. The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping
+cautiously from one foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few
+steps to the door and grasped the cold door handle.
+
+It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically
+against all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking
+with alarm and terror and overflowing with love.
+
+She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the
+cold, damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed
+her. With her bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over
+him, and opened the door into the part of the hut where Prince
+Andrew lay. It was dark in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench
+beside a bed on which something was lying, stood a tallow candle
+with a long, thick, and smoldering wick.
+
+From the moment she had been told that of Prince Andrew's wound
+and his presence there, Natasha had resolved to see him. She did not
+know why she had to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt
+the more convinced that it was necessary.
+
+All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now
+that the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might
+see. How was he maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that
+incessant moaning of the adjutant's? Yes, he was altogether like that.
+In her imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When
+she saw an indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees
+raised under the quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body
+there, and stood still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her
+forward. She cautiously took one step and then another, and found
+herself in the middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man-
+Timokhin- was lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons,
+and two others- the doctor and a valet- lay on the floor.
+
+The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake by
+the pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange
+apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and
+nightcap. The valet's sleepy, frightened exclamation, "What do you
+want? What's the matter?" made Natasha approach more swiftly to what
+was lying in the corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body looked,
+she must see him. She passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle
+wick, and she saw Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the
+quilt, and such as she had always seen him.
+
+He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his
+glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially his
+neck, delicate as a child's, revealed by the turn-down collar of his
+shirt, gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had
+never seen on him before. She went up to him and with a swift,
+flexible, youthful movement dropped on her knees.
+
+He smiled and held out his hand to her.
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the
+ambulance station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state and the
+inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor's
+opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with
+pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that
+his temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning.
+The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had
+remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself
+asked to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his
+removal into the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose
+consciousness. When he had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a
+long time motionless with closed eyes. Then he opened them and
+whispered softly: "And the tea?" His remembering such a small detail
+of everyday life astonished the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew's pulse,
+and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had improved. He
+was dissatisfied because he knew by experience that if his patient did
+not die now, he would do so a little later with greater suffering.
+Timokhin, the red-nosed major of Prince Andrew's regiment, had
+joined him in Moscow and was being taken along with him, having been
+wounded in the leg at the battle of Borodino. They were accompanied by
+a doctor, Prince Andrew's valet, his coach. man, and two orderlies.
+
+They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking
+with feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to
+understand and remember something.
+
+"I don't want any more. Is Timokhin here?" he asked.
+
+Timokhin crept along the bench to him.
+
+"I am here, your excellency."
+
+"How's your wound?"
+
+"Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?"
+
+Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.
+
+"Couldn't one get a book?" he asked.
+
+"What book?"
+
+"The Gospels. I haven't one."
+
+The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he
+was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly
+but reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him
+as he was uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted
+the cloak with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the
+noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began
+examining that dreadful place. The doctor was very much displeased
+about something and made a change in the dressings, turning the
+wounded man over so that he groaned again and grew unconscious and
+delirious from the agony. He kept asking them to get him the book
+and put it under him.
+
+"What trouble would it be to you?" he said. "I have not got one.
+Please get it for me and put it under for a moment," he pleaded in a
+piteous voice.
+
+The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.
+
+"You fellows have no conscience," said he to the valet who was
+pouring water over his hands. "For just one moment I didn't look after
+you... It's such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it."
+
+"By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under
+him!" said the valet.
+
+The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was
+the matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he
+asked to be carried into the hut after his caleche had stopped at
+Mytishchi. After growing confused from pain while being carried into
+the hut he again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once
+more recalled all that had happened to him, and above all vividly
+remembered the moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of
+the sufferings of a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to
+him which promised him happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague
+and indefinite, again possessed his soul. He remembered that he had
+now a new source of happiness and that this happiness had something to
+do with the Gospels. That was why he asked for a copy of them. The
+uncomfortable position in which they had put him and turned him over
+again confused his thoughts, and when he came to himself a third
+time it was in the complete stillness of the night. Everybody near him
+was sleeping. A cricket chirped from across the passage; someone was
+shouting and singing in the street; cockroaches rustled on the
+table, on the icons, and on the walls, and a big fly flopped at the
+head of the bed and around the candle beside him, the wick of which
+was charred and had shaped itself like a mushroom.
+
+His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,
+feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the
+power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which
+to fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from
+the deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in
+and can then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew's
+mind was not in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of
+his mind were more active and clearer than ever, but they acted
+apart from his will. Most diverse thoughts and images occupied him
+simultaneously. At times his brain suddenly began to work with a
+vigor, clearness, and depth it had never reached when he was in
+health, but suddenly in the midst of its work it would turn to some
+unexpected idea and he had not the strength to turn it back again.
+
+"Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be
+deprived," he thought as he lay in the semi-darkness of the quiet hut,
+gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. "A happiness
+lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act
+on man- a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving.
+Every man can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was
+possible only for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was
+the Son...?"
+
+And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince
+Andrew heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality)
+a soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating
+"piti-piti-piti," and then "titi," and then again "piti-piti-piti,"
+and "ti-ti" once more. At the same time he felt that above his face,
+above the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being
+erected out of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this
+whispered music. He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it
+was difficult) so that this airy structure should not collapse; but
+nevertheless it kept collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound
+of whispered rhythmic music- "it stretches, stretches, spreading out
+and stretching," said Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to
+this whispering and feeling the sensation of this drawing out and
+the construction of this edifice of needles, he also saw by glimpses a
+red halo round the candle, and heard the rustle of the cockroaches and
+the buzzing of the fly that flopped against his pillow and his face.
+Each time the fly touched his face it gave him a burning sensation and
+yet to his surprise it did not destroy the structure, though it
+knocked against the very region of his face where it was rising. But
+besides this there was something else of importance. It was
+something white by the door- the statue of a sphinx, which also
+oppressed him.
+
+"But perhaps that's my shirt on the table," he thought, "and
+that's my legs, and that is the door, but why is it always
+stretching and drawing itself out, and 'piti-piti-piti' and 'ti-ti'
+and 'piti-piti-piti'...? That's enough, please leave off!" Prince
+Andrew painfully entreated someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings
+again swam to the surface of his mind with peculiar clearness and
+force.
+
+"Yes- love," he thought again quite clearly. "But not love which
+loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some
+reason, but the love which I- while dying- first experienced when I
+saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love
+which is the very essence of the soul and does not require an
+object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one's neighbors, to
+love one's enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His
+manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with
+human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why
+I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What has
+become of him? Is he alive?...
+
+"When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but
+divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can
+destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people
+have I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as
+I did her." And he vividly pictured to himself Natasha, not as he
+had done in the past with nothing but her charms which gave him
+delight, but for the first time picturing to himself her soul. And
+he understood her feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now
+understood for the first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her,
+the cruelty of his rupture with her. "If only it were possible for
+me to see her once more! Just once, looking into those eyes to say..."
+
+"Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!" flopped the
+fly... And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a
+world of reality and delirium in which something particular was
+happening. In that world some structure was still being erected and
+did not fall, something was still stretching out, and the candle
+with its red halo was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay
+near the door; but besides all this something creaked, there was a
+whiff of fresh air, and a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the
+door. And that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of the very
+Natasha of whom he had just been thinking.
+
+"Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is," thought Prince
+Andrew, trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face
+remained before him with the force of reality and drew nearer.
+Prince Andrew wished to return that former world of pure thought,
+but he could not, and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft
+whispering voice continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed
+him and stretched out, and the strange face was before him. Prince
+Andrew collected all his strength in an effort to recover his
+senses, he moved a little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his
+ears, a dimness in his eyes, and like a man plunged into water he lost
+consciousness. When he came to himself, Natasha, that same living
+Natasha whom of all people he most longed to love with this new pure
+divine love that had been revealed to him, was kneeling before him. He
+realized that it was the real living Natasha, and he was not surprised
+but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless on her knees (she was unable to
+stir), with frightened eyes riveted on him, was restraining her
+sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it
+something quivered.
+
+Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.
+
+"You?" he said. "How fortunate!"
+
+With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer to him on
+her knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and
+began kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.
+
+"Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.
+"Forgive me!"
+
+"I love you," said Prince Andrew.
+
+"Forgive...!"
+
+"Forgive what?" he asked.
+
+"Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha in a
+scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more
+rapidly, just touching it with her lips.
+
+"I love you more, better than before," said Prince Andrew, lifting
+her face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.
+
+Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
+compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha's thin pale face,
+with its swollen lips, was more than plain- it was dreadful. But
+Prince Andrew did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were
+beautiful. They heard the sound of voices behind them.
+
+Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.
+Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had
+long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his
+bare body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.
+
+"What's this?" said the doctor, rising from his bed. "Please go
+away, madam!"
+
+At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her
+daughter's absence, knocked at the door.
+
+Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out of the
+room and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.
+
+From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs' journey, at
+every halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natasha never
+left the wounded Bolkonski, and the doctor had to admit that he had
+not expected from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in
+nursing a wounded man.
+
+Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew
+die in her daughter's arms during the journey- as, judging by what the
+doctor said, it seemed might easily happen- she could not oppose
+Natasha. Though with the intimacy now established between the
+wounded man and Natasha the thought occurred that should he recover
+their former engagement would be renewed, no one- least of all Natasha
+and Prince Andrew- spoke of this: the unsettled question of life and
+death, which hung not only over Bolkonski but over all Russia, shut
+out all other considerations.
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching,
+the clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt
+uncomfortable on his body, and his mind had a dim consciousness of
+something shameful he had done the day before. That something shameful
+was his yesterday's conversation with Captain Ramballe.
+
+It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of
+doors. Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an
+engraved stock which Gerasim had replaced on the writing table, he
+remembered where he was and what lay before him that very day.
+
+"Am I not too late?" he thought. "No, probably he won't make his
+entry into Moscow before noon."
+
+Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him,
+but hastened to act.
+
+After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to
+go out. But it then occurred to him for the first time that he
+certainly could not carry the weapon in his hand through the
+streets. It was difficult to hide such a big pistol even under his
+wide coat. He could not carry it unnoticed in his belt or under his
+arm. Besides, it had been discharged, and he had not had time to
+reload it. "No matter, dagger will do," he said to himself, though
+when planning his design he had more than once come to the
+conclusion that the chief mistake made by the student in 1809 had been
+to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as his chief aim
+consisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving to himself
+that he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he could
+to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a
+green sheath which he had bought at the Sukharev market with the
+pistol, and hid it under his waistcoat.
+
+Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his
+head, Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or
+meeting the captain, and passed out into the street.
+
+The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much
+indifference the evening before, had greatly increased during the
+night. Moscow was on fire in several places. The buildings in Carriage
+Row, across the river, in the Bazaar and the Povarskoy, as well as the
+barges on the Moskva River and the timber yards by the Dorogomilov
+Bridge, were all ablaze.
+
+Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and from
+there to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where he had long
+before decided that the deed should should be done. The gates of
+most of the houses were locked and the shutters up. The streets and
+lanes were deserted. The air was full of smoke and the smell of
+burning. Now and then he met Russians with anxious and timid faces,
+and Frenchmen with an air not of the city but of the camp, walking
+in the middle of the streets. Both the Russians and the French
+looked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his height and stoutness,
+and the strange morose look of suffering in his face and whole figure,
+the Russians stared at Pierre because they could not make out to
+what class he could belong. The French followed him with
+astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the
+other Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid
+no attention to them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who
+were explaining something to some Russians who did not understand
+them, stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.
+
+Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel
+standing beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the
+shout was threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man's
+musket as he raised it did Pierre understand that he had to pass on
+the other side of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of what
+went on around him. He carried his resolution within himself in terror
+and haste, like something dreadful and alien to him, for, after the
+previous night's experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he was
+not destined to bring his mood safely to his destination. And even had
+he not been hindered by anything on the way, his intention could not
+now have been carried out, for Napoleon had passed the Arbat more than
+four hours previously on his way from the Dorogomilov suburb to the
+Kremlin, and was now sitting in a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal
+study in the Kremlin, giving detailed and exact orders as to
+measures to be taken immediately to extinguish the fire, to prevent
+looting, and to reassure the inhabitants. But Pierre did not know
+this; he was entirely absorbed in what lay before him, and was
+tortured- as those are who obstinately undertake a task that is
+impossible for them not because of its difficulty but because of its
+incompatibility with their natures- by the fear of weakening at the
+decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.
+
+Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by
+instinct and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the
+Povarskoy.
+
+As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser-
+he even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame
+rose from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the
+streets and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that
+something unusual was happening around him, did not realize that he
+was approaching the fire. As he was going along a foot path across a
+wide-open space adjoining the Povarskoy on one side and the gardens of
+Prince Gruzinski's house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the
+desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if
+awakening from a dream and lifted his head.
+
+By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of
+household goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and
+trunks. On the ground, beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longer
+young, with long, prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak and
+cap. This woman, swaying to and fro and muttering something, was
+choking with sobs. Two girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in dirty
+short frocks and cloaks, were staring at their mother with a look of
+stupefaction on their pale frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy
+of about seven, who wore an overcoat and an immense cap evidently
+not his own, was crying in his old nurse's arms. A dirty, barefooted
+maid was sitting on a trunk, and, having undone her pale-colored
+plait, was pulling it straight and sniffing at her singed hair. The
+woman's husband, a short, round-shouldered man in the undress
+uniform of a civilian official, with sausage-shaped whiskers and
+showing under his square-set cap the hair smoothly brushed forward
+over his temples, with expressionless face was moving the trunks,
+which were placed one on another, and was dragging some garments
+from under them.
+
+As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his
+feet.
+
+"Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends...
+help us, somebody," she muttered between her sobs. "My girl... My
+daughter! My youngest daughter is left behind. She's burned! Ooh!
+Was it for this I nursed you.... Ooh!"
+
+"Don't, Mary Nikolievna!" said her husband to her in a low voice,
+evidently only to justify himself before the stranger. "Sister must
+have taken her, or else where can she be?" he added.
+
+"Monster! Villain!" shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing to
+weep. "You have no heart, you don't feel for your own child! Another
+man would have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and
+neither a man nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man," she
+went on, addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. "The fire broke
+out alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out 'Fire!' and we
+rushed to collect our things. We ran out just as we were.... This is
+what we have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all the
+rest is lost. We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O
+Lord!..." and again she began to sob. "My child, my dear one!
+Burned, burned!"
+
+"But where was she left?" asked Pierre.
+
+From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man
+might help her.
+
+"Oh, dear sir!" she cried, seizing him by the legs. "My
+benefactor, set my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid girl, show
+him the way!" she cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and
+still farther exposing her long teeth.
+
+"Show me the way, show me, I... I'll do it," gasped Pierre rapidly.
+
+The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her
+plait, sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre
+felt as if he had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held his
+head higher, his eyes shone with the light of life, and with swift
+steps he followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on the
+Povarskoy. The whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues
+of flame here and there broke through that cloud. A great number of
+people crowded in front of the conflagration. In the middle of the
+street stood a French general saying something to those around him.
+Pierre, accompanied by the maid, was advancing to the spot where the
+general stood, but the French soldiers stopped him.
+
+"On ne passe pas!"~^ cried a voice.
+
+^~ "You can't pass!
+
+"This way, uncle," cried the girl. "We'll pass through the side
+street, by the Nikulins'!"
+
+Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with
+her. She ran across the street, turned down a side street to the left,
+and, passing three houses, turned into a yard on the right.
+
+"It's here, close by," said she and, running across the yard, opened
+a gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small
+wooden wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One
+of its sides had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames
+issued from the openings of the windows and from under the roof.
+
+As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air
+and involuntarily stopped.
+
+"Which is it? Which is your house?" he asked.
+
+"Ooh!" wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. "That's it, that was
+our lodging. You've burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my
+precious little missy! Ooh!" lamented Aniska, who at the sight of
+the fire felt that she too must give expression to her feelings.
+
+Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he
+involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large house
+that was as yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, and
+around which swarmed a crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not
+realize what these men, who were dragging something out, were about;
+but seeing before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saber
+and trying to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely understood that
+looting was going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that idea.
+
+The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings,
+the whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the
+people, and the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick
+black clouds and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with here
+and there dense sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish
+scales creeping along the walls), and the heat and smoke and
+rapidity of motion, produced on Pierre the usual animating effects
+of a conflagration. It had a peculiarly strong effect on him because
+at the sight of the fire he felt himself suddenly freed from the ideas
+that had weighed him down. He felt young, bright, adroit, and
+resolute. He ran round to the other side of the lodge and was about to
+dash into that part of it which was still standing, when just above
+his head he heard several voices shouting and then a cracking sound
+and the ring of something heavy falling close beside him.
+
+Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some
+Frenchmen who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with
+metal articles. Other French soldiers standing below went up to the
+drawer.
+
+"What does this fellow want?" shouted one of them referring to
+Pierre.
+
+"There's a child in that house. Haven't you seen a child?" cried
+Pierre.
+
+"What's he talking about? Get along!" said several voices, and one
+of the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take
+from them some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved
+threateningly toward him.
+
+"A child?" shouted a Frenchman from above. "I did hear something
+squealing in the garden. Perhaps it's his brat that the fellow is
+looking for. After all, one must be human, you know...."
+
+"Where is it? Where?" said Pierre.
+
+"There! There!" shouted the Frenchman at the window, pointing to the
+garden at the back of the house. "Wait a bit- I'm coming down."
+
+And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with
+a spot on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window
+on the ground floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with
+him into the garden.
+
+"Hurry up, you others!" he called out to his comrades. "It's getting
+hot."
+
+When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman
+pulled Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space
+where a three-year-old girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat.
+
+"There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!" said the
+Frenchman. "Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you
+know!" and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his
+comrades.
+
+Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going
+to take her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly,
+scrofulous-looking child, unattractively like her mother, began to
+yell and run away. Pierre, however, seized her and lifted her in his
+arms. She screamed desperately and angrily and tried with her little
+hands to pull Pierre's hands away and to bite them with her slobbering
+mouth. Pierre was seized by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he
+had experienced when touching some nasty little animal. But he made an
+effort not to throw the child down and ran with her to the large
+house. It was now, however, impossible to get back the way he had
+come; the maid, Aniska, was no longer there, and Pierre with a feeling
+of pity and disgust pressed the wet, painfully sobbing child to
+himself as tenderly as he could and ran with her through the garden
+seeking another way out.
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back
+with his little burden to the Gruzinski garden at the corner of the
+Povarskoy. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had
+set out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and
+goods that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian
+families who had taken refuge here from the fire with their
+belongings, there were several French soldiers in a variety of
+clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried to find the family
+of that civil servant in order to restore the daughter to her mother
+and go to save someone else. Pierre felt that he had still much to
+do and to do quickly. Glowing with the heat and from running, he
+felt at that moment more strongly than ever the sense of youth,
+animation, and determination that had come on him when he ran to
+save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging with her little
+hands to Pierre's coat, sat on his arm gazing about her like some
+little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a slight
+smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that
+frightened, sickly little face.
+
+He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left
+them. He walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various
+faces he met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family
+consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new,
+cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar
+type, and a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the
+perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched,
+black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright color of her long,
+beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the
+crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright
+lilac shawl on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown
+out onto the snow. She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the
+old woman, and looked from under her long lashes with motionless,
+large, almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she
+was aware of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck
+Pierre and, hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to
+look at her. When he had reached the fence, still without finding
+those he sought, he stopped and looked about him.
+
+With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous
+than before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered
+about him.
+
+"Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You're of the gentry
+yourself, aren't you? Whose child is it?" they asked him.
+
+Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat
+who had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked
+whether anyone knew where she had gone.
+
+"Why, that must be the Anferovs," said an old deacon, addressing a
+pockmarked peasant woman. "Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!" he added
+in his customary bass.
+
+"The Anferovs? No," said the woman. "They left in the morning.
+That must be either Mary Nikolievna's or the Ivanovs'!"
+
+"He says 'a woman,' and Mary Nikolievna is a lady," remarked a house
+serf.
+
+"Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth," said Pierre.
+
+"That's Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden when these
+wolves swooped down," said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers.
+
+"O Lord, have mercy!" added the deacon.
+
+"Go over that way, they're there. It's she! She kept on lamenting
+and crying," continued the woman. "It's she. Here, this way!"
+
+But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds
+been intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was
+looking at the Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone
+up to them. One of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat
+tied round the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his head and
+his feet were bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck
+Pierre, was a long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in
+his movements and with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a
+woman's loose gown of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian
+boots. The little barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the
+Armenians and, saying something, immediately seized the old man by his
+legs and the old man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in
+the frieze gown stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and
+with his hands in his pockets stood staring at her, motionless and
+silent.
+
+"Here, take the child!" said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly to
+the woman, handing the little girl to her. "Give her back to them,
+give her back!" he almost shouted, putting the child, who began
+screaming, on the ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the
+Armenian family.
+
+The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had
+secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other.
+The old man was saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre
+caught but a glimpse of this, his whole attention was directed to
+the Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile, swaying slowly from
+side to side, had drawn nearer to the young woman and taking his hands
+from his pockets had seized her by the neck.
+
+The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same
+attitude, with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or
+feel what the soldier was doing to her.
+
+While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the
+Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing
+from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the
+young woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.
+
+"Let that woman alone!" exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious
+voice, seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him
+aside.
+
+The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing
+down the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward
+Pierre.
+
+"Voyons, Pas de betises!"~^ he cried.
+
+^~ "Look here, no nonsense!"
+
+Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing
+and his strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted
+Frenchman and, before the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked
+him off his feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval
+were heard from the crowd around, and at the same moment a mounted
+patrol of French Uhlans appeared from round the corner. The Uhlans
+came up at a trot to Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them.
+Pierre remembered nothing of what happened after that. He only
+remembered beating someone and being beaten and finally feeling that
+his hands were bound and that a crowd of French soldiers stood
+around him and were searching him.
+
+"Lieutenant, he has a dagger," were the first words Pierre
+understood.
+
+"Ah, a weapon?" said the officer and turned to the barefooted
+soldier who had been arrested with Pierre. "All right, you can tell
+all about it at the court-martial." Then he turned to Pierre. "Do
+you speak French?"
+
+Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply.
+His face probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something
+in a whisper and four more Uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves
+on both sides of Pierre.
+
+"Do you speak French?" the officer asked again, keeping at a
+distance from Pierre. "Call the interpreter."
+
+A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks,
+and by his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to
+be a French salesman from one of the Moscow shops.
+
+"He does not look like a common man," said the interpreter, after
+a searching look at Pierre.
+
+"Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary," remarked the officer.
+"And ask him who he is," he added.
+
+"Who are you?" asked the interpreter in poor Russian. "You must
+answer the chief."
+
+"I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner- take me!"
+Pierre suddenly replied in French.
+
+"Ah, ah!" muttered the officer with a frown. "Well then, march!"
+
+A crowd had collected round the Uhlans. Nearest to Pierre stood
+the pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when the patrol
+started she moved forward.
+
+"Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?" said she. "And the
+little girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she's not
+theirs?" said the woman.
+
+"What does that woman want?" asked the officer.
+
+Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight
+of the little girl he had saved.
+
+"What does she want?" he murmured. "She is bringing me my daughter
+whom I have just saved from the flames," said he. "Good-by!" And
+without knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along
+with resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers.
+
+The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various
+streets of Moscow by Durosnel's order to put a stop to the pillage,
+and especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the general
+opinion which had that day originated among the higher French
+officers, were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching through
+a number of streets the patrol arrested five more Russian suspects:
+a small shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant, and a house
+serf, besides several looters. But of all these various suspected
+characters, Pierre was considered to be the most suspicious of all.
+When they had all been brought for the night to a large house on the
+Zubov Rampart that was being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed
+apart under strict guard.
+
+BOOK TWELVE: 1812
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+In Petersburg at that time a complicated struggle was being
+carried on with greater heat than ever in the highest circles, between
+the parties of Rumyantsev, the French, Marya Fedorovna, the Tsarevich,
+and others, drowned as usual by the buzzing of the court drones. But
+the calm, luxurious life of Petersburg, concerned only about
+phantoms and reflections of real life, went on in its old way and made
+it hard, except by a great effort, to realize the danger and the
+difficult position of the Russian people. There were the same
+receptions and balls, the same French theater, the same court
+interests and service interests and intrigues as usual. Only in the
+very highest circles were attempts made to keep in mind the
+difficulties of the actual position. Stories were whispered of how
+differently the two Empresses behaved in these difficult
+circumstances. The Empress Marya, concerned for the welfare of the
+charitable and educational institutions under her patronage, had given
+directions that they should all be removed to Kazan, and the things
+belonging to these institutions had already been packed up. The
+Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions she would
+be pleased to give- with her characteristic Russian patriotism had
+replied that she could give no directions about state institutions for
+that was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally was
+concerned she would be the last to quit Petersburg.
+
+At Anna Pavlovna's on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of
+the battle of Borodino, there was a soiree, the chief feature of which
+was to be the reading of a letter from His Lordship the Bishop when
+sending the Emperor an icon of the Venerable Sergius. It was
+regarded as a model of ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince
+Vasili himself, famed for his elocution, was to read it. (He used to
+read at the Empress'.) The art of his reading was supposed to lie in
+rolling out the words, quite independently of their meaning, in a loud
+and singsong voice alternating between a despairing wail and a
+tender murmur, so that the wail fell quite at random on one word and
+the murmur on another. This reading, as was always the case at Anna
+Pavlovna's soirees, had a political significance. That evening she
+expected several important personages who had to be made ashamed of
+their visits to the French theater and aroused to a patriotic
+temper. A good many people had already arrived, but Anna Pavlovna, not
+yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room, did not
+let the reading begin but wound up the springs of a general
+conversation.
+
+The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess
+Bezukhova. She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously,
+had missed several gatherings of which she was usually ornament, and
+was said to be receiving no one, and instead of the celebrated
+Petersburg doctors who usually attended her had entrusted herself to
+some Italian doctor who was treating her in some new and unusual way.
+
+They all knew very well that the enchanting countess' illness
+arose from an inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at
+the same time, and that the Italian's cure consisted in removing
+such inconvenience; but in Anna Pavlovna's presence no one dared to
+think of this or even appear to know it.
+
+"They say the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says it is
+angina pectoris."
+
+"Angina? Oh, that's a terrible illness!"
+
+"They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the angina..."
+and the word angina was repeated with great satisfaction.
+
+"The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child when the
+doctor told him the case was dangerous."
+
+"Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting woman."
+
+"You are speaking of the poor countess?" said Anna Pavlovna,
+coming up just then. "I sent to ask for news, and hear that she is a
+little better. Oh, she is certainly the most charming woman in the
+world," she went on, with a smile at her own enthusiasm. "We belong to
+different camps, but that does not prevent my esteeming her as she
+deserves. She is very unfortunate!" added Anna Pavlovna.
+
+Supposing that by these words Anna Pavlovna was somewhat lifting the
+veil from the secret of the countess' malady, an unwary young man
+ventured to express surprise that well known doctors had not been
+called in and that the countess was being attended by a charlatan
+who might employ dangerous remedies.
+
+"Your information maybe better than mine," Anna Pavlovna suddenly
+and venomously retorted on the inexperienced young man, "but I know on
+good authority that this doctor is a very learned and able man. He
+is private physician to the Queen of Spain."
+
+And having thus demolished the young man, Anna Pavlovna turned to
+another group where Bilibin was talking about the Austrians: having
+wrinkled up his face he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again
+and utter one of his mots.
+
+"I think it is delightful," he said, referring to a diplomatic
+note that had been sent to Vienna with some Austrian banners
+captured from the French by Wittgenstein, "the hero of Petropol" as he
+was then called in Petersburg.
+
+"What? What's that?" asked Anna Pavlovna, securing silence for the
+mot, which she had heard before.
+
+And Bilibin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic dispatch,
+which he had himself composed.
+
+"The Emperor returns these Austrian banners," said Bilibin,
+"friendly banners gone astray and found on a wrong path," and his brow
+became smooth again.
+
+"Charming, charming!" observed Prince Vasili.
+
+"The path to Warsaw, perhaps," Prince Hippolyte remarked loudly
+and unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him, understanding what he
+meant. Prince Hippolyte himself glanced around with amused surprise.
+He knew no more than the others what his words meant. During his
+diplomatic career he had more than once noticed that such utterances
+were received as very witty, and at every opportunity he uttered in
+that way the first words that entered his head. "It may turn out
+very well," he thought, "but if not, they'll know how to arrange
+matters." And really, during the awkward silence that ensued, that
+insufficiently patriotic person entered whom Anna Pavlovna had been
+waiting for and wished to convert, and she, smiling and shaking a
+finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince Vasili to the table and bringing
+him two candles and the manuscript begged him to begin. Everyone
+became silent.
+
+"Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor! " Prince Vasili sternly
+declaimed, looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether
+anyone had anything to say to the contrary. But no one said
+anything. "Moscow, our ancient capital, the New Jerusalem, receives
+her Christ"- he placed a sudden emphasis on the word her- "as a mother
+receives her zealous sons into her arms, and through the gathering
+mists, foreseeing the brilliant glory of thy rule, sings in
+exultation, 'Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh!'"
+
+Prince Vasili pronounced these last words in a tearful voice.
+
+Bilibin attentively examined his nails, and many of those present
+appeared intimidated, as if asking in what they were to blame. Anna
+Pavlovna whispered the next words in advance, like an old woman
+muttering the prayer at Communion: "Let the bold and insolent
+Goliath..." she whispered.
+
+Prince Vasili continued.
+
+"Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of France
+encompass the realms of Russia with death-bearing terrors; humble
+Faith, the sling of the Russian David, shall suddenly smite his head
+in his blood-thirsty pride. This icon of the Venerable Sergius, the
+servant of God and zealous champion of old of our country's weal, is
+offered to Your Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning strength
+prevents rejoicing in the sight of your most gracious presence. I
+raise fervent prayers to Heaven that the Almighty may exalt the race
+of the just, and mercifully fulfill the desires of Your Majesty."
+
+"What force! What a style!" was uttered in approval both of reader
+and of author.
+
+Animated by that address Anna Pavlovna's guests talked for a long
+time of the state of the fatherland and offered various conjectures as
+to the result of the battle to be fought in a few days.
+
+"You will see," said Anna Pavlovna, "that tomorrow, on the Emperor's
+birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!"
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was in fact fulfilled. Next day
+during the service at the palace church in honor of the Emperor's
+birthday, Prince Volkonski was called out of the church and received a
+dispatch from Prince Kutuzov. It was Kutuzov's report, written from
+Tatarinova on the day of the battle. Kutuzov wrote that the Russians
+had not retreated a step, that the French losses were much heavier
+than ours, and that he was writing in haste from the field of battle
+before collecting full information. It followed that there must have
+been a victory. And at once, without leaving the church, thanks were
+rendered to the Creator for His help and for the victory.
+
+Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was justified, and all that morning a
+joyously festive mood reigned in the city. Everyone believed the
+victory to have been complete, and some even spoke of Napoleon's
+having been captured, of his deposition, and of the choice of a new
+ruler for France.
+
+It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real
+strength and completeness amid the conditions of court life and far
+from the scene of action. General events involuntarily group
+themselves around some particular incident. So now the courtiers'
+pleasure was based as much on the fact that the news had arrived on
+the Emperor's birthday as on the fact of the victory itself. It was
+like a successfully arranged surprise. Mention was made in Kutuzov's
+report of the Russian losses, among which figured the names of
+Tuchkov, Bagration, and Kutaysov. In the Petersburg world this sad
+side of the affair again involuntarily centered round a single
+incident: Kutaysov's death. Everybody knew him, the Emperor liked him,
+and he was young and interesting. That day everyone met with the
+words:
+
+"What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the service. But what a
+loss Kutaysov is! How sorry I am!"
+
+"What did I tell about Kutuzov?" Prince Vasili now said with a
+prophet's pride. "I always said he was the only man capable of
+defeating Napoleon."
+
+But next day no news arrived from the army and the public mood
+grew anxious. The courtiers suffered because of the suffering the
+suspense occasioned the Emperor.
+
+"Fancy the Emperor's position!" said they, and instead of
+extolling Kutuzov as they had done the day before, they condemned
+him as the cause of the Emperor's anxiety. That day Prince Vasili no
+longer boasted of his protege Kutuzov, but remained silent when the
+commander in chief was mentioned. Moreover, toward evening, as if
+everything conspired to make Petersburg society anxious and uneasy,
+a terrible piece of news was added. Countess Helene Bezukhova had
+suddenly died of that terrible malady it had been so agreeable to
+mention. Officially, at large gatherings, everyone said that
+Countess Bezukhova had died of a terrible attack of angina pectoris,
+but in intimate circles details were mentioned of how the private
+physician of the Queen of Spain had prescribed small doses of a
+certain drug to produce a certain effect; but Helene, tortured by
+the fact that the old count suspected her and that her husband to whom
+she had written (that wretched, profligate Pierre) had not replied,
+had suddenly taken a very large dose of the drug, and had died in
+agony before assistance could be rendered her. It was said that Prince
+Vasili and the old count had turned upon the Italian, but the latter
+had produced such letters from the unfortunate deceased that they
+had immediately let the matter drop.
+
+Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts: the Emperor's
+lack of news, the loss of Kutuzov, and the death of Helene.
+
+On the third day after Kutuzov's report a country gentleman
+arrived from Moscow, and news of the surrender of Moscow to the French
+spread through the whole town. This was terrible! What a position
+for the Emperor to be in! Kutuzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasili
+during the visits of condolence paid to him on the occasion of his
+daughter's death said of Kutuzov, whom he had formerly praised (it was
+excusable for him in his grief to forget what he had said), that it
+was impossible to expect anything else from a blind and depraved old
+man.
+
+"I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been entrusted
+to such a man."
+
+As long as this news remained unofficial it was possible to doubt
+it, but the next day the following communication was received from
+Count Rostopchin:
+
+Prince Kutuzov's adjutant has brought me a letter in which he
+demands police officers to guide the army to the Ryazan road. He
+writes that he is regretfully abandoning Moscow. Sire! Kutuzov's
+action decides the fate of the capital and of your empire! Russia will
+shudder to learn of the abandonment of the city in which her greatness
+is centered and in which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I shall
+follow the army. I have had everything removed, and it only remains
+for me to weep over the fate of my fatherland.
+
+On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince Volkonski to
+Kutuzov with the following rescript:
+
+Prince Michael Ilarionovich! Since the twenty-ninth of August I have
+received no communication from you, yet on the first of September I
+received from the commander in chief of Moscow, via Yaroslavl, the sad
+news that you, with the army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You
+can yourself imagine the effect this news has had on me, and your
+silence increases my astonishment. I am sending this by
+Adjutant-General Prince Volkonski, to hear from you the situation of
+the army and the reasons that have induced you to take this melancholy
+decision.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a messenger from
+Kutuzov reached Petersburg with the official announcement of that
+event. This messenger was Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know
+Russian, but who was quoique etranger, russe de coeur et d'ame,~^ as he
+said of himself.
+
+^~ Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul.
+
+The Emperor at once received this messenger in his study at the
+palace on Stone Island. Michaud, who had never seen Moscow before
+the campaign and who did not know Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as
+he wrote) when he appeared before notre tres gracieux souverain~^
+with the news of the burning of Moscow, dont les flammes eclairaient
+sa route.~^
+
+^~ Our most gracious sovereign.
+
+^~ Whose flames illumined his route.
+
+Though the source of M. Michaud's chagrin must have been different
+from that which caused Russians to grieve, he had such a sad face when
+shown into the Emperor's study that the latter at once asked:
+
+"Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?"
+
+"Very sad, sire," replied Michaud, lowering his eyes with a sigh.
+"The abandonment of Moscow."
+
+"Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a battle?" asked
+the Emperor quickly, his face suddenly flushing.
+
+Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutuzov had entrusted
+to him, which was that it had been impossible to fight before
+Moscow, and that as the only remaining choice was between losing the
+army as well as Moscow, or losing Moscow alone, the field marshal
+had to choose the latter.
+
+The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at Michaud.
+
+"Has the enemy entered the city?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sire, and Moscow is now in ashes. I left it all in flames,"
+replied Michaud in a decided tone, but glancing at the Emperor he
+was frightened by what he had done.
+
+The Emperor began to breathe heavily and rapidly, his lower lip
+trembled, and tears instantly appeared in his fine blue eyes.
+
+But this lasted only a moment. He suddenly frowned, as if blaming
+himself for his weakness, and raising his head addressed Michaud in
+a firm voice:
+
+"I see, Colonel, from all that is happening, that Providence
+requires great sacrifices of us... I am ready to submit myself in
+all things to His will; but tell me, Michaud, how did you leave the
+army when it saw my ancient capital abandoned without a battle? Did
+you not notice discouragement?..."
+
+Seeing that his most gracious ruler was calm once more, Michaud also
+grew calm, but was not immediately ready to reply to the Emperor's
+direct and relevant question which required a direct answer.
+
+"Sire, will you allow me to speak frankly as befits a loyal
+soldier?" he asked to gain time.
+
+"Colonel, I always require it," replied the Emperor. "Conceal
+nothing from me, I wish to know absolutely how things are."
+
+"Sire!" said Michaud with a subtle, scarcely perceptible smile on
+his lips, having now prepared a well-phrased reply, "sire, I left
+the whole army, from its chiefs to the lowest soldier, without
+exception in desperate and agonized terror..."
+
+"How is that?" the Emperor interrupted him, frowning sternly. "Would
+misfortune make my Russians lose heart?... Never!"
+
+Michaud had only waited for this to bring out the phrase he had
+prepared.
+
+"Sire," he said, with respectful playfulness, "they are only
+afraid lest Your Majesty, in the goodness of your heart, should
+allow yourself to be persuaded to make peace. They are burning for the
+combat," declared this representative of the Russian nation, "and to
+prove to Your Majesty by the sacrifice of their lives how devoted they
+are...."
+
+"Ah!" said the Emperor reassured, and with a kindly gleam in his
+eyes, he patted Michaud on the shoulder. "You set me at ease,
+Colonel."
+
+He bent his head and was silent for some time.
+
+"Well, then, go back to the army," he said, drawing himself up to
+his full height and addressing Michaud with a gracious and majestic
+gesture, "and tell our brave men and all my good subjects wherever you
+go that when I have not a soldier left I shall put myself at the
+head of my beloved nobility and my good peasants and so use the last
+resources of my empire. It still offers me more than my enemies
+suppose," said the Emperor growing more and more animated; "but should
+it ever be ordained by Divine Providence," he continued, raising to
+heaven his fine eyes shining with emotion, "that my dynasty should
+cease to reign on the throne of my ancestors, then after exhausting
+all the means at my command, I shall let my beard grow to here" (he
+pointed halfway down his chest) "and go and eat potatoes with the
+meanest of my peasants, rather than sign the disgrace of my country
+and of my beloved people whose sacrifices I know how to appreciate."
+
+Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the Emperor suddenly
+turned away as if to hide from Michaud the tears that rose to his
+eyes, and went to the further end of his study. Having stood there a
+few moments, he strode back to Michaud and pressed his arm below the
+elbow with a vigorous movement. The Emperor's mild and handsome face
+was flushed and his eyes gleamed with resolution and anger.
+
+"Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here, perhaps we
+may recall it with pleasure someday... Napoleon or I," said the
+Emperor, touching his breast. "We can no longer both reign together. I
+have learned to know him, and he will not deceive me any more...."
+
+And the Emperor paused, with a frown.
+
+When he heard these words and saw the expression of firm
+resolution in the Emperor's eyes, Michaud- quoique etranger, russe
+de coeur et d'ame- at that solemn moment felt himself enraptured by
+all that he had heard (as he used afterwards to say), and gave
+expression to his own feelings and those of the Russian people whose
+representative he considered himself to be, in the following words:
+
+"Sire!" said he, "Your Majesty is at this moment signing the glory
+of the nation and the salvation of Europe!"
+
+With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed him.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It is natural for us who were not living in those days to imagine
+that when half Russia had been conquered and the inhabitants were
+ficeing to distant provinces, and one levy after another was being
+raised for the defense of the fatherland, all Russians from the
+greatest to the least were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves,
+saving their fatherland, or weeping over its downfall. The tales and
+descriptions of that time without exception speak only of the
+self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion, despair, grief, and the heroism of
+the Russians. But it was not really so. It appears so to us because we
+see only the general historic interest of that time and do not see all
+the personal human interests that people had. Yet in reality those
+personal interests of the moment so much transcend the general
+interests that they always prevent the public interest from being felt
+or even noticed. Most of the people at that time paid no attention
+to the general progress of events but were guided only by their
+private interests, and they were the very people whose activities at
+that period were most useful.
+
+Those who tried to understand the general course of events and to
+take part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless
+members of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they
+did for the common good turned out to be useless and foolish- like
+Pierre's and Mamonov's regiments which looted Russian villages, and
+the lint the young ladies prepared and that never reached the wounded,
+and so on. Even those, fond of intellectual talk and of expressing
+their feelings, who discussed Russia's position at the time
+involuntarily introduced into their conversation either a shade of
+pretense and falsehood or useless condemnation and anger directed
+against people accused of actions no one could possibly be guilty
+of. In historic events the rule forbidding us to eat of the fruit of
+the Tree of Knowledge is specially applicable. Only unconscious action
+bears fruit, and he who plays a part in an historic event never
+understands its significance. If he tries to realize it his efforts
+are fruitless.
+
+The more closely a man was engaged in the events then taking place
+in Russia the less did he realize their significance. In Petersburg
+and in the provinces at a distance from Moscow, ladies, and
+gentlemen in militia uniforms, wept for Russia and its ancient capital
+and talked of self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army which
+retired beyond Moscow there was little talk or thought of Moscow,
+and when they caught sight of its burned ruins no one swore to be
+avenged on the French, but they thought about their next pay, their
+next quarters, of Matreshka the vivandiere, and like matters.
+
+As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostov took a
+close and prolonged part in the defense of his country, but did so
+casually, without any aim at self-sacrifice, and he therefore looked
+at what was going on in Russia without despair and without dismally
+racking his brains over it. Had he been asked what he thought of the
+state of Russia, he would have said that it was not his business to
+think about it, that Kutuzov and others were there for that purpose,
+but that he had heard that the regiments were to be made up to their
+full strength, that fighting would probably go on for a long time yet,
+and that things being so it was quite likely he might be in command of
+a regiment in a couple of years' time.
+
+As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that he was being
+sent to Voronezh to buy remounts for his division, not only without
+regret at being prevented from taking part in the coming battle, but
+with the greatest pleasure- which he did not conceal and which his
+comrades fully understood.
+
+A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nicholas received the
+necessary money and warrants, and having sent some hussars on in
+advance, he set out with post horses for Voronezh.
+
+Only a man who has experienced it- that is, has passed some months
+continuously in an atmosphere of campaigning and war- can understand
+the delight Nicholas felt when he escaped from the region covered by
+the army's foraging operations, provision trains, and hospitals. When-
+free from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp- he saw
+villages with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen's country
+houses, fields where cattle were grazing, posthouses with
+stationmasters asleep in them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this
+for the first time. What for a long while specially surprised and
+delighted him were the women, young and healthy, without a dozen
+officers making up to each of them; women, too, who were pleased and
+flattered that a passing officer should joke with them.
+
+In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a hotel in
+Voronezh, ordered things he had long been deprived of in camp, and
+next day, very clean-shaven and in a full-dress uniform he had not
+worn for a long time, went to present himself to the authorities.
+
+The commander of the militia was a civilian general, an old man
+who was evidently pleased with his military designation and rank. He
+received Nicholas brusquely (imagining this to be characteristically
+military) and questioned him with an important air, as if
+considering the general progress of affairs and approving and
+disapproving with full right to do so. Nicholas was in such good
+spirits that this merely amused him.
+
+From the commander of the militia he drove to the governor. The
+governor was a brisk little man, very simple and affable. He indicated
+the stud farms at which Nicholas might procure horses, recommended
+to him a horse dealer in the town and a landowner fourteen miles out
+of town who had the best horses, and promised to assist him in every
+way.
+
+"You are Count Ilya Rostov's son? My wife was a great friend of your
+mother's. We are at home on Thursdays- today is Thursday, so please
+come and see us quite informally," said the governor, taking leave
+of him.
+
+Immediately on leaving the governor's, Nicholas hired post horses
+and, taking his squadron quartermaster with him, drove at a gallop
+to the landowner, fourteen miles away, who had the stud. Everything
+seemed to him pleasant and easy during that first part of his stay
+in Voronezh and, as usually happens when a man is in a pleasant
+state of mind, everything went well and easily.
+
+The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a bachelor, an old
+cavalryman, a horse fancier, a sportsman, the possessor of some
+century-old brandy and some old Hungarian wine, who had a snuggery
+where he smoked, and who owned some splendid horses.
+
+In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six
+thousand rubles- to serve, as he said, as samples of his remounts.
+After dining and taking rather too much of the Hungarian wine,
+Nicholas- having exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was
+already on the friendliest terms- galloped back over abominable roads,
+in the brightest frame of mind, continually urging on the driver so as
+to be in time for the governor's party.
+
+When he had changed, poured water over his head, and scented
+himself, Nicholas arrived at the governor's rather late, but with
+the phrase "better late than never" on his lips.
+
+It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but everyone knew
+that Catherine Petrovna would play valses and the ecossaise on the
+clavichord and that there would be dancing, and so everyone had come
+as to a ball.
+
+Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but with this
+difference, that it was livelier in the towns in consequence of the
+arrival of many wealthy families from Moscow, and as in everything
+that went on in Russia at that time a special recklessness was
+noticeable, an "in for a penny, in for a pound- who cares?" spirit,
+and the inevitable small talk, instead of turning on the weather and
+mutual acquaintances, now turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon.
+
+The society gathered together at the governor's was the best in
+Voronezh.
+
+There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas' Moscow
+acquaintances, but there were no men who could at all vie with the
+cavalier of St. George, the hussar remount officer, the good-natured
+and well-bred Count Rostov. Among the men was an Italian prisoner,
+an officer of the French army; and Nicholas felt that the presence
+of that prisoner enhanced his own importance as a Russian hero. The
+Italian was, as it were, a war trophy. Nicholas felt this, it seemed
+to him that everyone regarded the Italian in the same light, and he
+treated him cordially though with dignity and restraint.
+
+As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing
+around him a fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the
+words "better late than never" and heard them repeated several times
+by others, people clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he
+felt at once that he had entered into his proper position in the
+province- that of a universal favorite: a very pleasant position,
+and intoxicatingly so after his long privations. At posting
+stations, at inns, and in the landowner's snuggery, maidservants had
+been flattered by his notice, and here too at the governor's party
+there were (as it seemed to Nicholas) an inexhaustible number of
+pretty young women, married and unmarried, impatiently awaiting his
+notice. The women and girls flirted with him and, from the first
+day, the people concerned themselves to get this fine young
+daredevil of an hussar married and settled down. Among these was the
+governor's wife herself, who welcomed Rostov as a near relative and
+called him "Nicholas."
+
+Catherine Petrovna did actually play valses and the ecossaise, and
+dancing began in which Nicholas still further captivated the
+provincial society by his agility. His particularly free manner of
+dancing even surprised them all. Nicholas was himself rather surprised
+at the way he danced that evening. He had never danced like that in
+Moscow and would even have considered such a very free and easy manner
+improper and in bad form, but here he felt it incumbent on him to
+astonish them all by something unusual, something they would have to
+accept as the regular thing in the capital though new to them in the
+provinces.
+
+All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed, plump and
+pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials.
+With the naive conviction of young men in a merry mood that other
+men's wives were created for them, Rostov did not leave the lady's
+side and treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style,
+as if, without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and
+the lady would get on together. The husband, however, did not seem
+to share that conviction and tried to behave morosely with Rostov. But
+the latter's good-natured naivete was so boundless that sometimes even
+he involuntarily yielded to Nicholas' good humor. Toward the end of
+the evening, however, as the wife's face grew more flushed and
+animated, the husband's became more and more melancholy and solemn, as
+though there were but a given amount of animation between them and
+as the wife's share increased the husband's diminished.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair, bending
+closely over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments
+with a smile that never left his face. Jauntily shifting the
+position of his legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor
+of perfume, and admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines
+of his legs in their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the
+blonde lady that he wished to run away with a certain lady here in
+Voronezh.
+
+"Which lady?"
+
+"A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes" (Nicholas looked at his
+partner) "are blue, her mouth coral and ivory; her figure" (he glanced
+at her shoulders) "like Diana's...."
+
+The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what she was talking
+about.
+
+"Ah, Nikita Ivanych!" cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if
+wishing Nikita Ivanych to share his joke, he began to tell him of
+his intention to elope with a blonde lady.
+
+The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The governor's
+good-natured wife came up with a look of disapproval.
+
+"Anna Ignatyevna wants to see you, Nicholas," said she,
+pronouncing the name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna
+Ignatyevna was a very important person. "Come, Nicholas! You know
+you let me call you so?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?"
+
+"Anna Ignatyevna Malvintseva. She has heard from her niece how you
+rescued her... Can you guess?"
+
+"I rescued such a lot of them!" said Nicholas.
+
+"Her niece, Princess Bolkonskaya. She is here in Voronezh with her
+aunt. Oho! How you blush. Why, are...?"
+
+"Not a bit! Please don't, Aunt!"
+
+"Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!"
+
+The governor's wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady
+with a blue headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with
+the most important personages of the town. This was Malvintseva,
+Princess Mary's aunt on her mother's side, a rich, childless widow who
+always lived in Voronezh. When Rostov approached her she was
+standing settling up for the game. She looked at him and, screwing
+up her eyes sternly, continued to upbraid the general who had won from
+her.
+
+"Very pleased, mon cher," she then said, holding out her hand to
+Nicholas. "Pray come and see me."
+
+After a few words about Princess Mary and her late father, whom
+Malvintseva had evidently not liked, and having asked what Nicholas
+knew of Prince Andrew, who also was evidently no favorite of hers, the
+important old lady dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation
+to come to see her.
+
+Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he bowed. At the
+mention of Princess Mary he experienced a feeling of shyness and
+even of fear, which he himself did not understand.
+
+When he had parted from Malvintseva Nicholas wished to return to the
+dancing, but the governor's little wife placed her plump hand on his
+sleeve and, saying that she wanted to have a talk with him, led him to
+her sitting room, from which those who were there immediately withdrew
+so as not to be in her way.
+
+"Do you know, dear boy," began the governor's wife with a serious
+expression on her kind little face, "that really would be the match
+for you: would you like me to arrange it?"
+
+"Whom do you mean, Aunt?" asked Nicholas.
+
+"I will make a match for you with the princess. Catherine Petrovna
+speaks of Lily, but I say, no- the princess! Do you want me to do
+it? I am sure your mother will be grateful to me. What a charming girl
+she is, really! And she is not at all so plain, either."
+
+"Not at all," replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea. "As
+befits a soldier, Aunt, I don't force myself on anyone or refuse
+anything," he said before he had time to consider what he was saying.
+
+"Well then, remember, this is not a joke!"
+
+"Of course not!"
+
+"Yes, yes," the governor's wife said as if talking to herself. "But,
+my dear boy, among other things you are too attentive to the other,
+the blonde. One is sorry for the husband, really...."
+
+"Oh no, we are good friends with him," said Nicholas in the
+simplicity of his heart; it did not enter his head that a pastime so
+pleasant to himself might not be pleasant to someone else.
+
+"But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor's wife!"
+thought Nicholas suddenly at supper. "She will really begin to arrange
+a match... and Soyna...?" And on taking leave of the governor's
+wife, when she again smilingly said to him, "Well then, remember!"
+he drew her aside.
+
+"But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt..."
+
+"What is it, my dear? Come, let's sit down here," said she.
+
+Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most intimate
+thoughts (which he would not have told to his mother, his sister, or
+his friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he
+afterwards recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable
+frankness which had very important results for him, it seemed to
+him- as it seems to everyone in such cases- that it was merely some
+silly whim that seized him: yet that burst of frankness, together with
+other trifling events, had immense consequences for him and for all
+his family.
+
+"You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an heiress, but
+the very idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me."
+
+"Oh yes, I understand," said the governor's wife.
+
+"But Princess Bolkonskaya- that's another matter. I will tell you
+the truth. In the first place I like her very much, I feel drawn to
+her; and then, after I met her under such circumstances- so strangely,
+the idea often occurred to me: 'This is fate.' Especially if you
+remember that Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I had never
+happened to meet her before, somehow it had always happened that we
+did not meet. And as long as my sister Natasha was engaged to her
+brother it was of course out of the question for me to think of
+marrying her. And it must needs happen that I should meet her just
+when Natasha's engagement had been broken off... and then
+everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone and never
+will, only to you."
+
+The governor's wife pressed his elbow gratefully.
+
+"You know Sonya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to marry her,
+and will do so.... So you see there can be no question about-" said
+Nicholas incoherently and blushing.
+
+"My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know Sonya has nothing
+and you yourself say your Papa's affairs are in a very bad way. And
+what about your mother? It would kill her, that's one thing. And
+what sort of life would it be for Sonya- if she's a girl with a heart?
+Your mother in despair, and you all ruined.... No, my dear, you and
+Sonya ought to understand that."
+
+Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear these arguments.
+
+"All the same, Aunt, it is impossible," he rejoined with a sigh,
+after a short pause. "Besides, would the princess have me? And
+besides, she is now in mourning. How can one think of it!"
+
+"But you don't suppose I'm going to get you married at once? There
+is always a right way of doing things," replied the governor's wife.
+
+"What a matchmaker you are, Aunt..." said Nicholas, kissing her
+plump little hand.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostov, Princess Mary
+had found her nephew there with his tutor, and a letter from Prince
+Andrew giving her instructions how to get to her Aunt Malvintseva at
+Voronezh. That feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her
+during her father's illness, since his death, and especially since her
+meeting with Rostov was smothered by arrangements for the journey,
+anxiety about her brother, settling in a new house, meeting new
+people, and attending to her nephew's education. She was sad. Now,
+after a month passed in quiet surroundings, she felt more and more
+deeply the loss of her father which was associated in her mind with
+the ruin of Russia. She was agitated and incessantly tortured by the
+thought of the dangers to which her brother, the only intimate
+person now remaining to her, was exposed. She was worried too about
+her nephew's education for which she had always felt herself
+incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt at peace- a
+peace arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal
+dreams and hopes that had been on the point of awakening within her
+and were related to her meeting with Rostov.
+
+The day after her party the governor's wife came to see
+Malvintseva and, after discussing her plan with the aunt, remarked
+that though under present circumstances a formal betrothal was, of
+course, not to be thought of, all the same the young people might be
+brought together and could get to know one another. Malvintseva
+expressed approval, and the governor's wife began to speak of Rostov
+in Mary's presence, praising him and telling how he had blushed when
+Princess Mary's name was mentioned. But Princess Mary experienced a
+painful rather than a joyful feeling- her mental tranquillity was
+destroyed, and desires, doubts, self-reproach, and hopes reawoke.
+
+During the two days that elapsed before Rostov called, Princess Mary
+continually thought of how she ought to behave to him. First she
+decided not to come to the drawing room when he called to see her
+aunt- that it would not be proper for her, in her deep mourning, to
+receive visitors; then she thought this would be rude after what he
+had done for her; then it occurred to her that her aunt and the
+governor's wife had intentions concerning herself and Rostov- their
+looks and words at times seemed to confirm this supposition- then
+she told herself that only she, with her sinful nature, could think
+this of them: they could not forget that situated as she was, while
+still wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking would be an insult to
+her and to her father's memory. Assuming that she did go down to see
+him, Princess Mary imagined the words he would say to her and what she
+would say to him, and these words sometimes seemed undeservedly cold
+and then to mean too much. More than anything she feared lest the
+confusion she felt might overwhelm her and betray her as soon as she
+saw him.
+
+But when on Sunday after church the footman announced in the drawing
+room that Count Rostov had called, the princess showed no confusion,
+only a slight blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new
+and radiant light.
+
+"You have met him, Aunt?" said she in a calm voice, unable herself
+to understand that she could be outwardly so calm and natural.
+
+When Rostov entered the room, the princess dropped her eyes for an
+instant, as if to give the visitor time to greet her aunt, and then
+just as Nicholas turned to her she raised her head and met his look
+with shining eyes. With a movement full of dignity and grace she
+half rose with a smile of pleasure, held out her slender, delicate
+hand to him, and began to speak in a voice in which for the first time
+new deep womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who was in
+the drawing room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise.
+Herself a consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered better on
+meeting a man she wished to attract.
+
+"Either black is particularly becoming to her or she really has
+greatly improved without my having noticed it. And above all, what
+tact and grace!" thought Mademoiselle Bourienne.
+
+Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that moment, she
+would have been more surprised than Mademoiselle Bourienne at the
+change that had taken place in herself. From the moment she recognized
+that dear, loved face, a new life force took possession of her and
+compelled her to speak and act apart from her own will. From the
+time Rostov entered, her face became suddenly transformed. It was as
+if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern and the
+intricate, skillful, artistic work on its sides, that previously
+seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless, was suddenly shown up in
+unexpected and striking beauty. For the first time all that pure,
+spiritual, inward travail through which she had lived appeared on
+the surface. All her inward labor, her dissatisfaction with herself,
+her sufferings, her strivings after goodness, her meekness, love,
+and self-sacrifice- all this now shone in those radiant eyes, in her
+delicate smile, and in every trait of her gentle face.
+
+Rostov saw all this as clearly as if he had known her whole life. He
+felt that the being before him was quite different from, and better
+than, anyone he had met before, and above all better than himself.
+
+Their conversation was very simple and unimportant. They spoke of
+the war, and like everyone else unconsciously exaggerated their sorrow
+about it; they spoke of their last meeting- Nicholas trying to
+change the subject- they talked of the governor's kind wife, of
+Nicholas' relations, and of Princess Mary's.
+
+She did not talk about her brother, diverting the conversation as
+soon as her aunt mentioned Andrew. Evidently she could speak of
+Russia's misfortunes with a certain artificiality, but her brother was
+too near her heart and she neither could nor would speak lightly of
+him. Nicholas noticed this, as he noticed every shade of Princess
+Mary's character with an observation unusual to him, and everything
+confirmed his conviction that she was a quite unusual and
+extraordinary being. Nicholas blushed and was confused when people
+spoke to him about the princess (as she did when he was mentioned) and
+even when he thought of her, but in her presence he felt quite at
+ease, and said not at all what he had prepared, but what, quite
+appropriately, occurred to him at the moment.
+
+When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas, as is
+usual when there are children, turned to Prince Andrew's little son,
+caressing him and asking whether he would like to be an hussar. He
+took the boy on his knee, played with him, and looked round at
+Princess Mary. With a softened, happy, timid look she watched the
+boy she loved in the arms of the man she loved. Nicholas also
+noticed that look and, as if understanding it, flushed with pleasure
+and began to kiss the boy with good natured playfulness.
+
+As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out into society,
+and Nicholas did not think it the proper thing to visit her again; but
+all the same the governor's wife went on with her matchmaking, passing
+on to Nicholas the flattering things Princess Mary said of him and
+vice versa, and insisting on his declaring himself to Princess Mary.
+For this purpose she arranged a meeting between the young people at
+the bishop's house before Mass.
+
+Though Rostov told the governeor's wife that he would not make any
+declaration to Princess Mary, he promised to go.
+
+As at Tilsit Rostov had not allowed himself to doubt that what
+everybody considered right was right, so now, after a short but
+sincere struggle between his effort to arrange his life by his own
+sense of justice, and in obedient submission to circumstances, he
+chose the latter and yielded to the power he felt irresistibly
+carrying him he knew not where. He knew that after his promise to
+Sonya it would be what he deemed base to declare his feelings to
+Princess Mary. And he knew that he would never act basely. But he also
+knew (or rather felt at the bottom of his heart) that by resigning
+himself now to the force of circumstances and to those who were
+guiding him, he was not only doing nothing wrong, but was doing
+something very important- more important than anything he had ever
+done in his life.
+
+After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his life went on
+externally as before, all his former amusements lost their charm for
+him and he often thought about her. But he never thought about her
+as he had thought of all the young ladies without exception whom he
+had met in society, nor as he had for a long time, and at one time
+rapturously, thought about Sonya. He had pictured each of those
+young ladies as almost all honest-hearted young men do, that is, as
+a possible wife, adapting her in his imagination to all the conditions
+of married life: a white dressing gown, his wife at the tea table, his
+wife's carriage, little ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to
+her, and so on- and these pictures of the future had given him
+pleasure. But with Princess Mary, to whom they were trying to get
+him engaged, he could never picture anything of future married life.
+If he tried, his pictures seemed incongruous and false. It made him
+afraid.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed
+and wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow
+reached Voronezh in the middle of September. Princess Mary, having
+learned of her brother's wound only from the Gazette and having no
+definite news of him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her
+again himself) to set off in search of Prince Andrew.
+
+When he received the news of the battle of Borodino and the
+abandonment of Moscow, Rostov was not seized with despair, anger,
+the desire for vengeance, or any feeling of that kind, but
+everything in Voronezh suddenly seemed to him dull and tiresome, and
+he experienced an indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The
+conversations he heard seemed to him insincere; he did not know how to
+judge all these affairs and felt that only in the regiment would
+everything again become clear to him. He made haste to finish buying
+the horses, and often became unreasonably angry with his servant and
+squadron quartermaster.
+
+A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving, at which
+Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral for the Russian
+victory. He stood a little behind the governor and held himself with
+military decorum through the service, meditating on a great variety of
+subjects. When the service was over the governor's wife beckoned him
+to her.
+
+"Have you seen the princess?" she asked, indicating with a
+movement of her head a lady standing on the opposite side, beyond
+the choir.
+
+Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so much by the
+profile he saw under her bonnet as by the feeling of solicitude,
+timidity, and pity that immediately overcame him. Princess Mary,
+evidently engrossed by her thoughts, was crossing herself for the last
+time before leaving the church.
+
+Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same face he
+had seen before, there was the same general expression of refined,
+inner, spiritual labor, but now it was quite differently lit up. There
+was a pathetic expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had
+occurred before when she was present, Nicholas went up to her
+without waiting to be prompted by the governor's wife and not asking
+himself whether or not it was right and proper to address her here
+in church, and told her he had heard of her trouble and sympathized
+with his whole soul. As soon as she heard his voice a vivid glow
+kindled in her face, lighting up both her sorrow and her joy.
+
+"There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess," said Rostov.
+"It is that if your brother, Prince Andrew Nikolievich, were not
+living, it would have been at once announced in the Gazette, as he
+is a colonel."
+
+The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was saying, but
+cheered by the expression of regretful sympathy on his face.
+
+"And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound" (the Gazette
+said it was a shell) "either proving fatal at once or being very
+slight," continued Nicholas. "We must hope for the best, and I am
+sure..."
+
+Princess Mary interrupted him.
+
+"Oh, that would be so dread..." she began and, prevented by
+agitation from finishing, she bent her head with a movement as
+graceful as everything she did in his presence and, looking up at
+him gratefully, went out, following her aunt.
+
+That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at home to settle
+some accounts with the horse dealers. When he had finished that
+business it was already too late to go anywhere but still too early to
+go to bed, and for a long time he paced up and down the room,
+reflecting on his life, a thing he rarely did.
+
+Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on him when he had
+met her in Smolensk province. His having encountered her in such
+exceptional circumstances, and his mother having at one time mentioned
+her to him as a good match, had drawn his particular attention to her.
+When he met her again in Voronezh the impression she made on him was
+not merely pleasing but powerful. Nicholas had been struck by the
+peculiar moral beauty he observed in her at this time. He was,
+however, preparing to go away and it had not entered his head to
+regret that he was thus depriving himself of chances of meeting her.
+But that day's encounter in church had, he felt, sunk deeper than
+was desirable for his peace of mind. That pale, sad, refined face,
+that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures, and especially
+the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her features agitated
+him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostov could not bear to see the
+expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not like
+Prince Andrew) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy
+and dreaminess, but in Princess Mary that very sorrow which revealed
+the depth of a whole spiritual world foreign to him was an
+irresistible attraction.
+
+"She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!" he said to himself.
+"Why am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sonya?" And he
+involuntarily compared the two: the lack of spirituality in the one
+and the abundance of it in the other- a spirituality he himself lacked
+and therefore valued most highly. He tried to picture what would
+happen were he free. How he would propose to her and how she would
+become his wife. But no, he could not imagine that. He felt awed,
+and no clear picture presented itself to his mind. He had long ago
+pictured to himself a future with Sonya, and that was all clear and
+simple just because it had all been thought out and he knew all
+there was in Sonya, but it was impossible to picture a future with
+Princess Mary, because he did not understand her but simply loved her.
+
+Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and playful in them,
+but to dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little
+frightening.
+
+"How she prayed!" he thought. "It was plain that her whole soul
+was in her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves mountains,
+and I am sure her prayer will be answered. Why don't I pray for what I
+want?" he suddenly thought. "What do I want? To be free, released from
+Sonya... She was right," he thought, remembering what the governor's
+wife had said: "Nothing but misfortune can come of marrying Sonya.
+Muddles, grief for Mamma... business difficulties... muddles, terrible
+muddles! Besides, I don't love her- not as I should. O, God! release
+me from this dreadful, inextricable position!" he suddenly began to
+pray. "Yes, prayer can move mountains, but one must have faith and not
+pray as Natasha and I used to as children, that the snow might turn
+into sugar- and then run out into the yard to see whether it had
+done so. No, but I am not praying for trifles now," he thought as he
+put his pipe down in a corner, and folding his hands placed himself
+before the icon. Softened by memories of Princess Mary he began to
+pray as he had not done for a long time. Tears were in his eyes and in
+his throat when the door opened and Lavrushka came in with some
+papers.
+
+"Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?" cried
+Nicholas, quickly changing his attitude.
+
+"From the governor," said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice. "A courier
+has arrived and there's a letter for you."
+
+"Well, all right, thanks. You can go!"
+
+Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from his mother
+and the other from Sonya. He recognized them by the handwriting and
+opened Sonya's first. He had read only a few lines when he turned pale
+and his eyes opened wide with fear and joy.
+
+"No, it's not possible!" he cried aloud.
+
+Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room holding the letter
+and reading it. He glanced through it, then read it again, and then
+again, and standing still in the middle of the room he raised his
+shoulders, stretching out his hands, with his mouth wide open and
+his eyes fixed. What he had just been praying for with confidence that
+God would hear him had come to pass; but Nicholas was as much
+astonished as if it were something extraordinary and unexpected, and
+as if the very fact that it had happened so quickly proved that it had
+not come from God to whom he had prayed, but by some ordinary
+coincidence.
+
+This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite voluntary
+letter from Sonya freed him from the knot that fettered him and from
+which there had seemed no escape. She wrote that the last
+unfortunate events- the loss of almost the whole of the Rostovs'
+Moscow property- and the countess' repeatedly expressed wish that
+Nicholas should marry Princess Bolkonskaya, together with his
+silence and coldness of late, had all combined to make her decide to
+release him from his promise and set him completely free.
+
+It would be too painful to me to think that I might be a cause of
+sorrow or discord in the family that has been so good to me (she
+wrote), and my love has no aim but the happiness of those I love;
+so, Nicholas, I beg you to consider yourself free, and to be assured
+that, in spite of everything, no one can love you more than does
+
+Your Sonya
+
+Both letters were written from Troitsa. The other, from the
+countess, described their last days in Moscow, their departure, the
+fire, and the destruction of all their property. In this letter the
+countess also mentioned that Prince Andrew was among the wounded
+traveling with them; his state was very critical, but the doctor
+said there was now more hope. Sonya and Natasha were nursing him.
+
+Next day Nicholas took his mother's letter and went to see
+Princess Mary. Neither he nor she said a word about what "Natasha
+nursing him" might mean, but thanks to this letter Nicholas suddenly
+became almost as intimate with the princess as if they were relations.
+
+The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her journey to
+Yaroslavl, and a few days later left to rejoin his regiment.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Sonya's letter written from Troitsa, which had come as an answer
+to Nicholas' prayer, was prompted by this: the thought of getting
+Nicholas married to an heiress occupied the old countess' mind more
+and more. She knew that Sonya was the chief obstacle to this
+happening, and Sonya's life in the countess' house had grown harder
+and harder, especially after they had received a letter from
+Nicholas telling of his meeting with Princess Mary in Bogucharovo. The
+countess let no occasion slip of making humiliating or cruel allusions
+to Sonya.
+
+But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all
+that was going on, she called Sonya to her and, instead of reproaching
+and making demands on her, tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself
+and repay all that the family had done for her by breaking off her
+engagement with Nicholas.
+
+"I shall not be at peace till you promise me this."
+
+Sonya burst into hysterical tears and replied through her sobs
+that she would do anything and was prepared for anything, but gave
+no actual promise and could not bring herself to decide to do what was
+demanded of her. She must sacrifice herself for the family that had
+reared and brought her up. To sacrifice herself for others was Sonya's
+habit. Her position in the house was such that only by sacrifice could
+she show her worth, and she was accustomed to this and loved doing it.
+But in all her former acts of self-sacrifice she had been happily
+conscious that they raised her in her own esteem and in that of
+others, and so made her more worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more
+than anything in the world. But now they wanted her to sacrifice the
+very thing that constituted the whole reward for her self-sacrifice
+and the whole meaning of her life. And for the first time she felt
+bitterness against those who had been her benefactors only to
+torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous of Natasha who had
+never experienced anything of this sort, had never needed to sacrifice
+herself, but made others sacrifice themselves for her and yet was
+beloved by everybody. And for the first time Sonya felt that out of
+her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate feeling was beginning
+to grow up which was stronger than principle, virtue, or religion.
+Under the influence of this feeling Sonya, whose life of dependence
+had taught her involuntarily to be secretive, having answered the
+countess in vague general terms, avoided talking with her and resolved
+to wait till she should see Nicholas, not in order to set him free but
+on the contrary at that meeting to bind him to her forever.
+
+The bustle and terror of the Rostovs' last days in Moscow stifled
+the gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sonya. She was glad to find
+escape from them in practical activity. But when she heard of Prince
+Andrew's presence in their house, despite her sincere pity for him and
+for Natasha, she was seized by a joyful and superstitious feeling that
+God did not intend her to be separated from Nicholas. She knew that
+Natasha loved no one but Prince Andrew and had never ceased to love
+him. She knew that being thrown together again under such terrible
+circumstances they would again fall in love with one another, and that
+Nicholas would then not be able to marry Princess Mary as they would
+be within the prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror
+of what had happened during those last days and during the first
+days of their journey, this feeling that Providence was intervening in
+her personal affairs cheered Sonya.
+
+At the Troitsa monastery the Rostovs first broke their journey for a
+whole day.
+
+Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry,
+one of which was occupied by Prince Andrew. The wounded man was much
+better that day and Natasha was sitting with him. In the next room sat
+the count and countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was
+calling on them as old acquaintances and benefactors of the monastery.
+Sonya was there too, tormented by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew
+and Natasha were talking about. She heard the sound of their voices
+through the door. That door opened and Natasha came out, looking
+excited. Not noticing the monk, who had risen to greet her and was
+drawing back the wide sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sonya
+and took her hand.
+
+"Natasha, what are you about? Come here!" said the countess.
+
+Natasha went up to the monk for his blessing, and advised her to
+pray for aid to God and His saint.
+
+As soon as the prior withdrew, Natasha took her friend by the hand
+and went with her into the unoccupied room.
+
+"Sonya, will he live?" she asked. "Sonya, how happy I am, and how
+unhappy!... Sonya, dovey, everything is as it used to be. If only he
+lives! He cannot... because... because... of" and Natasha burst into
+tears.
+
+"Yes! I knew it! Thank God!" murmured Sonya. "He will live."
+
+Sonya was not less agitated than her friend by the latter's fear and
+grief and by her own personal feelings which she shared with no one.
+Sobbing, she kissed and comforted Natasha. "If only he lives!" she
+thought. Having wept, talked, and wiped away their tears, the two
+friends went together to Prince Andrew's door. Natasha opened it
+cautiously and glanced into the room, Sonya standing beside her at the
+half-open door.
+
+Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows. His pale
+face was calm, his eyes closed, and they could see his regular
+breathing.
+
+"O, Natasha!" Sonya suddenly almost screamed, catching her
+companion's arm and stepping back from the door.
+
+"What? What is it?" asked Natasha.
+
+"It's that, that..." said Sonya, with a white face and trembling
+lips.
+
+Natasha softly closed the door and went with Sonya to the window,
+not yet understanding what the latter was telling her.
+
+"You remember," said Sonya with a solemn and frightened
+expression. "You remember when I looked in the mirror for you... at
+Otradnoe at Christmas? Do you remember what I saw?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" cried Natasha opening her eyes wide, and vaguely
+recalling that Sonya had told her something about Prince Andrew whom
+she had seen lying down.
+
+"You remember?" Sonya went on. "I saw it then and told everybody,
+you and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a bed," said she, making a
+gesture with her hand and a lifted finger at each detail, "and that he
+had his eyes closed and was covered just with a pink quilt, and that
+his hands were folded," she concluded, convincing herself that the
+details she had just seen were exactly what she had seen in the
+mirror.
+
+She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned the first
+thing that came into her head, but what she had invented then seemed
+to her now as real as any other recollection. She not only
+remembered what she had then said- that he turned to look at her and
+smiled and was covered with something red- but was firmly convinced
+that she had then seen and said that he was covered with a pink
+quilt and that his eyes were closed.
+
+"Yes, yes, it really was pink!" cried Natasha, who now thought she
+too remembered the word pink being used, and saw in this the most
+extraordinary and mysterious part of the prediction.
+
+"But what does it mean?" she added meditatively.
+
+"Oh, I don't know, it is all so strange," replied Sonya, clutching
+at her head.
+
+A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natasha went to him,
+but Sonya, feeling unusually excited and touched, remained at the
+window thinking about the strangeness of what had occurred.
+
+They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the army, and
+the countess was writing to her son.
+
+"Sonya!" said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as
+her niece passed, "Sonya, won't you write to Nicholas?" She spoke in a
+soft, tremulous voice, and in the weary eyes that looked over her
+spectacles Sonya read all that the countess meant to convey with these
+words. Those eyes expressed entreaty, shame at having to ask, fear
+of a refusal, and readiness for relentless hatred in case of such
+refusal.
+
+Sonya went up to the countess and, kneeling down, kissed her hand.
+
+"Yes, Mamma, I will write," said she.
+
+Sonya was softened, excited, and touched by all that had occurred
+that day, especially by the mysterious fulfillment she had just seen
+of her vision. Now that she knew that the renewal of Natasha's
+relations with Prince Andrew would prevent Nicholas from marrying
+Princess Mary, she was joyfully conscious of a return of that
+self-sacrificing spirit in which she was accustomed to live and
+loved to live. So with a joyful consciousness of performing a
+magnanimous deed- interrupted several times by the tears that dimmed
+her velvety black eyes- she wrote that touching letter the arrival
+of which had so amazed Nicholas.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated him with
+hostility but yet with respect, in the guardhouse to which he was
+taken. In their attitude toward him could still be felt both
+uncertainty as to who he might be- perhaps a very important person-
+and hostility as a result of their recent personal conflict with him.
+
+But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre felt that for
+the new guard- both officers and men- he was not as interesting as
+he had been to his captors; and in fact the guard of the second day
+did not recognize in this big, stout man in a peasant coat the
+vigorous person who had fought so desperately with the marauder and
+the convoy and had uttered those solemn words about saving a child;
+they saw in him only No. 17 of the captured Russians, arrested and
+detained for some reason by order of the Higher Command. If they
+noticed anything remarkable about Pierre, it was only his unabashed,
+meditative concentration and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke
+French, which struck them as surprisingly good. In spite of this he
+was placed that day with the other arrested suspects, as the
+separate room he had occupied was required by an officer.
+
+All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the lowest class
+and, recognizing him as a gentleman, they all avoided him, more
+especially as he spoke French. Pierre felt sad at hearing them
+making fun of him.
+
+That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably,
+among them) were to be tried for incendiarism. On the third day he was
+taken with the others to a house where a French general with a white
+mustache sat with two colonels and other Frenchmen with scarves on
+their arms. With the precision and definiteness customary in
+addressing prisoners, and which is supposed to preclude human frailty,
+Pierre like the others was questioned as to who he was, where he had
+been, with what object, and so on.
+
+These questions, like questions put at trials generally, left the
+essence of the matter aside, shut out the possibility of that
+essence's being revealed, and were designed only to form a channel
+through which the judges wished the answers of the accused to flow
+so as to lead to the desired result, namely a conviction. As soon as
+Pierre began to say anything that did not fit in with that aim, the
+channel was removed and the water could flow to waste. Pierre felt,
+moreover, what the accused always feel at their trial, perplexity as
+to why these questions were put to him. He had a feeling that it was
+only out of condescension or a kind of civility that this device of
+placing a channel was employed. He knew he was in these men's power,
+that only by force had they brought him there, that force alone gave
+them the right to demand answers to their questions, and that the sole
+object of that assembly was to inculpate him. And so, as they had
+the power and wish to inculpate him, this expedient of an inquiry
+and trial seemed unnecessary. It was evident that any answer would
+lead to conviction. When asked what he was doing when he was arrested,
+Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner that he was restoring to
+its parents a child he had saved from the flames. Why had he fought
+the marauder? Pierre answered that he "was protecting a woman," and
+that "to protect a woman who was being insulted was the duty of
+every man; that..." They interrupted him, for this was not to the
+point. Why was he in the yard of a burning house where witnesses had
+seen him? He replied that he had gone out to see what was happening in
+Moscow. Again they interrupted him: they had not asked where he was
+going, but why he was found near the fire? Who was he? they asked,
+repeating their first question, which he had declined to answer. Again
+he replied that he could not answer it.
+
+"Put that down, that's bad... very bad," sternly remarked the
+general with the white mustache and red flushed face.
+
+On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovski rampart.
+
+Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach house of a
+merchant's house near the Crimean bridge. On his way through the
+streets Pierre felt stifled by the smoke which seemed to hang over the
+whole city. Fires were visible on all sides. He did not then realize
+the significance of the burning of Moscow, and looked at the fires
+with horror.
+
+He passed four days in the coach house near the Crimean bridge and
+during that time learned, from the talk of the French soldiers, that
+all those confined there were awaiting a decision which might come any
+day from the marshal. What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn
+from the soldiers. Evidently for them "the marshal" represented a very
+high and rather mysterious power.
+
+These first days, before the eighth of September when the
+prisoners were had up for a second examination, were the hardest of
+all for Pierre.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+On the eighth of September an officer- a very important one
+judging by the respect the guards showed him- entered the coach
+house where the prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on
+the staff, was holding a paper in his hand, and called over all the
+Russians there, naming Pierre as "the man who does not give his name."
+Glancing indolently and indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered
+the officer in charge to have them decently dressed and tidied up
+before taking them to the marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers
+arrived and Pierre with thirteen others was led to the Virgin's Field.
+It was a fine day, sunny after rain, and the air was unusually pure.
+The smoke did not hang low as on the day when Pierre had been taken
+from the guardhouse on the Zubovski rampart, but rose through the pure
+air in columns. No flames were seen, but columns of smoke rose on
+all sides, and all Moscow as far as Pierre could see was one vast
+charred ruin. On all sides there were waste spaces with only stoves
+and chimney stacks still standing, and here and there the blackened
+walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed at the ruins and did not
+recognize districts he had known well. Here and there he could see
+churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which was not
+destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the
+belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin
+glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly.
+These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the
+Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate
+this holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to
+be seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when
+they saw the French.
+
+It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but
+in place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed,
+Pierre unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order
+had been established over this ruined nest. He felt this in the
+looks of the soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly and
+gaily, were escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the
+looks of an important French official in a carriage and pair driven by
+a soldier, whom they met on the way. He felt it in the merry sounds of
+regimental music he heard from the left side of the field, and felt
+and realized it especially from the list of prisoners the French
+officer had read out when he came that morning. Pierre had been
+taken by one set of soldiers and led first to one and then to
+another place with dozens of other men, and it seemed that they
+might have forgotten him, or confused him with the others. But no: the
+answers he had given when questioned had come back to him in his
+designation as "the man who does not give his name," and under that
+appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were now leading
+him somewhere with unhesitating assurance on their faces that he and
+all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted and that
+they were being taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself to be
+an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose
+action he did not understand but which was working well.
+
+He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of the
+Virgin's Field, to a large white house with an immense garden not
+far from the convent. This was Prince Shcherbitov's house, where
+Pierre had often been in other days, and which, as he learned from the
+talk of the soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke of
+Eckmuhl (Davout).
+
+They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one by one.
+Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through a glass
+gallery, an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar to him, into a
+long low study at the door of which stood an adjutant.
+
+Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further end
+of the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently
+consulting a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without
+raising his eyes, he said in a low voice:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word. To
+him Davout was not merely a French general, but a man notorious for
+his cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as he sat like a stern
+schoolmaster who was prepared to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre
+felt that every instant of delay might cost him his life; but he did
+not know what to say. He did not venture to repeat what he had said at
+his first examination, yet to disclose his rank and position was
+dangerous and embarrassing. So he was silent. But before he had
+decided what to do, Davout raised his head, pushed his spectacles back
+on his forehead, screwed up his eyes, and looked intently at him.
+
+"I know that man," he said in a cold, measured tone, evidently
+calculated to frighten Pierre.
+
+The chill that had been running down Pierre's back now seized his
+head as in a vise.
+
+"You cannot know me, General, I have never seen you..."
+
+"He is a Russian spy," Davout interrupted, addressing another
+general who was present, but whom Pierre had not noticed.
+
+Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation in his voice
+Pierre rapidly began:
+
+"No, monseigneur," he said, suddenly remembering that Davout was a
+duke. "No, monseigneur, you cannot have known me. I am a militia
+officer and have not quitted Moscow."
+
+"Your name?" asked Davout.
+
+"Bezukhov."
+
+"What proof have I that you are not lying?"
+
+"Monseigneur!" exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended but in a
+pleading voice.
+
+Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they
+looked at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from
+conditions of war and law, that look established human relations
+between the two men. At that moment an immense number of things passed
+dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were
+both children of humanity and were brothers.
+
+At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head from the
+papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by numbers, Pierre
+was merely a circumstance, and Davout could have shot him without
+burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a
+human being. He reflected for a moment.
+
+"How can you show me that you are telling the truth?" said Davout
+coldly.
+
+Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his regiment and the
+street where the house was.
+
+"You are not what you say," returned Davout.
+
+In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing proofs of
+the truth of his statements.
+
+But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported something to
+Davout.
+
+Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought, and began
+buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had quite forgotten
+Pierre.
+
+When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he jerked his head
+in Pierre's direction with a frown and ordered him to be led away. But
+where they were to take him Pierre did not know: back to the coach
+house or to the place of execution his companions had pointed out to
+him as they crossed the Virgin's Field.
+
+He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was putting another
+question to Davout.
+
+"Yes, of course!" replied Davout, but what this "yes" meant,
+Pierre did not know.
+
+Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went, whether it was
+far, or in which direction. His faculties were quite numbed, he was
+stupefied, and noticing nothing around him went on moving his legs
+as the others did till they all stopped and he stopped too. The only
+thought in his mind at that time was: who was it that had really
+sentenced him to death? Not the men on the commission that had first
+examined him- not one of them wished to or, evidently, could have done
+it. It was not Davout, who had looked at him in so human a way. In
+another moment Davout would have realized that he was doing wrong, but
+just then the adjutant had come in and interrupted him. The
+adjutant, also, had evidently had no evil intent though he might
+have refrained from coming in. Then who was executing him, killing
+him, depriving him of life- him, Pierre, with all his memories,
+aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And Pierre
+felt that it was no one.
+
+It was a system- a concurrence of circumstances.
+
+A system of some sort was killing him- Pierre- depriving him of
+life, of everything, annihilating him.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+From Prince Shcherbatov's house the prisoners were led straight down
+the Virgin's Field, to the left of the nunnery, as far as a kitchen
+garden in which a post had been set up. Beyond that post a fresh pit
+had been dug in the ground, and near the post and the pit a large
+crowd stood in a semicircle. The crowd consisted of a few Russians and
+many of Napoleon's soldiers who were not on duty- Germans, Italians,
+and Frenchmen, in a variety of uniforms. To the right and left of
+the post stood rows of French troops in blue uniforms with red
+epaulets and high boots and shakos.
+
+The prisoners were placed in a certain order, according to the
+list (Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post. Several drums
+suddenly began to beat on both sides of them, and at that sound Pierre
+felt as if part of his soul had been torn away. He lost the power of
+thinking or understanding. He could only hear and see. And he had only
+one wish- that the frightful thing that had to happen should happen
+quickly. Pierre looked round at his fellow prisoners and scrutinized
+them.
+
+The two first were convicts with shaven heads. One was tall and
+thin, the other dark, shaggy, and sinewy, with a flat nose. The
+third was a domestic serf, about forty-five years old, with grizzled
+hair and a plump, well-nourished body. The fourth was a peasant, a
+very handsome man with a broad, light-brown beard and black eyes.
+The fifth was a factory hand, a thin, sallow-faced lad of eighteen
+in a loose coat.
+
+Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot them
+separately or two at a time. "In couples," replied the officer in
+command in a calm voice. There was a stir in the ranks of the soldiers
+and it was evident that they were all hurrying- not as men hurry to do
+something they understand, but as people hurry to finish a necessary
+but unpleasant and incomprehensible task.
+
+A French official wearing a scarf came up to the right of the row of
+prisoners and read out the sentence in Russian and in French.
+
+Then two pairs of Frenchmen approached the criminals and at the
+officer's command took the two convicts who stood first in the row.
+The convicts stopped when they reached the post and, while sacks
+were being brought, looked dumbly around as a wounded beast looks at
+an approaching huntsman. One crossed himself continually, the other
+scratched his back and made a movement of the lips resembling a smile.
+With hurried hands the soldiers blindfolded them, drawing the sacks
+over their heads, and bound them to the post.
+
+Twelve sharpshooters with muskets stepped out of the ranks with a
+firm regular tread and halted eight paces from the post. Pierre turned
+away to avoid seeing what was going to happen. Suddenly a crackling,
+rolling noise was heard which seemed to him louder than the most
+terrific thunder, and he looked round. There was some smoke, and the
+Frenchmen were doing something near the pit, with pale faces and
+trembling hands. Two more prisoners were led up. In the same way and
+with similar looks, these two glanced vainly at the onlookers with
+only a silent appeal for protection in their eyes, evidently unable to
+understand or believe what was going to happen to them. They could not
+believe it because they alone knew what their life meant to them,
+and so they neither understood nor believed that it could be taken
+from them.
+
+Again Pierre did not wish to look and again turned away; but again
+the sound as of a frightful explosion struck his ear, and at the
+same moment he saw smoke, blood, and the pale, scared faces of the
+Frenchmen who were again doing something by the post, their
+trembling hands impeding one another. Pierre, breathing heavily,
+looked around as if asking what it meant. The same question was
+expressed in all the looks that met his.
+
+On the faces of all the Russians and of the French soldiers and
+officers without exception, he read the same dismay, horror, and
+conflict that were in his own heart. "But who, after all, is doing
+this? They are all suffering as I am. Who then is it? Who?" flashed
+for an instant through his mind.
+
+"Sharpshooters of the 86th, forward!" shouted someone. The fifth
+prisoner, the one next to Pierre, was led away- alone. Pierre did
+not understand that he was saved, that he and the rest had been
+brought there only to witness the execution. With ever-growing horror,
+and no sense of joy or relief, he gazed at what was taking place.
+The fifth man was the factory lad in the loose cloak. The moment
+they laid hands on him he sprang aside in terror and clutched at
+Pierre. (Pierre shuddered and shook himself free.) The lad was
+unable to walk. They dragged him along, holding him up under the arms,
+and he screamed. When they got him to the post he grew quiet, as if he
+suddenly understood something. Whether he understood that screaming
+was useless or whether he thought it incredible that men should kill
+him, at any rate he took his stand at the post, waiting to be
+blindfolded like the others, and like a wounded animal looked around
+him with glittering eyes.
+
+Pierre was no longer able to turn away and close his eyes. His
+curiosity and agitation, like that of the whole crowd, reached the
+highest pitch at this fifth murder. Like the others this fifth man
+seemed calm; he wrapped his loose cloak closer and rubbed one bare
+foot with the other.
+
+When they began to blindfold him he himself adjusted the knot
+which hurt the back of his head; then when they propped him against
+the bloodstained post, he leaned back and, not being comfortable in
+that position, straightened himself, adjusted his feet, and leaned
+back again more comfortably. Pierre did not take his eyes from him and
+did not miss his slightest movement.
+
+Probably a word of command was given and was followed by the reports
+of eight muskets; but try as he would Pierre could not afterwards
+remember having heard the slightest sound of the shots. He only saw
+how the workman suddenly sank down on the cords that held him, how
+blood showed itself in two places, how the ropes slackened under the
+weight of the hanging body, and how the workman sat down, his head
+hanging unnaturally and one leg bent under him. Pierre ran up to the
+post. No one hindered him. Pale, frightened people were doing
+something around the workman. The lower jaw of an old Frenchman with a
+thick mustache trembled as he untied the ropes. The body collapsed.
+The soldiers dragged it awkwardly from the post and began pushing it
+into the pit.
+
+They all plainly and certainly knew that they were criminals who
+must hide the traces of their guilt as quickly as possible.
+
+Pierre glanced into the pit and saw that the factory lad was lying
+with his knees close up to his head and one shoulder higher than the
+other. That shoulder rose and fell rhythmically and convulsively,
+but spadefuls of earth were already being thrown over the whole
+body. One of the soldiers, evidently suffering, shouted gruffly and
+angrily at Pierre to go back. But Pierre did not understand him and
+remained near the post, and no one drove him away.
+
+When the pit had been filled up a command was given. Pierre was
+taken back to his place, and the rows of troops on both sides of the
+post made a half turn and went past it at a measured pace. The
+twenty-four sharpshooters with discharged muskets, standing in the
+center of the circle, ran back to their places as the companies passed
+by.
+
+Pierre gazed now with dazed eyes at these sharpshooters who ran in
+couples out of the circle. All but one rejoined their companies.
+This one, a young soldier, his face deadly pale, his shako pushed
+back, and his musket resting on the ground, still stood near the pit
+at the spot from which he had fired. He swayed like a drunken man,
+taking some steps forward and back to save himself from falling. An
+old, noncommissioned officer ran out of the ranks and taking him by
+the elbow dragged him to his company. The crowd of Russians and
+Frenchmen began to disperse. They all went away silently and with
+drooping heads.
+
+"That will teach them to start fires," said one of the Frenchmen.
+
+Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was a soldier
+who was trying to find some relief after what had been done, but was
+not able to do so. Without finishing what he had begun to say he
+made a hopeless movement with his arm and went away.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest of the
+prisoners and placed alone in a small, ruined, and befouled church.
+
+Toward evening a noncommissioned officer entered with two soldiers
+and told him that he had been pardoned and would now go to the
+barracks for the prisoners of war. Without understanding what was said
+to him, Pierre got up and went with the soldiers. They took him to the
+upper end of the field, where there were some sheds built of charred
+planks, beams, and battens, and led him into one of them. In the
+darkness some twenty different men surrounded Pierre. He looked at
+them without understanding who they were, why they were there, or what
+they wanted of him. He heard what they said, but did not understand
+the meaning of the words and made no kind of deduction from or
+application of them. He replied to questions they put to him, but
+did not consider who was listening to his replies, nor how they
+would understand them. He looked at their faces and figures, but
+they all seemed to him equally meaningless.
+
+From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible murders
+committed by men who did not wish to commit them, it was as if the
+mainspring of his life, on which everything depended and which made
+everything appear alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything
+had collapsed into a heap of meaningless rubbish. Though he did not
+acknowledge it to himself, his faith in the right ordering of the
+universe, in humanity, in his own soul, and in God, had been
+destroyed. He had experienced this before, but never so strongly as
+now. When similar doubts had assailed him before, they had been the
+result of his own wrongdoing, and at the bottom of his heart he had
+felt that relief from his despair and from those doubts was to be
+found within himself. But now he felt that the universe had crumbled
+before his eyes and only meaningless ruins remained, and this not by
+any fault of his own. He felt that it was not in his power to regain
+faith in the meaning of life.
+
+Around him in the darkness men were standing and evidently something
+about him interested them greatly. They were telling him something and
+asking him something. Then they led him away somewhere, and at last he
+found himself in a corner of the shed among men who were laughing
+and talking on all sides.
+
+"Well, then, mates... that very prince who..." some voice at the
+other end of the shed was saying, with a strong emphasis on the word
+who.
+
+Sitting silent and motionless on a heap of straw against the wall,
+Pierre sometimes opened and sometimes closed his eyes. But as soon
+as he closed them he saw before him the dreadful face of the factory
+lad- especially dreadful because of its simplicity- and the faces of
+the murderers, even more dreadful because of their disquiet. And he
+opened his eyes again and stared vacantly into the darkness around
+him.
+
+Beside him in a stooping position sat a small man of whose
+presence he was first made aware by a strong smell of perspiration
+which came from him every time he moved. This man was doing
+something to his legs in the darkness, and though Pierre could not see
+his face he felt that the man continually glanced at him. On growing
+used to the darkness Pierre saw that the man was taking off his leg
+bands, and the way he did it aroused Pierre's interest.
+
+Having unwound the string that tied the band on one leg, he
+carefully coiled it up and immediately set to work on the other leg,
+glancing up at Pierre. While one hand hung up the first string the
+other was already unwinding the band on the second leg. In this way,
+having carefully removed the leg bands by deft circular motions of his
+arm following one another uninterruptedly, the man hung the leg
+bands up on some pegs fixed above his head. Then he took out a
+knife, cut something, closed the knife, placed it under the head of
+his bed, and, seating himself comfortably, clasped his arms round
+his lifted knees and fixed his eyes on Pierre. The latter was
+conscious of something pleasant, comforting, and well rounded in these
+deft movements, in the man's well-ordered arrangements in his
+corner, and even in his very smell, and he looked at the man without
+taking his eyes from him.
+
+"You've seen a lot of trouble, sir, eh?" the little man suddenly
+said.
+
+And there was so much kindliness and simplicity in his singsong
+voice that Pierre tried to reply, but his jaw trembled and he felt
+tears rising to his eyes. The little fellow, giving Pierre no time
+to betray his confusion, instantly continued in the same pleasant
+tones:
+
+"Eh, lad, don't fret!" said he, in the tender singsong caressing
+voice old Russian peasant women employ. "Don't fret, friend- 'suffer
+an hour, live for an age!' that's how it is, my dear fellow. And
+here we live, thank heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too,
+there are good men as well as bad," said he, and still speaking, he
+turned on his knees with a supple movement, got up, coughed, and
+went off to another part of the shed.
+
+"Eh, you rascal!" Pierre heard the same kind voice saying at the
+other end of the shed. "So you've come, you rascal? She remembers...
+Now, now, that'll do!"
+
+And the soldier, pushing away a little dog that was jumping up at
+him, returned to his place and sat down. In his hands he had something
+wrapped in a rag.
+
+"Here, eat a bit, sir," said he, resuming his former respectful tone
+as he unwrapped and offered Pierre some baked potatoes. "We had soup
+for dinner and the potatoes are grand!"
+
+Pierre had not eaten all day and the smell of the potatoes seemed
+extremely pleasant to him. He thanked the soldier and began to eat.
+
+"Well, are they all right?" said the soldier with a smile. "You
+should do like this."
+
+He took a potato, drew out his clasp knife, cut the potato into
+two equal halves on the palm of his hand, sprinkled some salt on it
+from the rag, and handed it to Pierre.
+
+"The potatoes are grand!" he said once more. "Eat some like that!"
+
+Pierre thought he had never eaten anything that tasted better.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," said he, "but why did they shoot those poor
+fellows? The last one was hardly twenty."
+
+"Tss, tt...!" said the little man. "Ah, what a sin... what a sin!"
+he added quickly, and as if his words were always waiting ready in his
+mouth and flew out involuntarily he went on: "How was it, sir, that
+you stayed in Moscow?"
+
+"I didn't think they would come so soon. I stayed accidentally,"
+replied Pierre.
+
+"And how did they arrest you, dear lad? At your house?"
+
+"No, I went to look at the fire, and they arrested me there, and
+tried me as an incendiary."
+
+"Where there's law there's injustice," put in the little man.
+
+"And have you been here long?" Pierre asked as he munched the last
+of the potato.
+
+"I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in Moscow."
+
+"Why, are you a soldier then?"
+
+"Yes, we are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of
+fever. We weren't told anything. There were some twenty of us lying
+there. We had no idea, never guessed at all."
+
+"And do you feel sad here?" Pierre inquired.
+
+"How can one help it, lad? My name is Platon, and the surname is
+Karataev," he added, evidently wishing to make it easier for Pierre to
+address him. "They call me 'little falcon' in the regiment. How is one
+to help feeling sad? Moscow- she's the mother of cities. How can one
+see all this and not feel sad? But 'the maggot gnaws the cabbage,
+yet dies first'; that's what the old folks used to tell us," he
+added rapidly.
+
+"What? What did you say?" asked Pierre.
+
+"Who? I?" said Karataev. "I say things happen not as we plan but
+as God judges," he replied, thinking that he was repeating what he had
+said before, and immediately continued:
+
+"Well, and you, have you a family estate, sir? And a house? So you
+have abundance, then? And a housewife? And your old parents, are
+they still living?" he asked.
+
+And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt that a
+suppressed smile of kindliness puckered the soldier's lips as he put
+these questions. He seemed grieved that Pierre had no parents,
+especially that he had no mother.
+
+"A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but there's none
+as dear as one's own mother!" said he. "Well, and have you little
+ones?" he went on asking.
+
+Again Pierre's negative answer seemed to distress him, and he
+hastened to add:
+
+"Never mind! You're young folks yet, and please God may still have
+some. The great thing is to live in harmony...."
+
+"But it's all the same now," Pierre could not help saying.
+
+"Ah, my dear fellow!" rejoined Karataev, "never decline a prison
+or a beggar's sack!"
+
+He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently
+preparing to tell a long story.
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home," he began. "We
+had a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants lived well and
+our house was one to thank God for. When Father and we went out mowing
+there were seven of us. We lived well. We were real peasants. It so
+happened..."
+
+And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had gone into
+someone's copse to take wood, how he had been caught by the keeper,
+had been tried, flogged, and sent to serve as a soldier.
+
+"Well, lad," and a smile changed the tone of his voice "we thought
+it was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If it had not been
+for my sin, my brother would have had to go as a soldier. But he, my
+younger brother, had five little ones, while I, you see, only left a
+wife behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I went as a
+soldier. I come home on leave and I'll tell you how it was, I look and
+see that they are living better than before. The yard full of
+cattle, the women at home, two brothers away earning wages, and only
+Michael the youngest, at home. Father, he says, 'All my children are
+the same to me: it hurts the same whichever finger gets bitten. But if
+Platon hadn't been shaved for a soldier, Michael would have had to
+go.' called us all to him and, will you believe it, placed us in front
+of the icons. 'Michael,' he says, 'come here and bow down to his feet;
+and you, young woman, you bow down too; and you, grandchildren, also
+bow down before him! Do you understand?' he says. That's how it is,
+dear fellow. Fate looks for a head. But we are always judging, 'that's
+not well- that's not right!' Our luck is like water in a dragnet:
+you pull at it and it bulges, but when you've drawn it out it's empty!
+That's how it is."
+
+And Platon shifted his seat on the straw.
+
+After a short silence he rose.
+
+"Well, I think you must be sleepy," said he, and began rapidly
+crossing himself and repeating:
+
+"Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus
+Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus Christ,
+have mercy on us and save us!" he concluded, then bowed to the ground,
+got up, sighed, and sat down again on his heap of straw. "That's the
+way. Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf," he
+muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him.
+
+"What prayer was that you were saying?" asked Pierre.
+
+"Eh?" murmured Platon, who had almost fallen asleep. "What was I
+saying? I was praying. Don't you pray?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Pierre. "But what was that you said: Frola and
+Lavra?"
+
+"Well, of course," replied Platon quickly, "the horses' saints.
+One must pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now you've curled up
+and got warm, you daughter of a bitch!" said Karataev, touching the
+dog that lay at his feet, and again turning over he fell asleep
+immediately.
+
+Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere in the distance
+outside, and flames were visible through the cracks of the shed, but
+inside it was quiet and dark. For a long time Pierre did not sleep,
+but lay with eyes open in the darkness, listening to the regular
+snoring of Platon who lay beside him, and he felt that the world
+that had been shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a
+new beauty and on new and unshakable foundations.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were
+confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where he
+remained for four weeks.
+
+When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty figures
+to him except Platon Karataev, who always remained in his mind a
+most vivid and precious memory and the personification of everything
+Russian, kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next
+morning at dawn the first impression of him, as of something round,
+was fully confirmed: Platon's whole figure- in a French overcoat
+girdled with a cord, a soldier's cap, and bast shoes- was round. His
+head was quite round, his back, chest, shoulders, and even his arms,
+which he held as if ever ready to embrace something, were rounded, his
+pleasant smile and his large, gentle brown eyes were also round.
+
+Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of
+campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier. He did not
+himself know his age and was quite unable to determine it. But his
+brilliantly white, strong teeth which showed in two unbroken
+semicircles when he laughed- as he often did- were all sound and good,
+there was not a gray hair in his beard or on his head, and his whole
+body gave an impression of suppleness and especially of firmness and
+endurance.
+
+His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of
+innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant and musical. But the chief
+peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness. It
+was evident that he never considered what he had said or was going
+to say, and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation
+had an irresistible persuasiveness.
+
+His physical strength and agility during the first days of his
+imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know what fatigue and
+sickness meant. Every night before lying down, he said: "Lord, lay
+me down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!" and every morning on
+getting up, he said: "I lay down and curled up, I get up and shake
+myself." And indeed he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a
+stone, and he only had to shake himself, to be ready without a
+moment's delay for some work, just as children are ready to play
+directly they awake. He could do everything, not very well but not
+badly. He baked, cooked, sewed, planed, and mended boots. He was
+always busy, and only at night allowed himself conversation- of
+which he was fond- and songs. He did not sing like a trained singer
+who knows he is listened to, but like the birds, evidently giving vent
+to the sounds in the same way that one stretches oneself or walks
+about to get rid of stiffness, and the sounds were always
+high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his face at
+such times was very serious.
+
+Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to grow, he
+seemed to have thrown off all that had been forced upon him-
+everything military and alien to himself- and had returned to his
+former peasant habits.
+
+"A soldier on leave- a shirt outside breeches," he would say.
+
+He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though he did
+not complain, and often mentioned that he had not been flogged once
+during the whole of his army service. When he related anything it
+was generally some old and evidently precious memory of his
+"Christian" life, as he called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of
+which his talk was full, were for the most part not the coarse and
+indecent saws soldiers employ, but those folk sayings which taken
+without a context seem so insignificant, but when used appositely
+suddenly acquire a significance of profound wisdom.
+
+He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a
+previous occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he
+talked well, adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with
+folk sayings which Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief
+charm of his talk lay in the fact that the commonest events- sometimes
+just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of them-
+assumed in Karataev's a character of solemn fitness. He liked to
+hear the folk tales one of the soldiers used to tell of an evening
+(they were always the same), but most of all he liked to hear
+stories of real life. He would smile joyfully when listening to such
+stories, now and then putting in a word or asking a question to make
+the moral beauty of what he was told clear to himself. Karataev had no
+attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but
+loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in
+contact with, particularly with man- not any particular man, but those
+with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his comrades, the
+French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt that in spite
+of Karataev's affectionate tenderness for him (by which he
+unconsciously gave Pierre's spiritual life its due) he would not
+have grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to
+feel in the same way toward Karataev.
+
+To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most ordinary
+soldier. They called him "little falcon" or "Platosha," chaffed him
+good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always
+remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable,
+rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and
+truth.
+
+Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he
+began to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude.
+
+Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask
+him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he had said a
+moment before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of
+his favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred
+in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of
+it. He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart
+from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation
+of an activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he
+regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only
+as part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and
+actions flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as
+fragrance exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value
+or significance of any word or deed taken separately.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+When Princess Mary heard from Nicholas that her brother was with the
+Rostovs at Yaroslavl she at once prepared to go there, in spite of her
+aunt's efforts to dissuade her- and not merely to go herself but to
+take her nephew with her. Whether it were difficult or easy,
+possible or impossible, she did not ask and did not want to know: it
+was her duty not only herself to be near her brother who was perhaps
+dying, but to do everything possible to take his son to him, and so
+she prepared to set off. That she had not heard from Prince Andrew
+himself, Princess Mary attributed to his being too weak to write or to
+his considering the long journey too hard and too dangerous for her
+and his son.
+
+In a few days Princess Mary was ready to start. Her equipages were
+the huge family coach in which she had traveled to Voronezh, a
+semiopen trap, and a baggage cart. With her traveled Mademoiselle
+Bourienne, little Nicholas and his tutor, her old nurse, three
+maids, Tikhon, and a young footman and courier her aunt had sent to
+accompany her.
+
+The usual route through Moscow could not be thought of, and the
+roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lipetsk,
+Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was very long and, as post horses were not
+everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the
+French were said to have shown themselves was even dangerous.
+
+During this difficult journey Mademoiselle Bourienne, Dessalles, and
+Princess Mary's servants were astonished at her energy and firmness of
+spirit. She went to bed later and rose earlier than any of them, and
+no difficulties daunted her. Thanks to her activity and energy,
+which infected her fellow travelers, they approached Yaroslavl by
+the end of the second week.
+
+The last days of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest of her
+life. Her love for Rostov no longer tormented or agitated her. It
+filled her whole soul, had become an integral part of herself, and she
+no longer struggled against it. Latterly she had become convinced that
+she loved and was beloved, though she never said this definitely to
+herself in words. She had become convinced of it at her last interview
+with Nicholas, when he had come to tell her that her brother was
+with the Rostovs. Not by a single word had Nicholas alluded to the
+fact that Prince Andrew's relations with Natasha might, if he
+recovered, be renewed, but Princess Mary saw by his face that he
+knew and thought of this.
+
+Yet in spite of that, his relation to her- considerate, delicate,
+and loving- not only remained unchanged, but it sometimes seemed to
+Princess Mary that he was even glad that the family connection between
+them allowed him to express his friendship more freely. She knew
+that she loved for the first and only time in her life and felt that
+she was beloved, and was happy in regard to it.
+
+But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature did not
+prevent her feeling grief for her brother with full force; on the
+contrary, that spiritual tranquility on the one side made it the
+more possible for her to give full play to her feeling for her
+brother. That feeling was so strong at the moment of leaving
+Voronezh that those who saw her off, as they looked at her careworn,
+despairing face, felt sure she would fall ill on the journey. But
+the very difficulties and preoccupations of the journey, which she
+took so actively in hand, saved her for a while from her grief and
+gave her strength.
+
+As always happens when traveling, Princess Mary thought only of
+the journey itself, forgetting its object. But as she approached
+Yaroslavl the thought of what might await her there- not after many
+days, but that very evening- again presented itself to her and her
+agitation increased to its utmost limit.
+
+The courier who had been sent on in advance to find out where the
+Rostovs were staying in Yaroslavl, and in what condition Prince Andrew
+was, when he met the big coach just entering the town gates was
+appalled by the terrible pallor of the princess' face that looked
+out at him from the window.
+
+"I have found out everything, your excellency: the Rostovs are
+staying at the merchant Bronnikov's house, in the Square not far
+from here, right above the Volga," said the courier.
+
+Princess Mary looked at him with frightened inquiry, not
+understanding why he did not reply to what she chiefly wanted to know:
+how was her brother? Mademoiselle Bourienne put that question for her.
+
+"How is the prince?" she asked.
+
+"His excellency is staying in the same house with them."
+
+"Then he is alive," thought Princess Mary, and asked in a low voice:
+"How is he?"
+
+"The servants say he is still the same."
+
+What "still the same" might mean Princess Mary did not ask, but with
+an unnoticed glance at little seven-year-old Nicholas, who was sitting
+in front of her looking with pleasure at the town, she bowed her
+head and did not raise it again till the heavy coach, rumbling,
+shaking and swaying, came to a stop. The carriage steps clattered as
+they were let down.
+
+The carriage door was opened. On the left there was water- a great
+river- and on the right a porch. There were people at the entrance:
+servants, and a rosy girl with a large plait of black hair, smiling as
+it seemed to Princess Mary in an unpleasantly affected way. (This
+was Sonya.) Princess Mary ran up the steps. "This way, this way!" said
+the girl, with the same artificial smile, and the princess found
+herself in the hall facing an elderly woman of Oriental type, who came
+rapidly to meet her with a look of emotion. This was the countess. She
+embraced Princess Mary and kissed her.
+
+"Mon enfant!" she muttered, "je vous aime et vous connais depuis
+longtemps."~^
+
+^~ "My child! I love you and have known you a long time."
+
+Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that this was the
+countess and that it was necessary to say something to her. Hardly
+knowing how she did it, she contrived to utter a few polite phrases in
+French in the same tone as those that had been addressed to her, and
+asked: "How is he?"
+
+"The doctor says that he is not in danger," said the countess, but
+as she spoke she raised her eyes with a sigh, and her gesture conveyed
+a contradiction of her words.
+
+"Where is he? Can I see him- can I?" asked the princess.
+
+"One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this his son?" said
+the countess, turning to little Nicholas who was coming in with
+Dessalles. "There will be room for everybody, this is a big house. Oh,
+what a lovely boy!"
+
+The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing room, where Sonya
+was talking to Mademoiselle Bourienne. The countess caressed the
+boy, and the old count came in and welcomed the princess. He had
+changed very much since Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had
+been a brisk, cheerful, self-assured old man; now he seemed a pitiful,
+bewildered person. While talking to Princess Mary he continually
+looked round as if asking everyone whether he was doing the right
+thing. After the destruction of Moscow and of his property, thrown out
+of his accustomed groove he seemed to have lost the sense of his own
+significance and to feel that there was no longer a place for him in
+life.
+
+In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as possible,
+and her vexation that at the moment when all she wanted was to see him
+they should be trying to entertain her and pretending to admire her
+nephew, the princess noticed all that was going on around her and felt
+the necessity of submitting, for a time, to this new order of things
+which she had entered. She knew it to be necessary, and though it
+was hard for her she was not vexed with these people.
+
+"This is my niece," said the count, introducing Sonya- "You don't
+know her, Princess?"
+
+Princess Mary turned to Sonya and, trying to stifle the hostile
+feeling that arose in her toward the girl, she kissed her. But she
+felt oppressed by the fact that the mood of everyone around her was so
+far from what was in her own heart.
+
+"Where is he?" she asked again, addressing them all.
+
+"He is downstairs. Natasha is with him," answered Sonya, flushing.
+"We have sent to ask. I think you must be tired, Princess."
+
+Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess Mary's eyes. She
+turned away and was about to ask the countess again how to go to
+him, when light, impetuous, and seemingly buoyant steps were heard
+at the door. The princess looked round and saw Natasha coming in,
+almost running- that Natasha whom she had liked so little at their
+meeting in Moscow long since.
+
+But hardly had the princess looked at Natasha's face before she
+realized that here was a real comrade in her grief, and consequently a
+friend. She ran to meet her, embraced her, and began to cry on her
+shoulder.
+
+As soon as Natasha, sitting at the head of Prince Andrew's bed,
+heard of Princess Mary's arrival, she softly left his room and
+hastened to her with those swift steps that had sounded buoyant to
+Princess Mary.
+
+There was only one expression on her agitated face when she ran into
+the drawing room- that of love- boundless love for him, for her, and
+for all that was near to the man she loved; and of pity, suffering for
+others, and passionate desire to give herself entirely to helping
+them. It was plain that at that moment there was in Natasha's heart no
+thought of herself or of her own relations with Prince Andrew.
+
+Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood all this at
+the first glance at Natasha's face, and wept on her shoulder with
+sorrowful pleasure.
+
+"Come, come to him, Mary," said Natasha, leading her into the
+other room.
+
+Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and turned to
+Natasha. She felt that from her she would be able to understand and
+learn everything.
+
+"How..." she began her question but stopped short.
+
+She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in words.
+Natasha's face eyes would eyes would have to tell her all more clearly
+and profoundly.
+
+Natasha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in doubt whether to
+say all she knew or not; she seemed to feel that before those luminous
+eyes which penetrated into the very depths of her heart, it was
+impossible not to tell the whole truth which she saw. And suddenly,
+Natasha's lips twitched, ugly wrinkles gathered round her mouth, and
+covering her face with her hands she burst into sobs.
+
+Princess Mary understood.
+
+But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did not trust:
+
+"But how is his wound? What is his general condition?"
+
+"You, you... will see," was all Natasha could say.
+
+They sat a little while downstairs near his room till they had
+left off crying and were able to go to him with calm faces.
+
+"How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he grew worse?
+When did this happen?" Princess Mary inquired.
+
+Natasha told her that at first there had been danger from his
+feverish condition and the pain he suffered, but at Troitsa that had
+passed and the doctor had only been afraid of gangrene. That danger
+had also passed. When they reached Yaroslavl the wound had begun to
+fester (Natasha knew all about such things as festering) and the
+doctor had said that the festering might take a normal course. Then
+fever set in, but the doctor had said the fever was not very serious.
+
+"But two days ago this suddenly happened," said Natasha,
+struggling with her sobs. "I don't know why, but you will see what
+he is like."
+
+"Is he weaker? Thinner?" asked the princess.
+
+"No, it's not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he is too
+good, he cannot, cannot live, because..."
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+When Natasha opened Prince Andrew's door with a familiar movement
+and let Princess Mary pass into the room before her, the princess felt
+the sobs in her throat. Hard as she had tried to prepare herself,
+and now tried to remain tranquil, she knew that she would be unable to
+look at him without tears.
+
+The princess understood what Natasha had meant by the words: "two
+days ago this suddenly happened." She understood those words to mean
+that he had suddenly softened and that this softening and gentleness
+were signs of approaching death. As she stepped to the door she
+already saw in imagination Andrew's face as she remembered it in
+childhood, a gentle, mild, sympathetic face which he had rarely shown,
+and which therefore affected her very strongly. She was sure he
+would speak soft, tender words to her such as her father had uttered
+before his death, and that she would not be able to bear it and
+would burst into sobs in his presence. Yet sooner or later it had to
+be, and she went in. The sobs rose higher and higher in her throat
+as she more and more clearly distinguished his form and her
+shortsighted eyes tried to make out his features, and then she saw his
+face and met his gaze.
+
+He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan,
+surrounded by pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin,
+translucently white hand he held a handkerchief, while with the
+other he stroked the delicate mustache he had grown, moving his
+fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them as they entered.
+
+On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary's pace
+suddenly slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her sobs ceased. She
+suddenly felt guilty and grew timid on catching the expression of
+his face and eyes.
+
+"But in what am I to blame?" she asked herself. And his cold,
+stern look replied: "Because you are alive and thinking of the living,
+while I..."
+
+In the deep the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but
+inwards there was an almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded
+his sister and Natasha.
+
+He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont.
+
+"How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?" said he in a
+voice as calm and aloof as his look.
+
+Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have struck such
+horror into Princess Mary's heart as the tone of his voice.
+
+"And have you brought little Nicholas?" he asked in the same slow,
+quiet manner and with an obvious effort to remember.
+
+"How are you now?" said Princess Mary, herself surprised at what she
+was saying.
+
+"That, my dear, you must ask the doctor," he replied, and again
+making an evident effort to be affectionate, he said with his lips
+only (his words clearly did not correspond to his thoughts):
+
+"Merci, chere amie, d'etre venue."~^
+
+^~ "Thank you for coming, my dear."
+
+Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him wince just
+perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She
+now understood what had happened to him two days before. In his words,
+his tone, and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look
+could be felt an estrangement from everything belonging to this world,
+terrible in one who is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he
+understand anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to
+understand, not because he lacked the power to do so but because he
+understood something else- something the living did not and could
+not understand- and which wholly occupied his mind.
+
+"There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together," said
+he, breaking the silence and pointing to Natasha. "She looks after
+me all the time."
+
+Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how he could say such
+a thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince Andrew, how could he say
+that, before her whom he loved and who loved him? Had he expected to
+live he could not have said those words in that offensively cold tone.
+If he had not known that he was dying, how could he have failed to
+pity her and how could he speak like that in her presence? The only
+explanation was that he was indifferent, because something else,
+much more important, had been revealed to him.
+
+The conversation was cold and disconnected and continually broke
+off.
+
+"Mary came by way of Ryazan," said Natasha.
+
+Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary, and
+only after calling her so in his presence did Natasha notice it
+herself.
+
+"Really?" he asked.
+
+"They told her that all Moscow has been burned down, and that..."
+
+Natasha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain that he was
+making an effort to listen, but could not do so.
+
+"Yes, they say it's burned," he said. "It's a great pity," and he
+gazed straight before him, absently stroking his mustache with his
+fingers.
+
+"And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?" Prince Andrew suddenly
+said, evidently wishing to speak pleasantly to them. "He wrote here
+that he took a great liking to you," he went on simply and calmly,
+evidently unable to understand all the complex significance his
+words had for living people. "If you liked him too, it would be a good
+thing for you to get married," he added rather more quickly, as if
+pleased at having found words he had long been seeking.
+
+Princess Mary heard his words but they had no meaning for her,
+except as a proof of how far away he now was from everything living.
+
+"Why talk of me?" she said quietly and glanced at Natasha.
+
+Natasha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All three were
+again silent.
+
+"Andrew, would you like..." Princess Mary suddenly said in a
+trembling voice, "would you like to see little Nicholas? He is
+always talking about you!"
+
+Prince Andrew smiled just perceptibly and for the first time, but
+Princess Mary, who knew his face so well, saw with horror that he
+did not smile with pleasure or affection for his son, but with
+quiet, gentle irony because he thought she was trying what she
+believed to be the last means of arousing him.
+
+"Yes, I shall be very glad to see him. Is he quite well?"
+
+When little Nicholas was brought into Prince Andrew's room he looked
+at his father with frightened eyes, but did not cry, because no one
+else was crying. Prince Andrew kissed him and evidently did not know
+what to say to him.
+
+When Nicholas had been led away, Princess Mary again went up to
+her brother, kissed him, and unable to restrain her tears any longer
+began to cry.
+
+He looked at her attentively.
+
+"Is it about Nicholas?" he asked.
+
+Princess Mary nodded her head, weeping.
+
+"Mary, you know the Gosp..." but he broke off.
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothing. You mustn't cry here," he said, looking at her with the
+same cold expression.
+
+When Princess Mary began to cry, he understood that she was crying
+at the thought that little Nicholas would be left without a father.
+With a great effort he tried to return to life and to see things
+from their point of view.
+
+"Yes, to them it must seem sad!" he thought. "But how simple it is.
+
+"The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Father
+feedeth them," he said to himself and wished to say to Princess
+Mary; "but no, they will take it their own way, they won't understand!
+They can't understand that all those feelings they prize so- all our
+feelings, all those ideas that seem so important to us, are
+unnecessary. We cannot understand one another," and he remained
+silent.
+
+Prince Andrew's little son was seven. He could scarcely read, and
+knew nothing. After that day he lived through many things, gaining
+knowledge, observation, and experience, but had he possessed all the
+faculties he afterwards acquired, he could not have had a better or
+more profound understanding of the meaning of the scene he had
+witnessed between his father, Mary, and Natasha, than he had then.
+He understood it completely, and, leaving the room without crying,
+went silently up to Natasha who had come out with him and looked shyly
+at her with his beautiful, thoughtful eyes, then his uplifted, rosy
+upper lip trembled and leaning his head against her he began to cry.
+
+After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him
+and either sat alone or came timidly to Princess Mary, or to Natasha
+of whom he seemed even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them
+quietly and shyly.
+
+When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully understood
+what Natasha's face had told her. She did not speak any more to
+Natasha of hopes of saving his life. She took turns with her beside
+his sofa, and did not cry any more, but prayed continually, turning in
+soul to that Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the
+dying man was now so evident.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Not only did Prince Andrew know he would die, but he felt that he
+was dying and was already half dead. He was conscious of an
+aloofness from everything earthly and a strange and joyous lightness
+of existence. Without haste or agitation he awaited what was coming.
+That inexorable, eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of which
+he had felt continually all his life- was now near to him and, by
+the strange lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible and
+palpable...
+
+Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice experienced that
+terribly tormenting fear of death- the end- but now he no longer
+understood that fear.
+
+He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like a top
+before him, and he looked at the fallow field, the bushes, and the
+sky, and knew that he was face to face with death. When he came to
+himself after being wounded and the flower of eternal, unfettered love
+had instantly unfolded itself in his soul as if freed from the bondage
+of life that had restrained it, he no longer feared death and ceased
+to think about it.
+
+During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he
+spent after he was wounded, the more deeply he penetrated into the new
+principle of eternal love revealed to him, the more he unconsciously
+detached himself from earthly life. To love everything and everybody
+and always to sacrifice oneself for love meant not to love anyone, not
+to live this earthly life. And the more imbued he became with that
+principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more
+completely he destroyed that dreadful barrier which- in the absence of
+such love- stands between life and death. When during those first days
+he remembered that he would have to die, he said to himself: "Well,
+what of it? So much the better!"
+
+But after the night in Mytishchi when, half delirious, he had seen
+her for whom he longed appear before him and, having pressed her
+hand to his lips, had shed gentle, happy tears, love for a
+particular woman again crept unobserved into his heart and once more
+bound him to life. And joyful and agitating thoughts began to occupy
+his mind. Recalling the moment at the ambulance station when he had
+seen Kuragin, he could not now regain the feeling he then had, but was
+tormented by the question whether Kuragin was alive. And he dared
+not inquire.
+
+His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what Natasha
+referred to when she said: "This suddenly happened," had occurred
+two days before Princess Mary arrived. It was the last spiritual
+struggle between life and death, in which death gained the victory. It
+was the unexpected realization of the fact that he still valued life
+as presented to him in the form of his love for Natasha, and a last,
+though ultimately vanquished, attack of terror before the unknown.
+
+It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish,
+and his thoughts were preternaturally clear. Sonya was sitting by
+the table. He began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized
+him.
+
+"Ah, she has come!" thought he.
+
+And so it was: in Sonya's place sat Natasha who had just come in
+noiselessly.
+
+Since she had begun looking after him, he had always experienced
+this physical consciousness of her nearness. She was sitting in an
+armchair placed sideways, screening the light of the candle from
+him, and was knitting a stocking. She had learned to knit stockings
+since Prince Andrew had casually mentioned that no one nursed the sick
+so well as old nurses who knit stockings, and that there is
+something soothing in the knitting of stockings. The needles clicked
+lightly in her slender, rapidly moving hands, and he could clearly see
+the thoughtful profile of her drooping face. She moved, and the ball
+rolled off her knees. She started, glanced round at him, and screening
+the candle with her hand stooped carefully with a supple and exact
+movement, picked up the ball, and regained her former position.
+
+He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a
+deep breath after stooping, but refrained from doing so and breathed
+cautiously.
+
+At the Troitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had
+told her that if he lived he would always thank God for his wound
+which had brought them together again, but after that they never spoke
+of the future.
+
+"Can it or can it not be?" he now thought as he looked at her and
+listened to the light click of the steel needles. "Can fate have
+brought me to her so strangely only for me to die?... Is it possible
+that the truth of life has been revealed to me only to show me that
+I have spent my life in falsity? I love her more than anything in
+the world! But what am I to do if I love her?" he thought, and he
+involuntarily groaned, from a habit acquired during his sufferings.
+
+On hearing that sound Natasha put down the stocking, leaned nearer
+to him, and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, stepped lightly up to
+him and bent over him.
+
+"You are not asleep?"
+
+"No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you come in.
+No one else gives me that sense of soft tranquillity that you do...
+that light. I want to weep for joy."
+
+Natasha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.
+
+"Natasha, I love you too much! More than anything in the world."
+
+"And I!"- She turned away for an instant. "Why too much?" she asked.
+
+"Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in your
+soul, your whole soul- shall I live? What do you think?"
+
+"I am sure of it, sure!" Natasha almost shouted, taking hold of both
+his hands with a passionate movement.
+
+He remained silent awhile.
+
+"How good it would be!" and taking her hand he kissed it.
+
+Natasha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered that this
+would not do and that he had to be quiet.
+
+"But you have not slept," she said, repressing her joy. "Try to
+sleep... please!"
+
+He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back to the candle
+and sat down again in her former position. Twice she turned and looked
+at him, and her eyes met his beaming at her. She set herself a task on
+her stocking and resolved not to turn round till it was finished.
+
+Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. He did not sleep
+long and suddenly awoke with a start and in a cold perspiration.
+
+As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject that now
+always occupied his mind- about life and death, and chiefly about
+death. He felt himself nearer to it.
+
+"Love? What is love?" he thought.
+
+"Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I
+understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is,
+everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it
+alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall
+return to the general and eternal source." These thoughts seemed to
+him comforting. But they were only thoughts. Something was lacking
+in them, they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and
+brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity. He
+fell asleep.
+
+He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was in, but
+that he was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and
+insignificant people appeared before him. He talked to them and
+discussed something trivial. They were preparing to go away somewhere.
+Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had
+more important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising them by
+empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons began to
+disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded
+all else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything
+depended on whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went,
+and tried to hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he
+would not be in time to lock the door though he painfully strained all
+his powers. He was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was
+the fear of death. It stood behind the door. But just when he was
+clumsily creeping toward the door, that dreadful something on the
+other side was already pressing against it and forcing its way in.
+Something not human- death- was breaking in through that door, and had
+to be kept out. He seized the door, making a final effort to hold it
+back- to lock it was no longer possible- but his efforts were weak and
+clumsy and the door, pushed from behind by that terror, opened and
+closed again.
+
+Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts
+were vain and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It
+entered, and it was death, and Prince Andrew died.
+
+But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was
+asleep, and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he
+awoke.
+
+"Yes, it was death! I died- and woke up. Yes, death is an
+awakening!" And all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil
+that had till then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual
+vision. He felt as if powers till then confined within him had been
+liberated, and that strange lightness did not again leave him.
+
+When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan,
+Natasha went up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer
+and looked at her strangely, not understanding.
+
+That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary's
+arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting
+fever assumed a malignant character, but what the doctor said did
+not interest Natasha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to her
+were more convincing.
+
+From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew
+together with his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration
+of life it did not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep
+compared to the duration of a dream.
+
+There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow
+awakening.
+
+His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. Both
+Princess Mary and Natasha, who did not leave him, felt this. They
+did not weep or shudder and during these last days they themselves
+felt that they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he
+had left them) but on what reminded them most closely of him- his
+body. Both felt this so strongly that the outward and terrible side of
+death did not affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment
+their grief. Neither in his presence nor out of it did they weep,
+nor did they ever talk to one another about him. They felt that they
+could not express in words what they understood.
+
+They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and
+deeper, away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so
+and that it was right.
+
+He confessed, and received communion: everyone came to take leave of
+him. When they brought his son to him, he pressed his lips to the
+boy's and turned away, not because he felt it hard and sad (Princess
+Mary and Natasha understood that) but simply because he thought it was
+all that was required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy,
+he did what was demanded and looked round as if asking whether there
+was anything else he should do.
+
+When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving,
+occurred, Princess Mary and Natasha were present.
+
+"Is it over?" said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes
+lain motionless, growing cold before them. Natasha went up, looked
+at the dead eyes, and hastened to close them. She closed them but
+did not kiss them, but clung to that which reminded her most nearly of
+him- his body.
+
+"Where has he gone? Where is he now?..."
+
+When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table,
+everyone came to take leave of him and they all wept.
+
+Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful
+perplexity. The countess and Sonya cried from pity for Natasha and
+because he was no more. The old count cried because he felt that
+before long, he, too, must take the same terrible step.
+
+Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their
+own personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion
+which had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of
+the simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in
+their presence.
+
+BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their
+completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in
+man's soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity of
+the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the
+cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to
+him intelligible and says: "This is the cause!" In historical events
+(where the actions of men are the subject of observation) the first
+and most primitive approximation to present itself was the will of the
+gods and, after that, the will of those who stood in the most
+prominent position- the heroes of history. But we need only
+penetrate to the essence of any historic event- which lies in the
+activity of the general mass of men who take part in it- to be
+convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the
+actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may
+seem to be a matter of indifference whether we understand the
+meaning of historical events this way or that; yet there is the same
+difference between a man who says that the people of the West moved on
+the East because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this
+happened because it had to happen, as there is between those who
+declared that the earth was stationary and that the planets moved
+round it and those who admitted that they did not know what upheld the
+earth, but knew there were laws directing its movement and that of the
+other planets. There is, and can be, no cause of an historical event
+except the one cause of all causes. But there are laws directing
+events, and some of these laws are known to us while we are
+conscious of others we cannot comprehend. The discovery of these
+laws is only possible when possible when we have quite abandoned the
+attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man, just as the
+discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was possible only
+when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the earth.
+
+The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the
+occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the
+most important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the
+Russian army from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino
+camp- the so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River. They
+ascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to different men and
+dispute as to whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians,
+including the French, acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders
+when they speak of that flank march. But it is hard to understand
+why military writers, and following them others, consider this flank
+march to be the profound conception of some one man who saved Russia
+and destroyed Napoleon. In the first place it is hard to understand
+where the profundity and genius of this movement lay, for not much
+mental effort was needed to see that the best position for an army
+when it is not being attacked is where there are most provisions;
+and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best
+position for an army after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was on
+the Kaluga road. So it is impossible to understand by what reasoning
+the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver was a
+profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why
+they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and
+destroy the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded,
+accompanied, or followed by other circumstances, might have proved
+ruinous to the Russians and salutary for the French. If the position
+of the Russian army really began to improve from the time of that
+march, it does not at all follow that the march was the cause of it.
+
+That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to
+the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its
+destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If
+Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained
+inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given battle as
+Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French
+attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhra? What
+would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had
+attacked the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when
+he attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the
+French moved on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank
+march that brought salvation might have proved disastrous.
+
+The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying
+history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be
+attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in
+reality, like the retreat from Fili, it did not suggest itself to
+anyone in its entirety, but resulted- moment by moment, step by
+step, event by event- from an endless number of most diverse
+circumstances and was only seen in its entirety when it had been
+accomplished and belonged to the past.
+
+At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds of the
+Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely,
+a direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In proof of this there is the
+fact that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and
+above all there is the well-known conversation after the council,
+between the commander in chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of the
+commissariat department. Lanskoy informed the commander in chief
+that the army supplies were for the most part stored along the Oka
+in the Tula and Ryazan provinces, and that if they retreated on Nizhni
+the army would be separated from its supplies by the broad river
+Oka, which cannot be crossed early in winter. This was the first
+indication of the necessity of deviating from what had previously
+seemed the most natural course- a direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod.
+The army turned more to the south, along the Ryazan road and nearer to
+its supplies. Subsequently the in activity of the French (who even
+lost sight of the Russian army), concern for the safety of the arsenal
+at Tula, and especially the advantages of drawing nearer to its
+supplies caused the army to turn still further south to the Tula road.
+Having crossed over, by a forced march, to the Tula road beyond the
+Pakhra, the Russian commanders intended to remain at Podolsk and had
+no thought of the Tarutino position; but innumerable circumstances and
+the reappearance of French troops who had for a time lost touch with
+the Russians, and projects of giving battle, and above all the
+abundance of provisions in Kaluga province, obliged our army to turn
+still more to the south and to cross from the Tula to the Kaluga
+road and go to Tarutino, which was between the roads along which those
+supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to say when it was decided to
+abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say precisely when, or by whom,
+it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only when the army had got
+there, as the result of innumerable and varying forces, did people
+begin to assure themselves that they had desired this movement and
+long ago foreseen its result.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the
+advance of the French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been
+continually retreating straight back from the invaders, deviated
+from that direct course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally
+drawn toward the district where supplies were abundant.
+
+If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading
+the Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could
+not have done anything but make a return movement toward Moscow,
+describing an arc in the direction where most provisions were to be
+found and where the country was richest.
+
+That movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula, and Kaluga
+roads was so natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that
+direction, and demands were sent from Petersburg for Kutuzov to take
+his army that way. At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a
+reprimand from the Emperor for having moved his army along the
+Ryazan road, and the Emperor's letter indicated to him the very
+position he had already occupied near Kaluga.
+
+Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by
+the whole campaign and by the battle of Borodino, the Russian army-
+when the strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push
+was received- assumed the position natural to it.
+
+Kutuzov's merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as
+it is called, but in the fact that he alone understood the
+significance of what had happened. He alone then understood the
+meaning of the French army's inactivity, he alone continued to
+assert that the battle of Borodino had been a victory, he alone- who
+as commander in chief might have been expected to be eager to
+attack- employed his whole strength to restrain the Russian army
+from useless engagements.
+
+The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the fleeing hunter had
+left him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and
+merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was
+heard to moan.
+
+The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed
+its calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutuzov's
+camp with overtures for peace.
+
+Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head
+was right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words that occurred to him,
+though they were meaningless.
+
+MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am sending one of my
+adjutants-general to discuss several interesting questions with you. I
+beg your Highness to credit what he says to you, especially when he
+expresses the sentiment of esteem and special regard I have long
+entertained for your person. This letter having no other object, I
+pray God, monsieur le Prince Koutouzov, to keep you in His holy and
+gracious protection!
+
+NAPOLEON
+
+MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812
+
+Kutuzov replied: "I should be cursed by posterity were I looked on
+as the initiator of a settlement of any sort. Such is the present
+spirit of my nation." But he continued to exert all his powers to
+restrain his troops from attacking.
+
+During the month that the French troops were pillaging in Moscow and
+the Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarutino, a change had
+taken place in the relative strength of the two armies- both in spirit
+and in number- as a result of which the superiority had passed to
+the Russian side. Though the condition and numbers of the French
+army were unknown to the Russians, as soon as that change occurred the
+need of attacking at once showed itself by countless signs. These
+signs were: Lauriston's mission; the abundance of provisions at
+Tarutino; the reports coming in from all sides of the inactivity and
+disorder of the French; the flow of recruits to our regiments; the
+fine weather; the long rest the Russian soldiers had enjoyed, and
+the impatience to do what they had been assembled for, which usually
+shows itself in an army that has been resting; curiosity as to what
+the French army, so long lost sight of, was doing; the boldness with
+which our outposts now scouted close up to the French stationed at
+Tarutino; the news of easy successes gained by peasants and
+guerrilla troops over the French, the envy aroused by this; the desire
+for revenge that lay in the heart of every Russian as long as the
+French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every
+soldier's mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed
+and that the advantage was now on our side. There was a substantial
+change in the relative strength, and an advance had become inevitable.
+And at once, as a clock begins to strike and chime as soon as the
+minute hand has completed a full circle, this change was shown by an
+increased activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The Russian army was commanded by Kutuzov and his staff, and also by
+the Emperor from Petersburg. Before the news of the abandonment of
+Moscow had been received in Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole
+campaign had been drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his guidance.
+Though this plan had been drawn up on the supposition that Moscow
+was still in our hands, it was approved by the staff and accepted as a
+basis for action. Kutuzov only replied that movements arranged from
+a distance were always difficult to execute. So fresh instructions
+were sent for the solution of difficulties that might be
+encountered, as well as fresh people who were to watch Kutuzov's
+actions and report upon them.
+
+Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now
+reorganized. The posts left vacant by Bagration, who had been
+killed, and by Barclay, who had gone away in dudgeon, had to be
+filled. Very serious consideration was given to the question whether
+it would be better to put A in B's place and B in D's, or on the
+contrary to put D in A's place, and so on- as if anything more than
+A's or B's satisfaction depended on this.
+
+As a result of the hostility between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, his
+Chief of Staff, the presence of confidential representatives of the
+Emperor, and these transfers, a more than usually complicated play
+of parties was going on among the staff of the army. A was undermining
+B, D was undermining C, and so on in all possible combinations and
+permutations. In all these plottings the subject of intrigue was
+generally the conduct of the war, which all these men believed they
+were directing; but this affair of the war went on independently of
+them, as it had to go: that is, never in the way people devised, but
+flowing always from the essential attitude of the masses. Only in
+the highest spheres did all these schemes, crossings, and
+interminglings appear to be a true reflection of what had to happen.
+
+Prince Michael Ilarionovich! (wrote the Emperor on the second of
+October in a letter that reached Kutuzov after the battle at Tarutino)
+Since September 2 Moscow has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last
+reports were written on the twentieth, and during all this time not
+only has no action been taken against the enemy or for the relief of
+the ancient capital, but according to your last report you have even
+retreated farther. Serpukhov is already occupied by an enemy
+detachment and Tula with its famous arsenal so indispensable to the
+army, is in danger. From General Wintzingerode's reports, I see that
+an enemy corps of ten thousand men is moving on the Petersburg road.
+Another corps of several thousand men is moving on Dmitrov. A third
+has advanced along the Vladimir road, and a fourth, rather
+considerable detachment is stationed between Ruza and Mozhaysk.
+Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as the twenty-fifth. In view of
+all this information, when the enemy has scattered his forces in large
+detachments, and with Napoleon and his Guards in Moscow, is it
+possible that the enemy's forces confronting you are so considerable
+as not to allow of your taking the offensive? On the contrary, he is
+probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most with an army
+corps much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem
+that, availing yourself of these circumstances, you might
+advantageously attack a weaker one and annihilate him, or at least
+oblige him to retreat, retaining in our hands an important part of the
+provinces now occupied by the enemy, and thereby averting danger
+from Tula and other towns in the interior. You will be responsible
+if the enemy is able to direct a force of any size against
+Petersburg to threaten this capital in which it has not been
+possible to retain many troops; for with the army entrusted to you,
+and acting with resolution and energy, you have ample means to avert
+this fresh calamity. Remember that you have still to answer to our
+offended country for the loss of Moscow. You have experienced my
+readiness to reward you. That readiness will not weaken in me, but I
+and Russia have a right to expect from you all the zeal, firmness, and
+success which your intellect, military talent, and the courage of
+the troops you command justify us in expecting.
+
+But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation
+of the forces had already made itself felt in Petersburg, was
+dispatched, Kutuzov had found himself unable any longer to restrain
+the army he commanded from attacking and a battle had taken place.
+
+On the second of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who was out
+scouting, killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded
+hare he made his way far into the forest and came upon the left
+flank of Murat's army, encamped there without any precautions. The
+Cossack laughingly told his comrades how he had almost fallen into the
+hands of the French. A cornet, hearing the story, informed his
+commander.
+
+The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack officers wished
+to take advantage of this chance to capture some horses, but one of
+the superior officers, who was acquainted with the higher authorities,
+reported the incident to a general on the staff. The state of
+things on the staff had of late been exceedingly strained. Ermolov had
+been to see Bennigsen a few days previously and had entreated him to
+use his influence with the commander in chief to induce him to take
+the offensive.
+
+"If I did not know you I should think you did not want what you
+are asking for. I need only advise anything and his Highness is sure
+to do the opposite," replied Bennigsen.
+
+The Cossack's report, confirmed by horse patrols who were sent
+out, was the final proof that events had matured. The tightly coiled
+spring was released, the clock began to whirr and the chimes to
+play. Despite all his supposed power, his intellect, his experience,
+and his knowledge of men, Kutuzov- having taken into consideration the
+Cossack's report, a note from Bennigsen who sent personal reports to
+the Emperor, the wishes he supposed the Emperor to hold, and the
+fact that all the generals expressed the same wish- could no longer
+check the inevitable movement, and gave the order to do what he
+regarded as useless and harmful- gave his approval, that is, to the
+accomplished fact.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Bennigsen's note and the Cossack's information that the left flank
+of the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it
+was necessary to order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of
+October.
+
+On the morning of the fourth of October Kutuzov signed the
+dispositions. Toll read them to Ermolov, asking him to attend to the
+further arrangements.
+
+"All right- all right. I haven't time just now," replied Ermolov,
+and left the hut.
+
+The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the
+Austerlitz dispositions, it was written- though not in German this
+time:
+
+"The First Column will march here and here," "the Second Column will
+march there and there," and so on; and on paper, all these columns
+arrived at their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy.
+Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions,
+and as is always the case, not a single column reached its place at
+the appointed time.
+
+When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been
+prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to
+Ermolov to deal with. A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutuzov's
+orderly, pleased at the importance of the mission entrusted to him,
+went to Ermolov's quarters.
+
+"Gone away," said Ermolov's orderly.
+
+The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom
+Ermolov was often to be found.
+
+"No, and the general's out too."
+
+The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.
+
+"No, he's gone out."
+
+"If only they don't make me responsible for this delay! What a
+nuisance it is!" thought the officer, and he rode round the whole
+camp. One man said he had seen Ermolov ride past with some other
+generals, others said he must have returned home. The officer searched
+till six o'clock in the evening without even stopping to eat.
+Ermolov was nowhere to be found and no one knew where he was. The
+officer snatched a little food at a comrade's, and rode again to the
+vanguard to find Miloradovich. Miloradovich too was away, but here
+he was told that he had gone to a ball at General Kikin's and that
+Ermolov was probably there too.
+
+"But where is it?"
+
+"Why, there, over at Echkino," said a Cossack officer, pointing to a
+country house in the far distance.
+
+"What, outside our line?"
+
+"They've put two regiments as outposts, and they're having such a
+spree there, it's awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!"
+
+The officer rode out beyond our lines to Echkino. While still at a
+distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier's dance
+song proceeding from the house.
+
+"In the meadows... in the meadows!" he heard, accompanied by
+whistling and the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by
+shouts. These sounds made his spirits rise, but at the same time he
+was afraid that he would be blamed for not having executed sooner
+the important order entrusted to him. It was already past eight
+o'clock. He dismounted and went up into the porch of a large country
+house which had remained intact between the Russian and French forces.
+In the refreshment room and the hall, footmen were bustling about with
+wine and viands. Groups of singers stood outside the windows. The
+officer was admitted and immediately saw all the chief generals of the
+army together, and among them Ermolov's big imposing figure. They
+all had their coats unbuttoned and were standing in a semicircle
+with flushed and animated faces, laughing loudly. In the middle of the
+room a short handsome general with a red face was dancing the trepak
+with much spirit and agility.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Ivanych! Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a
+moment he was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait;
+but one of the generals espied him and, hearing what he had come
+about, informed Ermolov.
+
+Ermolov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what
+the officer had to say, took the papers from him without a word.
+
+"You think he went off just by chance?" said a comrade, who was on
+the staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards,
+referring to Ermolov. "It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get
+Konovnitsyn into trouble. You'll see what a mess there'll be
+tomorrow."
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to be called
+early, said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant
+consciousness of having to direct a battle he did not approve of,
+got into his caleche and drove from Letashovka (a village three and
+a half miles from Tarutino) to the place where the attacking columns
+were to meet. He sat in the caleche, dozing and waking up by turns,
+and listening for any sound of firing on the right as an indication
+that the action had begun. But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn
+morning was just dawning. On approaching Tarutino Kutuzov noticed
+cavalrymen leading their horses to water across the road along which
+he was driving. Kutuzov looked at them searchingly, stopped his
+carriage, and inquired what regiment they belonged to. They belonged
+to a column that should have been far in front and in ambush long
+before then. "It may be a mistake," thought the old commander in
+chief. But a little further on he saw infantry regiments with their
+arms piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed, eating their rye
+porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The officer
+reported that no order to advance had been received.
+
+"How! Not rec..." Kutuzov began, but checked himself immediately and
+sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his caleche, he waited
+with drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down.
+When Eykhen, the officer of the general staff whom he had summoned,
+appeared, Kutuzov went purple in the face, not because that officer
+was to blame for the mistake, but because he was an object of
+sufficient importance for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and
+panting the old man fell into that state of fury in which he sometimes
+used to roll on the ground, and he fell upon Eykhen, threatening him
+with his hands, shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another
+man, Captain Brozin, who happened to turn up and who was not at all to
+blame, suffered the same fate.
+
+"What sort of another blackguard are you? I'll have you shot!
+Scoundrels!" yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and
+reeling.
+
+He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a Serene
+Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever
+had in Russia, to be placed in this position- made the laughingstock
+of the whole army! "I needn't have been in such a hurry to pray
+about today, or have kept awake thinking everything over all night,"
+thought he to himself. "When I was a chit of an officer no one would
+have dared to mock me so... and now!" He was in a state of physical
+suffering as if from corporal punishment, and could not avoid
+expressing it by cries of anger and distress. But his strength soon
+began to fail him, and looking about him, conscious of having said
+much that was amiss, he again got into his caleche and drove back in
+silence.
+
+His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he
+listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermolov did not come to
+see him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen,
+Konovnitsyn, and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should
+be executed next day. And once more Kutuzov had to consent.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the
+evening and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with
+dark purple clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy,
+and the troops advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of
+the artillery could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk
+out loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried
+to prevent their horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking
+heightened its charm and they marched gaily. Some columns,
+supposing. they had reached their destination, halted, piled arms, and
+settled down on the cold ground, but the majority marched all night
+and arrived at places where they evidently should not have been.
+
+Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the least important
+detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time.
+This detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path
+leading from the village of Stromilova to Dmitrovsk.
+
+Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed off, was awakened by
+a deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a
+Polish sergeant of Poniatowski's corps, who explained in Polish that
+he had come over because he had been slighted in the service: that
+he ought long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver
+than any of them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them
+out. He said that Murat was spending the night less than a mile from
+where they were, and that if they would let him have a convoy of a
+hundred men he would capture him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov
+consulted his fellow officers.
+
+The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go
+and everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and
+arguing, Major-General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided to go
+with the Polish sergeant.
+
+"Now, remember," said Count Orlov-Denisov to the sergeant at
+parting, "if you have been lying I'll have you hanged like a dog;
+but if it's true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!"
+
+Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and
+rode away with Grekov whose men had quickly assembled. They
+disappeared into the forest, and Count Orlov-Denisov, having seen
+Grekov off, returned, shivering from the freshness of the early dawn
+and excited by what he had undertaken on his own responsibility, and
+began looking at the enemy camp, now just visible in the deceptive
+light of dawn and the dying campfires. Our columns ought to have begun
+to appear on an open declivity to his right. He looked in that
+direction, but though the columns would have been visible quite far
+off, they were not to be seen. It seemed to the count that things were
+beginning to stir in the French camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant
+confirmed this.
+
+"Oh, it is really too late," said Count Orlov, looking at the camp.
+
+As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before
+our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the
+sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian
+attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which he
+would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a
+commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!
+
+"I am sure that rascal was lying," said the count.
+
+"They can still be called back," said one of his suite, who like
+Count Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the
+enemy's camp.
+
+"Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?"
+
+"Will you have them fetched back?"
+
+"Fetch them back, fetch them back!" said Count Orlov with sudden
+determination, looking at his watch. "It will be too late. It is quite
+light."
+
+And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grekov. When
+Grekov returned, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited both by the abandoned
+attempt and by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not
+appear, as well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance.
+All his men felt the same excitement.
+
+"Mount!" he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and
+crossed themselves.... "Forward, with God's aid!"
+
+"Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack
+companies, trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if
+poured out of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.
+
+One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw
+the Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just
+waking up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and
+horses.
+
+Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind
+and around them, they would have captured Murat and everything
+there. That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to
+make the Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners.
+None of them listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and
+thirty-eight guns were taken on the spot, besides standards and
+(what seemed most important to the Cossacks) horses, saddles,
+horsecloths, and the like. All this had to be dealt with, the
+prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided- not without some
+shouting and even a little themselves- and it was on this that the
+Cossacks all busied themselves.
+
+The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover
+themselves: they formed into detachments and began firing.
+Orlov-Denisov, still waiting for the other columns to arrive, advanced
+no further.
+
+Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that "the First
+Column will march" and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,
+commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due
+order and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their
+appointed places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully,
+began to halt; murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and
+finally a backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about,
+shouted, grew angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and
+were late, gave vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and
+went forward, simply to get somewhere. "We shall get somewhere or
+other!" And they did indeed get somewhere, though not to their right
+places; a few eventually even got to their right place, but too late
+to be of any use and only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this
+battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped
+assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside down
+everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut's corps in a wood when it
+was already broad daylight, though the corps should long before have
+joined Orlov-Denisov. Excited and vexed by the failure and supposing
+that someone must be responsible for it, Toll galloped up to the
+commander of the corps and began upbraiding him severely, saying
+that he ought to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting old soldier of
+placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay, confusion,
+and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody's surprise and quite
+contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things to Toll.
+
+"I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men
+as well as anybody," he said, and advanced with a single division.
+
+Coming out onto a field under the enemy's fire, this brave general
+went straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering
+in his agitation whether going into action now, with a single
+division, would be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets
+were just what he needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets
+killed him, and other bullets killed many of his men. And his division
+remained under fire for some time quite uselessly.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the
+front, but Kutuzov accompanied that column. He well knew that
+nothing but confusion would come of this battle undertaken against his
+will, and as far as was in his power held the troops back. He did
+not advance.
+
+He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering
+suggestions that they should attack.
+
+"The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don't see that we
+are unable to execute complicated maneuvers," said he to
+Miloradovich who asked permission to advance.
+
+"We couldn't take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in
+time, and nothing can be done now!" he replied to someone else.
+
+When Kutuzov was informed that at the French rear- where according
+to the reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody- there
+were now two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov
+who was behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous
+day.
+
+"You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds,
+but as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy,
+forewarned, takes measures accordingly."
+
+Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these
+words. He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that
+Kutuzov would content himself with that hint.
+
+"He's having a little fun at my expense," said Ermolov softly,
+nudging with his knee Raevski who was at his side.
+
+Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and respectfully
+remarked:
+
+"It is not too late yet, your Highness- the enemy has not gone away-
+if you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as
+see a little smoke."
+
+Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat's
+troops were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every
+hundred paces he halted for three quarters of an hour.
+
+The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov's Cossacks had
+done: the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.
+
+In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a diamond decoration,
+and Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also
+received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various
+grades, and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.
+
+"That's how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the
+Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be
+understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that
+we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today.
+But people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking
+about or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle- Tarutino,
+Borodino, or Austerlitz- takes place as those who planned it
+anticipated. That is an essential condition.
+
+A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than
+during a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence
+the course taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in
+advance and never coincides with the direction of any one force.
+
+If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a
+given body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one
+of those forces, but will always be a mean- what in mechanics is
+represented by the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces.
+
+If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French
+ones, we find their wars and battles carried out in accordance with
+previously formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those
+descriptions are false.
+
+The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had
+in view- to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the
+dispositions; nor that which Count Orlov-Denisov may have had in view-
+to take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying the
+whole corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor
+the aim of the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish
+himself; nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got,
+and so on. But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and
+what all the Russians of that day desired- to drive the French out
+of Russia and destroy their army- it is quite clear that the battle of
+Tarutino, just because of its incongruities, was exactly what was
+wanted at that stage of the campaign. It would be difficult and even
+impossible to imagine any result more opportune than the actual
+outcome of this battle. With a minimum of effort and insignificant
+losses, despite the greatest confusion, the most important results
+of the whole campaign were attained: the transition from retreat to
+advance, an exposure of the weakness of the French, and the
+administration of that shock which Napoleon's army had only awaited to
+begin its flight.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa;
+there can be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in
+the hands of the French. The Russians retreat and abandon their
+ancient capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and
+incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon's hands. The Russian army, only
+half the strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to
+attack for a whole month. Napoleon's position is most brilliant. He
+can either fall on the Russian army with double its strength and
+destroy it; negotiate an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal
+make a menacing move on Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse,
+return to Smolensk or Vilna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special
+genius would seem to be required to retain the brilliant position
+the French held at that time. For that, only very simple and easy
+steps were necessary: not to allow the troops to loot, to prepare
+winter clothing- of which there was sufficient in Moscow for the whole
+army- and methodically to collect the provisions, of which
+(according to the French historians) there were enough in Moscow to
+supply the whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon, that greatest of
+all geniuses, who the historians declare had control of the army, took
+none of these steps.
+
+He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used
+his power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses
+open to him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in
+Moscow, advancing on Petersburg or on Nizhni-Novgorod, or retiring
+by a more northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutuzov
+afterwards took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be imagined
+than what he actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting
+the troops plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a
+garrison behind him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutuzov without
+joining battle, turned to the right and reached Malo-Yaroslavets,
+again without attempting to break through and take the road Kutuzov
+took, but retiring instead to Mozhaysk along the devastated Smolensk
+road. Nothing more stupid than that could have been devised, or more
+disastrous for the army, as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon's aim been
+to destroy his army, the most skillful strategist could hardly have
+devised any series of actions that would so completely have
+accomplished that purpose, independently of anything the Russian
+army might do.
+
+Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he
+destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very
+stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to
+Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a
+genius.
+
+In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the
+personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws
+that guided the event.
+
+The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon's faculties as
+having weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did
+not justify his actions. He employed all his ability and strength to
+do the best he could for himself and his army, as he had done
+previously and as he did subsequently in 1813. His activity at that
+time was no less astounding than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in
+Austria, and in Prussia. We do not know for certain in how far his
+genius was genuine in Egypt- where forty centuries looked down upon
+his grandeur- for his great exploits there are all told us by
+Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius in Austria or
+Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French or German
+sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps without
+fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans to
+recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on
+in Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius in
+order to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at the
+matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon that right.
+
+His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as
+elsewhere. Order after order order and plan after plan were issued
+by him from the time he entered Moscow till the time he left it. The
+absence of citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of
+Moscow, did not disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the
+welfare of his army or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare
+of the people of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or
+of diplomatic considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated
+peace.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry
+into Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the
+movements of the Russian army, sent army corps out along the different
+roads, and charged Murat to find Kutuzov. Then he gave careful
+directions about the fortification of the Kremlin, and drew up a
+brilliant plan for a future campaign over the whole map of Russia.
+
+With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain
+Yakovlev, who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how
+to get out of Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and
+his magnanimity, and having written a letter to the Emperor
+Alexander in which he considered it his duty to inform his Friend
+and Brother that Rostopchin had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he
+dispatched Yakovlev to Petersburg.
+
+Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to
+Tutolmin, he dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate.
+
+With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave
+orders to find and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel
+Rostopchin was punished by an order to burn down his houses.
+
+With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a
+constitution. A municipality was established and the following
+announcement issued:
+
+INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!
+
+Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King
+desires to arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you
+how he punishes disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been
+taken to put an end to disorder and to re-establish public security. A
+paternal administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form
+your municipality or city government. It will take care of you, of
+your needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be distinguished
+by a red ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city
+will wear a white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only
+wear a red ribbon round the left arm.
+
+The city police is established on its former footing, and better
+order already prevails in consequence of its activity. The
+government has appointed two commissaries general, or chiefs of
+police, and twenty commissaries or captains of wards have been
+appointed to the different wards of the city. You will recognize
+them by the white ribbon they will wear on the left arm. Several
+churches of different denominations are open, and divine service is
+performed in them unhindered. Your fellow citizens are returning every
+day to their homes. and orders have been given that they should find
+in them the help and protection due to their misfortunes. These are
+the measures the government has adopted to re-establish order and
+relieve youp condition. But to achieve this aim it is necessary that
+you should add your efforts and should, if possible, forget the
+misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain the hope of a less
+cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death
+awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or on what remains
+of your property, and finally that you should not doubt that these
+will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest and most
+just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you may
+be, re-establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of a
+state, live like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to
+another, unite to defeat the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the
+military and civil authorities, and your tears will soon cease to
+flow!
+
+With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all
+the troops in turn should enter Moscow a la maraude~^ to obtain
+provisions for themselves, so that the army might have its future
+provided for.
+
+^~ As looters.
+
+With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be
+brought back and services to be again performed in the churches.
+
+With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the
+following was placarded everywhere:
+
+PROCLAMATION!
+
+You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom
+misfortune has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of
+the soil, still kept out in the fields by groundless fear, listen!
+Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order is being
+restored in it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from
+their hiding places on finding that they are respected. Any violence
+to them or to their property is promptly punished. His Majesty the
+Emperor and King protects them, and considers no one among you his
+enemy except those who disobey his orders. He desires to end your
+misfortunes and restore you to your homes and families. Respond,
+therefore, to his benevolent intentions and come to us without fear.
+Inhabitants, return with confidence to your abodes! You will soon find
+means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen and industrious artisans,
+return to your work, your houses, your shops, where the protection
+of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay for your work.
+And lastly you too, peasants, come from the forests where you are
+hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full
+assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in
+the city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the
+products of the soil. The government has taken the following steps
+to ensure freedom of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants,
+husbandmen, and those living in the neighborhood of Moscow may without
+any danger bring their supplies of all kinds to two appointed markets,
+of which one is on the Mokhovaya Street and the other at the Provision
+Market. (2) Such supplies will be bought from them at such prices as
+seller and buyer may agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a
+fair price he will be free to take his goods back to his village and
+no one may hinder him under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday
+of each week are appointed as the chief market days and to that end
+a sufficient number of troops will be stationed along the highroads on
+Tuesdays and Saturdays at such distances from the town as to protect
+the carts. (4) Similar measures will be taken that peasants with their
+carts and horses may meet with no hindrance on their return journey.
+(5) Steps will immediately be taken to re-establish ordinary trading.
+
+Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and
+artisans, to whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry
+out the paternal intentions of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to
+co-operate with him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and
+confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite with us!
+
+With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the
+people, reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The
+Emperor rode through the streets to comfort the inhabitants, and,
+despite his preoccupation with state affairs, himself visited the
+theaters that were established by his order.
+
+In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads,
+Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma
+Mere to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining
+tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He
+visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by
+him to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutolmin. Then,
+as Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in
+forged Russian money which he had prepared: "Raising the use of
+these means by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let
+relief be distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food
+was too precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part
+enemies, Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to
+purchase food from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them."
+
+With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being
+issued to inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military
+duties and to suppress robbery.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans- which
+were not at all worse than others issued in similar circumstances- did
+not affect the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock
+detached from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless
+way without engaging the cogwheels.
+
+With reference to the military side- the plan of campaign- that work
+of genius of which Thiers remarks that, "His genius never devised
+anything more profound, more skillful, or more admirable," and
+enters into a polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius
+must be referred not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October-
+that plan never was or could be executed, for it was quite out of
+touch with the facts of the case. The fortifying of the Kremlin, for
+which la Mosquee (as Napoleon termed the church of Basil the
+Beatified) was to have been razed to the ground, proved quite useless.
+The mining of the Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon's
+wish that it should be blown up when he left Moscow- as a child
+wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to be beaten. The pursuit
+of the Russian army, about which Napoleon was so concerned, produced
+an unheard-of result. The French generals lost touch with the
+Russian army of sixty thousand men, and according to Thiers it was
+only eventually found, like a lost pin, by the skill- and apparently
+the genius- of Murat.
+
+With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon's arguments as to his
+magnanimity and justice, both to Tutolmin and to Yakovlev (whose chief
+concern was to obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless;
+Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their
+embassage.
+
+With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed
+incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.
+
+With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a
+municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain
+people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of
+preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from
+being looted.
+
+With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so
+easily been settled by Napoleon's visit to a mosque, no results were
+achieved. Two or three priests who were found in Moscow did try to
+carry out Napoleon's wish, but one of them was slapped in the face
+by a French soldier while conducting service, and a French official
+reported of another that: "The priest whom I found and invited to
+say Mass cleaned and locked up the church. That night the doors were
+again broken open, the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and
+other disorders perpetrated."
+
+With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious
+workmen and to peasants evoked no response. There were no
+industrious workmen, and the peasants caught the commissaries who
+ventured too far out of town with the proclamation and killed them.
+
+As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the
+troops, these did not meet with success either. The theaters set up in
+the Kremlin and in Posnyakov's house were closed again at once because
+the actors and actresses were robbed.
+
+Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as
+well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The
+French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the
+paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to
+the unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.
+
+But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders
+given by the authorities at that time was Napoleon's attempt to stop
+the looting and re-establish discipline.
+
+This is what the army authorities were reporting:
+
+"Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against it. Order
+is not yet restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade
+in a lawful manner. The sutlers alone venture to trade, and they
+sell stolen goods."
+
+"The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of
+the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate
+inhabitants hiding in the cellars the little they have left, even have
+the ferocity to wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly
+witnessed."
+
+"Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and pillaging-
+October 9."
+
+"Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of thieves in our
+district who ought to be arrested by a strong force- October 11."
+
+"The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict
+orders to stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually
+seen returning to the Kremlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and
+pillage were renewed more violently than ever yesterday evening,
+last night, and today. The Emperor sees with regret that the picked
+soldiers appointed to guard his person, who should set an example of
+discipline, carry disobedience to such a point that they break into
+the cellars and stores containing army supplies. Others have disgraced
+themselves to the extent of disobeying sentinels and officers, and
+have abused and beaten them."
+
+"The Grand Marshal of the palace," wrote the governor, "complains
+bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to
+commit nuisances in all the courtyards and even under the very windows
+of the Emperor."
+
+That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot
+the provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated
+and perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it
+did not go away.
+
+It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused
+by the capture of transport trains on the Smolensk road, and by the
+battle of Tarutino. The news of that battle of Tarutino,
+unexpectedly received by Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a
+desire to punish the Russians (Thiers says), and he issued the order
+for departure which the whole army was demanding.
+
+Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they
+had stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal tresor, but
+on seeing the baggage trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers
+says) horror-struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not
+order all the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with
+those of a certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed at the
+caleches and carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked that
+it was a very good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry
+provisions, the sick, and the wounded.
+
+The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal
+which feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To
+study the skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from
+the time it entered Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying
+the dying leaps and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very
+often a wounded animal, hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the
+hunter's gun, runs forward and back again, and hastens its own end.
+Napoleon, under pressure from his whole army, did the same thing.
+The rustle of the battle of Tarutino frightened the beast, and it
+rushed forward onto the hunter's gun, reached him, turned back, and
+finally- like any wild beast- ran back along the most
+disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent was familiar.
+
+During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have
+been the leader of all these movements- as the figurehead of a ship
+may seem to a savage to guide the vessel- acted like a child who,
+holding a couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving
+it.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of
+the shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little
+blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped
+about him. This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside
+Karataev at night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but
+always returned again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it
+still belonged to nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor;
+the soldier who told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev and others
+called it Gray, or sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name,
+or even of a breed or any definite color did not seem to trouble the
+blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry tail stood up firm and round
+as a plume, its bandy legs served it so well that it would often
+gracefully lift a hind leg and run very easily and quickly on three
+legs, as if disdaining to use all four. Everything pleased it. Now
+it would roll on its back, yelping with delight, now bask in the sun
+with a thoughtful air of importance, and now frolic about playing with
+a chip of wood or a straw.
+
+Pierre's attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only
+remnant of his former clothing), a pair of soldier's trousers which by
+Karataev's advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and
+a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this
+time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of
+solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache
+covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested
+with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes
+was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The
+former slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now
+replaced by an energetic readiness for action and resistance. His feet
+were bare.
+
+Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and
+horsemen were passing that morning, then into the distance across
+the river, then at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about
+biting him, and then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in
+various positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he
+looked at his bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction
+flitted across his face. The sight of them reminded him of all he
+had experienced and learned during these weeks and this recollection
+was pleasant to him.
+
+For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts
+in the mornings- what is called an "old wives' summer."
+
+In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly
+pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in
+the air.
+
+On everything- far and near- lay the magic crystal glitter seen only
+at that time autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance,
+with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare
+trees, the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green
+church spire, and the corners of the white house in the distance,
+all stood out in the transparent air in most delicate outline and with
+unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a
+half-burned mansion occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still
+showing dark green beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled
+house- which in dull weather was repulsively ugly- seemed quietly
+beautiful now, in the clear, motionless brilliance.
+
+A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a
+skullcap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from
+behind a corner of the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly
+wink.
+
+"What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!" (Their name for Pierre.) "Eh?
+Just like spring!"
+
+And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his
+pipe, though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.
+
+"To be on the march in such weather..." he began.
+
+Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the
+corporal told him that nearly all the troops were starting and there
+ought to be an order about the prisoners that day. Sokolov, one of the
+soldiers in the shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the
+corporal that something should be done about him. The corporal replied
+that Pierre need not worry about that as they had an ambulance and a
+permanent hospital and arrangements would be made for the sick, and
+that in general everything that could happen had been foreseen by
+the authorities.
+
+"Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the
+captain, you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to
+the captain when he makes his round, he will do anything for you."
+
+(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with
+Pierre and showed him all sorts of favors.)
+
+"'You see, St. Thomas,' he said to me the other day. 'Monsieur Kiril
+is a man of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who
+has had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what's what.... If he
+wants anything and asks me, he won't get a refusal. When one has
+studied, you see, one likes education and well-bred people.' It is for
+your sake I mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not
+been for you that affair would have ended ill."
+
+And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The
+affair he had alluded to had happened a few days before- a fight
+between the prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had
+succeeded in pacifying his comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had
+heard Pierre talking to the corporal immediately asked what the
+Frenchman had said. While Pierre was repeating what he had been told
+about the army leaving Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier
+came up to the door of the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his
+fingers to his forehead by way of greeting, he asked Pierre whether
+the soldier Platoche to whom he had given a shirt to sew was in that
+shed.
+
+A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to
+them, which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into
+boots and shirts for them.
+
+"Ready, ready, dear fellow!" said Karataev, coming out with a neatly
+folded shirt.
+
+Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at
+work, was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot.
+His hair was bound round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree
+bast, and his round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.
+
+"A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here
+it is, ready," said Platon, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had
+sewn.
+
+The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his
+hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had
+a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin
+bare body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking
+on would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly.
+None of the prisoners said a word.
+
+"See, it fits well!" Platon kept repeating, pulling the shirt
+straight.
+
+The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without
+raising his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.
+
+"You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper
+tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse,"
+said Platon with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his
+work.
+
+"It's good, quite good, thank you," said the Frenchman, in French,
+"but there must be some linen left over.
+
+"It will fit better still when it sets to your body," said Karataev,
+still admiring his handiwork. "You'll be nice and comfortable...."
+
+"Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?" said the
+Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note
+and gave it to Karataev. "But give me the pieces that are over."
+
+Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what the Frenchman
+was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karataev thanked the
+Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The
+Frenchman insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over
+and asked Pierre to translate what he said.
+
+"What does he want the bits for?" said Karataev. "They'd make fine
+leg bands for us. Well, never mind."
+
+And Karataev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression,
+took a small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the
+Frenchman without looking at him. "Oh dear!" muttered Karataev and
+went away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment,
+then looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre's look had told
+him something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice:
+
+"Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!" And handing back the
+odd bits he turned and went out.
+
+"There, look at that," said Karataev, swaying his head. "People said
+they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It's what the old
+folk used to say: 'A sweating hand's an open hand, a dry hand's
+close.' He's naked, but yet he's given it back."
+
+Karataev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the
+pieces.
+
+"But they'll make grand leg bands, dear friend," he said, and went
+back into the shed.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and
+though the French had offered to move him from the men's to the
+officers' shed, he had stayed in the shed where he was first put.
+
+In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the
+extreme limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his
+physical strength and health, of which he had till then been
+unconscious, and thanks especially to the fact that the privations
+came so gradually that it was impossible to say when they began, he
+endured his position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this
+time he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly
+striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in different ways that
+tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed him in
+the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in
+philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in
+wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for
+Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning- and all these quests and
+experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had
+found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death,
+through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.
+
+Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as
+it were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the
+agitating thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important.
+It did not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or
+politics, or Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things
+were no business of his, and that he was not called on to judge
+concerning them and therefore could not do so. "Russia and summer
+weather are not bound together," he thought, repeating words of
+Karataev's which he found strangely consoling. His intention of
+killing Napoleon and his calculations of the cabalistic number of
+the beast of the Apocalypse now seemed to him meaningless and even
+ridiculous. His anger with his wife and anxiety that his name should
+not be smirched now seemed not merely trivial but even amusing. What
+concern was it of his that somewhere or other that woman was leading
+the life she preferred? What did it matter to anybody, and
+especially to him, whether or not they found out that their prisoner's
+name was Count Bezukhov?
+
+He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and
+quite agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew's thoughts
+somewhat differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that
+happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a shade of
+bitterness and irony as though he was really saying that all desire
+for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and
+never be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental
+reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs
+and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is,
+of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's
+highest happiness. Here and now for the first time he fully
+appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat, drinking
+when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth
+when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to talk
+and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one's needs- good food,
+cleanliness, and freedom- now that he was deprived of all this, seemed
+to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of
+occupation, that is, of his way of life- now that that was so
+restricted- seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a
+superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying
+one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation- such
+freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had
+given him in his own life- is just what makes the choice of occupation
+insolubly difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of
+having an occupation.
+
+All Pierre's daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free.
+Yet subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke
+with enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable,
+strong, joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind
+and inner freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.
+
+When on the first day he got up early, went out of the shed at dawn,
+and saw the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still
+dark at first, the hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills,
+and the wooded banks above the winding river vanishing in the purple
+distance, when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the
+noise of the crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when
+afterwards light gleamed from the east and the sun's rim appeared
+solemnly from behind a cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the
+hoarfrost, the distance and the river, all began to sparkle in the
+glad light- Pierre felt a new joy and strength in life such as he
+had never before known. And this not only stayed with him during the
+whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in strength as the
+hardships of his position increased.
+
+That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still
+further strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners
+formed of him soon after his arrival at the shed. With his knowledge
+of languages, the respect shown him by the French, his simplicity, his
+readiness to give anything asked of him (he received the allowance
+of three rubles a week made to officers); with his strength, which
+he showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the hut;
+his gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting still
+and thinking without doing anything (which seemed to them
+incomprehensible), he appeared to them a rather mysterious and
+superior being. The very qualities that had been a hindrance, if not
+actually harmful, to him in the world he had lived in- his strength,
+his disdain for the comforts of life, his absent-mindedness and
+simplicity- here among these people gave him almost the status of a
+hero. And Pierre felt that their opinion placed responsibilities
+upon him.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and
+seventh of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts
+loaded, and troops and baggage trains started.
+
+At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing
+shakos and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in
+front of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses
+sounded all along the lines.
+
+In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only
+awaited the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolov, pale and thin
+with dark shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot
+and not dressed. His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his
+face, gazed inquiringly at his comrades who were paying no attention
+to him, and he moaned regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so
+much his sufferings that caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as
+his fear and grief at being left alone.
+
+Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes
+Karataev had made for him from some leather a French soldier had
+torn off a tea chest and brought to have his boots mended with, went
+up to the sick man and squatted down beside him.
+
+"You know, Sokolov, they are not all going away! They have a
+hospital here. You may be better off than we others," said Pierre.
+
+"O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!" moaned the man
+in a louder voice.
+
+"I'll go and ask them again directly," said Pierre, rising and going
+to the door of the shed.
+
+Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him
+a pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal
+and soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had
+metal straps, and these changed their familiar faces.
+
+The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The
+prisoners had to be counted before being let out.
+
+"Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?..." Pierre began.
+
+But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal
+he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that
+moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of
+drums was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at
+Pierre's words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door.
+The shed became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two
+sides drowned the sick man's groans.
+
+"There it is!... It again!..." said Pierre to himself, and an
+involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal's changed
+face, in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise
+of the drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which
+compelled people against their will to kill their fellow men- that
+force the effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To
+fear or to try to escape that force, to address entreaties or
+exhortations to those who served as its tools, was useless. Pierre
+knew this now. One had to wait and endure. He did not again go to
+the sick man, nor turn to look at him, but stood frowning by the
+door of the hut.
+
+When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one
+another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed
+his way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal
+had assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also
+in marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which
+Pierre had recognized in the corporal's words and in the roll of the
+drums.
+
+"Pass on, pass on!" the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and
+looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.
+
+Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.
+
+"What now?" the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing
+Pierre.
+
+Pierre told him about the sick man.
+
+"He'll manage to walk, devil take him!" said the captain. "Pass
+on, pass on!" he continued without looking at Pierre.
+
+"But he is dying," Pierre again began.
+
+"Be so good..." shouted the captain, frowning angrily.
+
+"Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam..." rattled the drums, and Pierre
+understood that this mysterious force completely controlled these
+men and that it was now useless to say any more.
+
+The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to
+march in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among
+them, and about three hundred men.
+
+The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all
+strangers to Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at
+him and at his shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him
+walked a fat major with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing
+a Kazan dressing grown tied round with a towel, and who evidently
+enjoyed the respect of his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in
+which he clasped his tobacco pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing
+gown and held the stem of his pipe firmly with the other. Panting
+and puffing, the major grumbled and growled at everybody because he
+thought he was being pushed and that they were all hurrying when
+they had nowhere to hurry to and were all surprised at something
+when there was nothing to be surprised at. Another, a thin little
+officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing where they were now
+being taken and how far they would get that day. An official in felt
+boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from side to side
+and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his observations
+as to what had been burned down and what this or that part of the city
+was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent was a
+Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was
+mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.
+
+"What are you disputing about?" said the major angrily. "What does
+it matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it's
+burned down, and there's an end of it.... What are you pushing for?
+Isn't the road wide enough?" said he, turning to a man behind him
+who was not pushing him at all.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?" the prisoners on one side and
+another were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. "All
+beyond the river, and Zubova, and in the Kremlin.... Just look!
+There's not half of it left. Yes, I told you- the whole quarter beyond
+the river, and so it is."
+
+"Well, you know it's burned, so what's the use of talking?" said the
+major.
+
+As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one of the few
+unburned quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly
+started to one side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.
+
+"Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And
+smeared with something!"
+
+Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked
+these exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the
+palings surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw
+better than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set
+upright against the palings with its face smeared with soot.
+
+"Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!..." the
+convoy guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh
+virulence, drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who
+were gazing at the dead man.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter the prisoners
+marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons
+belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they
+came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with
+private vehicles.
+
+At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get
+across. From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving
+baggage trains before and behind them. To the right, where the
+Kaluga road turns near Neskuchny, endless rows of troops and carts
+stretched away into the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais'
+corps which had started before any of the others. Behind, along the
+riverside and across the Stone Bridge, were Ney's troops and
+transport.
+
+Davout's troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing
+the Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kaluga
+road. But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of
+Beauharnais' train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the
+Kaluga road when the vanguard of Ney's army was already emerging
+from the Great Ordynka Street.
+
+When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few
+steps forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles
+and men crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few
+hundred paces that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking
+more than an hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the
+streets of the Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and
+the prisoners jammed close together had to stand for some hours at
+that crossway. From all sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard
+the rattle of wheels, the tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger
+and abuse. Pierre stood pressed against the wall of a charred house,
+listening to that noise which mingled in his imagination with the roll
+of the drums.
+
+To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the
+wall of the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.
+
+"What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They've loaded goods
+even on the cannon! Look there, those are furs!" they exclaimed. "Just
+see what the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one
+has behind in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some
+icons, by heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has
+loaded himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they've even grabbed
+those chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks....
+Heavens! They're fighting."
+
+"That's right, hit him on the snout- on his snout! Like this, we
+shan't get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be
+Napoleon's own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown!
+It's like a portable house.... That fellow's dropped his sack and
+doesn't see it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not
+bad-looking either! Yes, I dare say, that's the way they'll let you
+pass... Just look, there's no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven,
+so they are! In carriages- see how comfortably they've settled
+themselves!"
+
+Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of general curiosity
+bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to
+his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted
+their curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts,
+closely squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in
+glaring colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.
+
+From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the
+mysterious force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful:
+neither the corpse smeared with soot for fun nor these women
+hurrying away nor the burned ruins of Moscow. All that he now
+witnessed scarcely made an impression on him- as if his soul, making
+ready for a hard struggle, refused to receive impressions that might
+weaken it.
+
+The women's vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts,
+soldiers, wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers,
+ammunition carts, more soldiers, and now and then women.
+
+Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.
+
+All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some
+invisible power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came
+flowing from the different streets with one and the same desire to get
+on quickly; they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to
+fight, white teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of
+abuse flew from side to side, and all the faces bore the same
+swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that had struck
+Pierre that morning on the corporal's face when the drums were
+beating.
+
+It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the
+escort collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way
+in among the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all
+sides, emerged onto the Kaluga road.
+
+They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the
+sun began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men
+began to prepare for their night's rest. They all appeared angry and
+dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could
+be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran
+into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole.
+Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat
+the carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others
+fought among themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly
+wounded on the head by a sword.
+
+It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid
+fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and
+the same feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and
+eagerness to push on that had seized them at the start. Once at a
+standstill they all seemed to understand that they did not yet know
+where they were going, and that much that was painful and difficult
+awaited them on this journey.
+
+During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than
+they had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the
+first time received horseflesh for their meat ration.
+
+From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what
+seemed like personal spite against each of the prisoners, in
+unexpected contrast to their former friendly relations.
+
+This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of
+prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one
+Russian soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had
+escaped. Pierre saw a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for
+straying too far from the road, and heard his friend the captain
+reprimand and threaten to court-martial a noncommissioned officer on
+account of the escape of the Russian. To the noncommissioned officer's
+excuse that the prisoner was ill and could not walk, the officer
+replied that the order was to shoot those who lagged behind. Pierre
+felt that that fatal force which had crushed him during the
+executions, but which be had not felt during his imprisonment, now
+again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but he felt that in
+proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush him, there grew
+and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent of it.
+
+He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with
+his comrades.
+
+Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen
+in Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of
+the order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in
+reaction against the worsening of their position they were all
+particularly animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences,
+of amusing scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and
+avoided all talk of their present situation.
+
+The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in
+the sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon
+from the rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely
+in the gray haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night
+had not yet come. Pierre got up and left his new companions,
+crossing between the campfires to the other side of the road where
+he had been told the common soldier prisoners were stationed. He
+wanted to talk to them. On the road he was stopped by a French
+sentinel who ordered him back.
+
+Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an
+unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him
+and dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of
+the cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought.
+Suddenly he burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured
+laughter, so loud that men from various sides turned with surprise
+to see what this strange and evidently solitary laughter could mean.
+
+"Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: "The
+soldier did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me
+captive. What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!..." and
+he laughed till tears started to his eyes.
+
+A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing
+at all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther
+away from the inquisitive man, and looked around him.
+
+The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the
+crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the
+red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the
+light sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp,
+unseen before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still,
+beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless
+distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the
+twinkling stars in its faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that
+is within me, and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all
+that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!" He smiled, and
+went and lay down to sleep beside his companions.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutuzov with a
+letter from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow,
+though Napoleon was already not far from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga
+road. Kutuzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one
+formerly brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no
+question of peace.
+
+Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov's guerrilla
+detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that troops of
+Broussier's division had been seen at Forminsk and that being
+separated from the rest of the French army they might easily be
+destroyed. The soldiers and officers again demanded action. Generals
+on the staff, excited by the memory of the easy victory at Tarutino,
+urged Kutuzov to carry out Dorokhov's suggestion. Kutuzov did not
+consider any offensive necessary. The result was a compromise which
+was inevitable: a small detachment was sent to Forminsk to attack
+Broussier.
+
+By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most
+difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhturov- that same
+modest little Dokhturov whom no one had described to us as drawing
+up plans of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering
+crosses on batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was
+spoken of as undecided and undiscerning- but whom we find commanding
+wherever the position was most difficult all through the
+Russo-French wars from Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he
+remained last at the Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what
+was possible when all were flying and perishing and not a single
+general was left in the rear guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk
+with twenty thousand men to defend the town against Napoleon's whole
+army. In Smolensk, at the Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in
+a paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by the bombardment of the
+town- and Smolensk held out all day long. At the battle of Borodino,
+when Bagration was killed and nine tenths of the men of our left flank
+had fallen and the full force of the French artillery fire was
+directed against it, the man sent there was this same irresolute and
+undiscerning Dokhturov- Kutuzov hastening to rectify a mistake he
+had made by sending someone else there first. And the quiet little
+Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became the greatest glory of
+the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us in verse and
+prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has been said.
+
+It was Dokhturov again whom they sent to Forminsk and from there
+to Malo-Yaroslavets, the place where the last battle with the French
+was fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army
+began; and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of
+the campaign, but of Dokhturov nothing or very little is said and that
+dubiously. And this silence about Dokhturov is the clearest
+testimony to his merit.
+
+It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a
+machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance
+and is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most
+important part. The man who does not understand the construction of
+the machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which
+revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine,
+and not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.
+
+On the tenth of October when Dokhturov had gone halfway to
+Forminsk and stopped at the village of Aristovo, preparing
+faithfully to execute the orders he had received, the whole French
+army having, in its convulsive movement, reached Murat's position
+apparently in order to give battle- suddenly without any reason turned
+off to the left onto the new Kaluga road and began to enter
+Forminsk, where only Broussier had been till then. At that time
+Dokhturov had under his command, besides Dorokhov's detachment, the
+two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and Seslavin.
+
+On the evening of October 11 Seslavin came to the Aristovo
+headquarters with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner
+said that the troops that had entered Forminsk that day were the
+vanguard of the whole army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army
+had left Moscow four days previously. That same evening a house serf
+who had come from Borovsk said he had seen an immense army entering
+the town. Some Cossacks of Dokhturov's detachment reported having
+sighted the French Guards marching along the road to Borovsk. From all
+these reports it was evident that where they had expected to meet a
+single division there was now the whole French army marching from
+Moscow in an unexpected direction- along the Kaluga road. Dokhturov
+was unwilling to undertake any action, as it was not clear to him
+now what he ought to do. He had been ordered to attack Forminsk. But
+only Broussier had been there at that time and now the whole French
+army was there. Ermolov wished to act on his own judgment, but
+Dokhturov insisted that he must have Kutuzov's instructions. So it was
+decided to send a dispatch to the staff.
+
+For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovitinov, was chosen, who
+was to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering a
+written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovitinov, having received the
+dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff
+accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four
+days. Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour
+and a half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka
+after one o'clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle
+fence hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he
+entered a dark passage.
+
+"The general on duty, quick! It's very important!" said he to
+someone who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.
+
+"He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third
+night he has not slept," said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper.
+"You should wake the captain first."
+
+"But this is very important, from General Dokhturov," said
+Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in
+the dark.
+
+The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.
+
+"Your honor, your honor! A courier."
+
+"What? What's that? From whom?" came a sleepy voice.
+
+"From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich. Napoleon is at Forminsk,"
+said Bolkhovitinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but
+guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnitsyn.
+
+The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.
+
+"I don't like waking him," he said, fumbling for something. "He is
+very ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor."
+
+"Here is the dispatch," said Bolkhovitinov. "My orders are to give
+it at once to the general on duty."
+
+"Wait a moment, I'll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you
+always hide it?" said the voice of the man who was stretching himself,
+to the orderly. (This was Shcherbinin, Konovnitsyn's adjutant.)
+"I've found it, I've found it!" he added.
+
+The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was fumbling for
+something on the candlestick.
+
+"Oh, the nasty beasts!" said he with disgust.
+
+By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw Shcherbinin's
+youthful face as he held the candle, and the face of another man who
+was still asleep. This was Konovnitsyn.
+
+When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned
+up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow candle, from
+the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were
+running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was
+bespattered all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it
+with his sleeve.
+
+"Who gave the report?" inquired Shcherbinin, taking the envelope.
+
+"The news is reliable," said Bolkhovitinov. "Prisoners, Cossacks,
+and the scouts all say the same thing."
+
+"There's nothing to be done, we'll have to wake him," said
+Shcherbinin, rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay
+covered by a greatcoat. "Peter Petrovich!" said he. (Konovnitsyn did
+not stir.) "To the General Staff!" he said with a smile, knowing
+that those words would be sure to arouse him.
+
+And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On
+Konovnitsyn's handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,
+there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote
+from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face
+assumed its habitual calm and firm appearance.
+
+"Well, what is it? From whom?" he asked immediately but without
+hurry, blinking at the light.
+
+While listening to the officer's report Konovnitsyn broke the seal
+and read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his
+legs in their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began
+putting on his boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair
+over his temples, and donned his cap.
+
+"Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness."
+
+Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of
+great importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or
+ask himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest
+him. He regarded the whole business of the war not with his
+intelligence or his reason but by something else. There was within him
+a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one
+must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only
+attend to one's own work. And he did his work, giving his whole
+strength to the task.
+
+Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to have been
+included merely for propriety's sake in the list of the so-called
+heroes of 1812- the Barclays, Raevskis, Ermolovs, Platovs, and
+Miloradoviches. Like Dokhturov he had the reputation of being a man of
+very limited capacity and information, and like Dokhturov he never
+made plans of battle but was always found where the situation was most
+difficult. Since his appointment as general on duty he had always
+slept with his door open, giving orders that every messenger should be
+allowed to wake him up. In battle he was always under fire, so that
+Kutuzov reproved him for it and feared to send him to the front, and
+like Dokhturov he was one of those unnoticed cogwheels that, without
+clatter or noise, constitute the most essential part of the machine.
+
+Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnitsyn frowned-
+partly from an increased pain in his head and partly at the unpleasant
+thought that occurred to him, of how all that nest of influential
+men on the staff would be stirred up by this news, especially
+Bennigsen, who ever since Tarutino had been at daggers drawn with
+Kutuzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel, issue orders,
+and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable to him
+though he knew it could not be helped.
+
+And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news,
+immediately began to expound his plans to a general sharing his
+quarters, until Konovnitsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded
+him that they must go to see his Highness.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often
+fell asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his
+bed without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.
+
+So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred
+head on his plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and
+peering into the darkness.
+
+Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more
+influence than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him,
+Kutuzov was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his
+troops being obliged to take part in useless aggressive movements. The
+lesson of the Tarutino battle and of the day before it, which
+Kutuzov remembered with pain, must, he thought, have some effect on
+others too.
+
+"They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive.
+Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutuzov.
+He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will
+fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled,
+the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an
+experienced sportsman he knew that the beast was wounded, and
+wounded as only the whole strength of Russia could have wounded it,
+but whether it was mortally wounded or not was still an undecided
+question. Now by the fact of Lauriston and Barthelemi having been
+sent, and by the reports of the guerrillas, Kutuzov was almost sure
+that the wound was mortal. But he needed further proofs and it was
+necessary to wait.
+
+"They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall
+see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!" thought he. "What
+for? Only to distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are
+like children from whom one can't get any sensible account of what has
+happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But
+that's not what is needed now.
+
+"And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to
+them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies" (he
+remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) "they have
+foreseen everything. But the contingencies are endless."
+
+The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodino
+was mortal or not had hung over Kutuzov's head for a whole month. On
+the one hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutuzov felt
+assured with all his being that the terrible blow into which he and
+all the Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal.
+But in any case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for
+them and grew more impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed
+during those sleepless nights he did just what he reproached those
+younger generals for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible
+contingencies, just like the younger men, but with this difference,
+that he saw thousands of contingencies instead of two or three and
+based nothing on them. The longer he thought the more contingencies
+presented themselves. He imagined all sorts of movements of the
+Napoleonic army as a whole or in sections- against Petersburg, or
+against him, or to outflank him. He thought too of the possibility
+(which he feared most of all) that Napoleon might fight him with his
+own weapon and remain in Moscow awaiting him. Kutuzov even imagined
+that Napoleon's army might turn back through Medyn and Yukhnov, but
+the one thing he could not foresee was what happened- the insane,
+convulsive stampede of Napoleon's army during its first eleven days
+after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made possible what Kutuzov
+had not yet even dared to think of- the complete extermination of
+the French. Dorokhov's report about Broussier's division, the
+guerrillas' reports of distress in Napoleon's army, rumors of
+preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that
+the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were
+only suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not
+to Kutuzov. With his sixty years' experience he knew what value to
+attach to rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to group
+all news so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew
+how readily in such cases they omit all that makes for the contrary.
+And the more he desired it the less he allowed himself to believe
+it. This question absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to
+him only life's customary routine. To such customary routine
+belonged his conversations with the staff, the letters he wrote from
+Tarutino to Madame de Stael, the reading of novels, the distribution
+of awards, his correspondence with Petersburg, and so on. But the
+destruction of the French, which he alone foresaw, was his heart's one
+desire.
+
+On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm
+and thinking of that.
+
+There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll,
+Konovnitsyn, and Bolkhovitinov.
+
+"Eh, who's there? Come in, come in! What news?" the field marshal
+called out to them.
+
+While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the
+substance of the news.
+
+"Who brought it?" asked Kutuzov with a look which, when the candle
+was lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.
+
+"There can be no doubt about it, your Highness."
+
+"Call him in, call him here."
+
+Kutuzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big
+paunch resting against the other which was doubled under him. He
+screwed up his seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more
+carefully, as if wishing to read in his face what preoccupied his
+own mind.
+
+"Tell me, tell me, friend," said he to Bolkhovitinov in his low,
+aged voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his
+chest, "come nearer- nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That
+Napoleon has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?"
+
+Bolkhovitinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he
+had been told to report.
+
+"Speak quicker, quicker! Don't torture me!" Kutuzov interrupted him.
+
+Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting
+instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutuzov
+checked him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered
+and wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side
+of the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.
+
+"O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer..." said he in a
+tremulous voice with folded hands. "Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O
+Lord!" and he wept.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all
+Kutuzov's activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by
+authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers,
+or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhturov went to
+Malo-Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov lingered with the main army and gave
+orders for the evacuation of Kaluga- a retreat beyond which town
+seemed to him quite possible.
+
+Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for
+his retreat fled in the opposite direction.
+
+Napoleon's historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at
+Tarutino and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as to what would
+have happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich
+southern provinces.
+
+But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from
+advancing into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did
+not bar his way), the historians forget that nothing could have
+saved his army, for then already it bore within itself the germs of
+inevitable ruin. How could that army- which had found abundant
+supplies in Moscow and had trampled them underfoot instead of
+keeping them, and on arriving at Smolensk had looted provisions
+instead of storing them- how could that army recuperate in Kaluga
+province, which was inhabited by Russians such as those who lived in
+Moscow, and where fire had the same property of consuming what was set
+ablaze?
+
+That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodino
+and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were,
+the chemical elements of dissolution.
+
+The members of what had once been an army- Napoleon himself and
+all his soldiers fled- without knowing whither, each concerned only to
+make his escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the
+hopelessness of which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.
+
+So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaroslavets, when the
+generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all
+mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier
+Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing
+needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even
+Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all
+recognized.
+
+But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away,
+there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must
+flee. An external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this
+shock came in due time. It was what the French called "le hourra de
+l'Empereur."
+
+The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out
+early in the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of
+marshals and an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and
+the scene of the previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks
+on the prowl for booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly
+captured him. If the Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what
+saved him was the very thing that was destroying the French army,
+the booty on which the Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they went
+after plunder, leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed
+after the plunder and Napoleon managed to escape.
+
+When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor
+himself in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was
+nothing for it but to fly as fast as possible along the nearest,
+familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-year-old stomach understood
+that hint, not feeling his former agility and boldness, and under
+the influence of the fright the Cossacks had given him he at once
+agreed with Mouton and issued orders- as the historians tell us- to
+retreat by the Smolensk road.
+
+That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated,
+does not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces
+which influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozhaysk
+(that is, the Smolensk) road acted simultaneously on him also.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to
+go a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him
+at the end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a
+promised land to have the strength to move.
+
+The promised land for the French during their advance had been
+Moscow, during their retreat it was their native land. But that native
+land was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is
+absolutely necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to
+himself: "Today I shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I
+shall rest and spend the night," and during the first day's journey
+that resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his
+hopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single person are always
+magnified in a crowd.
+
+For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the final
+goal- their native land- was too remote, and their immediate goal
+was Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously
+intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that
+much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they
+were told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon
+himself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this
+alone could give them strength to move on and endure their present
+privations. So both those who knew and those who did not know deceived
+themselves, and pushed on to Smolensk as to a promised land.
+
+Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising
+energy and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on.
+Besides the common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French
+into one mass and supplied them with a certain energy, there was
+another cause binding them together- their great numbers. As with
+the physical law of gravity, their enormous mass drew the individual
+human atoms to itself. In their hundreds of thousands they moved
+like a whole nation.
+
+Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a
+prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one
+hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew
+each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps
+could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed
+themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to
+surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not
+always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded and swift
+movement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only
+difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to
+which the French were directing all their energies. Beyond a certain
+limit no mechanical disruption of the body could hasten the process of
+decomposition.
+
+A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a
+certain limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt
+the snow. On the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the
+remaining snow becomes.
+
+Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this. When the
+flight of the French army along the Smolensk road became well defined,
+what Konovnitsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of
+October began to occur. The superior officers all wanted to
+distinguish themselves, to cut off, to seize, to capture, and to
+overthrow the French, and all clamored for action.
+
+Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited
+in the case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.
+
+He could not tell them what we say now: "Why fight, why block the
+road, losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate
+wretches? What is the use of that, when a third of their army has
+melted away on the road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?" But
+drawing from his aged wisdom what they could understand, he told
+them of the golden bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him,
+flinging themselves on, rending and exulting over the dying beast.
+
+Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in proximity to the French
+near Vyazma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up
+two French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov
+they sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.
+
+And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,
+trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to
+the attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost
+thousands of men.
+
+But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,
+closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily
+melting away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolensk.
+
+BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow that
+followed it and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is
+one of the most instructive phenomena in history.
+
+All historians agree that the external activity of states and
+nations in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars,
+and that as a direct result of greater or less success in war the
+political strength of states and nations increases or decreases.
+
+Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or
+emperor, having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his
+enemy's army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten
+thousand men, and subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several
+millions, all the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm
+the truth of the statement that the greater or lesser success of one
+army against another is the cause, or at least an essential
+indication, of an increase or decrease in the strength of the
+nation- even though it is unintelligible why the defeat of an army-
+a hundredth part of a nation- should oblige that whole nation to
+submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the rights of the
+conquering nation have increased to the detriment of the defeated.
+An army has suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its rights
+in proportion to the severity of the reverse, and if its army
+suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated.
+
+So according to history it has been found from the most ancient
+times, and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon's wars serve to
+confirm this rule. In proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army
+Austria loses its rights, and the rights and the strength of France
+increase. The victories of the French at Jena and Auerstadt destroy
+the independent existence of Prussia.
+
+But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow
+is taken and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia
+that ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and
+then Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of
+history: to say that the field of battle at Borodino remained in the
+hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were other battles
+that destroyed Napoleon's army, is impossible.
+
+After the French victory at Borodino there was no general engagement
+nor any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist.
+What does this mean? If it were an example taken from the history of
+China, we might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is
+the historians' usual expedient when anything does not fit their
+standards); if the matter concerned some brief conflict in which
+only a small number of troops took part, we might treat it as an
+exception; but this event occurred before our fathers' eyes, and for
+them it was a question of the life or death of their fatherland, and
+it happened in the greatest of all known wars.
+
+The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodino to
+the expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does
+not produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of
+conquest; it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples
+lies not in the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in
+something else.
+
+The French historians, describing the condition of the French army
+before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army,
+except the cavalry, the artillery, and the transport- there was no
+forage for the horses or the cattle. That was a misfortune no one
+could remedy, for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather
+than let the French have it.
+
+The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the
+peasants Karp and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow
+drove in their carts to pillage the town, and in general personally
+failed to manifest any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable
+multitude of such peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for
+the high price offered them, but burned it instead.
+
+Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with
+rapiers according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The
+fencing has gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants,
+feeling himself wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke
+but concerns his life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first
+cudgel that comes to hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine
+that the combatant who so sensibly employed the best and simplest
+means to attain his end was at the same time influenced by
+traditions of chivalry and, desiring to conceal the facts of the case,
+insisted that he had gained his victory with the rapier according to
+all the rules of art. One can imagine what confusion and obscurity
+would result from such an account of the duel.
+
+The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of
+fencing was the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier
+and snatched up the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to
+explain the matter according to the rules of fencing are the
+historians who have described the event.
+
+After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did not follow any
+previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the
+retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodino and the renewed
+retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the
+seizure of transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures
+from the rules.
+
+Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing
+attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent's rapier saw a cudgel
+raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutuzov and
+to the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to
+all the rules- as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite
+of the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the
+rules, in spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it
+seemed rather disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to
+assume a pose en quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and
+to make an adroit thrust en prime, and so on- the cudgel of the
+people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic strength,
+and without consulting anyone's tastes or rules and regardless of
+anything else, it rose and fell with stupid simplicity, but
+consistently, and belabored the French till the whole invasion had
+perished.
+
+And it is well for a people who do not- as the French did in 1813-
+salute according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt
+of their rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their
+magnanimous conqueror, but at the moment of trial, without asking what
+rules others have adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick
+up the first cudgel that comes to hand and strike with it till the
+feeling of resentment and revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of
+contempt and compassion.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the
+so-called laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men
+pressed together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that
+take on a national character. In such actions, instead of two crowds
+opposing each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when
+attacked by stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers.
+This was done by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in
+the Caucasus, and by the Russians in 1812.
+
+People have called this kind of war "guerrilla warfare" and assume
+that by so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a
+war does not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a
+well-known rule of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That
+rule says that an attacker should concentrate his forces in order to
+be stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict.
+
+Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly
+infringes that rule.
+
+This contradiction arises from the fact that military science
+assumes the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers.
+Military science says that the more troops the greater the strength.
+Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison.~^
+
+^~ Large battalions are always victorious.
+
+For military science to say this is like defining momentum in
+mechanics by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are
+equal or unequal to each other simply because the masses involved
+are equal or unequal.
+
+Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.
+
+In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its
+mass and some unknown x.
+
+Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the
+fact that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and
+that small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the
+existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover it- now in a
+geometric formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most
+usually, in the genius of the commanders. But the assignment of
+these various meanings to the factor does not yield results which
+accord with the historic facts.
+
+Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to
+gratify the "heroes") of the efficacy of the directions issued in
+wartime by commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.
+
+That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the
+greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the
+men composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are
+not, fighting under the command of a genius, in two- or three-line
+formation, with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a
+minute. Men who want to fight will always put themselves in the most
+advantageous conditions for fighting.
+
+The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass
+gives the resulting force. To define and express the significance of
+this unknown factor- the spirit of an army- is a problem for science.
+
+This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to
+substitute for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that
+force becomes apparent- such as the commands of the general, the
+equipment employed, and so on- mistaking these for the real
+significance of the factor, and if we recognize this unknown
+quantity in its entirety as being the greater or lesser desire to
+fight and to face danger. Only then, expressing known historic facts
+by equations and comparing the relative significance of this factor,
+can we hope to define the unknown.
+
+Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions,
+or divisions, conquer- that is, kill or take captive- all the
+others, while themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and
+on the other fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to
+the fifteen, and therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This
+equation does not give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us
+a ratio between two unknowns. And by bringing variously selected
+historic units (battles, campaigns, periods of war) into such
+equations, a series of numbers could be obtained in which certain laws
+should exist and might be discovered.
+
+The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when
+attacking, and in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms
+the truth that the strength of an army depends on its spirit. To
+lead men forward under fire more discipline (obtainable only by
+movement in masses) is needed than is needed to resist attacks. But
+this rule which leaves out of account the spirit of the army
+continually proves incorrect and is in particularly striking
+contrast to the facts when some strong rise or fall in the spirit of
+the troops occurs, as in all national wars.
+
+The French, retreating in 1812- though according to tactics they
+should have separated into detachments to defend themselves-
+congregated into a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen
+that only the mass held the army together. The Russians, on the
+contrary, ought according to tactics to have attacked in mass, but
+in fact they split up into small units, because their spirit had so
+risen that separate individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the
+French without needing any compulsion to induce them to expose
+themselves to hardships and dangers.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into
+Smolensk.
+
+Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the
+government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had
+been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off
+as instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denis
+Davydov, with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the
+value of this terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of
+military science destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit
+for taking the first step toward regularizing this method of warfare.
+
+On August 24 Davydov's first partisan detachment was formed and then
+others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more
+numerous these detachments became.
+
+The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the
+fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree-
+the French army- and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October,
+when the French were fleeing toward Smolensk, there were hundreds of
+such companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some
+that adopted all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs,
+and the comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack
+cavalry. There were also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and
+groups of peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan
+commanded one party which captured several hundred prisoners in the
+course of a month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village
+elder, who slew hundreds of the French.
+
+The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of
+October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves,
+amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded and
+captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling,
+hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the
+end of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had
+become clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what
+could not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and
+moving according to rules at a distance from the French, still
+regarded many things as impossible. The small bands that had started
+their activities long before and had already observed the French
+closely considered things possible which the commanders of the big
+detachments did not dare to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who
+crept in among the French now considered everything possible.
+
+On October 22, Denisov (who was one of the irregulars) was with
+his group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early
+morning he and his party had been on the move. All day long he had
+been watching from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French
+convoy of cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the
+rest of the army, which- as was learned from spies and prisoners-
+was moving under a strong escort to Smolensk. Besides Denisov and
+Dolokhov (who also led a small party and moved in Denisov's vicinity),
+the commanders of some large divisions with staffs also knew of this
+convoy and, as Denisov expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for
+it. Two of the commanders of large parties- one a Pole and the other a
+German- sent invitations to Denisov almost simultaneously,
+requesting him to join up with their divisions to attack the convoy.
+
+"No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself," said Denisov on
+reading these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite
+his heartfelt desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general,
+he had to forgo that pleasure because he was already under the command
+of the Polish general. To the Polish general he replied to the same
+effect, informing him that he was already under the command of the
+German.
+
+Having arranged matters thus, Denisov and Dolokhov intended, without
+reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that
+convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from
+the village of Mikulino to that of Shamshevo. To the left of the
+road between Mikulino and Shamshevo there were large forests,
+extending in some places up to the road itself though in others a mile
+or more back from it. Through these forests Denisov and his party rode
+all day, sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to
+the very edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That
+morning, Cossacks of Denisov's party had seized and carried off into
+the forest two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck
+in the mud not far from Mikulino where the forest ran close to the
+road. Since then, and until evening, the party had the movements of
+the French without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach
+Shamshevo quietly without alarming them and then, after joining
+Dolokhov who was to come that evening to a consultation at a
+watchman's hut in the forest less than a mile from Shamshevo, to
+surprise the French at dawn, falling like an avalanche on their
+heads from two sides, and rout and capture them all at one blow.
+
+In their rear, more than a mile from Mikulino where the forest
+came right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any
+fresh columns of French should show themselves.
+
+Beyond Shamshevo, Dolokhov was to observe the road in the same
+way, to find out at what distance there were other French troops. They
+reckoned that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denisov had two
+hundred, and Dolokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of
+numbers did not deter Denisov. All that he now wanted to know was what
+troops these were and to learn that he had to capture a "tongue"- that
+is, a man from the enemy column. That morning's attack on the wagons
+had been made so hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all
+been killed; only a little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he
+was a straggler he could tell them nothing definite about the troops
+in that column.
+
+Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear
+of putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tikhon
+Shcherbaty, a peasant of his party, to Shamshevo to try and seize at
+least one of the French quartermasters who had been sent on in
+advance.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both
+the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and
+then suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.
+
+Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain
+ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides.
+Like his horse, which turned its head and laid its ears back, he
+shrank from the driving rain and gazed anxiously before him. His
+thin face with its short, thick black beard looked angry.
+
+Beside Denisov rode an esaul,~^ Denisov's fellow worker, also in felt
+cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.
+
+^~ A captain of Cossacks.
+
+Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow,
+pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm
+self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to
+say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first
+glance at the esaul and Denisov one saw that the latter was wet and
+uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the
+esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always
+and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was
+one with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold
+strength.
+
+A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and
+wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.
+
+A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount with an
+enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a
+blue French overcoat.
+
+Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform
+and blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on
+to the hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed
+about him with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that
+morning.
+
+Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars
+in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in
+French greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The
+horses, being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether
+chestnut or bay. Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes,
+looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles,
+reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the
+fallen leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up trying not
+to stir, so as to warm the water that had trickled to their bodies and
+not admit the fresh cold water that was leaking in under their
+seats, their knees, and at the back of their necks. In the midst of
+the outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by French horses
+and by saddled Cossack horses that had been hitched on in front,
+rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and splashed through the
+water that lay in the ruts.
+
+Denisov's horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and
+bumped his rider's knee against a tree.
+
+"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed Denisov angrily, and showing his teeth he
+struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and
+his comrades with mud.
+
+Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from
+hunger (none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more
+because he still had no news from Dolokhov and the man sent to capture
+a "tongue" had not returned.
+
+"There'll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as
+today. It's too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it
+off till another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will
+snatch the prey from under our noses," thought Denisov, continually
+peering forward, hoping to see a messenger from Dolokhov.
+
+On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to
+the right, Denisov stopped.
+
+"There's someone coming," said he.
+
+The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated.
+
+"There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not
+presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself," said the
+esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks did not know.
+
+The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer
+visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary
+gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and
+drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him,
+standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young
+lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Denisov
+and handed him a sodden envelope.
+
+"From the general," said the officer. "Please excuse its not being
+quite dry."
+
+Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.
+
+"There, they kept telling us: 'It's dangerous, it's dangerous,'"
+said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denisov was reading the
+dispatch. "But Komarov and I"- he pointed to the Cossack- "were
+prepared. We have each of us two pistols.... But what's this?" he
+asked, noticing the French drummer boy. "A prisoner? You've already
+been in action? May I speak to him?"
+
+"Wostov! Petya!" exclaimed Denisov, having run through the dispatch.
+"Why didn't you say who you were?" and turning with a smile he held
+out his hand to the lad.
+
+The officer was Petya Rostov.
+
+All the way Petya had been preparing himself to behave with
+Denisov as befitted a grownup man and an officer- without hinting at
+their previous acquaintance. But as soon as Denisov smiled at him
+Petya brightened up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner
+he had been rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already
+been in a battle near Vyazma and how a certain hussar had
+distinguished himself there.
+
+"Well, I am glad to see you," Denisov interrupted him, and his
+face again assumed its anxious expression.
+
+"Michael Feoklitych," said he to the esaul, "this is again fwom that
+German, you know. He"- he indicated Petya- "is serving under him."
+
+And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a
+repetition of the German general's demand that he should join forces
+with him for an attack on the transport.
+
+"If we don't take it tomowwow, he'll snatch it fwom under our
+noses," he added.
+
+While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya- abashed by
+Denisov's cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition
+of his trousers- furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat
+so that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air
+as possible.
+
+"Will there be any orders, your honor?" he asked Denisov, holding
+his hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general
+for which he had prepared himself, "or shall I remain with your
+honor?"
+
+"Orders?" Denisov repeated thoughtfully. "But can you stay till
+tomowwow?"
+
+"Oh, please... May I stay with you?" cried Petya.
+
+"But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?"
+asked Denisov.
+
+Petya blushed.
+
+"He gave me no instructions. I think I could?" he returned,
+inquiringly.
+
+"Well, all wight," said Denisov.
+
+And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting
+place arranged near the watchman's hut in the forest, and told the
+officer on the Kirghiz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant)
+to go and find out where Dolokhov was and whether he would come that
+evening. Denisov himself intended going with the esaul and Petya to
+the edge of the forest where it reached out to Shamshevo, to have a
+look at the part of the French bivouac they were to attack next day.
+
+"Well, old fellow," said he to the peasant guide, "lead us to
+Shamshevo."
+
+Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and
+the hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to
+the edge of the forest.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from
+the trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode silently, following
+the peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned
+toes and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet
+leaves, silently led them to the edge of the forest.
+
+He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to
+where the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree
+that had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously
+to them with his hand.
+
+Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant
+was standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest,
+on a downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a
+steep ravine, was a small village and a landowner's house with a
+broken roof. In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well,
+by the pond, over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill
+from the bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred
+yards away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist.
+Their un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining
+uphill with the carts, and their calls to one another, could be
+clearly heard.
+
+"Bwing the prisoner here," said Denisov in a low voice, not taking
+his eyes off the French.
+
+A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to
+Denisov. Pointing to the French troops, Denisov asked him what these
+and those of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his
+pockets and lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denisov in affright, but
+in spite of an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused
+answers, merely assenting to everything Denisov asked him. Denisov
+turned away from him frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his
+own conjectures to him.
+
+Petya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy,
+now at Denisov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village
+and along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.
+
+"Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?" said
+Denisov with a merry sparkle in his eyes.
+
+"It is a very suitable spot," said the esaul.
+
+"We'll send the infantwy down by the swamps," Denisov continued.
+"They'll cweep up to the garden; you'll wide up fwom there with the
+Cossacks"- he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village- "and
+I with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot..."
+
+"The hollow is impassable- there's a swamp there," said the esaul.
+"The horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left...."
+
+While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded
+from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared,
+then another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French
+voices shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment
+Denisov and the esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought
+they were the cause of the firing and shouting. But the firing and
+shouting did not relate to them. Down below, a man wearing something
+red was running through the marsh. The French were evidently firing
+and shouting at him.
+
+"Why, that's our Tikhon," said the esaul.
+
+"So it is! It is!"
+
+"The wascal!" said Denisov.
+
+"He'll get away!" said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.
+
+The man whom they called Tikhon, having run to the stream, plunged
+in so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared
+for an instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet,
+and ran on. The French who had been pursuing him stopped.
+
+"Smart, that!" said the esaul.
+
+"What a beast!" said Denisov with his former look of vexation. "What
+has he been doing all this time?"
+
+"Who is he?" asked Petya.
+
+"He's our plastun. I sent him to capture a 'tongue.'"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Petya, nodding at the first words Denisov uttered as
+if he understood it all, though he really did not understand
+anything of it.
+
+Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most indispensable men in their
+band. He was a peasant from Pokrovsk, near the river Gzhat. When
+Denisov had come to Pokrovsk at the beginning of his operations and
+had as usual summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew
+about the French, the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied,
+as all village elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything
+of them. But when Denisov explained that his purpose was to kill the
+French, and asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied
+that some "more-orderers" had really been at their village, but that
+Tikhon Shcherbaty was the only man who dealt with such matters.
+Denisov had Tikhon called and, having praised him for his activity,
+said a few words in the elder's presence about loyalty to the Tsar and
+the country and the hatred of the French that all sons of the
+fatherland should cherish.
+
+"We don't do the French any harm," said Tikhon, evidently frightened
+by Denisov's words. "We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you
+know! We killed a score or so of 'more-orderers,' but we did no harm
+else..."
+
+Next day when Denisov had left Pokrovsk, having quite forgotten
+about this peasant, it was reported to him that Tikhon had attached
+himself to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it.
+Denisov gave orders to let him do so.
+
+Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching
+water, flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking
+and aptitude for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for
+booty and always brought back French clothing and weapons, and when
+told to would bring in French captives also. Denisov then relieved him
+from drudgery and began taking him with him when he went out on
+expeditions and had him enrolled among the Cossacks.
+
+Tikhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging
+behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried
+rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf
+uses its teeth, with equal case picking fleas out of its fur or
+crunching thick bones. Tikhon with equal accuracy would split logs
+with blows at arm's length, or holding the head of the ax would cut
+thin little pegs or carve spoons. In Denisov's party he held a
+peculiar and exceptional position. When anything particularly
+difficult or nasty had to be done- to push a cart out of the mud
+with one's shoulders, pull a horse out of a swamp by its tail, skin
+it, slink in among the French, or walk more than thirty miles in a
+day- everybody pointed laughingly at Tikhon.
+
+"It won't hurt that devil- he's as strong as a horse!" they said
+of him.
+
+Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at
+him and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which
+Tikhon treated only with internal and external applications of
+vodka) was the subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment-
+jokes in which Tikhon readily joined.
+
+"Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?" the Cossacks would
+banter him. And Tikhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended
+to be angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only
+effect of this incident on Tikhon was that after being wounded he
+seldom brought in prisoners.
+
+He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found
+more opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more
+Frenchmen, and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the
+Cossacks and hussars and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been
+sent by Denisov overnight to Shamshevo to capture a "tongue." But
+whether because he had not been content to take only one Frenchman
+or because he had slept through the night, he had crept by day into
+some bushes right among the French and, as Denisov had witnessed
+from above, had been detected by them.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+After talking for some time with the esaul about next day's
+attack, which now, seeing how near they were to the French, he
+seemed to have definitely decided on, Denisov turned his horse and
+rode back.
+
+"Now, my lad, we'll go and get dwy," he said to Petya.
+
+As they approached the watchhouse Denisov stopped, peering into
+the forest. Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging
+arms, wearing a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazan hat, was
+approaching with long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his
+shoulder and an ax stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denisov he
+hastily threw something into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its
+floppy brim, and approached his commander. It was Tikhon. His wrinkled
+and pockmarked face and narrow little eyes beamed with
+self-satisfied merriment. He lifted his head high and gazed at Denisov
+as if repressing a laugh.
+
+"Well, where did you disappear to?" inquired Denisov.
+
+"Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen," answered Tikhon
+boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.
+
+"Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well,
+why haven't you taken one?"
+
+"Oh, I took one all right," said Tikhon.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"You see, I took him first thing at dawn," Tikhon continued,
+spreading out his flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes.
+"I took him into the forest. Then I see he's no good and think I'll go
+and fetch a likelier one."
+
+"You see?... What a wogue- it's just as I thought," said Denisov
+to the esaul. "Why didn't you bwing that one?"
+
+"What was the good of bringing him?" Tikhon interrupted hastily
+and angrily- "that one wouldn't have done for you. As if I don't
+know what sort you want!"
+
+"What a bwute you are!... Well?"
+
+"I went for another one," Tikhon continued, "and I crept like this
+through the wood and lay down." (He suddenly lay down on his stomach
+with a supple movement to show how he had done it.) "One turned up and
+I grabbed him, like this." (He jumped up quickly and lightly.)
+"'Come along to the colonel,' I said. He starts yelling, and
+suddenly there were four of them. They rushed at me with their
+little swords. So I went for them with my ax, this way: 'What are
+you up to?' says I. 'Christ be with you!'" shouted Tikhon, waving
+his arms with an angry scowl and throwing out his chest.
+
+"Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the
+puddles!" said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.
+
+Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained
+from laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tikhon's face to the
+esaul's and Denisov's, unable to make out what it all meant.
+
+"Don't play the fool!" said Denisov, coughing angrily. "Why didn't
+you bwing the first one?"
+
+Tikhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other,
+then suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin,
+disclosing a gap where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called
+Shcherbaty- the gap-toothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a
+peal of merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined.
+
+"Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing," said Tikhon. "The
+clothes on him- poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your
+honor! Why, he says: 'I'm a general's son myself, I won't go!' he
+says."
+
+"You are a bwute!" said Denisov. "I wanted to question..."
+
+"But I questioned him," said Tikhon. "He said he didn't know much.
+'There are a lot of us,' he says, 'but all poor stuff- only soldiers
+in name,' he says. 'Shout loud at them,' he says, 'and you'll take
+them all,'" Tikhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into
+Denisov's eyes.
+
+"I'll give you a hundwed sharp lashes- that'll teach you to play the
+fool!" said Denisov severely.
+
+"But why are you angry?" remonstrated Tikhon, "just as if I'd
+never seen your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I'll
+fetch you any of them you want- three if you like."
+
+"Well, let's go," said Denisov, and rode all the way to the
+watchhouse in silence and frowning angrily.
+
+Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks laughing with
+him and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the
+bushes.
+
+When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tikhon's words and
+smile had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon
+had killed a man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive
+drummer boy and felt a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted
+only a moment. He felt it necessary to hold his head higher, to
+brace himself, and to question the esaul with an air of importance
+about tomorrow's undertaking, that he might not be unworthy of the
+company in which he found himself.
+
+The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov on the way with
+the news that Dolokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.
+
+Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him, said: "Well,
+tell me about yourself."
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Petya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow,
+joined his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general
+commanding a large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his
+commission, and especially since he had joined the active army and
+taken part in the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state
+of blissful excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic
+hurry not to miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was
+highly delighted with what he saw and experienced in the army, but
+at the same time it always seemed to him that the really heroic
+exploits were being performed just where he did not happen to be.
+And he was always in a hurry to get where he was not.
+
+When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish
+to send somebody to Denisov's detachment, Petya begged so piteously to
+be sent that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he
+recalled Petya's mad action at the battle of Vyazma, where instead
+of riding by the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had
+galloped to the advanced line under the fire of the French and had
+there twice fired his pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade
+his taking part in any action whatever of Denisov's. That was why
+Petya had blushed and grown confused when Denisov asked him whether he
+could stay. Before they had ridden to the outskirts of the forest
+Petya had considered he must carry out his instructions strictly and
+return at once. But when he saw the French and saw Tikhon and
+learned that there would certainly be an attack that night, he
+decided, with the rapidity with which young people change their views,
+that the general, whom he had greatly respected till then, was a
+rubbishy German, that Denisov was a hero, the esaul a hero, and Tikhon
+a hero too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave them at a
+moment of difficulty.
+
+It was already growing dusk when Denisov, Petya, and the esaul
+rode up to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be
+seen, and Cossacks and hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the
+glade and were kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest
+where the French could not see the smoke. In the passage of the
+small watchhouse a Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some
+mutton. In the room three officers of Denisov's band were converting a
+door into a tabletop. Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to
+be dried, and at once began helping the officers to fix up the
+dinner table.
+
+In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the
+table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt.
+
+Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton
+with his hands, down which the grease trickled, Petya was in an
+ecstatic childish state of love for all men, and consequently of
+confidence that others loved him in the same way.
+
+"So then what do you think, Vasili Dmitrich?" said he to Denisov.
+"It's all right my staying a day with you?" And not waiting for a
+reply he answered his own question: "You see I was told to find out-
+well, I am finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into the
+chief... I don't want a reward... But I want..."
+
+Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head
+and flourishing his arms.
+
+"Into the vewy chief..." Denisov repeated with a smile.
+
+"Only, please let me command something, so that I may really
+command..." Petya went on. "What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a
+knife?" he said, turning to an officer who wished to cut himself a
+piece of mutton.
+
+And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired it.
+
+"Please keep it. I have several like it," said Petya, blushing.
+"Heavens! I was quite forgetting!" he suddenly cried. "I have some
+raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless ones. We have a new sutler
+and he has such capital things. I bought ten pounds. I am used to
+something sweet. Would you like some?..." and Petya ran out into the
+passage to his Cossack and brought back some bags which contained
+about five pounds of raisins. "Have some, gentlemen, have some!"
+
+"You want a coffeepot, don't you?" he asked the esaul. "I bought a
+capital one from our sutler! He has splendid things. And he's very
+honest, that's the chief thing. I'll be sure to send it to you. Or
+perhaps your flints are giving out, or are worn out- that happens
+sometimes, you know. I have brought some with me, here they are"-
+and he showed a bag- "a hundred flints. I bought them very cheap.
+Please take as many as you want, or all if you like...."
+
+Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, Petya stopped and
+blushed.
+
+He tried to remember whether he had not done anything else that
+was foolish. And running over the events of the day he remembered
+the French drummer boy. "It's capital for us here, but what of him?
+Where have they put him? Have they fed him? Haven't they hurt his
+feelings?" he thought. But having caught himself saying too much about
+the flints, he was now afraid to speak out.
+
+"I might ask," he thought, "but they'll say: 'He's a boy himself and
+so he pities the boy.' I'll show them tomorrow whether I'm a boy. Will
+it seem odd if I ask?" Petya thought. "Well, never mind!" and
+immediately, blushing and looking anxiously at the officers to see
+if they appeared ironical, he said:
+
+"May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give him
+something to eat?... Perhaps..."
+
+"Yes, he's a poor little fellow," said Denisov, who evidently saw
+nothing shameful in this reminder. "Call him in. His name is Vincent
+Bosse. Have him fetched."
+
+"I'll call him," said Petya.
+
+"Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow," Denisov repeated.
+
+Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this. He slipped in
+between the officers, came close to Denisov, and said:
+
+"Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!"
+
+And having kissed Denisov he ran out of the hut.
+
+"Bosse! Vincent!" Petya cried, stopping outside the door.
+
+"Who do you want, sir?" asked a voice in the darkness.
+
+Petya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured
+that day.
+
+"Ah, Vesenny?" said a Cossack.
+
+Vincent, the boy's name, had already been changed by the Cossacks
+into Vesenny (vernal) and into Vesenya by the peasants and soldiers.
+In both these adaptations the reference to spring (vesna) matched
+the impression made by the young lad.
+
+"He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesenya!
+Vesenya!- Vesenny!" laughing voices were heard calling to one
+another in the darkness.
+
+"He's a smart lad," said an hussar standing near Petya. "We gave him
+something to eat a while ago. He was awfully hungry!"
+
+The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was heard in the
+darkness, and the drummer boy came to the door.
+
+"Ah, c'est vous!" said Petya. "Voulez-vous manger? N'ayez pas
+peur, on ne vous fera pas de mal,"~^ he added shyly and affectionately,
+touching the boy's hand. "Entrez, entrez."~^
+
+^~ "Ah, it's you! Do you want something to eat? Don't be afraid,
+they won't hurt you."
+
+^~ "Come in, come in."
+
+"Merci, monsieur,"~^ said the drummer boy in a trembling almost
+childish voice, and he began scraping his dirty feet on the threshold.
+
+^~ "Thank you, sir."
+
+There were many things Petya wanted to say to the drummer boy, but
+did not dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then
+in the darkness he took the boy's hand and pressed it.
+
+"Come in, come in!" he repeated in a gentle whisper. "Oh, what can I
+do for him?" he thought, and opening the door he let the boy pass in
+first.
+
+When the boy had entered the hut, Petya sat down at a distance
+from him, considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention to
+him. But he fingered the money in his pocket and wondered whether it
+would seem ridiculous to give some to the drummer boy.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The arrival of Dolokhov diverted Petya's attention from the
+drummer boy, to whom Denisov had had some mutton and vodka given,
+and whom he had had dressed in a Russian coat so that he might be kept
+with their band and not sent away with the other prisoners. Petya
+had heard in the army many stories of Dolokhov's extraordinary bravery
+and of his cruelty to the French, so from the moment he entered the
+hut Petya did not take his eyes from him, but braced himself up more
+and more and held his head high, that he might not be unworthy even of
+such company.
+
+Dolokhov's appearance amazed Petya by its simplicity.
+
+Denisov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of Nicholas
+the Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of speaking and
+everything he did indicated his unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in
+Moscow had worn a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most
+correct officer of the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a
+Guardsman's padded coat with an Order of St. George at his
+buttonhole and a plain forage cap set straight on his head. He took
+off his wet felt cloak in a corner of the room, and without greeting
+anyone went up to Denisov and began questioning him about the matter
+in hand. Denisov told him of the designs the large detachments had
+on the transport, of the message Petya had brought, and his own
+replies to both generals. Then he told him all he knew of the French
+detachment.
+
+"That's so. But we must know what troops they are and their
+numbers," said Dolokhov. "It will be necessary to go there. We can't
+start the affair without knowing for certain how many there are. I
+like to work accurately. Here now- wouldn't one of these gentlemen
+like to ride over to the French camp with me? I have brought a spare
+uniform."
+
+"I, I... I'll go with you!" cried Petya.
+
+"There's no need for you to go at all," said Denisov, addressing
+Dolokhov, "and as for him, I won't let him go on any account."
+
+"I like that!" exclaimed Petya. "Why shouldn't I go?"
+
+"Because it's useless."
+
+"Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall go, and
+that's all. You'll take me, won't you?" he said, turning to Dolokhov.
+
+"Why not?" Dolokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of
+the French drummer boy. "Have you had that youngster with you long?"
+he asked Denisov.
+
+"He was taken today but he knows nothing. I'm keeping him with me."
+
+"Yes, and where do you put the others?" inquired Dolokhov.
+
+"Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them," shouted
+Denisov, suddenly flushing. "And I say boldly that I have not a single
+man's life on my conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send
+thirty or thwee hundwed men to town under escort, instead of staining-
+I speak bluntly- staining the honor of a soldier?"
+
+"That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this young count
+of sixteen," said Dolokhov with cold irony, "but it's time for you
+to drop it."
+
+"Why, I've not said anything! I only say that I'll certainly go with
+you," said Petya shyly.
+
+"But for you and me, old fellow, it's time to drop these amenities,"
+continued Dolokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking
+of this subject which irritated Denisov. "Now, why have you kept
+this lad?" he went on, swaying his head. "Because you are sorry for
+him! Don't we know those 'receipts' of yours? You send a hundred men
+away, and thirty get there. The rest either starve or get killed. So
+isn't it all the same not to send them?"
+
+The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.
+
+"That's not the point. I'm not going to discuss the matter. I do not
+wish to take it on my conscience. You say they'll die. All wight. Only
+not by my fault!"
+
+Dolokhov began laughing.
+
+"Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if
+they did catch me they'd string me up to an aspen tree, and with all
+your chivalry just the same." He paused. "However, we must get to
+work. Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms
+in it. Well, are you coming with me?" he asked Petya.
+
+"I? Yes, yes, certainly!" cried Petya, blushing almost to tears
+and glancing at Denisov.
+
+While Dolokhov had been disputing with Denisov what should be done
+with prisoners, Petya had once more felt awkward and restless; but
+again he had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about.
+"If grown-up, distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and
+right," thought he. "But above all Denisov must not dare to imagine
+that I'll obey him and that he can order me about. I will certainly go
+to the French camp with Dolokhov. If he can, so can I!"
+
+And to all Denisov's persuasions, Petya replied that he too was
+accustomed to do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that
+he never considered personal danger.
+
+"For you'll admit that if we don't know for sure how many of them
+there are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are
+only two of us. Besides, I want to go very much and certainly will go,
+so don't hinder me," said he. "It will only make things worse..."
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov
+rode to the clearing from which Denisov had reconnoitered the French
+camp, and emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended
+into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks
+accompanying him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot
+along the road to the bridge. Petya, his heart in his mouth with
+excitement, rode by his side.
+
+"If we're caught, I won't be taken alive! I have a pistol,"
+whispered he.
+
+"Don't talk Russian," said Dolokhov in a hurried whisper, and at
+that very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: "Qui
+vive?"~^ and the click of a musket.
+
+^~ "Who goes there?"
+
+The blood rushed to Petya's face and he grasped his pistol.
+
+"Lanciers du 6-me,"~^ replied Dolokhov, neither hastening nor
+slackening his horse's pace.
+
+^~ "Lancers of the 6th Regiment."
+
+The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.
+
+"Mot d'ordre."~^
+
+^~ "Password."
+
+Dolokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.
+
+"Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici?"~^ he asked.
+
+^~ "Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?"
+
+"Mot d'ordre," repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not
+replying.
+
+"Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas
+le mot d'ordre..." cried Dolokhov suddenly flaring up and riding
+straight at the sentinel. "Je vous demande si le colonel est ici."~^
+
+^~ "When an officer is making his round, sentinels don't ask him for
+the password.... I am asking you if the colonel is here."
+
+And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped
+aside, Dolokhov rode up the incline at a walk.
+
+Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dolokhov
+stopped him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The
+man, a soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up
+to Dolokhov's horse, touched it with his hand, and explained simply
+and in a friendly way that the commander and the officers were
+higher up the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm, as he
+called the landowner's house.
+
+Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk
+could be heard around the campfires, Dolokhov turned into the
+courtyard of the landowner's house. Having ridden in, he dismounted
+and approached a big blazing campfire, around which sat several men
+talking noisily. Something was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge
+of the fire and a soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by
+the fire, was kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.
+
+"Oh, he's a hard nut to crack," said one of the officers who was
+sitting in the shadow at the other side of the fire.
+
+"He'll make them get a move on, those fellows!" said another,
+laughing.
+
+Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of
+Dolokhov's and Petya's steps as they advanced to the fire leading
+their horses.
+
+"Bonjour, messieurs!"~^ said Dolokhov loudly and clearly.
+
+^~ "Good day, gentlemen."
+
+There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire,
+and one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up
+to Dolokhov.
+
+"Is that you, Clement?" he asked. "Where the devil...? But, noticing
+his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dolokhov as
+a stranger, asking what he could do for him.
+
+Dolokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake
+their regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether
+they knew anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything,
+and Petya thought the officers were beginning to look at him and
+Dolokhov with hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were
+silent.
+
+"If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too
+late," said a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.
+
+Dolokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on
+farther that night.
+
+He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot
+and squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the
+long neck. That officer did not take his eyes from Dolokhov and
+again asked to what regiment he belonged. Dolokhov, as if he had not
+heard the question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe
+which he took from his pocket began asking the officer in how far
+the road before them was safe from Cossacks.
+
+"Those brigands are everywhere," replied an officer from behind
+the fire.
+
+Dolokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers
+such as his companion and himself, "but probably they would not dare
+to attack large detachments?" he added inquiringly. No one replied.
+
+"Well, now he'll come away," Petya thought every moment as he
+stood by the campfire listening to the talk.
+
+But Dolokhov restarted the conversation which had dropped and
+began putting direct questions as to how many men there were in the
+battalion, how many battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about
+the Russian prisoners with that detachment, Dolokhov said:
+
+"A horrid business dragging these corpses about with one! It would
+be better to shoot such rabble," and burst into loud laughter, so
+strange that Petya thought the French would immediately detect their
+disguise, and involuntarily took a step back from the campfire.
+
+No one replied a word to Dolokhov's laughter, and a French officer
+whom they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and
+whispered something to a companion. Dolokhov got up and called to
+the soldier who was holding their horses.
+
+"Will they bring our horses or not?" thought Petya, instinctively
+drawing nearer to Dolokhov.
+
+The horses were brought.
+
+"Good evening, gentlemen," said Dolokhov.
+
+Petya wished to say "Good night" but could not utter a word. The
+officers were whispering together. Dolokhov was a long time mounting
+his horse which would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at
+a footpace. Petya rode beside him, longing to look round to see
+whether or no the French were running after them, but not daring to.
+
+Coming out onto the road Dolokhov did not ride back across the
+open country, but through the village. At one spot he stopped and
+listened. "Do you hear?" he asked. Petya recognized the sound of
+Russian voices and saw the dark figures of Russian prisoners round
+their campfires. When they had descended to the bridge Petya and
+Dolokhov rode past the sentinel, who without saying a word paced
+morosely up and down it, then they descended into the hollow where the
+Cossacks awaited them.
+
+"Well now, good-by. Tell Denisov, 'at the first shot at
+daybreak,'" said Dolokhov and was about to ride away, but Petya seized
+hold of him.
+
+"Really!" he cried, "you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how
+splendid! How I love you!"
+
+"All right, all right!" said Dolokhov. But Petya did not let go of
+him and Dolokhov saw through the gloom that Petya was bending toward
+him and wanted to kiss him. Dolokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his
+horse, and vanished into the darkness.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Having returned to the watchman's hut, Petya found Denisov in the
+passage. He was awaiting Petya's return in a state of agitation,
+anxiety, and self-reproach for having let him go.
+
+"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Yes, thank God!" he repeated,
+listening to Petya's rapturous account. "But, devil take you, I
+haven't slept because of you! Well, thank God. Now lie down. We can
+still get a nap before morning."
+
+"But... no," said Petya, "I don't want to sleep yet. Besides I
+know myself, if I fall asleep it's finished. And then I am used to not
+sleeping before a battle."
+
+He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of his
+expedition and vividly picturing to himself what would happen next
+day.
+
+Then, noticing that Denisov was asleep, he rose and went out of
+doors.
+
+It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but drops were
+still falling from the trees. Near the watchman's hut the black shapes
+of the Cossacks' shanties and of horses tethered together could be
+seen. Behind the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with their
+horses beside them were discernible, and in the hollow the dying
+campfire gleamed red. Not all the Cossacks and hussars were asleep;
+here and there, amid the sounds of falling drops and the munching of
+the horses near by, could be heard low voices which seemed to be
+whispering.
+
+Petya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to the wagons.
+Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses
+munching their oats. In the dark Petya recognized his own horse, which
+he called "Karabakh" though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to
+it.
+
+"Well, Karabakh! We'll do some service tomorrow," said he,
+sniffing its nostrils and kissing it.
+
+"Why aren't you asleep, sir?" said a Cossack who was sitting under a
+wagon.
+
+"No, ah... Likhachev- isn't that your name? Do you know I have
+only just come back! We've been into the French camp."
+
+And Petya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only of his ride
+but also of his object, and why he considered it better to risk his
+life than to act "just anyhow."
+
+"Well, you should get some sleep now," said the Cossack.
+
+"No, I am used to this," said Petya. "I say, aren't the flints in
+your pistols worn out? I brought some with me. Don't you want any? You
+can have some."
+
+The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get a closer look
+at Petya.
+
+"Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately," said
+Petya. "Some fellows do things just anyhow, without preparation, and
+then they're sorry for it afterwards. I don't like that."
+
+"Just so," said the Cossack.
+
+"Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you sharpen
+my saber for me? It's got bl..." (Petya feared to tell a lie, and
+the saber never had been sharpened.) "Can you do it?"
+
+"Of course I can."
+
+Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the
+warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat
+on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon.
+
+"I say! Are the lads asleep?" asked Petya.
+
+"Some are, and some aren't- like us."
+
+"Well, and that boy?"
+
+"Vesenny? Oh, he's thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast
+asleep after his fright. He was that glad!"
+
+After that Petya remained silent for a long time, listening to the
+sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness and a black figure
+appeared.
+
+"What are you sharpening?" asked a man coming up to the wagon.
+
+"Why, this gentleman's saber."
+
+"That's right," said the man, whom Petya took to be an hussar.
+"Was the cup left here?"
+
+"There, by the wheel!"
+
+The hussar took the cup.
+
+"It must be daylight soon," said he, yawning, and went away.
+
+Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denisov's
+guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon
+captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under
+it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark
+blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below
+to the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had
+come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew
+nor waited to know anything of all this. He was in a fairy kingdom
+where nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be
+the watchman's hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very
+depths of the earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be
+the eye of an enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a
+wagon, but it might very well be that he was not sitting on a wagon
+but on a terribly high tower from which, if he fell, he would have
+to fall for a whole day or a whole month, or go on falling and never
+reach the bottom. Perhaps it was just the Cossack, Likhachev, who
+was sitting under the wagon, but it might be the kindest, bravest,
+most wonderful, most splendid man in the world, whom no one knew of.
+It might really have been that the hussar came for water and went back
+into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply vanished- disappeared
+altogether and dissolved into nothingness.
+
+Nothing Petya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was
+in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.
+
+He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the
+earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were
+swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if
+the clouds were passing, and a clear black sky appeared. Sometimes
+it seemed as if the black spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed
+to be rising high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink so low
+that one could touch it with one's hand.
+
+Petya's eyes began to close and he swayed a little.
+
+The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The horses neighed
+and jostled one another. Someone snored.
+
+"Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg..." hissed the saber against the
+whetstone, and suddenly Petya heard an harmonious orchestra playing
+some unknown, sweetly solemn hymn. Petya was as musical as Natasha and
+more so than Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about
+it, and so the melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him
+particularly fresh and attractive. The music became more and more
+audible. The melody grew and passed from one instrument to another.
+And what was played was a fugue- though Petya had not the least
+conception of what a fugue is. Each instrument- now resembling a
+violin and now a horn, but better and clearer than violin or horn-
+played its own part, and before it had finished the melody merged with
+another instrument that began almost the same air, and then with a
+third and a fourth; and they all blended into one and again became
+separate and again blended, now into solemn church music, now into
+something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant.
+
+"Oh- why, that was in a dream!" Petya said to himself, as he lurched
+forward. "It's in my ears. But perhaps it's music of my own. Well,
+go on, my music! Now!..."
+
+He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance,
+sounds fluttered, grew into harmonies, separated, blended, and again
+all mingled into the same sweet and solemn hymn. "Oh, this is
+delightful! As much as I like and as I like!" said Petya to himself.
+He tried to conduct that enormous orchestra.
+
+"Now softly, softly die away!" and the sounds obeyed him. "Now
+fuller, more joyful. Still more and more joyful!" And from an
+unknown depth rose increasingly triumphant sounds. "Now voices join
+in!" ordered Petya. And at first from afar he heard men's voices and
+then women's. The voices grew in harmonious triumphant strength, and
+Petya listened to their surpassing beauty in awe and joy.
+
+With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song, the drip from
+the trees, and the hissing of the saber, "Ozheg-zheg-zheg..." and
+again the horses jostled one another and neighed, not disturbing the
+choir but joining in it.
+
+Petya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all
+the time, wondered at his enjoyment and regretted that there was no
+one to share it. He was awakened by Likhachev's kindly voice.
+
+"It's ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!"
+
+Petya woke up.
+
+"It's getting light, it's really getting light!" he exclaimed.
+
+The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to
+their very tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare
+branches. Petya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket
+and gave it to Likhachev; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and
+sheathed it. The Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening
+their saddle girths.
+
+"And here's the commander," said Likhachev.
+
+Denisov came out of the watchman's hut and, having called Petya,
+gave orders to get ready.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness,
+tightened their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denisov stood
+by the watchman's hut giving final orders. The infantry of the
+detachment passed along the road and quickly disappeared amid the
+trees in the mist of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing through
+the mud. The esaul gave some orders to his men. Petya held his horse
+by the bridle, impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face,
+having been bathed in cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were
+particularly brilliant. Cold shivers ran down his spine and his
+whole body pulsed rhythmically.
+
+"Well, is ev'wything weady?" asked Denisov. "Bwing the horses."
+
+The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the Cossack
+because the saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted.
+Petya put his foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to
+nip his leg, but Petya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of
+his own weight and, turning to look at the hussars starting in the
+darkness behind him, rode up to Denisov.
+
+"Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for
+God's sake...!" said he.
+
+Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya's very existence. He turned
+to glance at him.
+
+"I ask one thing of you," he said sternly, "to obey me and not shove
+yourself forward anywhere."
+
+He did not say another word to Petya but rode in silence all the
+way. When they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably
+growing light over the field. Denisov talked in whispers with the
+esaul and the Cossacks rode past Petya and Denisov. When they had
+all ridden by, Denisov touched his horse and rode down the hill.
+Slipping onto their haunches and sliding, the horses descended with
+their riders into the ravine. Petya rode beside Denisov, the pulsation
+of his body constantly increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter,
+but the mist still hid distant objects. Having reached the valley,
+Denisov looked back and nodded to a Cossack beside him.
+
+"The signal!" said he.
+
+The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the
+tramp of horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from
+various sides, and then more shots.
+
+At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Petya lashed his
+horse and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denisov who
+shouted at him. It seemed to Petya that at the moment the shot was
+fired it suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge.
+Cossacks were galloping along the road in front of him. On the
+bridge he collided with a Cossack who had fallen behind, but he
+galloped on. In front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were
+running from right to left across the road. One of them fell in the
+mud under his horse's feet.
+
+Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the
+midst of that crowd terrible screams arose. Petya galloped up, and the
+first thing he saw was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman,
+clutching the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.
+
+"Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!" shouted Petya, and giving rein to his
+excited horse he galloped forward along the village street.
+
+He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged
+Russian prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road,
+were shouting something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking
+Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red
+face, had been defending himself against the hussars. When Petya
+galloped up the Frenchman had already fallen. "Too late again!"
+flashed through Petya's mind and he galloped on to the place from
+which the rapid firing could be heard. The shots came from the yard of
+the landowner's house he had visited the night before with Dolokhov.
+The French were making a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden
+thickly overgrown with bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who
+crowded at the gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached the
+gate, Petya saw Dolokhov, whose face was of a pale-greenish tint,
+shouting to his men. "Go round! Wait for the infantry!" he exclaimed
+as Petya rode up to him.
+
+"Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!" shouted Petya, and without pausing a moment
+galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the
+smoke was thickest.
+
+A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others
+plashed against something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped after
+Petya into the gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke
+some of the French threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes
+to meet the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the
+pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but instead of
+holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly and
+strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his saddle. His
+horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was smoldering in the
+morning light, stopped suddenly, and Petya fell heavily on to the
+wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs jerked rapidly
+though his head was quite motionless. A bullet had pierced his skull.
+
+After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the
+house with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that
+they surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted and went up to Petya, who lay
+motionless with outstretched arms.
+
+"Done for!" he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet
+Denisov who was riding toward him.
+
+"Killed?" cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance the
+unmistakably lifeless attitude- very familiar to him- in which Petya's
+body was lying.
+
+"Done for!" repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of these words
+afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who
+were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. "We won't take
+them!" he called out to Denisov.
+
+Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and with
+trembling hands turned toward himself the bloodstained,
+mud-bespattered face which had already gone white.
+
+"I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take them all!"
+he recalled Petya's words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise
+at the sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denisov turned
+away, walked to the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.
+
+Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and Dolokhov was
+Pierre Bezukhov.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been
+issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners
+among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party
+was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it
+had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled
+the first stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other
+half had gone on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had
+marched in front of the prisoners was left; they had all
+disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them
+during the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junot's enormous
+baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a
+cavalry baggage train.
+
+From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in
+three columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder
+that Pierre had noticed at their first halting place after leaving
+Moscow had now reached the utmost limit.
+
+The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead
+horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments
+continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again
+lagging behind it.
+
+Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the
+soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run
+headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and
+abused each other for their causeless panic.
+
+These three groups traveling together- the cavalry stores, the
+convoy of prisoners, and Junot's baggage train- still constituted a
+separate and united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly
+melting away.
+
+Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred
+and twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been
+captured or left behind. Some of Junot's wagons also had been captured
+or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers
+from Davout's corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned
+that a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to
+the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had
+been shot by the marshal's own order because a silver spoon
+belonging to the marshal had been found in his possession.
+
+The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three
+hundred and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a
+hundred now remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort
+than even the cavalry saddles or Junot's baggage. They understood that
+the saddles and Junot's spoon might be of some use, but that cold
+and hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard equally cold and
+hungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case
+the order was to shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but
+revolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition
+they themselves were in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the
+prisoners and so rendering their own plight still worse, treated
+them with particular moroseness and severity.
+
+At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the
+prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores,
+several of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away,
+but were recaptured by the French and shot.
+
+The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer
+prisoners should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been
+abandoned. All who could walk went together, and after the third stage
+Pierre had rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that
+had chosen Karataev for its master.
+
+On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again fell ill with
+the fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he
+grew gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know
+why, but since Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an
+effort to go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning
+with which Karataev generally lay down at the halting places, and when
+he smelled the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than
+before, Pierre moved farther away and did not think about him.
+
+While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his
+intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is
+created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the
+satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises
+not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last
+three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory
+truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that
+as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely
+free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack
+freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and
+that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed
+of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now,
+sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while
+the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes
+he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet
+that were covered with sores- his footgear having long since fallen to
+pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife- of his own
+free will as it had seemed to him- he had been no more free than now
+when they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself
+subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he
+scarcely felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw, and
+scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing,
+the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder they used instead of salt was
+even pleasant; there was no great cold, it was always warm walking
+in the daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice that
+devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at first hard to
+bear was his feet.
+
+After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet by the
+campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when
+everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,
+walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more
+terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,
+but thought of other things.
+
+Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the
+saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to
+another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows
+superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain
+limit.
+
+He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who
+lagged behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did
+not think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently would
+soon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about
+himself. The harder his position became and the more terrible the
+future, the more independent of that position in which he found
+himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and
+imaginings that came to him.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going uphill
+along the muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the
+roughness of the way. Occasionally he glanced at the familiar crowd
+around him and then again at his feet. The former and the latter
+were alike familiar and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran
+merrily along the side of the road, sometimes in proof of its
+agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along
+on three, and then again going on all four and rushing to bark at
+the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier and sleeker
+than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the flesh of different
+animals- from men to horses- in various stages of decomposition; and
+as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the dog could eat all
+it wanted.
+
+It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment
+it might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began
+raining harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed
+the water, which ran along the ruts in streams.
+
+Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps
+in threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally
+addressing the rain, he repeated: "Now then, now then, go on! Pelt
+harder!"
+
+It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and
+deep within him his soul was occupied with something important and
+comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction
+from a conversation with Karataev the day before.
+
+At their yesterday's halting place, feeling chilly by a dying
+campfire, Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was
+burning better. There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up- head and
+all- with his greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers
+in his effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre
+knew. It was already past midnight, the hour when Karataev was usually
+free of his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the
+fire and heard Platon's voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his
+pathetic face brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at
+his heart. His feeling of pity for this man frightened him and he
+wished to go away, but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down,
+trying not to look at Platon.
+
+"Well, how are you?" he asked.
+
+"How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant us death,"
+replied Platon, and at once resumed the story he had begun.
+
+"And so, brother," he continued, with a smile on his pale
+emaciated face and a particularly happy light in his eyes, " you
+see, brother..."
+
+Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev had told
+it to him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially
+joyful emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to that
+tale as to something new, and the quiet rapture Karataev evidently
+felt as he told it communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was
+of an old merchant who lived a good and God-fearing life with his
+family, and who went once to the Nizhni fair with a companion- a
+rich merchant.
+
+Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning
+his companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained
+knife was found under the old merchant's pillow. He was tried,
+knouted, and his nostrils having been torn off, "all in due form" as
+Karataev put it, he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.
+
+"And so, brother" (it was at this point that Pierre came up), "ten
+years or more passed by. The old man was living as a convict,
+submitting as he should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God
+for death. Well, one night the convicts were gathered just as we
+are, with the old man among them. And they began telling what each was
+suffering for, and how they had sinned against God. One told how he
+had taken a life, another had taken two, a third had set a house on
+fire, while another had simply been a vagrant and had done nothing. So
+they asked the old man: 'What are you being punished for, Daddy?'- 'I,
+my dear brothers,' said he, 'am being punished for my own and other
+men's sins. But I have not killed anyone or taken anything that was
+not mine, but have only helped my poorer brothers. I was a merchant,
+my dear brothers, and had much property. 'And he went on to tell
+them all about it in due order. 'I don't grieve for myself,' he
+says, 'God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry for my old
+wife and the children,' and the old man began to weep. Now it happened
+that in the group was the very man who had killed the other
+merchant. 'Where did it happen, Daddy?' he said. 'When, and in what
+month?' He asked all about it and his heart began to ache. So he comes
+up to the old man like this, and falls down at his feet! 'You are
+perishing because of me, Daddy,' he says. 'It's quite true, lads, that
+this man,' he says, 'is being tortured innocently and for nothing! I,'
+he says, 'did that deed, and I put the knife under your head while you
+were asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,' he says, 'for Christ's sake!'"
+
+Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and
+he drew the logs together.
+
+"And the old man said, 'God will forgive you, we are all sinners
+in His sight. I suffer for my own sins,' and he wept bitter tears.
+Well, and what do you think, dear friends?" Karataev continued, his
+face brightening more and more with a rapturous smile as if what he
+now had to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his
+story: "What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed to
+the authorities. 'I have taken six lives,' he says (he was a great
+sinner), 'but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don't let
+him suffer because of me.' So he confessed and it was all written down
+and the papers sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and
+while they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in
+the papers all in due form- the authorities I mean- time passed. The
+affair reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar's decree came: to
+set the merchant free and give him a compensation that had been
+awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for the old man.
+'Where is the old man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A
+paper has come from the Tsar!' so they began looking for him," here
+Karataev's lower jaw trembled, "but God had already forgiven him- he
+was dead! That's how it was, dear fellows!" Karataev concluded and sat
+for a long time silent, gazing before him with a smile.
+
+And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story
+itself but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that
+lit up Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic significance of
+that joy.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"A vos places!"~^ suddenly cried a voice.
+
+^~ "To your places."
+
+A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something
+joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the
+prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left
+came smartly dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the
+prisoners at a trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension
+people feel at the approach of those in authority. The prisoners
+thronged together and were pushed off the road. The convoy formed up.
+
+"The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!" and hardly had
+the sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage drawn by six gray horses
+rattled by. Pierre caught a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat
+with a tranquil look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of
+the marshals. His eye fell on Pierre's large and striking figure,
+and in the expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre
+thought he detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that sympathy.
+
+The general in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with
+a red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several
+officers formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their
+faces all looked excited and worried.
+
+"What did he say? What did he say?" Pierre heard them ask.
+
+While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in
+a crowd, and Pierre saw Karataev whom he had not yet seen that
+morning. He sat in his short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On
+his face, besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday
+while telling the tale of the merchant who suffered innocently,
+there was now an expression of quiet solemnity.
+
+Karataev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes now filled with
+tears, evidently wishing him to come near that he might say
+something to him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself.
+He made as if he did not notice that look and moved hastily away.
+
+When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked round.
+Karataev was still sitting at the side of the road under the birch
+tree and two Frenchmen were talking over his head. Pierre did not look
+round again but went limping up the hill.
+
+From behind, where Karataev had been sitting, came the sound of a
+shot. Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment he remembered that
+he had not yet finished reckoning up how many stages still remained to
+Smolensk- a calculation he had begun before the marshal went by. And
+he again started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one
+of whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both looked pale,
+and in the expression on their faces- one of them glanced timidly at
+Pierre- there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of
+the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and
+remembered that, two days before, that man had burned his shirt
+while drying it at the fire and how they had laughed at him.
+
+Behind him, where Karataev had been sitting, the dog began to
+howl. "What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?" thought Pierre.
+
+His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him, avoided
+looking back at the place where the shot had been fired and the dog
+was howling, just as Pierre did, but there was a set look on all their
+faces.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal's baggage train stopped
+at the village of Shamshevo. The men crowded together round the
+campfires. Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh,
+lay down with his back to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He
+again slept as he had done at Mozhaysk after the battle of Borodino.
+
+Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or
+another, gave expression to his thoughts, and even to the same
+thoughts that had been expressed in his dream at Mozhaysk.
+
+"Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and
+that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in
+consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and
+more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings,
+in innocent sufferings."
+
+"Karataev!" came to Pierre's mind.
+
+And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly
+old man who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. "Wait a
+bit," said the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was
+alive- a vibrating ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface
+consisted of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved
+and changed places, sometimes several of them merging into one,
+sometimes one dividing into many. Each drop tried to spread out and
+occupy as much space as possible, but others striving to do the same
+compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.
+
+"That is life," said the old teacher.
+
+"How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "How is it I did not
+know it before?"
+
+"God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect
+Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from
+the surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now,
+Karataev has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?"
+said the teacher.
+
+"Do you understand, damn you?" shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.
+
+He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a
+Russian soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting
+a piece of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and
+his sinewy, hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned
+the ramrod. His brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly
+visible by the glow of the charcoal.
+
+"It's all the same to him," he muttered, turning quickly to a
+soldier who stood behind him. "Brigand! Get away!"
+
+And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned
+away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier
+the Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting
+something with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the
+blue-gray dog, sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.
+
+"Ah, he's come?" said Pierre. "And Plat-" he began, but did not
+finish.
+
+Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his
+fancy- of the look Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of
+the shot heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty
+faces of the two Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and
+smoking gun, and of Karataev's absence at this halt- and he was on the
+point of realizing that Karataev had been killed, but just at that
+instant, he knew not why, the recollection came to his mind of a
+summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish lady on the
+veranda of his house in Kiev. And without linking up the events of the
+day or drawing a conclusion from them, Pierre closed his eyes,
+seeing a vision of the country in summertime mingled with memories
+of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating globe, and he sank into
+water so that it closed over his head.
+
+Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid
+firing. French soldiers were running past him.
+
+"The Cossacks!" one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of
+Russians surrounded Pierre.
+
+For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him.
+All around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy.
+
+"Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!" old soldiers exclaimed, weeping,
+as they embraced Cossacks and hussars.
+
+The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered
+them clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he
+sat among them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier
+who approached him, and kissed him, weeping.
+
+Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd of
+disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had
+happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed
+Dolokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched
+them with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent.
+On the opposite side stood Dolokhov's Cossack, counting the
+prisoners and marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.
+
+"How many?" Dolokhov asked the Cossack.
+
+"The second hundred," replied the Cossack.
+
+"Filez, filez!"~^ Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted this
+expression from the French, and when his eyes met those of the
+prisoners they flashed with a cruel light.
+
+^~ "Get along, get along!"
+
+Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some
+Cossacks who were carrying the body of Petya Rostov to a hole that had
+been dug in the garden.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight
+of the French assumed a still more tragic character, with men
+freezing, or roasting themselves to death at the campfires, while
+carriages with people dressed in furs continued to drive past,
+carrying away the property that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings,
+and dukes; but the process of the flight and disintegration of the
+French army went on essentially as before.
+
+From Moscow to Vyazma the French army of seventy-three thousand
+men not reckoning the Guards (who did nothing during the whole war but
+pillage) was reduced to thirty-six thousand, though not more than five
+thousand had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding
+terms of the progression could be determined mathematically. The
+French army melted away and perished at the same rate from Moscow to
+Vyazma, from Vyazma to Smolensk, from Smolensk to the Berezina, and
+from the Berezina to Vilna- independently of the greater or lesser
+intensity of the cold, the pursuit, the barring of the way, or any
+other particular conditions. Beyond Vyazma the French army instead
+of moving in three columns huddled together into one mass, and so went
+on to the end. Berthier wrote to his Emperor (we know how far
+commanding officers allow themselves to diverge from the truth in
+describing the condition of an army) and this is what he said:
+
+I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition of the
+various corps I have had occasion to observe during different stages
+of the last two or three days' march. They are almost disbanded.
+Scarcely a quarter of the soldiers remain with the standards of
+their regiments, the others go off by themselves in different
+directions hoping to find food and escape discipline. In general
+they regard Smolensk as the place where they hope to recover. During
+the last few days many of the men have been seen to throw away their
+cartridges and their arms. In such a state of affairs, whatever your
+ultimate plans may be, the interest of Your Majesty's service
+demands that the army should be rallied at Smolensk and should first
+of all be freed from ineffectives, such as dismounted cavalry,
+unnecessary baggage, and artillery material that is no longer in
+proportion to the present forces. The soldiers, who are worn out
+with hunger and fatigue, need these supplies as well as a few days'
+rest. Many have died last days on the road or at the bivouacs. This
+state of things is continually becoming worse and makes one fear
+that unless a prompt remedy is applied the troops will no longer be
+under control in case of an engagement.
+
+November 9: twenty miles from Smolensk.
+
+After staggering into Smolensk which seemed to them a promised land,
+the French, searching for food, killed one another, sacked their own
+stores, and when everything had been plundered fled farther.
+
+They all went without knowing whither or why they were going.
+Still less did that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no one issued any
+orders to him. But still he and those about him retained their old
+habits: wrote commands, letters, reports, and orders of the day;
+called one another sire, mon cousin, prince d'Eckmuhl, roi de
+Naples, and so on. But these orders and reports were only on paper,
+nothing in them was acted upon for they could not be carried out,
+and though they entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or
+Cousins, they all felt that they were miserable wretches who had
+done much evil for which they had now to pay. And though they
+pretended to be concerned about the army, each was thinking only of
+himself and of how to get away quickly and save himself.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign
+from Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian
+blindman's bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of them
+occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his
+whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into
+a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to
+escape runs straight into his opponent's arms.
+
+At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga road,
+Napoleon's armies made their presence known, but later when they
+reached the Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell
+tight- and often thinking they were escaping ran right into the
+Russians.
+
+Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit
+and the consequent exhaustion of the horses, the chief means of
+approximately ascertaining the enemy's position- by cavalry
+scouting- was not available. Besides, as a result of the frequent
+and rapid change of position by each army, even what information was
+obtained could not be delivered in time. If news was received one
+day that the enemy had been in a certain position the day before, by
+the third day when something could have been done, that army was
+already two days' march farther on and in quite another position.
+
+One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolensk there were
+several different roads available for the French, and one would have
+thought that during their stay of four days they might have learned
+where the enemy was, might have arranged some more advantageous plan
+and undertaken something new. But after a four days' halt the mob,
+with no maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten
+track, neither to the right nor to the left but along the old- the
+worst- road, through Krasnoe and Orsha.
+
+Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French
+separated in their flight and spread out over a distance of
+twenty-four hours. In front of them all fled the Emperor, then the
+kings, then the dukes. The Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take
+the road to the right beyond the Dnieper- which was the only
+reasonable thing for him to do- themselves turned to the right and
+came out onto the highroad at Krasnoe. And here as in a game of
+blindman's buff the French ran into our vanguard. Seeing their enemy
+unexpectedly the French fell into confusion and stopped short from the
+sudden fright, but then they resumed their flight, abandoning their
+comrades who were farther behind. Then for three days separate
+portions of the French army- first Murat's (the vice-king's), then
+Davout's, and then Ney's- ran, as it were, the gauntlet of the Russian
+army. They abandoned one another, abandoned all their heavy baggage,
+their artillery, and half their men, and fled, getting past the
+Russians by night by making semicircles to the right.
+
+Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of
+Smolensk which were in nobody's way, because despite the unfortunate
+plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor
+against which they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of
+ten thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha with only one thousand men
+left, having abandoned all the rest and all his cannon, and having
+crossed the Dnieper at night by stealth at a wooded spot.
+
+From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna, still
+playing at blindman's buff with the pursuing army. At the Berezina
+they again became disorganized, many were drowned and many
+surrendered, but those who got across the river fled farther. Their
+supreme chief donned a fur coat and, having seated himself in a
+sleigh, galloped on alone, abandoning his companions. The others who
+could do so drove away too, leaving those who could not to surrender
+or die.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which
+they did all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they
+turned onto the Kaluga road to the day their leader fled from the
+army, none of the movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might
+have thought that regarding this period of the campaign the
+historians, who attributed the actions of the mass to the will of
+one man, would have found it impossible to make the story of the
+retreat fit their theory. But no! Mountains of books have been written
+by the historians about this campaign, and everywhere are described
+Napoleon's arrangements, the maneuvers, and his profound plans which
+guided the army, as well as the military genius shown by his marshals.
+
+The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free road into a
+well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along
+which Kutuzov afterwards pursued him- this unnecessary retreat along a
+devastated road- is explained to us as being due to profound
+considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for his
+retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is
+described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle
+and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick
+and said:
+
+"J'ai assez fait l'empereur; il est temps de faire le general,"~^ but
+nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the
+scattered fragments of the army he left behind.
+
+^~ "I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act the
+general."
+
+Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals,
+especially of Ney- a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he
+made his way by night around through the forest and across the Dnieper
+and escaped to Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths
+of his men.
+
+And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic
+army is presented to us by the historians as something great and
+characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in
+ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child is
+taught to be ashamed of- even that act finds justification in the
+historians' language.
+
+When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of
+historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly
+contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians
+produce a saving conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems,
+excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing
+is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed.
+
+"C'est grand!"~^ say the historians, and there no longer exists
+either good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good,
+not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of
+some special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a
+warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his
+comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que
+c'est grand,~^ and his soul is tranquil.
+
+^~ "It is great."
+
+^~ That it is great.
+
+"Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n'y
+a qu'un pas,"~^ said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been
+repeating: "Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule
+il n'y a qu'un pas.
+
+^~ "From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."
+
+And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not
+commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to
+admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable meanness.
+
+For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no
+human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where
+simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign
+of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret,
+dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is
+that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three
+armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered
+French, hungry and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the
+historians relate) the aim of the Russians was to stop the French,
+to cut them off, and capture them all?
+
+How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than
+the French had given battle at Borodino, did not achieve its purpose
+when it had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim
+was to capture them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us
+that when we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not
+beat them? How could that happen?
+
+History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions
+says that this occurred because Kutuzov and Tormasov and Chichagov,
+and this man and that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers...
+
+But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were
+guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried
+and punished? But even if we admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and
+others were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still
+incomprehensible why, the position of the Russian army being what it
+was at Krasnoe and at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior
+forces), the French army with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not
+captured, if that was what the Russians aimed at.
+
+The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military
+historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an attack) is
+unfounded, for we know that he could not restrain the troops from
+attacking at Vyazma and Tarutino.
+
+Why was the Russian army- which with inferior forces had withstood
+the enemy in full strength at Borodino- defeated at Krasnoe and the
+Berezina by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was
+numerically superior?
+
+If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing
+Napoleon and his marshals- and that aim was not merely frustrated
+but all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled- then
+this last period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the
+French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly considered
+victorious by Russian historians.
+
+The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims
+of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical
+rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit
+that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for
+Napoleon and defeats for Kutuzov.
+
+But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a
+conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French
+victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series of
+Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the
+liberation of their country.
+
+The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the
+historians studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns
+and the generals, from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth,
+have attributed to this last period of the war of 1812 an aim that
+never existed, namely that of cutting off and capturing Napoleon
+with his marshals and his army.
+
+There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have
+been senseless and its attainment quite impossible.
+
+It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon's
+disorganized army was flying from Russia with all possible speed, that
+is to say, was doing just what every Russian desired. So what was
+the use of performing various operations on the French who were
+running away as fast as they possibly could?
+
+Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men
+whose whole energy was directed to flight.
+
+Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one's own
+troops in order to destroy the French army, which without external
+interference was destroying itself at such a rate that, though its
+path was not blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more than
+it actually did in December, namely a hundredth part of the original
+army.
+
+Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the
+Emperor, kings, and dukes- whose capture would have been in the
+highest degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit
+diplomatists of the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized.
+Still more senseless would have been the wish to capture army corps of
+the French, when our own army had melted away to half before
+reaching Krasnoe and a whole division would have been needed to convoy
+the corps of prisoners, and when our men were not always getting
+full rations and the prisoners already taken were perishing of hunger.
+
+All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon
+and his army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving
+out of his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had
+planted, should run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The
+only thing to be said in excuse of that gardener would be that he
+was very angry. But not even that could be said for those who drew
+up this project, for it was not they who had suffered from the
+trampled beds.
+
+But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would
+have been senseless, it was impossible.
+
+It was impossible first because- as experience shows that a
+three-mile movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with
+the plans- the probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein
+effecting a junction on time at an appointed place was so remote as to
+be tantamount to impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who when
+he received the plan remarked that diversions planned over great
+distances do not yield the desired results.
+
+Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with
+which Napoleon's army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than
+the Russians possessed would have been required.
+
+Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term "to cut off"
+has no meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army.
+To cut off an army- to bar its road- is quite impossible, for there is
+always plenty of room to avoid capture and there is the night when
+nothing can be seen, as the military scientists might convince
+themselves by the example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only
+possible to capture prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it
+is only possible to catch a swallow if it settles on one's hand. Men
+can only be taken prisoners if they surrender according to the rules
+of strategy and tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops
+quite rightly did not consider that this suited them, since death by
+hunger and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike.
+
+Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the
+world began has a war been fought under such conditions as those
+that obtained in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the
+French strained its strength to the utmost and could not have done
+more without destroying itself.
+
+During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe
+it lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to
+the population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of
+the army without a battle.
+
+And it is of this period of the campaign- when the army lacked boots
+and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and
+was camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees
+of frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and
+the rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be
+maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where
+discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for
+months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and
+cold, when half the army perished in a single month- it is of this
+period of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich
+should have made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormasov to
+another place, and Chichagov should have crossed (more than
+knee-deep in snow) to somewhere else, and how so-and-so "routed" and
+"cut off" the French and so on and so on.
+
+The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should
+have been done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not
+to blame because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed
+that they should do what was impossible.
+
+All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between
+the facts and the historical accounts only arises because the
+historians dealing with the matter have written the history of the
+beautiful words and sentiments of various generals, and not the
+history of the events.
+
+To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do
+their surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but
+the question of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals
+and in graves does not even interest them, for it does not come within
+the range of their investigation.
+
+Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans
+and consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who
+took a direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed
+insoluble easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.
+
+The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in
+the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it
+was senseless and unattainable.
+
+The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion.
+That aim was attained in the first place of itself, as the French
+ran away, and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight.
+Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying
+the French, and thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was
+following the French, ready to use its strength in case their movement
+stopped.
+
+The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the
+experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a
+menace than to strike the running animal on the head.
+
+BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror:
+substance similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it
+is a beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this
+horror at the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual
+wound, which like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes
+heals, but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.
+
+After Prince Andrew's death Natasha and Princess Mary alike felt
+this. Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing
+cloud of death that overhung them, they dared not look life in the
+face. They carefully guarded their open wounds from any rough and
+painful contact. Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street,
+a summons to dinner, the maid's inquiry what dress to prepare, or
+worse still any word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an
+insult, painfully irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary
+quiet in which they both tried to listen to the stern and dreadful
+choir that still resounded in their imagination, and hindered their
+gazing into those mysterious limitless vistas that for an instant
+had opened out before them.
+
+Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and
+pain. They spoke little even to one another, and when they did it
+was of very unimportant matters.
+
+Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility of
+a future seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did
+they avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them
+that what they had lived through and experienced could not be
+expressed in words, and that any reference to the details of his
+life infringed the majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been
+accomplished before their eyes.
+
+Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of
+everything that might lead up to the subject- this halting on all
+sides at the boundary of what they might not mention- brought before
+their minds with still greater purity and clearness what they were
+both feeling.
+
+But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete
+joy. Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independent
+arbiter of her own fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, was
+the first to be called back to life from that realm of sorrow in which
+she had dwelt for the first fortnight. She received letters from her
+relations to which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholas
+had been put was damp and he began to cough; Alpatych came to
+Yaroslavl with reports on the state of their affairs and with advice
+and suggestions that they should return to Moscow to the house on
+the Vozdvizhenka Street, which had remained uninjured and needed
+only slight repairs. Life did not stand still and it was necessary
+to live. Hard as it was for Princess Mary to emerge from the realm
+of secluded contemplation in which she had lived till then, and
+sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave Natasha alone, yet the
+cares of life demanded her attention and she involuntarily yielded
+to them. She went through the accounts with Alpatych, conferred with
+Dessalles about her nephew, and gave orders and made preparations
+for the journey to Moscow.
+
+Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began making
+preparations for departure, held aloof from her too.
+
+Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go with her to
+Moscow, and both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they saw
+their daughter losing strength every day and thought that a change
+of scene and the advice of Moscow doctors would be good for her.
+
+"I am not going anywhere," Natasha replied when this was proposed to
+her. "Do please just leave me alone!" And she ran out of the room,
+with difficulty refraining from tears of vexation and irritation
+rather than of sorrow.
+
+After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in her
+grief, Natasha spent most of the time in her room by herself,
+sitting huddled up feet and all in the corner of the sofa, tearing and
+twisting something with her slender nervous fingers and gazing
+intently and fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This
+solitude exhausted and tormented her but she was in absolute need of
+it. As soon as anyone entered she got up quickly, changed her position
+and expression, and picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting
+impatiently for the intruder to go.
+
+She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that
+on which- with a terrible questioning too great for her strength-
+her spiritual gaze was fixed.
+
+One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and thin, dressed
+in a black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a
+knot, was crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervously
+crumpling and smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at
+a corner of the door.
+
+She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone- to the other
+side of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never
+before thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and
+improbable, was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible
+than this side of life, where everything was either emptiness and
+desolation or suffering and indignity.
+
+She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imagine
+him otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as he
+had been at Mytishchi, at Troitsa, and at Yaroslavl.
+
+She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own,
+and sometimes devised other words they might have spoken.
+
+There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaning
+his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his
+shoulders raised. His lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and
+a wrinkle comes and goes on his pale forehead. One of his legs
+twitches just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natasha knows that he is
+struggling with terrible pain. "What is that pain like? Why does he
+have that pain? What does he feel? How does it hurt him?" thought
+Natasha. He noticed her watching him, raised his eyes, and began to
+speak seriously:
+
+"One thing would be terrible," said he: "to bind oneself forever
+to a suffering man. It would be continual torture." And he looked
+searchingly at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time to
+think what she would say. She said: "This can't go on- it won't. You
+will get well- quite well."
+
+She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived what
+she had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look at
+those words and understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair in
+that protracted gaze.
+
+"I agreed," Natasha now said to herself, "that it would be
+dreadful if he always continued to suffer. I said it then only because
+it would have been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently.
+He thought it would be dreadful for me. He then still wished to live
+and feared death. And I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not
+say what I meant. I thought quite differently. Had I said what I
+thought, I should have said: even if he had to go on dying, to die
+continually before my eyes, I should have been happy compared with
+what I am now. Now there is nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No,
+he did not and never will know it. And now it will never, never be
+possible to put it right." And now he again seemed to be saying the
+same words to her, only in her imagination Natasha this time gave
+him a different answer. She stopped him and said: "Terrible for you,
+but not for me! You know that for me there is nothing in life but you,
+and to suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me," and he
+took her hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that terrible
+evening four days before his death. And in her imagination she said
+other tender and loving words which she might have said then but
+only spoke now: "I love thee!... thee! I love, love..." she said,
+convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a desperate
+effort...
+
+She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in
+her eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this.
+Again everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again
+with a strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And
+now, now it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at
+the instant when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing
+itself to her a loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her
+ears. Dunyasha, her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a
+frightened look on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.
+
+"Come to your Papa at once, please!" said she with a strange,
+excited look. "A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich... a letter," she
+finished with a sob.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha was feeling
+a special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of
+them- her father, mother, and Sonya- were so near to her, so familiar,
+so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult
+to the world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not
+merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard
+Dunyasha's words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but did not
+grasp them.
+
+"What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live
+their own old, quiet, and commonplace life," thought Natasha.
+
+As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of
+her mother's room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He had
+evidently run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were
+choking him. When he saw Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and
+burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round
+face.
+
+"Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling..." and weeping like a
+child and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost
+fell into it, covering his face with his hands.
+
+Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natasha's whole
+being. Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache
+as if something was being torn inside her and she were dying. But
+the pain was immediately followed by a feeling of release from the
+oppressive constraint that had prevented her taking part in life.
+The sight of her father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that
+she heard through the door, made her immediately forget herself and
+her own grief.
+
+She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm, pointing to
+her mother's door. Princess Mary, pale and with quivering chin, came
+out from that room and taking Natasha by the arm said something to
+her. Natasha neither saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid
+steps, pausing at the door for an instant as if struggling with
+herself, and then ran to her mother.
+
+The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and awkward
+position, stretching out and beating her head against the wall.
+Sonya and the maids were holding her arms.
+
+"Natasha! Natasha!..." cried the countess. "It's not true... it's
+not true... He's lying... Natasha!" she shrieked, pushing those around
+her away. "Go away, all of you; it's not true! Killed!... ha, ha,
+ha!... It's not true!"
+
+Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her mother,
+embraced her, and with unexpected strength raised her, turned her face
+toward herself, and clung to her.
+
+"Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy," she kept on
+whispering, not pausing an instant.
+
+She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly with her,
+demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened and tore open her
+mother's dress.
+
+"My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!..." she whispered
+incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling her
+own irrepressible and streaming tears tickling her nose and cheeks.
+
+The countess pressed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes, and
+became quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up with unaccustomed
+swiftness, glanced vacantly around her, and seeing Natasha began to
+press her daughter's head with all her strength. Then she turned
+toward her daughter's face which was wincing with pain and gazed
+long at it.
+
+"Natasha, you love me?" she said in a soft trustful whisper.
+"Natasha, you would not deceive me? You'll tell me the whole truth?"
+
+Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look
+there was nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.
+
+"My darling Mummy!" she repeated, straining all the power of her
+love to find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that
+crushed her mother.
+
+And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing
+to believe that she could live when her beloved boy was killed in
+the bloom of life, escaped from reality into a world of delirium.
+
+Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the
+next day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother.
+Her persevering and patient love seemed completely to surround the
+countess every moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling
+her to life.
+
+During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few
+minutes, and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her chair and
+closed her eyes, but opened them again on hearing the bedstead
+creak. The countess was sitting up in bed and speaking softly.
+
+"How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won't you have some
+tea?" Natasha went up to her. "You have improved in looks and grown
+more manly," continued the countess, taking her daughter's hand.
+
+"Mamma! What are you saying..."
+
+"Natasha, he is no more, no more!"
+
+And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first
+time.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the count tried
+to replace Natasha but could not. They saw that she alone was able
+to restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks
+Natasha remained constantly at her mother's side, sleeping on a lounge
+chair in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her
+incessantly because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones
+soothed her mother.
+
+The mother's wounded spirit could not could not heal. Petya's
+death had torn from her half her life. When the news of Petya's
+death had come she had been a fresh and vigorous woman of fifty, but a
+month later she left her room a listless old woman taking no
+interest in life. But the same blow that almost killed the countess,
+this second blow, restored Natasha to life.
+
+A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is
+like a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep
+wound may heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike
+can yet heal completely only as the result of a vital force from
+within.
+
+Natasha's wound healed in that way. She thought her life was
+ended, but her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the
+essence of life- love- was still active within her. Love awoke and
+so did life.
+
+Prince Andrew's last days had bound Princess Mary and Natasha
+together; this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another.
+Princess Mary put off her departure, and for three weeks looked
+after Natasha as if she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed
+in her mother's bedroom had strained Natasha's physical strength.
+
+One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever, Princess Mary
+took her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natasha lay
+down, but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away
+she called her back.
+
+"I don't want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little."
+
+"You are tired- try to sleep."
+
+"No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me."
+
+"She is much better. She spoke so well today," said Princess Mary.
+
+Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned
+Princess Mary's face.
+
+"Is she like him?" thought Natasha. "Yes, like and yet not like. But
+she is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me.
+What is in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind
+like? What does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!"
+
+"Mary," she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary's hand to herself,
+"Mary, you mustn't think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love
+you! Let us be quite, quite friends."
+
+And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making
+Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her
+feelings.
+
+From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only
+between women was established between Princess Mary and Natasha.
+They were continually kissing and saying tender things to one
+another and spent most of their time together. When one went out the
+other became restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt
+more in harmony with one another than either of them felt with herself
+when alone. A feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them;
+an exclusive feeling of life being possible only in each other's
+presence.
+
+Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were
+already in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They
+spoke most of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her
+childhood, of her mother, her father, and her daydreams; and
+Natasha, who with a passive lack of understanding had formerly
+turned away from that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry
+of Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to Princess
+Mary by affection, learned to love her past too and to understand a
+side of life previously incomprehensible to her. She did not think
+of applying submission and self-abnegation to her own life, for she
+was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood and loved in
+another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For Princess
+Mary, listening to Natasha's tales of childhood and early youth, there
+also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of life: belief
+in life and its enjoyment.
+
+Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they
+thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him
+had the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without
+being conscious of it.
+
+Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all
+talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was
+suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness,
+and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm
+carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her
+drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed
+to her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.
+
+One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.
+Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and
+then, testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result.
+
+Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice trembled, so she
+called again- though she could hear Dunyasha coming- called her in the
+deep chest tones in which she had been wont to sing, sing, and
+listened attentively to herself.
+
+She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the
+layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable,
+delicate young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking
+root would so cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed
+her down that it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound
+had begun to heal from within.
+
+At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count
+insisted on Natasha's going with her to consult the doctors.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable to hold
+back his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy
+and so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the
+Russians who pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a
+battle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing the
+French could not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke
+down, and the information received of the movements of the French
+was never reliable.
+
+The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous
+marching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could not
+go any faster.
+
+To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is only
+necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while not
+losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarutino and
+less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that
+place a hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty
+thousand.
+
+The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our
+army as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference
+was that the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of
+destruction as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen
+were left behind in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind
+were among their own people. The chief cause of the wastage of
+Napoleon's army was the rapidity of its movement, and a convincing
+proof of this is the corresponding decrease of the Russian army.
+
+Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the
+movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian
+army generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done at
+Tarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of
+our army.
+
+But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of
+the army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident,
+another reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itself
+to Kutuzov. The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French.
+The road the French would take was unknown, and so the closer our
+troops trod on their heels the greater distance they had to cover.
+Only by following at some distance could one cut across the zigzag
+path of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals
+meant fresh movements of the army and a lengthening of its marches,
+whereas the only reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. To
+that end Kutuzov's activity was directed during the whole campaign
+from Moscow to Vilna- not casually or intermittently but so
+consistently that he never once deviated from it.
+
+Kutuzov felt and knew- not by reasoning or science but with the
+whole of his Russian being- what every Russian soldier felt: that
+the French were beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be driven
+out; but at the same time he like the soldiers realized all the
+hardship of this march, the rapidity of which was unparalleled for
+such a time of the year.
+
+But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian
+army, who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody,
+and for some reason to capture a king or a duke- it seemed that now-
+when any battle must be horrible and senseless- was the very time to
+fight and conquer somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when
+one after another they presented projects of maneuvers to be made with
+those soldiers- ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved- who
+within a month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half
+their number, and who at the best if the flight continued would have
+to go a greater distance than they had already traversed, before
+they reached the frontier.
+
+This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow,
+and to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians
+stumbled on the French army.
+
+So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the three
+French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen
+thousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous
+encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob
+of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three
+days.
+
+Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so and
+so," etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the
+disposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from a hill over the
+French crowds that were running past, and demanded reinforcements
+which did not arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and
+hid themselves in the forest by night, making their way round as
+best they could, and continued their flight.
+
+Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the
+commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found
+when he was wanted- that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche~^ as he
+styled himself- who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys
+demanding their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was
+ordered to do.
+
+^~ Knight without fear and without reproach.
+
+"I give you that column, lads," he said, riding up to the troops and
+pointing out the French to the cavalry.
+
+And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could
+scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented to
+them- that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold,
+frost-bitten, and starving- and the column that had been presented
+to them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been
+anxious to do.
+
+At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several
+hundred cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff," and disputed
+as to who had distinguished himself and were pleased with their
+achievement- though they much regretted not having taken Napoleon,
+or at least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one
+another and especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.
+
+These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of
+the most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes
+and imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable
+deed. They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of the
+campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he
+thought nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from
+the Linen Factories because he was comfortable there, that at
+Krasnoe he checked the advance because on learning that Napoleon was
+there he had quite lost his head, and that it was probable that he had
+an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so
+on, and so on.
+
+Not only did his contempories, carried away by their passions,
+talk in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as
+grand, while Kutuzov is described by foreigners as a crafty,
+dissolute, weak old courtier, and by Russians as something indefinite-
+a sort of puppet useful only because he had a Russian name.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The
+Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written
+by order of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a
+cunning court liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by
+his blunders at Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian
+army of the glory of complete victory over the French.~^
+
+^~ History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and
+reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at Krasnoe,
+by Bogdanovich.
+
+Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian
+mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary
+individuals who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their
+personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish
+such men for discerning the higher laws.
+
+For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon-
+that most insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in
+exile, showed human dignity- Napoleon is the object of adulation and
+enthusiasm; he is grand. But Kutuzov- the man who from the beginning
+to the end of his activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or
+deed from Borodino to Vilna, presented an example exceptional in
+history of self-sacrifice and a present conciousness of the future
+importance of what was happening- Kutuzov seems to them something
+indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of the year
+1812 they always seem a little ashamed.
+
+And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose
+activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be
+difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the
+will of the whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find
+an instance in history of the aim of an historical personage being
+so completely accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov's efforts were
+directed in 1812.
+
+Kutuzov never talked of "forty centuries looking down from the
+Pyramids," of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what
+he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he said
+nothing about himself, adopted no prose, always appeared to be the
+simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most
+ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de
+Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with
+generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who
+tried to prove anything to him. When Count Rostopchin at the Yauza
+bridge galloped up to Kutuzov with personal reproaches for having
+caused the destruction of Moscow, and said: "How was it you promised
+not to abandon Moscow without a battle?" Kutuzov replied: "And I shall
+not abandon Moscow without a battle," though Moscow was then already
+abandoned. When Arakcheev, coming to him from the Emperor, said that
+Ermolov ought to be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied:
+"Yes, I was just saying so myself," though a moment before he had said
+quite the contrary. What did it matter to him- who then alone amid a
+senseless crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what
+was happening- what did it matter to him whether Rostopchin attributed
+the calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it
+matter to him who was appointed chief of the artillery.
+
+Not merely in these cases but continually did that old man- who by
+experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the
+words serving as their expression are not what move people- use
+quite meaningless words that happened to enter his head.
+
+But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the
+whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single
+aim toward which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite
+of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his
+real thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be
+understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodino, from which time his
+disagreement with those about him began, he alone said that the battle
+of Borodino was a victory, and repeated this both verbally and in
+his dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He alone
+said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to
+Lauriston's proposal of peace, he said: There can be no peace, for
+such is the people's will. He alone during the retreat of the French
+said that all our maneuvers are useless, everything is being
+accomplished of itself better than we could desire; that the enemy
+must be offered "a golden bridge"; that neither the Tarutino, the
+Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that we must keep some
+force to reach the frontier with, and that he would not sacrifice a
+single Russian for ten Frenchmen.
+
+And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakcheev
+to please the Emperor, he alone- incurring thereby the Emperor's
+displeasure- said in Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier
+is useless and harmful.
+
+Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of
+the events. His actions- without the smallest deviation- were all
+directed to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his
+strength for conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3)
+to drive them out of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the
+sufferings of our people and of our army.
+
+This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was "Patience and Time,"
+this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodino, investing
+the preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutuzov
+who before the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be
+lost, he alone, in contradiction to everyone else, declared till his
+death that Borodino was a victory, despite the assurance of generals
+that the battle was lost and despite the fact that for an army to have
+to retire after winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during
+the whole retreat insisted that battles, which were useless then,
+should not be fought, and that a new war should not be begun nor the
+frontiers of Russia crossed.
+
+It is easy now to understand the significance of these events- if
+only we abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that
+existed only in the heads of a dozen individuals- for the events and
+results now lie before us.
+
+But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general
+opinion, so truly discern the importance of the people's view of the
+events that in all his activity he was never once untrue to it?
+
+The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of
+the events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he
+possessed in full purity and strength.
+
+Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling
+caused the people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar's wish,
+to select him- an old man in disfavor- to be their representative in
+the national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest
+human pedestal from which he, the commander in chief, devoted all
+his powers not to slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing
+pity on them.
+
+That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not
+be cast in the false mold of a European hero- the supposed ruler of
+men- that history has invented.
+
+To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception
+of greatness.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle
+of Krasnoe. Toward evening- after much disputing and many mistakes
+made by generals who did not go to their proper places, and after
+adjutants had been sent about with counterorders- when it had become
+plain that the enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and
+would be no battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither
+his headquarters had that day been transferred.
+
+The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on his plump
+little white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented
+generals who whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the
+road groups of French prisoners captured that day (there were seven
+thousand of them) were crowding to warm themselves at campfires.
+Near Dobroe an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with
+talk and wrapped and bandaged in anything they had been able to get
+hold of, were standing in the road beside a long row of unharnessed
+French guns. At the approach of the commander in chief the buzz of
+talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on Kutuzov who, wearing a white
+cap with a red band and a padded overcoat that bulged on his round
+shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his white horse. One of
+the generals was reporting to him where the guns and prisoners had
+been captured.
+
+Kutuzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general
+was saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he
+gazed attentively and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a
+specially wretched appearance. Most of them were disfigured by
+frost-bitten noses and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and
+festering eyes.
+
+One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them,
+one of whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of
+raw flesh with their hands. There was something horrible and bestial
+in the fleeting glance they threw at the riders and in the
+malevolent expression with which, after a glance at Kutuzov, the
+soldier with the sores immediately turned away and went on with what
+he was doing.
+
+Kutuzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He
+puckered his face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head.
+At another spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a
+Frenchman on the shoulder, saying something to him in a friendly
+manner, and Kutuzov with the same expression on his face again
+swayed his head.
+
+"What were you saying?" he asked the general, who continuing his
+report directed the commander in chief's attention to some standards
+captured from the French and standing in front of the Preobrazhensk
+regiment.
+
+"Ah, the standards!" said Kutuzov, evidently detaching himself
+with difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied him.
+
+He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at
+him from all sides awaiting a word from him.
+
+He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment, sighed deeply,
+and closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers
+carrying the standards to advance and surround the commander in
+chief with them. Kutuzov was silent for a few seconds and then,
+submitting with evident reluctance to the duty imposed by his
+position, raised his head and began to speak. A throng of officers
+surrounded him. He looked attentively around at the circle of
+officers, recognizing several of them.
+
+"I thank you all!" he said, addressing the soldiers and then again
+the officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words
+were distinctly heard. "I thank you all for your hard and faithful
+service. The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor
+to you forever."
+
+He paused and looked around.
+
+"Lower its head, lower it!" he said to a soldier who had
+accidentally lowered the French eagle he was holding before the
+Preobrazhensk standards. "Lower, lower, that's it. Hurrah lads!" he
+added, addressing the men with a rapid movement of his chin.
+
+"Hur-r-rah!" roared thousands of voices.
+
+While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned forward in his
+saddle and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and
+apparently ironic gleam.
+
+"You see, brothers..." said he when the shouts had ceased... and all
+at once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no
+longer the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man who
+wanted to tell his comrades something very important.
+
+There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of
+the soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was
+going to say.
+
+"You see, brothers, I know it's hard for you, but it can't be
+helped! Bear up; it won't be for long now! We'll see our visitors
+off and then we'll rest. The Tsar won't forget your service. It is
+hard for you, but still you are at home while they- you see what
+they have come to," said he, pointing to the prisoners. "Worse off
+than our poorest beggars. While they were strong we didn't spare
+ourselves, but now we may even pity them. They are human beings too.
+Isn't it so, lads?"
+
+He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze
+fixed upon him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew
+brighter and brighter with an old man's mild smile, which drew the
+corners of his lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased
+speaking and bowed his head as if in perplexity.
+
+"But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody
+bastards!" he cried, suddenly lifting his head.
+
+And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first
+time during the whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the
+soldiers laughing joyfully and shouting "Hurrah!"
+
+Kutuzov's words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could
+have repeated the field marshal's address, begun solemnly and then
+changing into an old man's simplehearted talk; but the hearty
+sincerity of that speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined
+with pity for the foe and consciousness of the justice of our cause,
+exactly expressed by that old man's good-natured expletives, was not
+merely understood but lay in the soul of every soldier and found
+expression in their joyous and long-sustained shouts. Afterwards
+when one of the generals addressed Kutuzov asking whether he wished
+his caleche to be sent for, Kutuzov in answering unexpectedly gave a
+sob, being evidently greatly moved.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+When the troops reached their night's halting place on the eighth of
+November, the last day of the Krasnoe battles, it was already
+growing dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional
+lightly falling snow and toward evening it began to clear. Through the
+falling snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost
+grew keener.
+
+An infantry regiment which had left Tarutino three thousand strong
+but now numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that
+night at its halting place- a village on the highroad. The
+quartermasters who met the regiment announced that all the huts were
+full of sick and dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff.
+There was only one hut available for the regimental commander.
+
+The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the
+village and stacked its arms in front of the last huts.
+
+Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its
+lair and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep
+through the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village,
+and immediately the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of
+branches, and merry voices could be heard from there. Another
+section amid the regimental wagons and horses which were standing in a
+group was busy getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding the
+horses. A third section scattered through the village arranging
+quarters for the staff officers, carrying out the French corpses
+that were in the huts, and dragging away boards, dry wood, and
+thatch from the roofs, for the campfires, or wattle fences to serve
+for shelter.
+
+Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle
+wall of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed.
+
+"Now then, all together- shove!" cried the voices, and the huge
+surface of the wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking with frost,
+was seen swaying in the gloom of the night. The lower stakes cracked
+more and more and at last the wall fell, and with it the men who had
+been pushing it. Loud, coarse laughter and joyous shouts ensued.
+
+"Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever! That's it... Where
+are you shoving to?"
+
+"Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a song!"
+
+All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice began to
+sing. At the end of the third verse as the last note died away, twenty
+voices roared out at once: "Oo-oo-oo-oo! That's it. All together!
+Heave away, boys!..." but despite their united efforts the wattle
+hardly moved, and in the silence that followed the heavy breathing
+of the men was audible.
+
+"Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are! Lend a hand...
+will you? You may want us one of these days."
+
+Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on their way into
+the village joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, which was about
+thirty-five feet long an seven feet high, moved forward along the
+village street, swaying, pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of
+the gasping men.
+
+"Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There now..."
+
+Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.
+
+"What are you up to?" suddenly came the authoritative voice of a
+sergeant major who came upon the men who were hauling their burden.
+"There are gentry here; the general himself is in that hut, and you
+foul-mouthed devils, you brutes, I'll give it to you!" shouted he,
+hitting the first man who came in his way a swinging blow on the back.
+"Can't you make less noise?"
+
+The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck groaned and
+wiped his face, which had been scratched till it bled by his falling
+against the wattle.
+
+"There, how that devil hits out! He's made my face all bloody," said
+he in a frightened whisper when the sergeant major had passed on.
+
+"Don't you like it?" said a laughing voice, and moderating their
+tones the men moved forward.
+
+When they were out of the village they began talking again as loud
+as before, interlarding their talk with the same aimless expletives.
+
+In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers had gathered
+and were in animated talk over their tea about the events of the day
+and the maneuvers suggested for tomorrow. It was proposed to make a
+flank march to the left, cut off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture
+him.
+
+By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence to its place
+the campfires were blazing on all sides ready for cooking, the wood
+crackled, the snow was melting, and black shadows of soldiers
+flitted to and fro all over the occupied space where the snow had been
+trodden down.
+
+Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything was done without
+any orders being given. Stores of wood were brought for the night,
+shelters were rigged up for the officers, caldrons were being
+boiled, and muskets and accouterments put in order.
+
+The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a semicircle by
+the Eighth Company as a shelter from the north, propped up by musket
+rests, and a campfire was built before it. They beat the tattoo,
+called the roll, had supper, and settled down round the fires for
+the night- some repairing their footgear, some smoking pipes, and some
+stripping themselves naked to steam the lice out of their shirts.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched
+conditions the Russian soldiers were in at that time- lacking warm
+boots and sheepskin coats, without a roof over their heads, in the
+snow with eighteen degrees of frost, and without even full rations
+(the commissariat did not always keep up with the troops)- they
+would have presented a very sad and depressing spectacle.
+
+On the contrary, the army had never under the best material
+conditions presented a more cheerful and animated aspect. This was
+because all who began to grow depressed or who lost strength were
+sifted out of the army day by day. All the physically or morally
+weak had long since been left behind and only the flower of the
+army- physically and mentally- remained.
+
+More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth Company
+than anywhere else. Two sergeants major were sitting with them and
+their campfire blazed brighter than others. For leave to sit by
+their wattle they demanded contributions of fuel.
+
+"Eh, Makeev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you
+lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a
+red-haired and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking
+because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you,
+Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!" said he to another soldier.
+
+This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being
+robust he ordered about those weaker than himself. The soldier they
+called "Jackdaw," a thin little fellow with a sharp nose, rose
+obediently and was about to go but at that instant there came into the
+light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier
+carrying a load of wood.
+
+"Bring it here- that's fine!"
+
+They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire, blew at it with
+their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their greatcoats,
+making the flames hiss and crackle. The men drew nearer and lit
+their pipes. The handsome young soldier who had brought the wood,
+setting his arms akimbo, began stamping his cold feet rapidly and
+deftly on the spot where he stood.
+
+"Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It's well that I'm a
+musketeer..." he sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable.
+
+"Look out, your soles will fly off!" shouted the red-haired man,
+noticing that the sole of the dancer's boot was hanging loose. "What a
+fellow you are for dancing!"
+
+The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather, and threw
+it on the fire.
+
+"Right enough, friend," said he, and, having sat down, took out of
+his knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his
+foot. "It's the steam that spoils them," he added, stretching out
+his feet toward the fire.
+
+"They'll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we've
+finished hammering them, we're to receive double kits!"
+
+"And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after all, it
+seems," said one sergeant major.
+
+"I've had an eye on him this long while," said the other.
+
+"Well, he's a poor sort of soldier..."
+
+"But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday."
+
+"Yes, it's all very well, but when a man's feet are frozen how can
+he walk?"
+
+"Eh? Don't talk nonsense!" said a sergeant major.
+
+"Do you want to be doing the same?" said an old soldier, turning
+reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet.
+
+"Well, you know," said the sharp-nosed man they called Jackdaw in
+a squeaky and unsteady voice, raising himself at the other side of the
+fire, "a plump man gets thin, but for a thin one it's death. Take
+me, now! I've got no strength left," he added, with sudden
+resolution turning to the sergeant major. "Tell them to send me to
+hospital; I'm aching all over; anyway I shan't be able to keep up."
+
+"That'll do, that'll do!" replied the sergeant major quietly.
+
+The soldier said no more and the talk went on.
+
+"What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the fact is
+that not one of them had what you might call real boots on," said a
+soldier, starting a new theme. "They were no more than make-believes."
+
+"The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were clearing the hut for
+the colonel and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, boys,"
+put in the dancer. "As they turned them over one seemed still alive
+and, would you believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo."
+
+"But they're a clean folk, lads," the first man went on; "he was
+white- as white as birchbark- and some of them are such fine
+fellows, you might think they were nobles."
+
+"Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there."
+
+"But they don't understand our talk at all," said the dancer with
+a puzzled smile. "I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in
+his own way. A queer lot!"
+
+"But it's strange, friends," continued the man who had wondered at
+their whiteness, "the peasants at Mozhaysk were saying that when
+they began burying the dead- where the battle was you know- well,
+those dead had been lying there for nearly a month, and says the
+peasant, 'they lie as white as paper, clean, and not as much smell
+as a puff of powder smoke.'"
+
+"Was it from the cold?" asked someone.
+
+"You're a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If
+it had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. 'But,'
+he says, 'go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,' he
+says, 'we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as
+we drag them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,' he says, 'are
+white as paper and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.'"
+
+All were silent.
+
+"It must be from their food," said the sergeant major. "They used to
+gobble the same food as the gentry."
+
+No one contradicted him.
+
+"That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said the men were
+all called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days
+and still didn't finish carting the dead away. And as for the
+wolves, he says..."
+
+"That was a real battle," said an old soldier. "It's the only one
+worth remembering; but since that... it's only been tormenting folk."
+
+"And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them
+and, my word, they didn't let us get near before they just threw
+down their muskets and went on their knees. 'Pardon!' they say. That's
+only one case. They say Platov took 'Poleon himself twice. But he
+didn't know the right charm. He catches him and catches him- no
+good! He turns into a bird in his hands and flies away. And there's no
+way of killing him either."
+
+"You're a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look at you!"
+
+"Liar, indeed! It's the real truth."
+
+"If he fell into my hands, when I'd caught him I'd bury him in the
+ground with an aspen stake to fix him down. What a lot of men he's
+ruined!"
+
+"Well, anyhow we're going to end it. He won't come here again,"
+remarked the old soldier, yawning.
+
+The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began settling down to
+sleep.
+
+"Look at the stars. It's wonderful how they shine! You would think
+the women had spread out their linen," said one of the men, gazing
+with admiration at the Milky Way.
+
+"That's a sign of a good harvest next year."
+
+"We shall want some more wood."
+
+"You warm your back and your belly gets frozen. That's queer."
+
+"O Lord!"
+
+"What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you? Look how he's
+sprawling!"
+
+In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who had fallen
+asleep could be heard. Others turned over and warmed themselves, now
+and again exchanging a few words. From a campfire a hundred paces
+off came a sound of general, merry laughter.
+
+"Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!" said one of the
+soldiers, and what a lot of them there are!"
+
+One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth Company.
+
+"They're having such fun," said he, coming back. "Two Frenchies have
+turned up. One's quite frozen and the other's an awful swaggerer. He's
+singing songs...."
+
+"Oh, I'll go across and have a look...."
+
+And several of the men went over to the Fifth Company.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge of the forest.
+A huge campfire was blazing brightly in the midst of the snow,
+lighting up the branches of trees heavy with hoarfrost.
+
+About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the snow of the
+forest, and the crackling of dry branches.
+
+"A bear, lads," said one of the men.
+
+They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the forest into
+the bright firelight stepped two strangely clad human figures clinging
+to one another.
+
+These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the forest. They
+came up to the fire, hoarsely uttering something in a language our
+soldiers did not understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an
+officer's hat and seemed quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he
+had been going to sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy
+soldier with a shawl tied round his head, was stronger. He raised
+his companion and said something, pointing to his mouth. The
+soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen, spread a greatcoat on the ground
+for the sick man, and brought some buckwheat porridge and vodka for
+both of them.
+
+The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man with his
+head wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly.
+
+When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his bowl of porridge he
+suddenly became unnaturally merry and chattered incessantly to the
+soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and
+resting his head on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire,
+looking at the Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes. Occasionally
+he emitted a long-drawn groan and then again became silent. Morel,
+pointing to his shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers the fact
+that Ramballe was an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer
+who had come up to the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he would
+not take a French officer into his hut to warm him, and when the
+messenger returned and said that the colonel wished the officer to
+be brought to him, Ramballe was told to go. He rose and tried to walk,
+but staggered and would have fallen had not a soldier standing by held
+him up.
+
+"You won't do it again, eh?" said one of the soldiers, winking and
+turning mockingly to Ramballe.
+
+"Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are- a real peasant!"
+came rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.
+
+They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed arms of two
+soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe put his arms around
+their necks while they carried him and began wailing plaintively:
+
+"Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh,
+my brave, kind friends," and he leaned his head against the shoulder
+of one of the men like a child.
+
+Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire,
+surrounded by the soldiers.
+
+Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes,
+was wearing a woman's cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round
+his head over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a
+French song in a hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the
+nearest soldier. The soldiers simply held their sides as they
+watched him.
+
+"Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I'll soon pick it up. How
+is it?" said the man- a singer and a wag- whom Morel was embracing.
+
+"Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!" sang Morel, winking. "Ce
+diable a quatre..."~^
+
+^~ "Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That rowdy devil."
+
+"Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!" repeated the soldier,
+flourishing his arm and really catching the tune.
+
+"Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!" rose their rough, joyous laughter from all
+sides.
+
+Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.
+
+"Well, go on, go on!"
+
+_1 "Qui eut le triple talent,<br>
+De boire, de battre,<br>
+Et d'etre un vert galant."~^
+
+^~ Who had a triple talent
+
+_1 For drinking, for fighting,
+
+_1 And for being a gallant old boy...
+
+"It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletaev!"
+
+"Ke..." Zaletaev, brought out with effort: "ke-e-e-e," he drawled,
+laboriously pursing his lips, "le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-de-ba, e
+de-tra-va-ga-la " he sang.
+
+"Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want some more to
+eat?"
+
+"Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled up after
+starving."
+
+They gave him some more porridge and Morel with a laugh set to
+work on his third bowl. All the young soldiers smiled gaily as they
+watched him. The older men, who thought it undignified to amuse
+themselves with such nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side
+of the fire, but one would occasionally raise himself on an elbow
+and glance at Morel with a smile.
+
+"They are men too," said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his
+coat. "Even wormwood grows on its own root."
+
+"O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That means a hard
+frost...."
+
+They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one was
+looking at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now
+flaring up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering
+something gladsome and mysterious to one another.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical
+progression; and that crossing of the Berezina about which so much has
+been written was only one intermediate stage in its destruction, and
+not at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been
+and still is written about the Berezina, on the French side this is
+only because at the broken bridge across that river the calamities
+their army had been previously enduring were suddenly concentrated
+at one moment into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory,
+and on the Russian side merely because in Petersburg- far from the
+seat of war- a plan (again one of Pfuel's) had been devised to catch
+Napoleon in a strategic trap at the Berezina River. Everyone assured
+himself that all would happen according to plan, and therefore
+insisted that it was just the crossing of the Berezina that
+destroyed the French army. In reality the results of the crossing were
+much less disastrous to the French- in guns and men lost- than Krasnoe
+had been, as the figures show.
+
+The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina lies in the fact
+that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans
+for cutting off the enemy's retreat and the soundness of the only
+possible line of action- the one Kutuzov and the general mass of the
+army demanded- namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd
+fled at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed
+to reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was
+impossible to block its path. This was shown not so much by the
+arrangements it made for crossing as by what took place at the
+bridges. When the bridges broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from
+Moscow and women with children who were with the French transport,
+all- carried on by vis inertiae- pressed forward into boats and into
+the ice-covered water and did not, surrender.
+
+That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of
+pursuers was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own
+people each might hope for help from his fellows and the definite
+place he held among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining
+in the same pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share
+in the necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed
+of the fact that half the prisoners- with whom the Russians did not
+know what to do- perished of cold and hunger despite their captors'
+desire to save them; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The
+most compassionate Russian commanders, those favorable to the
+French- and even the Frenchmen in the Russian service- could do
+nothing for the prisoners. The French perished from the conditions
+to which the Russian army was itself exposed. It was impossible to
+take bread and clothes from our hungry and indispensable soldiers to
+give to the French who, though not harmful, or hated, or guilty,
+were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did that, but they were
+exceptions.
+
+Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was
+hope. Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in
+collective flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was
+concentrated.
+
+The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the
+remnant, especially after the Berezina, on which (in consequence of
+the Petersburg plan) special hopes had been placed by the Russians,
+and the keener grew the passions of the Russian commanders, blamed one
+another and Kutuzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of
+the Petersburg Berezina plan would be attributed to Kutuzov led to
+dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and more strongly
+expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of course expressed in a
+respectful form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was to
+blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when reporting to him or
+asking for his sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable
+formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead him at
+every turn.
+
+Because they could not understand him all these people assumed
+that it was useless to talk to the old man; that he would never
+grasp the profundity of their plans, that he would answer with his
+phrases (which they thought were mere phrases) about a "golden
+bridge," about the impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd
+of tatterdemalions, and so forth. They had heard all that before.
+And all he said- that it was necessary to await provisions, or that
+the men had no boots- was so simple, while what they proposed was so
+complicated and clever, that it was evident that he was old and stupid
+and that they, though not in power, were commanders of genius.
+
+After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and
+Petersburg hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff
+reached their maximum. Kutuzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged
+his shoulders. Only once, after the affair of the Berezina, did he get
+angry and write to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the
+Emperor) the following letter:
+
+"On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency
+please be so good as to set off for Kaluga on receipt of this, and
+there await further commands and appointments from His Imperial
+Majesty."
+
+But after Bennigsen's departure, the Grand Duke Tsarevich
+Constantine Pavlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the
+beginning of the campaign but had subsequently been removed from the
+army by Kutuzov. Now having come to the army, he informed Kutuzov of
+the Emperor's displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the
+slowness of their advance. The Emperor intended to join the army
+personally in a few days' time.
+
+The old man, experienced in court as well as in military affairs-
+this same Kutuzov who in August had been chosen commander in chief
+against the sovereign's wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke
+and heir- apparent from the army- who on his own authority and
+contrary to the Emperor's will had decided on the abandonment of
+Moscow, now realized at once that his day was over, that his part
+was played, and that the power he was supposed to hold was no longer
+his. And he understood this not merely from the attitude of the court.
+He saw on the one hand that the military business in which he had
+played his part was ended and felt that his mission was
+accomplished; and at the same time he began to be conscious of the
+physical weariness of his aged body and of the necessity of physical
+rest.
+
+On the twenty-ninth of November Kutuzov entered Vilna- his "dear
+Vilna" as he called it. Twice during his career Kutuzov had been
+governor of Vilna. In that wealthy town, which had not been injured,
+he found old friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of
+which he had so long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the
+cares of army and state and, as far as the passions that seethed
+around him allowed, immersed himself in the quiet life to which he had
+formerly been accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that
+had still to be done in the realm of history did not concern him at
+all.
+
+Chichagov, one of the most zealous "cutters-off" and
+"breakers-up," who had first wanted to effect a diversion in Greece
+and then in Warsaw but never wished to go where he was sent:
+Chichagov, noted for the boldness with which he spoke to the
+Emperor, and who considered Kutuzov to be under an obligation to him
+because when he was sent to make peace with Turkey in 1811
+independently of Kutuzov, and found that peace had already been
+concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of securing
+that peace was really Kutuzov's; this Chichagov was the first to
+meet Kutuzov at the castle where the latter was to stay. In undress
+naval uniform, with a dirk, and holding his cap under his arm, he
+handed Kutuzov a garrison report and the keys of the town. The
+contemptuously respectful attitude of the younger men to the old man
+in his dotage was expressed in the highest degree by the behavior of
+Chichagov, who knew of the accusations that were being directed
+against Kutuzov.
+
+When speaking to Chichagov, Kutuzov incidentally mentioned that
+the vehicles packed with china that had been captured from him at
+Borisov had been recovered and would be restored to him.
+
+"You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of.... On the
+contrary, I can supply you with everything even if you want to give
+dinner parties," warmly replied Chichagov, who tried by every word
+he spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov
+to be animated by the same desire.
+
+Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle
+penetrating smile: "I meant merely to say what I said."
+
+Contrary to the Emperor's wish Kutuzov detained the greater part
+of the army at Vilna. Those about him said that he became
+extraordinarily slack and physically feeble during his stay in that
+town. He attended to army affairs reluctantly, left everything to
+his generals, and while awaiting the Emperor's arrival led a
+dissipated life.
+
+Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with his suite-
+Count Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski, Arakcheev, and others- the Emperor
+reached Vilna on the eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh drove
+straight to the castle. In spite of the severe frost some hundred
+generals and staff officers in full parade uniform stood in front of
+the castle, as well as a guard of honor of the Semenov regiment.
+
+A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with
+three foam-flecked horses, shouted "Coming!" and Konovnitsyn rushed
+into the vestibule to inform Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall
+porter's little lodge.
+
+A minute later the old man's large stout figure in full-dress
+uniform, his chest covered with orders and a scarf drawn round his
+stomach, waddled out into the porch. He put on his hat with its
+peaks to the sides and, holding his gloves in his hand and walking
+with an effort sideways down the steps to the level of the street,
+took in his hand the report he had prepared for the Emperor.
+
+There was running to and fro and whispering; another troyka
+furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh
+in which the figures of the Emperor and Volkonski could already be
+descried.
+
+From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating
+effect on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt himself all
+over, readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up
+and, at the very moment when the Emperor, having alighted from the
+sleigh, lifted his eyes to him, handed him the report and began
+speaking in his smooth, ingratiating voice.
+
+The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from head to foot,
+frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to
+the old man, extended his arms and embraced him. And this embrace too,
+owing to a long-standing impression related to his innermost feelings,
+had its usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave a sob.
+
+The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenov guard, and again
+pressing the old man's hand went with him into the castle.
+
+When alone with the field marshal the Emperor expressed his
+dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit and at the mistakes
+made at Krasnoe and the Berezina, and informed him of his intentions
+for a future campaign abroad. Kutuzov made no rejoinder or remark. The
+same submissive, expressionless look with which he had listened to the
+Emperor's commands on the field of Austerlitz seven years before
+settled on his face now.
+
+When Kutuzov came out of the study and with lowered head was
+crossing the ballroom with his heavy waddling gait, he was arrested by
+someone's voice saying:
+
+"Your Serene Highness!"
+
+Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long while into the eyes of
+Count Tolstoy, who stood before him holding a silver salver on which
+lay a small object. Kutuzov seemed not to understand what was expected
+of him.
+
+Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely perceptible smile flashed
+across his puffy face, and bowing low and respectfully he took the
+object that lay on the salver. It was the Order of St. George of the
+First Class.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball which the
+Emperor honored by his presence. Kutuzov had received the Order of St.
+George of the First Class and the Emperor showed him the highest
+honors, but everyone knew of the imperial dissatisfaction with him.
+The proprieties were observed and the Emperor was the first to set
+that example, but everybody understood that the old man was
+blameworthy and good-for-nothing. When Kutuzov, conforming to a custom
+of Catherine's day, ordered the standards that had been captured to be
+lowered at the Emperor's feet on his entering the ballroom, the
+Emperor made a wry face and muttered something in which some people
+caught the words, "the old comedian."
+
+The Emperor's displeasure with Kutuzov was specially increased at
+Vilna by the fact that Kutuzov evidently could not or would not
+understand the importance of the coming campaign.
+
+When on the following morning the Emperor said to the officers
+assembled about him: "You have not only saved Russia, you have saved
+Europe!" they all understood that the war was not ended.
+
+Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly expressed his opinion
+that no fresh war could improve the position or add to the glory of
+Russia, but could only spoil and lower the glorious position that
+Russia had gained. He tried to prove to the Emperor the
+impossibility of levying fresh troops, spoke of the hardships
+already endured by the people, of the possibility of failure and so
+forth.
+
+This being the field marshal's frame of mind he was naturally
+regarded as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the impending war.
+
+To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the natural
+method was to do what had been done with him at Austerlitz and with
+Barclay at the beginning of the Russian campaign- to transfer the
+authority to the Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under
+the commander in chief's feet without upsetting the old man by
+informing him of the change.
+
+With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed and its
+real strength removed and transferred to the Emperor. Toll,
+Konovnitsyn, and Ermolov received fresh appointments. Everyone spoke
+loudly of the field marshal's great weakness and failing health.
+
+His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away and given to
+another. And in fact his health was poor.
+
+So naturally, simply, and gradually- just as he had come from Turkey
+to the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the militia, and then to
+the army when he was needed there- now when his part was played out,
+Kutuzov's place was taken by a new and necessary performer.
+
+The war 1812, besides its national significance dear to every
+Russian heart, was now to assume another, a European, significance.
+
+The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a
+movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war
+another leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing
+from Kutuzov's and animated by different motives.
+
+Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the peoples from
+east to west and for the refixing of national frontiers as Kutuzov had
+been for the salvation and glory of Russia.
+
+Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, the balance of power, or
+Napoleon meant. He could not understand it. For the representative
+of the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia
+had been liberated and raised to the summit of her glory, there was
+nothing left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the
+representative of the national war but to die, and Kutuzov died.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the
+physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until
+after they were over. After his liberation he reached Orel, and on the
+third day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was
+laid up for three months. He had what the doctors termed "bilious
+fever." But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him,
+and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.
+
+Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre's mind by all that
+happened to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He
+remembered only the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy,
+internal physical distress, and pains in his feet and side. He
+remembered a general impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of
+people and of being worried by the curiosity of officers and
+generals who questioned him, he also remembered his difficulty in
+procuring a conveyance and horses, and above all he remembered his
+incapacity to think and feel all that time. On the day of his rescue
+he had seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same day he had learned
+that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodino for more
+than a month had recently died in the Rostovs' house at Yaroslavl, and
+Denisov who told him this news also mentioned Helene's death,
+supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before. All this at the
+time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its
+significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as quickly
+as possible from places where people were killing one another, to some
+peaceful refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over
+all the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orel he
+immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw
+in attendance on him two of his servants, Terenty and Vaska, who had
+come from Moscow; and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had
+been living on his estate at Elets and hearing of his rescue and
+illness had come to look after him.
+
+It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre lost
+the impressions he had become accustomed to during the last few months
+and got used to the idea that no one would oblige him to go anywhere
+tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he
+would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long
+time in his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of
+captivity. In the same way little by little he came to understand
+the news he had been told after his rescue, about the death of
+Prince Andrew, the death of his wife, and the destruction of the
+French.
+
+A joyous feeling of freedom- that complete inalienable freedom
+natural to man which he had first experienced at the first halt
+outside Moscow- filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence. He
+was surprised to find that this inner freedom, which was independent
+of external conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of
+external liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without
+acquaintances. No one demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere.
+He had all he wanted: the thought of his wife which had been a
+continual torment to him was no longer there, since she was no more.
+
+"Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself when a cleanly laid
+table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down
+for the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the
+French had gone and that his wife was no more. "Oh, how good, how
+splendid!"
+
+And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well, and what
+then? What am I going to do?" And he immediately gave himself the
+answer: "Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!"
+
+The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he
+had continually sought to find- the aim of life- no longer existed for
+him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared
+temporarily- he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not
+present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the
+complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at
+this time.
+
+He could not see an aim, for he now had faith- not faith in any kind
+of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living,
+ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set
+himself. That search for an aim had been simply a search for God,
+and suddenly in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning
+but by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God
+is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learned that in
+Karataev God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable than in the
+Architect of the Universe recognized by the Freemasons. He felt like a
+man who after straining his eyes to see into the far distance finds
+what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked over the
+heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in
+front of him without straining his eyes.
+
+In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable
+infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere
+and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had
+only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had
+equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space,
+where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed
+to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen.
+And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and
+philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as
+he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances
+and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and
+senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal,
+and infinite in everything, and therefore- to see it and enjoy its
+contemplation- he naturally threw away the telescope through which
+he had till now gazed over men's heads, and gladly regarded the
+ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around
+him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and happy he became.
+That dreadful question, "What for?" which had formerly destroyed all
+his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question,
+"What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: "Because
+there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from
+a man's head."
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance
+he was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and
+seemed occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something
+special of his own. The difference between his former and present self
+was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was
+said to him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly
+seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At present he still
+forgot what was said to him and still did not see what was before
+his eyes, but he now looked with a scarcely perceptible and
+seemingly ironic smile at what was before him and listened to what was
+said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite different.
+Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so
+people had been inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of
+life always played round his lips, and sympathy for others, shone in
+his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as
+contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his presence.
+
+Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he
+talked, and seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in
+conversation and knew how to listen so that people readily told him
+their most intimate secrets.
+
+The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been particularly
+hostile to him since she had felt herself under obligations to him
+after the old count's death, now after staying a short time in Orel-
+where she had come intending to show Pierre that in spite of his
+ingratitude she considered it her duty to nurse him- felt to her
+surprise and vexation that she had become fond of him. Pierre did
+not in any way seek her approval, he merely studied her with interest.
+Formerly she had felt that he regarded her with indifference and
+irony, and so had shrunk into herself as she did with others and had
+shown him only the combative side of her nature; but now he seemed
+to be trying to understand the most intimate places of her heart, and,
+mistrustfully at first but afterwards gratefully, she let him see
+the hidden, kindly sides of her character.
+
+The most cunning man could not have crept into her confidence more
+successfully, evoking memories of the best times of her youth and
+showing sympathy with them. Yet Pierre's cunning consisted simply in
+finding pleasure in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered,
+hard, and (in her own way) proud princess.
+
+"Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under the influence
+of bad people but of people such as myself," thought she.
+
+His servants too- Terenty and Vaska- in their own way noticed the
+change that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had
+become much "simpler." Terenty, when he had helped him undress and
+wished him good night, often lingered with his master's boots in his
+hands and clothes over his arm, to see whether he would not start a
+talk. And Pierre, noticing that Terenty wanted a chat, generally
+kept him there.
+
+"Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?" he would ask.
+
+And Terenty would begin talking of the destruction of Moscow, and of
+the old count, and would stand for a long time holding the clothes and
+talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre's stories, and then would go
+out into the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master
+and affection for him.
+
+The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every day, though
+he considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a man whose every
+moment was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with
+Pierre telling him his favorite anecdotes and his observations on
+the characters of his patients in general, and especially of the
+ladies.
+
+"It's a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our
+provincials," he would say.
+
+There were several prisoners from the French army in Orel, and the
+doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre.
+
+This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to make
+fun of the tenderness the Italian expressed for him.
+
+The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to see Pierre, talk
+with him, tell him about his past, his life at home, and his love, and
+pour out to him his indignation against the French and especially
+against Napoleon.
+
+"If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to fight
+such a nation," he said to Pierre. "You, who have suffered so from the
+French, do not even feel animosity toward them."
+
+Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian merely
+by evoking the best side of his nature and taking a pleasure in so
+doing.
+
+During the last days of Pierre's stay in Orel his old Masonic
+acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced him to the lodge in
+1807, came to see him. Willarski was married to a Russian heiress
+who had a large estate in Orel province, and he occupied a temporary
+post in the commissariat department in that town.
+
+Hearing that Bezukhov was in Orel, Willarski, though they had
+never been intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship
+and intimacy that people who meet in a desert generally express for
+one another. Willarski felt dull in Orel and was pleased to meet a man
+of his own circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests.
+
+But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre had lagged
+much behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself,
+into apathy and egotism.
+
+"You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow," he said.
+
+But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it had
+been formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him every day. To
+Pierre as he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to
+think that he had been like that himself but a short time before.
+
+Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with his family
+affairs, his wife's affairs, and his official duties. He regarded
+all these occupations as hindrances to life, and considered that
+they were all contemptible because their aim was the welfare of
+himself and his family. Military, administrative, political, and
+Masonic interests continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre,
+without trying to change the other's views and without condemning him,
+but with the quiet, joyful, and amused smile now habitual to him,
+was interested in this strange though very familiar phenomenon.
+
+There was a new feature in Pierre's relations with Willarski, with
+the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met,
+which gained for him the general good will. This was his
+acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by
+words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking,
+feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view. This
+legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and
+irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and
+the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes
+complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and
+between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him an amused
+and gentle smile.
+
+In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a
+center of gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly all pecuniary
+questions, especially requests for money to which, as an extremely
+wealthy man, he was very exposed, produced in him a state of
+hopeless agitation and perplexity. "To give or not to give?" he had
+asked himself. "I have it and he needs it. But someone else needs it
+still more. Who needs it most? And perhaps they are both impostors?"
+In the old days he had been unable to find a way out of all these
+surmises and had given to all who asked as long as he had anything
+to give. Formerly he had been in a similar state of perplexity with
+regard to every question concerning his property, when one person
+advised one thing and another something else.
+
+Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either doubt
+or perplexity about these questions. There was now within him a
+judge who by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should
+not be done.
+
+He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but now he
+felt certain of what ought and what ought not to be done. The first
+time he had recourse to his new judge was when a French prisoner, a
+colonel, came to him and, after talking a great deal about his
+exploits, concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre
+should give him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children.
+Pierre refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was
+afterwards surprised how simple and easy had been what used to
+appear so insurmountably difficult. At the same time that he refused
+the colonel's demand he made up his mind that he must have recourse to
+artifice when leaving Orel, to induce the Italian officer to accept
+some money of which he was evidently in need. A further proof to
+Pierre of his own more settled outlook on practical matters was
+furnished by his decision with regard to his wife's debts and to the
+rebuilding of his houses in and near Moscow.
+
+His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre reckoned up with him
+his diminished income. The burning of Moscow had cost him, according
+to the head steward's calculation, about two million rubles.
+
+To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave him an
+estimate showing that despite these losses his income would not be
+diminished but would even be increased if he refused to pay his wife's
+debts which he was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild
+his Moscow house and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had
+cost him eighty thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing.
+
+"Yes, of course that's true," said Pierre with a cheerful smile.
+"I don't need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much
+richer."
+
+But in January Savelich came from Moscow and gave him an account
+of the state of things there, and spoke of the estimate an architect
+had made of the cost of rebuilding the town and country houses,
+speaking of this as of a settled matter. About the same time he
+received letters from Prince Vasili and other Petersburg acquaintances
+speaking of his wife's debts. And Pierre decided that the steward's
+proposals which had so pleased him were wrong and that he must go to
+Petersburg and settle his wife's affairs and must rebuild in Moscow.
+Why this was necessary he did not know, but he knew for certain that
+it was necessary. His income would be reduced by three fourths, but he
+felt it must be done.
+
+Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to travel together.
+
+During the whole time of his convalescence in Orel Pierre had
+experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life; but when during his
+journey he found himself in the open world and saw hundreds of new
+faces, that feeling was intensified. Throughout his journey he felt
+like a schoolboy on holiday. Everyone- the stagecoach driver, the
+post-house overseers, the peasants on the roads and in the villages-
+had a new significance for him. The presence and remarks of
+Willarski who continually deplored the ignorance and poverty of Russia
+and its backwardness compared with Europe only heightened Pierre's
+pleasure. Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary
+strength and vitality- the strength which in that vast space amid
+the snows maintained the life of this original, peculiar, and unique
+people. He did not contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree
+with him- an apparent agreement being the simplest way to avoid
+discussions that could lead to nothing- and he smiled joyfully as he
+listened to him.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap has
+been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of
+rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they
+jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally
+difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of
+the French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But
+when we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity,
+energy, and immense number of the delving insects prove that despite
+the destruction of the heap, something indestructible, which though
+intangible is the real strength of the colony, still exists; and
+similarly, though in Moscow in the month of October there was no
+government no churches, shrines, riches, or houses- it was still the
+Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed, except something
+intangible yet powerful and indestructible.
+
+The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after
+it had been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and
+at first for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all
+had in common: a desire to get to the place that had been called
+Moscow, to apply their activities there.
+
+Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in
+a fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn of 1813 the
+number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in
+1812.
+
+The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of
+Wintzingerode's detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and
+residents who had fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its
+vicinity. The Russians who entered Moscow, finding it plundered,
+plundered it in their turn. They continued what the French had
+begun. Trains of peasant carts came to Moscow to carry off to the
+villages what had been abandoned in the ruined houses and the streets.
+The Cossacks carried off what they could to their camps, and the
+householders seized all they could find in other houses and moved it
+to their own, pretending that it was their property.
+
+But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third
+contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more and
+more difficult and assumed more definite forms.
+
+The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations
+of regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and
+craftsmanship, with luxury, and governmental and religious
+institutions. These forms were lifeless but still existed. There
+were bazaars, shops, warehouses, market stalls, granaries- for the
+most part still stocked with goods- and there were factories and
+workshops, palaces and wealthy houses filled with luxuries, hospitals,
+prisons, government offices, churches, and cathedrals. The longer
+the French remained the more these forms of town life perished,
+until finally all was merged into one confused, lifeless scene of
+plunder.
+
+The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the
+wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed. But
+plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city
+began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the greater
+the number of people taking part in it the more rapidly was the wealth
+of the city and its regular life restored.
+
+Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by
+curiosity, some by official duties, some by self-interest- house
+owners, clergy, officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and
+peasants- streamed into Moscow as blood flows to the heart.
+
+Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry off
+plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the corpses
+out of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their comrades'
+discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat
+down one another's prices to below what they had been in former
+days. Gangs of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in Moscow
+every day, and on all sides logs were being hewn, new houses built,
+and old, charred ones repaired. Tradesmen began trading in booths.
+Cookshops and taverns were opened in partially burned houses. The
+clergy resumed the services in many churches that had not been burned.
+Donors contributed Church property that had been stolen. Government
+clerks set up their baize-covered tables and their pigeonholes of
+documents in small rooms. The higher authorities and the police
+organized the distribution of goods left behind by the French. The
+owners of houses in which much property had been left, brought there
+from other houses, complained of the injustice of taking everything to
+the Faceted Palace in the Kremlin; others insisted that as the
+French had gathered things from different houses into this or that
+house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to keep all that was
+found there. They abused the police and bribed them, made out
+estimates at ten times their value for government stores that had
+perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin
+wrote proclamations.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex
+of his house which had not been burned. He called on Count
+Rostopchin and on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he
+intended to leave for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was
+celebrating the victory, everything was bubbling with life in the
+ruined but reviving city. Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone
+wished to meet him, and everyone questioned him about what he had
+seen. Pierre felt particularly well disposed toward them all, but
+was now instinctively on his guard for fear of binding himself in
+any way. To all questions put to him- whether important or quite
+trifling- such as: Where would he live? Was he going to rebuild?
+When was he going to Petersburg and would he mind taking a parcel
+for someone?- he replied: "Yes, perhaps," or, "I think so," and so on.
+
+He had heard that the Rostovs were at Kostroma but the thought of
+Natasha seldom occurred to him. If it did it was only as a pleasant
+memory of the distant past. He felt himself not only free from
+social obligations but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him,
+he had aroused in himself.
+
+On the third day after his arrival he heard from the Drubetskoys
+that Princess Mary was in Moscow. The death, sufferings, and last days
+of Prince Andrew had often occupied Pierre's thoughts and now recurred
+to him with fresh vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess Mary
+was in Moscow and living in her house- which had not been burned- in
+Vozdvizhenka Street, he drove that same evening to see her.
+
+On his way to the house Pierre kept thinking of Prince Andrew, of
+their friendship, of his various meetings with him, and especially
+of the last one at Borodino.
+
+"Is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind he was then
+in? Is it possible that the meaning of life was not disclosed to him
+before he died?" thought Pierre. He recalled Karataev and his death
+and involuntarily began to compare these two men, so different, and
+yet so similar in that they had both lived and both died and in the
+love he felt for both of them.
+
+Pierre drove up to the house of the old prince in a most serious
+mood. The house had escaped the fire; it showed signs of damage but
+its general aspect was unchanged. The old footman, who met Pierre with
+a stern face as if wishing to make the visitor feel that the absence
+of the old prince had not disturbed the order of things in the
+house, informed him that the princess had gone to her own
+apartments, and that she received on Sundays.
+
+"Announce me. Perhaps she will see me," said Pierre.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the man. "Please step into the portrait gallery."
+
+A few minutes later the footman returned with Dessalles, who brought
+word from the princess that she would be very glad to see Pierre if he
+would excuse her want of ceremony and come upstairs to her apartment.
+
+In a rather low room lit by one candle sat the princess and with her
+another person dressed in black. Pierre remembered that the princess
+always had lady companions, but who they were and what they were
+like he never knew or remembered. "This must be one of her
+companions," he thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress.
+
+The princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her hand.
+
+"Yes," she said, looking at his altered face after he had kissed her
+hand, "so this is how we meet again. He of spoke of you even at the
+very last," she went on, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion
+with a shyness that surprised him for an instant.
+
+"I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the first piece of
+good news we had received for a long time."
+
+Again the princess glanced round at her companion with even more
+uneasiness in her manner and was about to add something, but Pierre
+interrupted her.
+
+"Just imagine- I knew nothing about him!" said he. "I thought he had
+been killed. All I know I heard at second hand from others. I only
+know that he fell in with the Rostovs.... What a strange coincidence!"
+
+Pierre spoke rapidly and with animation. He glanced once at the
+companion's face, saw her attentive and kindly gaze fixed on him, and,
+as often happens when one is talking, felt somehow that this companion
+in the black dress was a good, kind, excellent creature who would
+not hinder his conversing freely with Princess Mary.
+
+But when he mentioned the Rostovs, Princess Mary's face expressed
+still greater embarrassment. She again glanced rapidly from Pierre's
+face to that of the lady in the black dress and said:
+
+"Do you really not recognize her?"
+
+Pierre looked again at the companion's pale, delicate face with
+its black eyes and peculiar mouth, and something near to him, long
+forgotten and more than sweet, looked at him from those attentive
+eyes.
+
+"But no, it can't be!" he thought. "This stern, thin, pale face that
+looks so much older! It cannot be she. It merely reminds me of her."
+But at that moment Princess Mary said, "Natasha!" And with difficulty,
+effort, and stress, like the opening of a door grown rusty on its
+hinges, a smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes, and from
+that opening door came a breath of fragrance which suffused Pierre
+with a happiness he had long forgotten and of which he had not even
+been thinking- especially at that moment. It suffused him, seized him,
+and enveloped him completely. When she smiled doubt was no longer
+possible, it was Natasha and he loved her.
+
+At that moment Pierre involuntarily betrayed to her, to Princess
+Mary, and above all to himself, a secret of which he himself had
+been unaware. He flushed joyfully yet with painful distress. He
+tried to hide his agitation. But the more he tried to hide it the more
+clearly- clearer than any words could have done- did he betray to
+himself, to her, and to Princess Mary that he loved her.
+
+"No, it's only the unexpectedness of it," thought Pierre. But as
+soon as he tried to continue the conversation he had begun with
+Princess Mary he again glanced at Natasha, and a still-deeper flush
+suffused his face and a still-stronger agitation of mingled joy and
+fear seized his soul. He became confused in his speech and stopped
+in the middle of what he was saying.
+
+Pierre had failed to notice Natasha because he did not at all expect
+to see her there, but he had failed to recognize her because the
+change in her since he last saw her was immense. She had grown thin
+and pale, but that was not what made her unrecognizable; she was
+unrecognizable at the moment he entered because on that face whose
+eyes had always shone with a suppressed smile of the joy of life,
+now when he first entered and glanced at her there was not the least
+shadow of a smile: only her eyes were kindly attentive and sadly
+interrogative.
+
+Pierre's confusion was not reflected by any confusion on Natasha's
+part, but only by the pleasure that just perceptibly lit up her
+whole face.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+"She has come to stay with me," said Princess Mary. "The count and
+countess will be here in a few days. The countess is in a dreadful
+state; but it was necessary for Natasha herself to see a doctor.
+They insisted on her coming with me."
+
+"Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?" said Pierre,
+addressing Natasha. "You know it happened the very day we were
+rescued. I saw him. What a delightful boy he was!"
+
+Natasha looked at him, and by way of answer to his words her eyes
+widened and lit up.
+
+"What can one say or think of as a consolation?" said Pierre.
+"Nothing! Why had such a splendid boy, so full of life, to die?"
+
+"Yes, in these days it would be hard to live without faith..."
+remarked Princess Mary.
+
+"Yes, yes, that is really true," Pierre hastily interrupted her.
+
+"Why is it true?" Natasha asked, looking attentively into Pierre's
+eyes.
+
+"How can you ask why?" said Princess Mary. "The thought alone of
+what awaits..."
+
+Natasha without waiting for Princess Mary to finish again looked
+inquiringly at Pierre.
+
+"And because," Pierre continued, "only one who believes that there
+is a God ruling us can bear a loss such as hers and... yours."
+
+Natasha had already opened her mouth to speak but suddenly
+stopped. Pierre hurriedly turned away from her and again addressed
+Princess Mary, asking about his friend's last days.
+
+Pierre's confusion had now almost vanished, but at the same time
+he felt that his freedom had also completely gone. He felt that
+there was now a judge of his every word and action whose judgment
+mattered more to him than that of all the rest of the world. As he
+spoke now he was considering what impression his words would make on
+Natasha. He did not purposely say things to please her, but whatever
+he was saying he regarded from her standpoint.
+
+Princess Mary- reluctantly as is usual in such cases- began
+telling of the condition in which she had found Prince Andrew. But
+Pierre's face quivering with emotion, his questions and his eager
+restless expression, gradually compelled her to go into details
+which she feared to recall for her own sake.
+
+"Yes, yes, and so...? " Pierre kept saying as he leaned toward her
+with his whole body and eagerly listened to her story. "Yes, yes... so
+he grew tranquil and softened? With all his soul he had always
+sought one thing- to be perfectly good- so he could not be afraid of
+death. The faults he had- if he had any- were not of his making. So he
+did soften?... What a happy thing that he saw you again," he added,
+suddenly turning to Natasha and looking at her with eyes full of
+tears.
+
+Natasha's face twitched. She frowned and lowered her eyes for a
+moment. She hesitated for an instant whether to speak or not.
+
+"Yes, that was happiness," she then said in her quiet voice with its
+deep chest notes. "For me it certainly was happiness." She paused.
+"And he... he... he said he was wishing for it at the very moment I
+entered the room...."
+
+Natasha's voice broke. She blushed, pressed her clasped hands on her
+knees, and then controlling herself with an evident effort lifted
+her head and began to speak rapidly.
+
+"We knew nothing of it when we started from Moscow. I did not dare
+to ask about him. Then suddenly Sonya told me he was traveling with
+us. I had no idea and could not imagine what state he was in, all I
+wanted was to see him and be with him," she said, trembling, and
+breathing quickly.
+
+And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell what she
+had never yet mentioned to anyone- all she had lived through during
+those three weeks of their journey and life at Yaroslavl.
+
+Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed upon her full
+of tears. As he listened he did not think of Prince Andrew, nor of
+death, nor of what she was telling. He listened to her and felt only
+pity for her, for what she was suffering now while she was speaking.
+
+Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her tears, sat
+beside Natasha, and heard for the first time the story of those last
+days of her brother's and Natasha's love.
+
+Evidently Natasha needed to tell that painful yet joyful tale.
+
+She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate
+secrets of her soul, and it seemed as if she could never finish.
+Several times she repeated the same thing twice.
+
+Dessalles' voice was heard outside the door asking whether little
+Nicholas might come in to say good night.
+
+"Well, that's all- everything," said Natasha.
+
+She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran to the
+door which was hidden by curtains, struck her head against it, and
+rushed from the room with a moan either of pain or sorrow.
+
+Pierre gazed at the door through which she had disappeared and did
+not understand why he suddenly felt all alone in the world.
+
+Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by drawing his
+attention to her nephew who had entered the room.
+
+At that moment of emotional tenderness young Nicholas' face, which
+resembled his father's, affected Pierre so much that when he had
+kissed the boy he got up quickly, took out his handkerchief, and
+went to the window. He wished to take leave of Princess Mary, but
+she would not let him go.
+
+"No, Natasha and I sometimes don't go to sleep till after two, so
+please don't go. I will order supper. Go downstairs, we will come
+immediately."
+
+Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him: "This is the
+first time she has talked of him like that."
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining room; a few
+minutes later he heard footsteps and Princess Mary entered with
+Natasha. Natasha was calm, though a severe and grave expression had
+again settled on her face. They all three of them now experienced that
+feeling of awkwardness which usually follows after a serious and
+heartfelt talk. It is impossible to go back to the same
+conversation, to talk of trifles is awkward, and yet the desire to
+speak is there and silence seems like affectation. They went
+silently to table. The footmen drew back the chairs and pushed them up
+again. Pierre unfolded his cold table napkin and, resolving to break
+the silence, looked at Natasha and at Princess Mary. They had
+evidently both formed the same resolution; the eyes of both shone with
+satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life also has joy.
+
+"Do you take vodka, Count?" asked Princess Mary, and those words
+suddenly banished the shadows of the past. "Now tell us about
+yourself," said she. "One hears such improbable wonders about you."
+
+"Yes," replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to
+him. "They even tell me wonders I myself never dreamed of! Mary
+Abramovna invited me to her house and kept telling me what had
+happened, or ought to have happened, to me. Stepan Stepanych also
+instructed me how I ought to tell of my experiences. In general I have
+noticed that it is very easy to be an interesting man (I am an
+interesting man now); people invite me out and tell me all about
+myself."
+
+Natasha smiled and was on the point of speaking.
+
+"We have been told," Princess Mary interrupted her, "that you lost
+two millions in Moscow. Is that true?"
+
+"But I am three times as rich as before," returned Pierre.
+
+Though the position was now altered by his decision to pay his
+wife's debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still maintained that
+he had become three times as rich as before.
+
+"What I have certainly gained is freedom," he began seriously, but
+did not continue, noticing that this theme was too egotistic.
+
+"And are you building?"
+
+"Yes. Savelich says I must!"
+
+"Tell me, you did not know of the countess' death when you decided
+to remain in Moscow?" asked Princess Mary and immediately blushed,
+noticing that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed
+to his words a meaning he had perhaps not intended.
+
+"No," answered Pierre, evidently not considering awkward the meaning
+Princess Mary had given to his words. "I heard of it in Orel and you
+cannot imagine how it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple," he
+added quickly, glancing at Natasha and noticing on her face
+curiosity as to how he would speak of his wife, "but her death shocked
+me terribly. When two people quarrel they are always both in fault,
+and one's own guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other
+is no longer alive. And then such a death... without friends and
+without consolation! I am very, very sorry for her," he concluded, and
+was pleased to notice a look of glad approval on Natasha's face.
+
+"Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor," said
+Princess Mary.
+
+Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time tried not to
+look at Natasha. When he ventured to glance her way again her face was
+cold, stern, and he fancied even contemptuous.
+
+"And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we have been
+told?" said Princess Mary.
+
+Pierre laughed.
+
+"No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being taken
+prisoner means being Napoleon's guest. Not only did I never see him
+but I heard nothing about him- I was in much lower company!"
+
+Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak about his
+captivity was gradually led on to do so.
+
+"But it's true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?"
+Natasha asked with a slight smile. "I guessed it then when we met at
+the Sukharev tower, do you remember?"
+
+Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by
+Princess Mary's questions and especially by Natasha's into giving a
+detailed account of his adventures.
+
+At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary
+with him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he
+came to describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was
+unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed
+emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he
+has lived through.
+
+Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre and now at
+Natasha. In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his
+goodness. Natasha, leaning on her elbow, the expression of her face
+constantly changing with the narrative, watched Pierre with an
+attention that never wandered- evidently herself experiencing all that
+he described. Not only her look, but her exclamations and the brief
+questions she put, showed Pierre that she understood just what he
+wished to convey. It was clear that she understood not only what he
+said but also what he wished to, but could not, express in words.
+The account Pierre gave of the incident with the child and the woman
+for protecting whom he was arrested was this: "It was an awful
+sight- children abandoned, some in the flames... One was snatched
+out before my eyes... and there were women who had their things
+snatched off and their earrings torn out..." he flushed and grew
+confused. "Then a patrol arrived and all the men- all those who were
+not looting, that is- were arrested, and I among them."
+
+"I am sure you're not telling us everything; I am sure you did
+something..." said Natasha and pausing added, "something fine?"
+
+Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he wanted to pass
+over the horrible details, but Natasha insisted that he should not
+omit anything.
+
+Pierre began to tell about Karataev, but paused. By this time he had
+risen from the table and was pacing the room, Natasha following him
+with her eyes. Then he added:
+
+"No, you can't understand what I learned from that illiterate man-
+that simple fellow."
+
+"Yes, yes, go on!" said Natasha. "Where is he?"
+
+"They killed him almost before my eyes."
+
+And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to tell of
+the last days of their retreat, of Karataev's illness and his death.
+
+He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled them. He now,
+as it were, saw a new meaning in all he had gone through. Now that
+he was telling it all to Natasha he experienced that pleasure which
+a man has when women listen to him- not clever women who when
+listening either try to remember what they hear to enrich their
+minds and when opportunity offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt
+it to some thought of their own and promptly contribute their own
+clever comments prepared in their little mental workshop- but the
+pleasure given by real women gifted with a capacity to select and
+absorb the very best a man shows of himself. Natasha without knowing
+it was all attention: she did not lose a word, no single quiver in
+Pierre's voice, no look, no twitch of a muscle in his face, nor a
+single gesture. She caught the unfinished word in its flight and
+took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret meaning of
+all Pierre's mental travail.
+
+Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized with him, but she
+now saw something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw the
+possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre, and
+the first thought of this filled her heart with gladness.
+
+It was three o'clock in the morning. The footmen came in with sad
+and stern faces to change the candles, but no one noticed them.
+
+Pierre finished his story. Natasha continued to look at him intently
+with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as if trying to
+understand something more which he had perhaps left untold. Pierre
+in shamefaced and happy confusion glanced occasionally at her, and
+tried to think what to say next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess
+Mary was silent. It occurred to none of them that it was three o'clock
+and time to go to bed.
+
+"People speak of misfortunes and sufferings," remarked Pierre,
+"but if at this moment I were asked: 'Would you rather be what you
+were before you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?'
+then for heaven's sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh!
+We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is
+lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While
+there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us. I say
+this to you," he added, turning to Natasha.
+
+"Yes, yes," she said, answering something quite different. "I too
+should wish nothing but to relive it all from the beginning."
+
+Pierre looked intently at her.
+
+"Yes, and nothing more." said Natasha.
+
+"It's not true, not true!" cried Pierre. "I am not to blame for
+being alive and wishing to live- nor you either."
+
+Suddenly Natasha bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and
+began to cry.
+
+"What is it, Natasha?" said Princess Mary.
+
+"Nothing, nothing." She smiled at Pierre through her tears. "Good
+night! It is time for bed."
+
+Pierre rose and took his leave.
+
+Princess Mary and Natasha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked
+of what Pierre had told them. Princess Mary did not express her
+opinion of Pierre nor did Natasha speak of him.
+
+"Well, good night, Mary!" said Natasha. "Do you know, I am often
+afraid that by not speaking of him" (she meant Prince Andrew) "for
+fear of not doing justice to our feelings, we forget him."
+
+Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged the justice
+of Natasha's remark, but she did not express agreement in words.
+
+"Is it possible to forget?" said she.
+
+"It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was hard
+and painful, but good, very good!" said Natasha. "I am sure he
+really loved him. That is why I told him... Was it all right?" she
+added, suddenly blushing.
+
+"To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!" said
+Princess Mary.
+
+"Do you know, Mary..." Natasha suddenly said with a mischievous
+smile such as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long
+time, "he has somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh- as if he
+had just come out of a Russian bath; do you understand? Out of a moral
+bath. Isn't it true?"
+
+"Yes," replied Princess Mary. "He has greatly improved."
+
+"With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well, just as
+if he had come straight from the bath... Papa used to..."
+
+"I understand why he" (Prince Andrew) "liked no one so much as him,"
+said Princess Mary.
+
+"Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are friends when
+they are quite different. That must be true. Really he is quite unlike
+him- in everything."
+
+"Yes, but he's wonderful."
+
+"Well, good night," said Natasha.
+
+And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her
+face as if it had been forgotten there.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night. He
+paced up and down his room, now turning his thoughts on a difficult
+problem and frowning, now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and
+wincing, and now smiling happily.
+
+He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natasha, and of their love,
+at one moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that
+feeling. It was already six in the morning and he still paced up and
+down the room.
+
+"Well, what's to be done if it cannot be avoided? What's to be done?
+Evidently it has to be so," said he to himself, and hastily undressing
+he got into bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or
+indecision.
+
+"Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must do
+everything that she and I may be man and wife," he told himself.
+
+A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on
+the Friday. When he awoke on the Thursday, Savelich came to ask him
+about packing for the journey.
+
+"What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there in
+Petersburg?" he asked involuntarily, though only to himself. "Oh, yes,
+long ago before this happened I did for some reason mean to go to
+Petersburg," he reflected. "Why? But perhaps I shall go. What a good
+fellow he is and how attentive, and how he remembers everything," he
+thought, looking at Savelich's old face, "and what a pleasant smile he
+has!"
+
+"Well, Savelich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?"
+Pierre asked him.
+
+"What's the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We lived under
+the late count- the kingdom of heaven be his!- and we have lived under
+you too, without ever being wronged."
+
+"And your children?"
+
+"The children will live just the same. With such masters one can
+live."
+
+"But what about my heirs?" said Pierre. "Supposing I suddenly
+marry... it might happen," he added with an involuntary smile.
+
+"If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a good
+thing."
+
+"How easy he thinks it," thought Pierre. "He doesn't know how
+terrible it is and how dangerous. Too soon or too late... it is
+terrible!"
+
+"So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?" asked
+Savelich.
+
+"No, I'll put it off for a bit. I'll tell you later. You must
+forgive the trouble I have put you to," said Pierre, and seeing
+Savelich smile, he thought: "But how strange it is that he should
+not know that now there is no Petersburg for me, and that that must be
+settled first of all! But probably he knows it well enough and is only
+pretending. Shall I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?"
+Pierre reflected. "No, another time."
+
+At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he had
+been to see Princess Mary the day before and had there met- "Whom do
+you think? Natasha Rostova!"
+
+The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than
+if he had seen Anna Semenovna.
+
+"Do you know her?" asked Pierre.
+
+"I have seen the princess," she replied. "I heard that they were
+arranging a match for her with young Rostov. It would be a very good
+thing for the Rostovs, they are said to be utterly ruined."
+
+"No; I mean do you know Natasha Rostova?"
+
+"I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a great
+pity."
+
+"No, she either doesn't understand or is pretending," thought
+Pierre. "Better not say anything to her either."
+
+The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre's journey.
+
+"How kind they all are," thought Pierre. "What is surprising is that
+they should trouble about these things now when it can no longer be of
+interest to them. And all for me!"
+
+On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre, inviting him
+to send a representative to the Faceted Palace to recover things
+that were to be returned to their owners that day.
+
+"And this man too," thought Pierre, looking into the face of the
+Chief of Police. "What a fine, good-looking officer and how kind.
+Fancy bothering about such trifies now! And they actually say he is
+not honest and takes bribes. What nonsense! Besides, why shouldn't
+he take bribes? That's the way he was brought up, and everybody does
+it. But what a kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at
+me."
+
+Pierre went to Princess Mary's to dinner.
+
+As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned
+down, he was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The
+picturesqueness of the chimney stacks and tumble-down walls of the
+burned-out quarters of the town, stretching out and concealing one
+another, reminded him of the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he
+met and their passengers, the carpenters cutting the timber for new
+houses with axes, the women hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked
+at him with cheerful beaming eyes that seemed to say: "Ah, there he
+is! Let's see what will come of it!"
+
+At the entrance to Princess Mary's house Pierre felt doubtful
+whether he had really been there the night before and really seen
+Natasha and talked to her. "Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall
+go in and find no one there." But he had hardly entered the room
+before he felt her presence with his whole being by the loss of his
+sense of freedom. She was in the same black dress with soft folds
+and her hair was done the same way as the day before, yet she was
+quite different. Had she been like this when he entered the day before
+he could not for a moment have failed to recognize her.
+
+She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince
+Andrew's fiancee. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on
+her face was a friendly and strangely roguish expression.
+
+Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there,
+but Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house
+with her.
+
+Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening.
+Though Princess Mary and Natasha were evidently glad to see their
+visitor and though all Pierre's interest was now centered in that
+house, by the evening they had talked over everything and the
+conversation passed from one trivial topic to another and repeatedly
+broke off. He stayed so long that Princess Mary and Natasha
+exchanged glances, evidently wondering when he would go. Pierre
+noticed this but could not go. He felt uneasy and embarrassed, but sat
+on because he simply could not get up and take his leave.
+
+Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and
+complaining of a headache began to say good night.
+
+"So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?" she asked.
+
+"No, I am not going," Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone
+and as though offended. "Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow- but I
+won't say good-by yet. I will call round in case you have any
+commissions for me," said he, standing before Princess Mary and
+turning red, but not taking his departure.
+
+Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other
+hand instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly
+and intently at him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she had
+plainly shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and
+long-drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.
+
+When Natasha left the room Pierre's confusion and awkwardness
+immediately vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly
+moved an armchair toward Princess Mary.
+
+"Yes, I wanted to tell you," said he, answering her look as if she
+had spoken. "Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess,
+my dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of
+her, I know it's impossible to speak of it now. But I want to be a
+brother to her. No, not that, I don't, I can't..."
+
+He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.
+
+"Well," he went on with an evident effort at self-control and
+coherence. "I don't know when I began to love her, but I have loved
+her and her alone all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine
+life without her. I cannot propose to her at present, but the
+thought that perhaps she might someday be my wife and that I may be
+missing that possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell
+me, can I hope? Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!" he added
+after a pause, and touched her hand as she did not reply.
+
+"I am thinking of what you have told me," answered Princess Mary.
+"This is what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love
+at present..."
+
+Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love
+was impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden
+change in Natasha two days before that she would not only not be
+hurt if Pierre spoke of his love, but that it was the very thing she
+wished for.
+
+"To speak to her now wouldn't do," said the princess all the same.
+
+"But what am I to do?
+
+"Leave it to me," said Princess Mary. "I know..."
+
+Pierre was looking into Princess Mary's eyes.
+
+"Well?... Well?..." he said.
+
+"I know that she loves... will love you," Princess Mary corrected
+herself.
+
+Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and with a
+frightened expression seized Princess Mary's hand.
+
+"What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think...?"
+
+"Yes, I think so," said Princess Mary with a smile. "Write to her
+parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it
+to happen and my heart tells me it will."
+
+"No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can't be.... How happy I
+am! No, it can't be!" Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess
+Mary's hands.
+
+"Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you,"
+she said.
+
+"To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I'll go. But I may come again
+tomorrow?"
+
+Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less animated
+than she had been the day before; but that day as he looked at her
+Pierre sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor
+she existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness. "Is it
+possible? No, it can't be," he told himself at every look, gesture,
+and word that filled his soul with joy.
+
+When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand, he could
+not help holding it a little longer in his own.
+
+"Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this
+treasure of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that
+it will one day be mine forever, as familiar to me as I am to
+myself?... No, that's impossible!..."
+
+"Good-by, Count," she said aloud. "I shall look forward very much to
+your return," she added in a whisper.
+
+And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face
+which accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of
+inexhaustible memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for
+Pierre. "'I shall look forward very much to your return....' Yes, yes,
+how did she say it? Yes, 'I shall look forward very much to your
+return.' Oh, how happy I am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!"
+said Pierre to himself.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+There was nothing in Pierre's soul now at all like what had troubled
+it during his courtship of Helene.
+
+He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the
+words he had spoken, or say: "Oh, why did I not say that?" and,
+"Whatever made me say 'Je vous aime'?" On the contrary, he now
+repeated in imagination every word that he or Natasha had spoken and
+pictured every detail of her face and smile, and did not wish to
+diminish or add anything, but only to repeat it again and again. There
+was now not a shadow of doubt in his mind as to whether what he had
+undertaken was right or wrong. Only one terrible doubt sometimes
+crossed his mind: "Wasn't it all a dream? Isn't Princess Mary
+mistaken? Am I not too conceited and self-confident? I believe all
+this- and suddenly Princess Mary will tell her, and she will be sure
+to smile and say: 'How strange! He must be deluding himself. Doesn't
+he know that he is a man, just a man, while I...? I am something
+altogether different and higher.'"
+
+That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now
+make any plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable
+that if only he could attain it, it would be the end of all things.
+Everything ended with that.
+
+A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself
+incapable, possessed him. The whole meaning of life- not for him alone
+but for the whole world- seemed to him centered in his love and the
+possibility of being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to
+be occupied with one thing only- his future happiness. Sometimes it
+seemed to him that other people were all as pleased as he was
+himself and merely tried to hide that pleasure by pretending to be
+busy with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw
+allusions to his happiness. He often surprised those he met by his
+significantly happy looks and smiles which seemed to express a
+secret understanding between him and them. And when he realized that
+people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied them with his
+whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them that all that
+occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention.
+
+When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service,
+or when the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the
+assumption that everybody's welfare depended on this or that issue
+of events, he would listen with a mild and pitying smile and
+surprise people by his strange comments. But at this time he saw
+everybody- both those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning
+of life (that is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who
+evidently did not understand it- in the bright light of the emotion
+that shone within himself, and at once without any effort saw in
+everyone he met everything that was good and worthy of being loved.
+
+When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her
+memory aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the
+bliss he now knew. Prince Vasili, who having obtained a new post and
+some fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed
+to him a pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.
+
+Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity.
+All the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained
+true for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently,
+but when he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the
+views he had held at this time of his madness and they always proved
+correct.
+
+"I may have appeared strange and queer then," he thought, "but I was
+not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had
+more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is
+worth understanding in life, because... because I was happy."
+
+Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to
+discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in
+people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love,
+and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes
+for loving them.
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+After Pierre's departure that first evening, when Natasha had said
+to Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: "He looks just, yes, just
+as if he had come out of a Russian bath- in a short coat and with
+his hair cropped," something hidden and unknown to herself, but
+irrepressible, awoke in Natasha's soul.
+
+Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered.
+To her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to
+the surface and demanded satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to
+have forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer
+complained of her position, did not say a word about the past, and
+no longer feared to make happy plans for the future. She spoke
+little of Pierre, but when Princess Mary mentioned him a
+long-extinguished light once more kindled in her eyes and her lips
+curved with a strange smile.
+
+The change that took place in Natasha at first surprised Princess
+Mary; but when she understood its meaning it grieved her. "Can she
+have loved my brother so little as to be able to forget him so
+soon?" she thought when she reflected on the change. But when she
+was with Natasha she was not vexed with her and did not reproach
+her. The reawakened power of life that had seized Natasha was so
+evidently irrepressible and unexpected by her that in her presence
+Princess Mary felt that she had no right to reproach her even in her
+heart.
+
+Natasha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new feeling
+that she did not try to hide the fact that she was no longer sad,
+but bright and cheerful.
+
+When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk
+with Pierre, Natasha met her on the threshold.
+
+"He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?" she repeated.
+
+And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to beg forgiveness
+for her joy settled on Natasha's face.
+
+"I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me."
+
+Understandable and touching as the look with which Natasha gazed
+at her seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry as she was to see her
+agitation, these words pained her for a moment. She remembered her
+brother and his love.
+
+"But what's to be done? She can't help it," thought the princess.
+
+And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natasha all that
+Pierre had said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natasha
+was astounded.
+
+"To Petersburg!" she repeated as if unable to understand.
+
+But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary's face she
+guessed the reason of that sadness and suddenly began to cry.
+
+"Mary," said she, "tell me what I should do! I am afraid of being
+bad. Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me...."
+
+"You love him?"
+
+"Yes," whispered Natasha.
+
+"Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake," said Princess
+Mary, who because of those tears quite forgave Natasha's joy.
+
+"It won't be just yet- someday. Think what fun it will be when I
+am his wife and you marry Nicholas!"
+
+"Natasha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about
+you."
+
+They were silent awhile.
+
+"But why go to Petersburg?" Natasha suddenly asked, and hastily
+replied to her own question. "But no, no, he must... Yes, Mary, He
+must...."
+
+FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had
+subsided within its shores and seemed to have become calm. But the
+mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of
+their motion are unknown to us) continued to operate.
+
+Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the
+movement of humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time.
+Various groups of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation
+and dissolution of kingdoms and displacement of peoples was in
+course of preparation.
+
+The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to
+shore as previously. It was seething in its depths. Historic figures
+were not borne by the waves from one shore to another as before.
+They now seemed to rotate on one spot. The historical figures at the
+head of armies, who formerly reflected the movement of the masses by
+ordering wars, campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless
+movement by political and diplomatic combinations, laws, and treaties.
+
+The historians call this activity of the historical figures "the
+reaction."
+
+In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical
+personages who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the
+reaction. All the well-known people of that period, from Alexander and
+Napoleon to Madame de Stael, Photius, Schelling, Fichte,
+Chateaubriand, and the rest, pass before their stern judgment seat and
+are acquitted or condemned according to whether they conduced to
+progress or to reaction.
+
+According to their accounts a reaction took place at that time in
+Russia also, and the chief culprit was Alexander I, the same man who
+according to them was the chief cause of the liberal movement at the
+commencement of his reign, being the savior of Russia.
+
+There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist
+to learned historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander
+for things he did wrong at this period of his reign.
+
+"He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In this case he
+did well and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning
+of his reign and during 1812, but acted badly by giving a constitution
+to Poland, forming the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakcheev,
+favoring Golitsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkov and
+Photius. He also acted badly by concerning himself with the active
+army and disbanding the Semenov regiment."
+
+It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the
+historians address to him, based on their knowledge of what is good
+for humanity.
+
+What do these reproaches mean?
+
+Do not the very actions for which the historians praise Alexander
+I (the liberal attempts at the beginning of his reign, his struggle
+with Napoleon, the firmness he displayed in 1812 and the campaign of
+1813) flow from the same sources- the circumstances of his birth,
+education, and life- that made his personality what it was and from
+which the actions for which they blame him (the Holy Alliance, the
+restoration of Poland, and the reaction of 1820 and later) also
+flowed?
+
+In what does the substance of those reproaches lie?
+
+It lies in the fact that an historic character like Alexander I,
+standing on the highest possible pinnacle of human power with the
+blinding light of history focused upon him; a character exposed to
+those strongest of all influences: the intrigues, flattery, and
+self-deception inseparable from power; a character who at every moment
+of his life felt a responsibility for all that was happening in
+Europe; and not a fictitious but a live character who like every man
+had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness,
+beauty, and truth- that this character- though not lacking in virtue
+(the historians do not accuse him of that)- had not the same
+conception of the welfare of humanity fifty years ago as a present-day
+professor who from his youth upwards has been occupied with
+learning: that is, with books and lectures and with taking notes
+from them.
+
+But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I was
+mistaken in his view of what was good for the people, we must
+inevitably assume that the historian who judges Alexander will also
+after the lapse of some time turn out to be mistaken in his view of
+what is good for humanity. This assumption is all the more natural and
+inevitable because, watching the movement of history, we see that
+every year and with each new writer, opinion as to what is good for
+mankind changes; so that what once seemed good, ten years later
+seems bad, and vice versa. And what is more, we find at one and the
+same time quite contradictory views as to what is bad and what is good
+in history: some people regard giving a constitution to Poland and
+forming the Holy Alliance as praiseworthy in Alexander, while others
+regard it as blameworthy.
+
+The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be called useful
+or harmful, for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or
+harmful. If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it
+does not agree with his limited understanding of what is good. Whether
+the preservation of my father's house in Moscow, or the glory of the
+Russian arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg and other
+universities, or the freedom of Poland or the greatness of Russia,
+or the balance of power in Europe, or a certain kind of European
+culture called "progress" appear to me to be good or bad, I must admit
+that besides these things the action of every historic character has
+other more general purposes inaccessible to me.
+
+But let us assume that what is called science can harmonize all
+contradictions and possesses an unchanging standard of good and bad by
+which to try historic characters and events; let us say that Alexander
+could have done everything differently; let us say that with
+guidance from those who blame him and who profess to know the ultimate
+aim of the movement of humanity, he might have arranged matters
+according to the program his present accusers would have given him- of
+nationality, freedom, equality, and progress (these, I think, cover
+the ground). Let us assume that this program was possible and had then
+been formulated, and that Alexander had acted on it. What would then
+have become of the activity of all those who opposed the tendency that
+then prevailed in the government- an activity that in the opinion of
+the historians was good and beneficent? Their activity would not
+have existed: there would have been no life, there would have been
+nothing.
+
+If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the
+possibility of life is destroyed.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to
+the attainment of certain ends- the greatness of Russia or of
+France, the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas
+of the Revolution general progress or anything else- then it is
+impossible to explain the facts of history without introducing the
+conceptions of chance and genius.
+
+If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth
+century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have
+been accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the
+invasion. If the aim wag the aggrandizement of France, that might have
+been attained without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the
+aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have
+accomplished that much better than warfare. If the aim was the
+progress of civilization, it is easy to see that there are other
+ways of diffusing civilization more expedient than by the
+destruction of wealth and of human lives.
+
+Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?
+
+Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation; genius
+utilized it," says history.
+
+But what is chance? What is genius?
+
+The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing
+thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a
+certain stage of understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a
+certain event occurs; I think that I cannot know it; so I do not try
+to know it and I talk about chance. I see a force producing effects
+beyond the scope of ordinary human agencies; I do not understand why
+this occurs and I talk of genius.
+
+To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a
+special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the
+others must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing
+conjunction of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances
+that this ram, who instead of getting into the general fold every
+evening goes into a special enclosure where there are oats- that
+this very ram, swelling with fat, is killed for meat.
+
+But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to
+them happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they
+need only admit that what happens to them may also have purposes
+beyond their ken, and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence
+in what happened to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not
+know for what purpose they are fattened, they will at least know
+that all that happened to the ram did not happen accidentally, and
+will no longer need the conceptions of chance or genius.
+
+Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately
+intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond
+our ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of
+historic characters and perceive the cause of the effect they
+produce (incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and then
+the words chance and genius become superfluous.
+
+We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the European
+convulsions and that we know only the facts- that is, the murders,
+first in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria,
+in Spain, and in Russia- and that the movements from the west to the
+east and from the east to the west form the essence and purpose of
+these events, and not only shall we have no need to see exceptional
+ability and genius in Napoleon and Alexander, but we shall be unable
+to consider them to be anything but like other men, and we shall not
+be obliged to have recourse to chance for an explanation of those
+small events which made these people what they were, but it will be
+clear that all those small events were inevitable.
+
+By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose, we shall
+clearly perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom or seed for
+any single plant better suited to it than those it produces, so it
+is impossible to imagine any two people more completely adapted down
+to the smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill, than
+Napoleon and Alexander with all their antecedents.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The fundamental and essential significance of the European events of
+the beginning of the nineteenth century lies in the movement of the
+mass of the European peoples from west to east and afterwards from
+east to west. The commencement of that movement was the movement
+from west to east. For the peoples of the west to be able to make
+their warlike movement to Moscow it was necessary: (1) that they
+should form themselves into a military group of a size able to
+endure a collision with the warlike military group of the east, (2)
+that they should abandon all established traditions and customs, and
+(3) that during their military movement they should have at their head
+a man who could justify to himself and to them the deceptions,
+robberies, and murders which would have to be committed during that
+movement.
+
+And beginning with the French Revolution the old inadequately
+large group was destroyed, as well as the old habits and traditions,
+and step by step a group was formed of larger dimensions with new
+customs and traditions, and a man was produced who would stand at
+the head of the coming movement and bear the responsibility for all
+that had to be done.
+
+A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions,
+without a name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges- by what seem the
+strangest chances- from among all the seething French parties, and
+without joining any one of them is borne forward to a prominent
+position.
+
+The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance
+of his opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling
+and self-confident limitations of this man raise him to the head of
+the army. The brilliant qualities of the soldiers of the army sent
+to Italy, his opponents' reluctance to fight, and his own childish
+audacity and self-confidence secure him military fame. Innumerable
+so called chances accompany him everywhere. The disfavor into which he
+falls with the rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts
+to avoid his predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not received
+into the Russian service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes
+to nothing. During the war in Italy he is several times on the verge
+of destruction and each time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing
+to various diplomatic considerations the Russian armies- just those
+which might have destroyed his prestige- do not appear upon the
+scene till he is no longer there.
+
+On his return from Italy he finds the government in Paris in a
+process of dissolution in which all those who are in it are inevitably
+wiped out and destroyed. And by chance an escape from this dangerous
+position presents itself in the form of an aimless and senseless
+expedition to Africa. Again so-called chance accompanies him.
+Impregnable Malta surrenders without a shot; his most reckless schemes
+are crowned with success. The enemy's fleet, which subsequently did
+not let a single boat pass, allows his entire army to elude it. In
+Africa a whole series of outrages are committed against the almost
+unarmed inhabitants. And the men who commit these crimes, especially
+their leader, assure themselves that this is admirable, this is glory-
+it resembles Caesar and Alexander the Great and is therefore good.
+
+This ideal of glory and grandeur- which consists not merely in
+considering nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on
+every crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible
+supernatural significance- that ideal, destined to guide this man
+and his associates, had scope for its development in Africa.
+Whatever he does succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The
+cruelty of murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His
+childishly rash, uncalled-for, and ignoble departure from Africa,
+leaving his comrades in distress, is set down to his credit, and again
+the enemy's fleet twice lets him slip past. When, intoxicated by the
+crimes he has committed so successfully, he reaches Paris, the
+dissolution of the republican government, which a year earlier might
+have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and his presence there
+now as a newcomer free from party entanglements can only serve to
+exalt him- and though he himself has no plan, he is quite ready for
+his new role.
+
+He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties
+snatched at him and demanded his participation.
+
+He alone- with his ideal of glory and grandeur developed in Italy
+and Egypt, his insane self-adulation, his boldness in crime and
+frankness in lying- he alone could justify what had to be done.
+
+He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost apart from
+his will and despite his indecision, his lack of a plan, and all his
+mistakes, he is drawn into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power and
+the conspiracy is crowned with success.
+
+He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm he wishes
+to flee, considering himself lost. He pretends to fall into a swoon
+and says senseless things that should have ruined him. But the once
+proud and shrewd rulers of France, feeling that their part is played
+out, are even more bewildered than he, and do not say the words they
+should have said to destroy him and retain their power.
+
+Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all men as if by
+agreement co-operate to confirm that power. Chance forms the
+characters of the rulers of France, who submit to him; chance forms
+the character of Paul I of Russia who recognizes his government;
+chance contrives a plot against him which not only fails to harm him
+but confirms his power. Chance puts the Duc d'Enghien in his hands and
+unexpectedly causes him to kill him- thereby convincing the mob more
+forcibly than in any other way that he had the right, since he had the
+might. Chance contrives that though he directs all his efforts to
+prepare an expedition against England (which would inevitably have
+ruined him) he never carries out that intention, but unexpectedly
+falls upon Mack and the Austrians, who surrender without a battle.
+Chance and genius give him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance
+all men, not only the French but all Europe- except England which does
+not take part in the events about to happen- despite their former
+horror and detestation of his crimes, now recognize his authority, the
+title he has given himself, and his ideal of grandeur and glory, which
+seems excellent and reasonable to them all.
+
+As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming movement,
+the western forces push toward the east several times in 1805, 1806,
+1807, and 1809, gaining strength and growing. In 1811 the group of
+people that had formed in France unites into one group with the
+peoples of Central Europe. The strength of the justification of the
+man who stands at the head of the movement grows with the increased
+size of the group. During the ten-year preparatory period this man had
+formed relations with all the crowned heads of Europe. The discredited
+rulers of the world can oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate
+Napoleonic ideal of glory and grandeur. One after another they
+hasten to display their insignificance before him. The King of Prussia
+sends his wife to seek the great man's mercy; the Emperor of Austria
+considers it a favor that this man receives a daughter the Caesars
+into his bed; the Pope, the guardian of all that the nations hold
+sacred, utilizes religion for the aggrandizement of the great man.
+It is not Napoleon who prepares himself for the accomplishment of
+his role, so much as all those round him who prepare him to take on
+himself the whole responsibility for what is happening and has to
+happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud he commits, which in
+the mouths of those around him is not at once represented as a great
+deed. The most suitable fete the Germans can devise for him is a
+celebration of Jena and Auerstadt. Not only is he great, but so are
+his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his brothers-in-law.
+Everything is done to deprive him of the remains of his reason and
+to prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so too
+are the forces.
+
+The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goal- Moscow.
+That city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than the
+opposing armies had suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to
+Wagram. But suddenly instead of those chances and that genius which
+hitherto had so consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of
+successes to the predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of
+inverse chances occur- from the cold in his head at Borodino to the
+sparks which set Moscow on fire, and the frosts- and instead of
+genius, stupidity and immeasurable baseness become evident.
+
+The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are
+now not for Napoleon but always against him.
+
+A countermovement is then accomplished from east to west with a
+remarkable resemblance to the preceding movement from west to east.
+Attempted drives from east to west- similar to the contrary
+movements of 1805, 1807, and 1809- precede the great westward
+movement; there is the same coalescence into a group of enormous
+dimensions; the same adhesion of the people of Central Europe to the
+movement; the same hesitation midway, and the same increasing rapidity
+as the goal is approached.
+
+Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government
+and army are destroyed. Napoleon himself is no longer of any
+account; all his actions are evidently pitiful and mean, but again
+an inexplicable chance occurs. The allies detest Napoleon whom they
+regard as the cause of their sufferings. Deprived of power and
+authority, his crimes and his craft exposed, he should have appeared
+to them what he appeared ten years previously and one year later- an
+outlawed brigand. But by some strange chance no one perceives this.
+His part is not yet ended. The man who ten years before and a year
+later was considered an outlawed brigand is sent to an island two
+days' sail from France, which for some reason is presented to him as
+his dominion, and guards are given to him and millions of money are
+paid him.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. The
+waves of the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddies
+are formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have
+caused the floods to abate.
+
+But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. The
+diplomatists think that their disagreements are the cause of this
+fresh pressure of natural forces; they anticipate war between their
+sovereigns; the position seems to them insoluble. But the wave they
+feel to be rising does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises
+again from the same point as before- Paris. The last backwash of the
+movement from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the
+apparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the military
+movement of that period of history.
+
+The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, without
+any conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but
+by strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man
+they cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.
+
+This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.
+
+That act is performed.
+
+The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off
+his powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more.
+
+And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to
+himself in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues
+and lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to
+the whole world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as
+long as an unseen hand directed his actions.
+
+The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the
+actor shows him to us.
+
+"See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was
+not he but I who moved you?"
+
+But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people
+understood this.
+
+Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life of
+Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from
+east to west.
+
+What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the head
+of that movement from east to west?
+
+What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with
+European affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests;
+a moral superiority over those sovereigns of the day who co-operated
+with him; a mild and attractive personality; and a personal
+grievance against Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I; all
+this had been prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life:
+his education, his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded
+him, and by Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.
+
+During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed.
+But as soon as the necessity for a general European war presented
+itself he appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting the
+nations of Europe, led them to the goal.
+
+The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possesses
+all possible power. How does he use it?
+
+Alexander I- the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early
+years had striven only for his people's welfare, the originator of the
+liberal innovations in his fatherland- now that he seemed to possess
+the utmost power and therefore to have the possibility of bringing
+about the welfare of his peoples- at the time when Napoleon in exile
+was drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made
+mankind happy had he retained power- Alexander I, having fulfilled his
+mission and feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizes
+the insignificance of that supposed power, turns away from it, and
+gives it into the hands of contemptible men whom he despises, saying
+only:
+
+"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man like
+the rest of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and of
+God."
+
+As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself,
+and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to
+comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet
+has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.
+
+A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is
+afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet
+admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it
+exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee
+collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it
+exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life
+of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed
+the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate
+its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of
+a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this
+the purpose of the bee's existence. Another, observing the migration
+of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that
+in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the
+bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes
+the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in
+the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the
+ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.
+
+All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee
+to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of
+historic characters and nations.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Natasha's wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in 1813, was the
+last happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov
+died that same year and, as always happens, after the father's death
+the family group broke up.
+
+The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow and the
+flight from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natasha's despair, Petya's
+death, and the old countess' grief fell blow after blow on the old
+count's head. He seemed to be unable to understand the meaning of
+all these events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual sense as if
+expecting and inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed
+now frightened and distraught and now unnaturally animated and
+enterprising.
+
+The arrangements for Natasha's marriage occupied him for a while. He
+ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful,
+but his cheerfulness was not infectious as it used to be: on the
+contrary it evoked the compassion of those who knew and liked him.
+
+When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet and began to
+complain of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his
+bed. He realized from the first that he would not get up again,
+despite the doctor's encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in
+an armchair by his pillow without undressing. Every time she gave
+him his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his last
+day, sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for
+having dissipated their property- that being the chief fault of
+which he was conscious. After receiving communion and unction he
+quietly died; and next day a throng of acquaintances who came to pay
+their last respects to the deceased filled the house rented by the
+Rostovs. All these acquaintances, who had so often dined and danced at
+his house and had so often laughed at him, now said, with a common
+feeling of self-reproach and emotion, as if justifying themselves:
+"Well, whatever he may have been he was a most worthy man. You don't
+meet such men nowadays.... And which of us has not weaknesses of his
+own?"
+
+It was just when the count's affairs had become so involved that
+it was impossible to say what would happen if he lived another year
+that he unexpectedly died.
+
+Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the news of his
+father's death reached him. He at once resigned his commission, and
+without waiting for it to be accepted took leave of absence and went
+to Moscow. The state of the count's affairs became quite obvious a
+month after his death, surprising everyone by the immense total of
+small debts the existence of which no one had suspected. The debts
+amounted to double the value of the property.
+
+Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance.
+But he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father's memory, which
+he held sacred, and therefore would not hear of refusing and
+accepted the inheritance together with the obligation to pay the
+debts.
+
+The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by a vague but
+powerful influence exerted on them while he lived by the count's
+careless good nature, all proceeded to enforce their claims at once.
+As always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should
+get paid first, and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given
+them as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors.
+Nicholas was allowed no respite and no peace, and those who had seemed
+to pity the old man- the cause of their losses (if they were
+losses)- now remorselessly pursued the young heir who had
+voluntarily undertaken the debts and was obviously not guilty of
+contracting them.
+
+Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate was sold
+by auction for half its value, and half the debts still remained
+unpaid. Nicholas accepted thirty thousand rubles offered him by his
+brother-in-law Bezukhov to pay off debts he regarded as genuinely
+due for value received. And to avoid being imprisoned for the
+remainder, as the creditors threatened, he re-entered the government
+service.
+
+He could not rejoin the army where he would have been made colonel
+at the next vacancy, for his mother now clung to him as her one hold
+on life; and so despite his reluctant to remain in Moscow among people
+who had known him before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil
+service, he accepted a post in Moscow in that service, doffed the
+uniform of which he was so fond, and moved with his mother and Sonya
+to a small house on the Sivtsev Vrazhek.
+
+Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had
+no clear idea of Nicholas' circumstances. Having borrowed money from
+his brother-in-law, Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from
+him. His position was the more difficult because with his salary of
+twelve hundred rubles he had not only to keep himself, his mother, and
+Sonya, but had to shield his mother from knowledge of their poverty.
+The countess could not conceive of life without the luxurious
+conditions she had been used to from childhood and, unable to
+realize how hard it was for her son, kept demanding now a carriage
+(which they did not keep) to send for a friend, now some expensive
+article of food for herself, or wine for her son, or money to buy a
+present as a surprise for Natasha or Sonya, or for Nicholas himself.
+
+Sonya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put up with her
+whims and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their
+poverty from the old countess. Nicholas felt himself irredeemably
+indebted to Sonya for all she was doing for his mother and greatly
+admired her patience and devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her.
+
+He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and
+because there was nothing to reproach her with. She had all that
+people are valued for, but little that could have made him love her.
+He felt that the more he valued her the less he loved her. He had
+taken her at her word when she wrote giving him his freedom and now
+behaved as if all that had passed between them had been long forgotten
+and could never in any case be renewed.
+
+Nicholas' position became worse and worse. The idea of putting
+something aside out of his salary proved a dream. Not only did he
+not save anything, but to comply with his mother's demands he even
+incurred some small debts. He could see no way out of this
+situation. The idea of marrying some rich woman, which was suggested
+to him by his female relations, was repugnant to him. The other way
+out- his mother's death- never entered his head. He wished for nothing
+and hoped for nothing, and deep in his heart experienced a gloomy
+and stern satisfaction in an uncomplaining endurance of his
+position. He tried to avoid his old acquaintances with their
+commiseration and offensive offers of assistance; he avoided all
+distraction and recreation, and even at home did nothing but play
+cards with his mother, pace silently up and down the room, and smoke
+one pipe after another. He seemed carefully to cherish within
+himself the gloomy mood which alone enabled him to endure his
+position.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From
+reports current in town she learned how the Rostovs were situated, and
+how "the son has sacrificed himself for his mother," as people were
+saying.
+
+"I never expected anything else of him," said Princess Mary to
+herself, feeling a joyous sense of her love for him. Remembering her
+friendly relations with all the Rostovs which had made her almost a
+member of the family, she thought it her duty to go to see them. But
+remembering her relations with Nicholas in Voronezh she was shy
+about doing so. Making a great effort she did however go to call on
+them a few weeks after her arrival in Moscow.
+
+Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess' room could only
+be reached through his. But instead of being greeted with pleasure
+as she had expected, at his first glance at her his face assumed a
+cold, stiff, proud expression she had not seen on it before. He
+inquired about her health, led the way to his mother, and having sat
+there for five minutes left the room.
+
+When the princess came out of the countess' room Nicholas met her
+again, and with marked solemnity and stiffness accompanied her to
+the anteroom. To her remarks about his mother's health he made no
+reply. "What's that to you? Leave me in peace," his looks seemed to
+say.
+
+"Why does she come prowling here? What does she want? I can't bear
+these ladies and all these civilities!" said he aloud in Sonya's
+presence, evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the
+princess' carriage had disappeared.
+
+"Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?" cried Sonya, hardly able
+to conceal her delight. "She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!"
+
+Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the princess
+any more. But after her visit the old countess spoke of her several
+times a day.
+
+She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on her,
+expressed a wish to see her often, but yet always became ill-humored
+when she began to talk about her.
+
+Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of the
+princess, but his silence irritated her.
+
+"She is a very admirable and excellent young woman," said she,
+"and you must go and call on her. You would at least be seeing
+somebody, and I think it must be dull for you only seeing us."
+
+"But I don't in the least want to, Mamma."
+
+"You used to want to, and now you don't. Really I don't understand
+you, my dear. One day you are dull, and the next you refuse to see
+anyone."
+
+"But I never said I was dull."
+
+"Why, you said yourself you don't want even to see her. She is a
+very admirable young woman and you always liked her, but now
+suddenly you have got some notion or other in your head. You hide
+everything from me."
+
+"Not at all, Mamma."
+
+"If I were asking you to do something disagreeable now- but I only
+ask you to return a call. One would think mere politeness required
+it.... Well, I have asked you, and now I won't interfere any more
+since you have secrets from your mother."
+
+"Well, then, I'll go if you wish it."
+
+"It doesn't matter to me. I only wish it for your sake."
+
+Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the cards for a
+patience, trying to divert his mother's attention to another topic.
+
+The same conversation was repeated next day and the day after, and
+the day after that.
+
+After her visit to the Rostovs and her unexpectedly chilly reception
+by Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself that she had been
+right in not wishing to be the first to call.
+
+"I expected nothing else," she told herself, calling her pride to
+her aid. "I have nothing to do with him and I only wanted to see the
+old lady, who was always kind to me and to whom I am under many
+obligations."
+
+But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a feeling
+akin to remorse troubled her when she thought of her visit. Though she
+had firmly resolved not to call on the Rostovs again and to forget the
+whole matter, she felt herself all the time in an awkward position.
+And when she asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit
+that it was her relation to Rostov. His cold, polite manner did not
+express his feeling for her (she knew that) but it concealed
+something, and until she could discover what that something was, she
+felt that she could not be at ease.
+
+One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her
+nephew's lessons, she was informed that Rostov had called. With a firm
+resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she
+sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room.
+
+Her first glance at Nicholas' face told her that he had only come to
+fulfill the demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain
+the tone in which he addressed her.
+
+They spoke of the countess' health, of their mutual friends, of
+the latest war news, and when the ten minutes required by propriety
+had elapsed after which a visitor may rise, Nicholas got up to say
+good-by.
+
+With Mademoiselle Bourienne's help the princess had maintained the
+conversation very well, but at the very last moment, just when he
+rose, she was so tired of talking of what did not interest her, and
+her mind was so full of the question why she alone was granted so
+little happiness in life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat
+still, her luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not noticing
+that he had risen.
+
+Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to notice her
+abstraction, made some remark to Mademoiselle Bourienne and then again
+looked at the princess. She still sat motionless with a look of
+suffering on her gentle face. He suddenly felt sorry for her and was
+vaguely conscious that he might be the cause of the sadness her face
+expressed. He wished to help her and say something pleasant, but could
+think of nothing to say.
+
+"Good-by, Princess!" said he.
+
+She started, flushed, and sighed deeply.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said as if waking up. "Are you going
+already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the cushion for the
+countess!"
+
+"Wait a moment, I'll fetch it," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she
+left the room.
+
+They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.
+
+"Yes, Princess," said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, "it doesn't
+seem long ago since we first met at Bogucharovo, but how much water
+has flowed since then! In what distress we all seemed to be then,
+yet I would give much to bring back that time... but there's no
+bringing it back."
+
+Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous
+ones as he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden
+meaning of his words which would explain his feeling for her.
+
+"Yes, yes," said she, "but you have no reason to regret the past,
+Count. As I understand your present life, I think you will always
+recall it with satisfaction, because the self-sacrifice that fills
+it now..."
+
+"I cannot accept your praise," he interrupted her hurriedly. "On the
+contrary I continually reproach myself.... But this is not at all an
+interesting or cheerful subject."
+
+His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the
+princess had caught a glimpse of the man she had known and loved,
+and it was to him that she now spoke.
+
+"I thought you would allow me to tell you this," she said. "I had
+come so near to you... and to all your family that I thought you would
+not consider my sympathy misplaced, but I was mistaken," and
+suddenly her voice trembled. "I don't know why," she continued,
+recovering herself, "but you used to be different, and..."
+
+"There are a thousand reasons why," laying special emphasis on the
+why. "Thank you, Princess," he added softly. "Sometimes it is hard."
+
+"So that's why! That's why!" a voice whispered in Princess Mary's
+soul. "No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only
+that handsome exterior, that I loved in him. I divined his noble,
+resolute, self-sacrificing spirit too," she said to herself. "Yes,
+he is poor now and I am rich.... Yes, that's the only reason....
+Yes, were it not for that..." And remembering his former tenderness,
+and looking now at his kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood
+the cause of his coldness.
+
+"But why, Count, why?" she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer
+to him. "Why? Tell me. You must tell me!"
+
+He was silent.
+
+"I don't understand your why, Count," she continued, "but it's
+hard for me... I confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of
+our former friendship. And that hurts me." There were tears in her
+eyes and in her voice. "I have had so little happiness in life that
+every loss is hard for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-by!" and
+suddenly she began to cry and was hurrying from the room.
+
+"Princess, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, trying to stop her.
+"Princess!"
+
+She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one
+another's eyes- and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly
+became possible, inevitable, and very near.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to
+Bald Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya.
+
+Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without
+selling any of his wife's property, and having received a small
+inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as
+well.
+
+In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs
+that he was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was
+negotiating to buy back Otradnoe- that being his pet dream.
+
+Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it
+that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas
+was a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the
+English ones then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical
+treatises on estate management, disliked factories, the raising of
+expensive products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not
+make a hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. He
+always had before his mind's eye the estate as a whole and not any
+particular part of it. The chief thing in his eyes was not the
+nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, nor manures, nor
+special plows, but that most important agent by which nitrogen,
+oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective- the peasant laborer.
+When Nicholas first began farming and began to understand its
+different branches, it was the serf who especially attracted his
+attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely a tool, but also a
+judge of farming and an end in himself. At first he watched the serfs,
+trying to understand their aims and what they considered good and bad,
+and only pretended to direct them and give orders while in reality
+learning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and their
+judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he had understood the
+peasants' tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their
+language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to
+them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform
+toward them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas' management
+produced very brilliant results.
+
+Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the
+estates he at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, and
+delegate, the very men the serfs would themselves have chosen had they
+had the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands. Before
+analyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the debit and
+credit (as he ironically called it), he found out how many cattle
+the peasants had and increased the number by all possible means. He
+kept the peasant families together in the largest groups possible, not
+allowing the family groups to divide into separate households. He
+was hard alike on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to
+get them expelled from the commune.
+
+He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants' hay and
+corn as of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown and
+harvested so early and so well, or got so good a return, as did
+Nicholas.
+
+He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs- the
+"drones" as he called them- and everyone said he spoiled them by his
+laxity. When a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf,
+especially if one had to be punished, he always felt undecided and
+consulted everybody in the house; but when it was possible to have a
+domestic serf conscripted instead of a land worker he did so without
+the least hesitation. He never felt any hesitation in dealing with the
+peasants. He knew that his every decision would be approved by them
+all with very few exceptions.
+
+He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to
+make things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclined
+to do so. He could not have said by what standard he judged what he
+should or should not do, but the standard was quite firm and
+definite in his own mind.
+
+Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he
+would say: "What can one do with our Russian peasants?" and imagined
+that he could not bear them.
+
+Yet he loved "our Russian peasants" and their way of life with his
+whole soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilated
+the one way and manner of farming which produced good results.
+
+Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband's and
+regretted that she could not share it; but she could not understand
+the joys and vexations he derived from that world, to her so remote
+and alien. She could not understand why he was so particularly
+animated and happy when, after getting up at daybreak and spending the
+whole morning in the fields or on the threshing floor, he returned
+from the sowing or mowing or reaping to have tea with her. She did not
+understand why he spoke with such admiration and delight of the
+farming of the thrifty and well-to-do peasant Matthew Ermishin, who
+with his family had carted corn all night; or of the fact that his
+(Nicholas') sheaves were already stacked before anyone else had his
+harvest in. She did not understand why he stepped out from the
+window to the veranda and smiled under his mustache and winked so
+joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry and thirsty
+shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind carried away a
+threatening cloud during the hay harvest he would return from the
+barn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of wormwood and
+gentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would say:
+"Well, one more day and my grain and the peasants' will all be under
+cover."
+
+Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready
+to anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when she
+brought him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed
+to her to be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should
+obstinately refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in what
+was not her business. She felt he had a world apart, which he loved
+passionately and which had laws she had not fathomed.
+
+Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good work
+he was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: "Not in the
+least; it never entered my head and I wouldn't do that for their good!
+That's all poetry and old wives' talk- all that doing good to one's
+neighbor! What I want is that our children should not have to go
+begging. I must put our affairs in order while I am alive, that's all.
+And to do that, order and strictness are essential.... That's all
+about it!" said he, clenching his vigorous fist. "And fairness, of
+course," he added, "for if the peasant is naked and hungry and has
+only one miserable horse, he can do no good either for himself or
+for me."
+
+And all Nicholas did was fruitful- probably just because he
+refused to allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for
+virtue's sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring
+estates came to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the
+memory of his administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs.
+"He was a master... the peasants' affairs first and then his own. Of
+course he was not to be trifled with either- in a word, he was a
+real master!"
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nicholas,
+and that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of
+making free use of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in
+this, but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form
+of punishment suddenly changed.
+
+Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Bogucharovo, a
+man who had succeeded to the post when Dron died and who was accused
+of dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the
+porch to question him, and immediately after the elder had given a few
+replies the sound of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch
+Nicholas went up to his wife, who sat with her head bent low over
+her embroidery frame, and as usual began to tell her what he had
+been doing that morning. Among other things he spoke of the
+Bogucharovo elder. Countess Mary turned red and then pale, but
+continued to sit with head bowed and lips compressed and gave her
+husband no reply.
+
+"Such an insolent scoundrel!" he cried, growing hot again at the
+mere recollection of him. "If he had told me he was drunk and did
+not see... But what is the matter with you, Mary?" he suddenly asked.
+
+Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but hastily looked
+down again and her lips puckered.
+
+"Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?"
+
+The looks of the plain Countess Mary always improved when she was in
+tears. She never cried from pain or vexation, but always from sorrow
+or pity, and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible
+charm.
+
+The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain
+herself and began to cry.
+
+"Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you... Nicholas!"
+and she covered her face with her hands.
+
+Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side, and
+paced up and down the room. He understood what she was weeping
+about, but could not in his heart at once agree with her that what
+he had regarded from childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong.
+"Is it just sentimentality, old wives' tales, or is she right?" he
+asked himself. Before he had solved that point he glanced again at her
+face filled with love and pain, and he suddenly realized that she
+was right and that he had long been sinning against himself.
+
+"Mary," he said softly, going up to her, "it will never happen
+again; I give you my word. Never," he repeated in a trembling voice
+like a boy asking for forgiveness.
+
+The tears flowed faster still from the countess' eyes. She took
+his hand and kissed it.
+
+"Nicholas, when when did you break your cameo?" she asked to
+change the subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with
+a cameo of Laocoon's head.
+
+"Today- it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don't remind me of it!"
+and again he flushed. "I give you my word of honor it shan't occur
+again, and let this always be a reminder to me," and he pointed to the
+broken ring.
+
+After that, when in discussions with his village elders or
+stewards the blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench,
+Nicholas would turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his
+eyes before the man who was making him angry. But he did forget
+himself once or twice within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and
+confess to his wife, and would again promise that this should really
+be the very last time.
+
+"Mary, you must despise me!" he would say. "I deserve it."
+
+"You should go, go away at once, if you don't feel strong enough
+to control yourself," she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her
+husband.
+
+Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not
+liked. He did not concern himself with the interests of his own class,
+and consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid.
+The whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with
+the work on his farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the
+same business like seriousness- leaving home for a month, or even two,
+with his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his
+time reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on
+these he spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as he
+said, a serious library, and he made it a rule to read through all the
+books he bought. He would sit in his study with a grave air,
+reading- a task he first imposed upon himself as a duty, but which
+afterwards became a habit affording him a special kind of pleasure and
+a consciousness of being occupied with serious matters. In winter,
+except for business excursions, he spent most of his time at home
+making himself one with his family and entering into all the details
+of his children's relations with their mother. The harmony between him
+and his wife grew closer and closer and he daily discovered fresh
+spiritual treasures in her.
+
+From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before
+that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself
+and Sonya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess
+Mary to be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized
+the wrong he had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and
+imagined that her wealth had influenced Nicholas' choice. She could
+not find fault with Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her,
+but often felt ill-will toward her which she could not overcome.
+
+Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about
+her own injustice toward her.
+
+"You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great deal-
+there is a passage in them that just fits Sonya."
+
+"What?" asked Countess Mary, surprised.
+
+"'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not
+shall be taken away.' You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I
+don't know. Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is
+taken away, and everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am
+dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to
+marry her, but I always had a sort of presentiment that it would not
+come off. She is a sterile flower, you know- like some strawberry
+blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she
+doesn't feel it as you or I would."
+
+Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in the Gospel
+must be understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with
+Natasha's explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her
+position trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a
+sterile flower. She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of
+the family as a whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the
+people but to the home. She waited on the old countess, petted and
+spoiled the children, was always ready to render the small services
+for which she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted from
+her with insufficient gratitude.
+
+The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the
+same scale as under the old prince.
+
+The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more
+than simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of
+wood, plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished
+with very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by
+their own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was
+spacious and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for
+visitors. Whole families of the Rostovs' and Bolkonskis' relations
+sometimes came to Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of
+servants and stayed for months. Besides that, four times a year, on
+the name days and birthdays of the hosts, as many as a hundred
+visitors would gather there for a day or two. The rest of the year
+life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary occupations, and
+its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers, provided out of the
+produce of the estate.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natasha
+had been staying at her brother's with her husband and children
+since early autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his
+own for three weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven
+weeks and was expected back every minute.
+
+Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas' old friend the retired
+General Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the Rostovs this
+fifth of December.
+
+On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of
+visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for
+a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to
+the new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would
+come to congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about
+the elections of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to
+spend the eve of that day in his usual way. He examined the
+bailiff's accounts of the village in Ryazan which belonged to his
+wife's nephew, wrote two business letters, and walked over to the
+granaries, cattle yards and stables before dinner. Having taken
+precautions against the general drunkenness to be expected on the
+morrow because it was a great saint's day, he returned to dinner,
+and without having time for a private talk with his wife sat down at
+the long table laid for twenty persons, at which the whole household
+had assembled. At that table were his mother, his mother's old lady
+companion Belova, his wife, their three children with their
+governess and tutor, his wife's nephew with his tutor, Sonya, Denisov,
+Natasha, her three children, their governess, and old Michael
+Ivanovich, the late prince's architect, who was living on in
+retirement at Bald Hills.
+
+Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband
+took his place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after
+taking up his table napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass
+standing before him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the
+case when he came in to dinner straight from the farm- especially
+before the soup. Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and when
+she herself was in a good frame of mind quietly waited till he had had
+his soup and then began to talk to him and make him admit that there
+was no cause for his ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and
+was hurt that he should be angry with her without any reason, and
+she felt unhappy. She asked him where he had been. He replied. She
+again inquired whether everything was going well on the farm. Her
+unnatural tone made him wince unpleasantly and he replied hastily.
+
+"Then I'm not mistaken," thought Countess Mary. "Why is he cross
+with me?" She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and
+wished to end the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded
+unnatural, but could not refrain from asking some more questions.
+
+Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon became general
+and lively, and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the
+table and went as usual to thank the old countess, Countess Mary
+held out her hand and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was
+angry with her.
+
+"You always have such strange fancies! I didn't even think of
+being angry," he replied.
+
+But the word always seemed to her to imply: "Yes, I am angry but I
+won't tell you why."
+
+Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sonya
+and the old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to
+disagree, could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they
+had their moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always
+just after they had been happiest together, they suddenly had a
+feeling of estrangement and hostility, which occurred most
+frequently during Countess Mary's pregnancies, and this was such a
+time.
+
+"Well, messieurs et mesdames," said Nicholas loudly and with
+apparent cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on
+purpose to vex her), "I have been on my feet since six this morning.
+Tomorrow I shall have to suffer, so today I'll go and rest."
+
+And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room
+and lay down on the sofa.
+
+"That's always the way," thought Countess Mary. "He talks to
+everyone except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him,
+especially when I am in this condition." She looked down at her
+expanded figure and in the glass at her pale, sallow, emaciated face
+in which her eyes now looked larger than ever.
+
+And everything annoyed her- Denisov's shouting and laughter,
+Natasha's talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her.
+
+Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling
+irritated.
+
+Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything
+of what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the
+nursery.
+
+The children were playing at "going to Moscow" in a carriage made of
+chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with
+them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable
+crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with
+difficulty, went to the small sitting room.
+
+"Perhaps he is not asleep; I'll have an explanation with him," she
+said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his
+mother, followed her on tiptoe. She not notice him.
+
+"Mary, dear, I think he is asleep- he was so tired," said Sonya,
+meeting her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that
+she crossed her path everywhere). "Andrew may wake him."
+
+Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt
+that Sonya was right, and for that very reason flushed and with
+evident difficulty refrained from saying something harsh. She made
+no reply, but to avoid obeying Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow
+her quietly and went to the door. Sonya went away by another door.
+From the room in which Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his
+even breathing, every slightest tone of which was familiar to his
+wife. As she listened to it she saw before her his smooth handsome
+forehead, his mustache, and his whole face, as she had so often seen
+it in the stillness of the night when he slept. Nicholas suddenly
+moved and cleared his throat. And at that moment little Andrew shouted
+from outside the door: "Papa! Mamma's standing here!" Countess Mary
+turned pale with fright and made signs to the boy. He grew silent, and
+quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to Countess Mary. She knew how
+Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through the door she heard
+Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and his voice said
+crossly:
+
+"I can't get a moment's peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you
+bring him here?"
+
+"I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me..."
+
+Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the
+door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little
+black-eyed three-year-old Natasha, her father's pet, having learned
+from her brother that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting
+room, ran to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little
+girl boldly opened the creaking door, went up to the sofa with
+energetic steps of her sturdy little legs, and having examined the
+position of her father, who was asleep with his back to her, rose on
+tiptoe and kissed the hand which lay under his head. Nicholas turned
+with a tender smile on his face.
+
+"Natasha, Natasha!" came Countess Mary's frightened whisper from the
+door. "Papa wants to sleep."
+
+"No, Mamma, he doesn't want to sleep," said little Natasha with
+conviction. "He's laughing."
+
+Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms.
+
+"Come in, Mary," he said to his wife.
+
+She went in and sat down by her husband.
+
+"I did not notice him following me," she said timidly. "I just
+looked in."
+
+Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife
+and, seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and
+kissed her hair.
+
+"May I kiss Mamma?" he asked Natasha.
+
+Natasha smiled bashfully.
+
+"Again!" she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the
+spot where Nicholas had placed the kiss.
+
+"I don't know why you think I am cross," said Nicholas, replying
+to the question he knew was in his wife's mind.
+
+"You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are
+like that. It always seems to me... "
+
+"Mary, don't talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he
+said gaily.
+
+"It seems to be that you can't love me, that I am so plain...
+always... and now... in this cond..."
+
+"Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it's love
+that makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and women of that kind
+who are loved for their beauty. But do I love my wife? I don't love
+her, but... I don't know how to put it. Without you, or when something
+comes between us like this, I seem lost and can't do anything. Now
+do I love my finger? I don't love it, but just try to cut it off!
+
+"I'm not like that myself, but I understand. So you're not angry
+with me?"
+
+"Awfully angry!" he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing
+his hair he began to pace the room.
+
+"Do you know, Mary, what I've been thinking?" he began,
+immediately thinking aloud in his wife's presence now that they had
+made it up.
+
+He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A
+thought had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he
+told her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till
+spring.
+
+Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and
+in her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the
+children.
+
+"You can see the woman in her already," she said in French, pointing
+to little Natasha. "You reproach us women with being illogical. Here
+is our logic. I say: 'Papa wants to sleep!' but she says, 'No, he's
+laughing.' And she was right," said Countess Mary with a happy smile.
+
+"Yes, yes." And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong
+hand, lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the
+legs, and paced the room with her. There was an expression of carefree
+happiness on the faces of both father and daughter.
+
+"But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one,"
+his wife whispered in French.
+
+"Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show..."
+
+At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley and footsteps
+in the hall and anteroom, as if someone had arrived.
+
+"Somebody has come."
+
+"I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see," said Countess Mary
+and left the room.
+
+In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little
+daughter a gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took the
+laughing child quickly from his shoulder and pressed her to his heart.
+His capers reminded him of dancing, and looking at the child's round
+happy little face he thought of what she would be like when he was
+an old man, taking her into society and dancing the mazurka with her
+as his old father had danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.
+
+"It is he, it is he, Nicholas!" said Countess Mary, re-entering
+the room a few minutes later. "Now our Natasha has come to life. You
+should have seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed
+away so long. Well, come along now, quick, quick! It's time you two
+were parted," she added, looking smilingly at the little girl who
+clung to her father.
+
+Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.
+
+Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.
+
+"I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy,"
+she whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time
+she sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though
+she felt, through her happiness, that there is another sort of
+happiness unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily
+thought at that instant.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already
+had three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she
+was now nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was
+difficult to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively
+Natasha of former days. Her features were more defined and had a calm,
+soft, and serene expression. In her face there was none of the
+ever-glowing animation that had formerly burned there and
+constituted its charm. Now her face and body were of all that one saw,
+and her soul was not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a
+strong, handsome, and fertile woman. The old fire very rarely
+kindled in her face now. That happened only when, as was the case that
+day, her husband returned home, or a sick child was convalescent, or
+when she and Countess Mary spoke of Prince Andrew (she never mentioned
+him to her husband, who she imagined was jealous of Prince Andrew's
+memory), or on the rare occasions when something happened to induce
+her to sing, a practice she had quite abandoned since her marriage. At
+the rare moments when the old fire did kindle in her handsome, fully
+developed body she was even more attractive than in former days.
+
+Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in
+Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is
+to say, in Nicholas' house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often
+seen in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her
+and found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha liked
+solitude- she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even
+thought that she did not- but with her pregnancies, her
+confinements, the nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of
+her husband's life, she had demands on her time which could be
+satisfied only by renouncing society. All who had known Natasha before
+her marriage wondered at the change in her as at something
+extraordinary. Only the old countess with her maternal instinct had
+realized that all Natasha's outbursts had been due to her need of
+children and a husband- as she herself had once exclaimed at
+Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest- and her mother was now
+surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never
+understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that
+Natasha would make an exemplary wife and mother.
+
+"Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all
+bounds," said the countess, "so that it even becomes absurd."
+
+Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk,
+especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let
+herself go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments,
+should be even more careful of her appearance than when she was
+unmarried, and should fascinate her husband as much as she did
+before he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once
+abandoned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually
+powerful part. She gave it up just because it was so powerfully
+seductive. She took no pains with her manners or with of speech, or
+with her toilet, or to show herself to her husband in her most
+becoming attitudes, or to avoid inconveniencing him by being too
+exacting. She acted in contradiction to all those rules. She felt that
+the allurements instinct had formerly taught her to use would now be
+merely ridiculous in the eyes of her husband, to whom she had from the
+first moment given herself up entirely- that is, with her whole
+soul, leaving no corner of it hidden from him. She felt that her unity
+with her husband was not maintained by the poetic feelings that had
+attracted him to her, but by something else- indefinite but firm as
+the bond between her own body and soul.
+
+To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing
+romantic songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange
+as to adorn herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others
+might perhaps have been agreeable- she did not know- but she had no
+time at all for it. The chief reason for devoting no time either to
+singing, to dress, or to choosing her words was that she really had no
+time to spare for these things.
+
+We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed
+in a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject
+so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's
+entire attention is devoted to it.
+
+The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha's attention was her
+family: that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should
+belong entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she
+had to bear, bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.
+
+And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her
+whole soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the
+larger did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did
+her powers appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one
+thing and yet was unable to accomplish all that she considered
+necessary.
+
+There were then as now conversations and discussions about women's
+rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and
+rights, though these themes were not yet termed questions as they
+are now; but these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha,
+she positively did not understand them.
+
+These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing
+in marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that
+is, only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance,
+which lies in the family.
+
+Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the
+question of how to get the greatest gratification from one's dinner,
+did not then and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of
+a dinner is the nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is
+the family.
+
+If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats
+two dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain
+his purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners.
+
+If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to
+have many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in
+that case will not have a family.
+
+If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is
+the family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more
+than one can digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are
+needed for the family- that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha
+needed a husband. A husband was given her and he gave her a family.
+And she not only saw no need of any other or better husband, but as
+all the powers of her soul were intent on serving that husband and
+family, she could not imagine and saw no interest in imagining how
+it would be if things were different.
+
+Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the
+society of her relatives- Countess Mary, and her brother, her
+mother, and Sonya. She valued the company of those to whom she could
+come striding disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and
+with joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby's
+napkin, and from whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect
+that baby was much better.
+
+To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the way she
+dressed and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy-
+she was jealous of Sonya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty
+or plain- were habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The
+general opinion was that Pierre was under his wife's thumb, which
+was really true. From the very first days of their married life
+Natasha had announced her demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his
+wife's view, to him a perfectly novel one, that every moment of his
+life belonged to her and to the family. His wife's demands
+astonished him, but they also flattered him, and he submitted to them.
+
+Pierre's subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not
+flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman;
+did not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money a
+whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except
+on business- in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits,
+which she did not in the least understand but to which she
+attributed great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had
+the right to regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as
+he chose. At home Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to
+her husband, and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was
+occupied- that is, was reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but
+to show a partiality for anything to get just what he liked done
+always. He had only to express a wish and Natasha would jump up and
+run to fulfill it.
+
+The entire household was governed according to Pierre's supposed
+orders, that is, by his wishes which Natasha tried to guess. Their way
+of life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties,
+Natasha's occupations, the children's upbringing, were all selected
+not merely with regard to Pierre's expressed wishes, but to what
+Natasha from the thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his
+wishes to be. And she deduced the essentials of his wishes quite
+correctly, and having once arrived at them clung to them
+tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to change his mind she would
+fight him with his own weapons.
+
+Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of
+their first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet
+nurse three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day
+told her of Rousseau's view, with which he quite agreed, that to
+have a wet nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was
+born, despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of
+her husband himself- who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing
+her baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injurious-
+she insisted on having her own way, and after that nursed all her
+babies herself.
+
+It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and
+wife would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his
+surprise and delight would find in his wife's ideas and actions the
+very thought against which she had argued, but divested of
+everything superfluous that in the excitement of the dispute he had
+added when expressing his opinion.
+
+After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm
+consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he
+saw himself reflected in his wife. He felt the good and bad within
+himself inextricably mingled and overlapping. But only what was really
+good in him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was
+rejected. And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a
+direct and mysterious reflection.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the
+Rostovs he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to
+come to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were
+being discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the
+principal founders.
+
+On reading that letter (she always read her husband's letters)
+Natasha herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though
+she would feel his absence very acutely. She attributed immense
+importance to all her husband's intellectual and abstract interests
+though she did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a
+hindrance to him in such matters. To Pierre's timid look of inquiry
+after reading the letter she replied by asking him to go, but to fix a
+definite date for his return. He was given four weeks' leave of
+absence.
+
+Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a
+fortnight before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm,
+depression, and irritability.
+
+Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied
+with the present state of affairs, had arrived during that
+fortnight. He looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad
+likeness of a person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies,
+and talk about the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former
+enchantress.
+
+Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her
+mother, her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to
+console her tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay
+in returning.
+
+"It's all nonsense, all rubbish- those discussions which lead to
+nothing and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very
+affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.
+
+And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one
+else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this
+little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she
+was conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his
+little nose. That creature said: "You are angry, you are jealous,
+you would like to pay him out, you are afraid- but here am I! And I am
+he..." and that was unanswerable. It was more than true.
+
+During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the baby for
+comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him
+and he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was
+just what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety
+about her husband more easily.
+
+She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre's sleigh was
+heard at the front door, and the old nurse- knowing how to please
+her mistress- entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a
+beaming face.
+
+"Has he come?" Natasha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move
+lest she should rouse the dozing baby.
+
+"He's come, ma'am," whispered the nurse.
+
+The blood rushed to Natasha's face and her feet involuntarily moved,
+but she could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his
+eyes and looked at her. "You're here?" he seemed to be saying, and
+again lazily smacked his lips.
+
+Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked him a little,
+handed him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door.
+But at the door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for
+having in her joy left the child too soon, and she glanced round.
+The nurse with raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of
+his cot.
+
+"Go, ma'am! Don't worry, go!" she whispered, smiling, with the
+kind of familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress.
+
+Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.
+
+Denisov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with
+his pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natasha. A flood
+of brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face.
+
+"He's come!" she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denisov felt that he
+too was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had
+returned.
+
+On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a fur coat
+unwinding his scarf. "It's he! It's really he! He has come!" she
+said to herself, and rushing at him embraced him, pressed his head
+to her breast, and then pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy,
+happy face, covered with hoarfrost. "Yes, it is he, happy and
+contented..."
+
+Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had
+experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her
+face vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of
+reproaches and angry words.
+
+"Yes, it's all very well for you. You are pleased, you've had a good
+time.... But what about me? You might at least have shown
+consideration for the children. I am nursing and my milk was
+spoiled.... Petya was at death's door. But you were enjoying yourself.
+Yes, enjoying..."
+
+Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come
+sooner; he knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a
+minute or two; above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy.
+He wanted to smile but dared not even think of doing so. He made a
+piteous, frightened face and bent down.
+
+"I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?"
+
+"All right now. Come along! I wonder you're not ashamed! If only you
+could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!"
+
+"You are well?"
+
+"Come, come!" she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went
+to their rooms.
+
+When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the
+nursery holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right
+palm and dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby's
+broad face with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since
+over and there was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha's face as she
+gazed tenderly at her husband and child.
+
+"And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?" she
+asked.
+
+"Yes, capitally."
+
+"You see, he holds it up." (She meant the baby's head.) "But how
+he did frighten me... You've seen the princess? Is it true she's in
+love with that..."
+
+"Yes, just fancy..."
+
+At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the
+baby on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries.
+But in spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the
+baby with the little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all
+his attention.
+
+"How sweet!" said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the
+baby. "Now, Nicholas," she added, turning to her husband, "I can't
+understand how it is you don't see the charm of these delicious
+marvels."
+
+"I don't and can't," replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby.
+"A lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!"
+
+"And yet he's such an affectionate father," said Countess Mary,
+vindicating her husband, "but only after they are a year old or so..."
+
+"Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly," said Natasha. "He says his
+hand is just made for a baby's seat. Just look!"
+
+"Only not for this..." Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and
+shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several
+perfectly distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole,
+though each retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the
+others. Every event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house
+was important to all these worlds, but each had its own special
+reasons to rejoice or grieve over that occurrence independently of the
+others.
+
+For instance, Pierre's return was a joyful and important event and
+they all felt it to be so.
+
+The servants- the most reliable judges of their masters because they
+judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their
+acts and way of life- were glad of Pierre's return because they knew
+that when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day
+attend to the estate, and would would be in better spirits and temper,
+and also because they would all receive handsome presents for the
+holidays.
+
+The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre's return
+because no one else drew them into the social life of the household as
+he did. He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only
+piece) to which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced,
+and they felt sure he had brought presents for them all.
+
+Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent,
+with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted
+because Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his
+rapturous and passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this
+love for Pierre whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had
+brought him up had done her utmost to make him love her husband as she
+loved him, and little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him
+with just a shade of contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did
+not want to be an hussar or a Knight of St. George like his uncle
+Nicholas; he wanted to be learned, wise, and kind like Pierre. In
+Pierre's presence his face always shone with pleasure and he flushed
+and was breathless when Pierre spoke to him. He did not miss a
+single word he uttered, and would afterwards, with Dessalles or by
+himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of everything Pierre had
+said. Pierre's past life and his unhappiness prior to 1812 (of which
+young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from some words he
+had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity, Platon
+Karataev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha
+(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially
+Pierre's friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not
+remember- all this made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.
+
+From broken remarks about Natasha and his father, from the emotion
+with which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful,
+reverent tenderness with which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who
+was only just beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that
+his father had loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his
+friend. But the father whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a
+divinity who could not be pictured, and of whom he never thought
+without a swelling heart and tears of sadness and rapture. So the
+boy also was happy that Pierre had arrived.
+
+The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and
+unite any company he was in.
+
+The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were
+pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more
+smoothly and peacefully.
+
+The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and
+especially that Natasha would now be herself again.
+
+Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and
+made haste to satisfy all their expectations.
+
+Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the
+aid of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not
+forgetting his mother- and brother-in-law's commissions, nor the dress
+material for a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife's nephews.
+In the early days of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that
+his wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the things
+he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious
+annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But in time
+he grew used to this demand. Knowing that Natasha asked nothing for
+herself, and gave him commissions for others only when he himself
+had offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected and
+childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for everyone in the
+house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred Natasha's censure
+it was only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her other
+defects (as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were
+qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now added
+stinginess.
+
+From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing
+entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he
+spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs- which had
+been in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife's debts-
+had begun to improve.
+
+Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive
+luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no
+longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had
+now been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not
+in his power, and so that way of life proved economical.
+
+With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.
+
+"What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff
+like a shopman.
+
+Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on
+her lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the
+things he showed her.
+
+"That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the
+material. "It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?"
+
+Pierre told her the price.
+
+"Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be
+and Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added,
+unable to suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb
+set with pearls, of a kind then just coming into fashion.
+
+"Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned
+Pierre.
+
+"When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair.
+"When I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be
+fashionable again by then. Well, let's go now."
+
+And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and
+then to the old countess' rooms.
+
+The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing
+grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing
+room with parcels under their arms.
+
+The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with
+a frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper
+lip had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.
+
+After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession,
+she felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left
+without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or
+kept awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She
+wanted nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity
+only death could give her. But until death came she had to go on
+living, that is, to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in
+very young children and very old people was particularly evident in
+her. Her life had no external aims- only a need to exercise her
+various functions and inclinations was apparent. She had to eat,
+sleep, think, speak, weep, work, give vent to her anger, and so on,
+merely because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a
+liver. She did these things not under any external impulse as people
+in the full vigor of life do, when behind the purpose for which they
+strive that of exercising their functions remains unnoticed. She
+talked only because she physically needed to exercise her tongue and
+lungs. She cried as a child does, because her nose had to be
+cleared, and so on. What for people in their full vigor is an aim
+was for her evidently merely a pretext.
+
+Thus in the morning- especially if she had eaten anything rich the
+day before- she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the
+handiest pretext Belova's deafness.
+
+She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other
+end of the room.
+
+"It seems a little warmer today, my dear," she would murmur.
+
+And when Belova replied: "Oh yes, they've come," she would mutter
+angrily: "O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!"
+
+Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or
+too damp or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability
+her face would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible
+symptoms when Belova would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the
+countess' face yellow. Just as she needed to work off her spleen so
+she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of
+thinking- and the pretext for that was a game of patience. When she
+needed to cry, the deceased count would be the pretext. When she
+wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext,
+and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be
+Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise, which was
+usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner rest
+in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same
+stories over and over again to the same audience.
+
+The old lady's condition was understood by the whole household
+though no one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible
+effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a
+sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the
+common understanding of her condition expressed.
+
+But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had
+played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole
+self, that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to
+yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being
+formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be
+pitied. "Memento mori," said these glances.
+
+Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and
+the little children failed to understand this and avoided her.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was
+in one of her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion
+of playing patience, and so- though by force of habit she greeted
+him with the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned
+after an absence: "High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of
+waiting for you. Well, thank God!" and received her presents with
+another customary remark: "It's not the gift that's precious, my dear,
+but that you give it to me, an old woman..."- yet it was evident
+that she was not pleased by Pierre's arrival at that moment when it
+diverted her attention from the unfinished game.
+
+She finished her game of patience and only then examined the
+presents. They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid
+workmanship, a bright-blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses
+depicted on it and with a lid, and a gold snuffbox with the count's
+portrait on the lid which Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in
+Petersburg. The countess had long wished for such a box, but as she
+did not want to cry just then she glanced indifferently at the
+portrait and gave her attention chiefly to the box for cards.
+
+"Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up," said she as she always
+did. "But best of all you have brought yourself back- for I never
+saw anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are
+we to do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away.
+Doesn't see anything, doesn't remember anything," she went on,
+repeating her usual phrases. "Look, Anna Timofeevna," she added to her
+companion, "see what a box for cards my son has brought us!"
+
+Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her dress
+material.
+
+Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denisov had
+much to talk about that they could not discuss before the old
+countess- not that anything was hidden from her, but because she had
+dropped so far behindhand in many things that had they begun to
+converse in her presence they would have had to answer inopportune
+questions and to repeat what they had already told her many times:
+that so-and-so was dead and so-and-so was married, which she would
+again be unable to remember- yet they sat at tea round the samovar
+in the drawing room from habit, and Pierre answered the countess'
+questions as to whether Prince Vasili had aged and whether Countess
+Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings and still thought of them, and other
+matters that interested no one and to which she herself was
+indifferent.
+
+Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable,
+continued all through teatime. All the grown-up members of the
+family were assembled near the round tea table at which Sonya presided
+beside the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had
+had tea and their voices were audible from the next room. At tea all
+sat in their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small
+table where his tea was handed to him; Milka, the old gray borzoi
+bitch (daughter of the first Milka), with a quite gray face and
+large black eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the
+armchair beside him; Denisov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers
+had turned half gray, sat beside countess Mary with his general's
+tunic unbuttoned; Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He
+spoke of what he knew might interest the old lady and that she could
+understand. He told her of external social events and of the people
+who had formed the circle of her contemporaries and had once been a
+real, living, and distinct group, but who were now for the most part
+scattered about the world and like herself were garnering the last
+ears of the harvests they had sown in earlier years. But to the old
+countess those contemporaries of hers seemed to be the only serious
+and real society. Natasha saw by Pierre's animation that his visit had
+been interesting and that he had much to tell them but dare not say it
+before the old countess. Denisov, not being a member of the family,
+did not understand Pierre's caution and being, as a malcontent, much
+interested in what was occurring in Petersburg, kept urging Pierre
+to tell them about what had happened in the Semenovsk regiment, then
+about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible Society. Once or twice
+Pierre was carried away and began to speak of these things, but
+Nicholas and Natasha always brought him back to the health of Prince
+Ivan and Countess Mary Alexeevna.
+
+"Well, and all this idiocy- Gossner and Tatawinova?" Denisov
+asked. "Is that weally still going on?"
+
+"Going on?" Pierre exclaimed. "Why more than ever! The Bible Society
+is the whole government now!"
+
+"What is that, mon cher ami?" asked the countess, who had
+finished her tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry
+after her meal. "What are you saying about the government? I don't
+understand."
+
+"Well, you know, Maman," Nicholas interposed, knowing how to
+translate things into his mother's language, "Prince Alexander
+Golitsyn has founded a society and in consequence has great influence,
+they say."
+
+"Arakcheev and Golitsyn," incautiously remarked Pierre, "are now the
+whole government! And what a government! They see treason everywhere
+and are afraid of everything."
+
+"Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a most
+estimable man. I used to meet him at Mary Antonovna's," said the
+countess in an offended tone; and still more offended that they all
+remained silent, she went on: "Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel
+Society! Well, and what harm is there in that?" and she rose
+(everybody else got up too) and with a severe expression sailed back
+to her table in the sitting room.
+
+The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the sounds of the
+children's voices and laughter from the next room. Evidently some
+jolly excitement was going on there.
+
+"Finished, finished!" little Natasha's gleeful yell rose above
+them all.
+
+Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natasha he
+never lost sight of) and smiled happily.
+
+"That's delightful music!" said he.
+
+"It means that Anna Makarovna has finished her stocking," said
+Countess Mary.
+
+"Oh, I'll go and see," said Pierre, jumping up. "You know," he
+added, stopping at the door, "why I'm especially fond of that music?
+It is always the first thing that tells me all is well. When I was
+driving here today, the nearer I got to the house the more anxious I
+grew. As I entered the anteroom I heard Andrusha's peals of laughter
+and that meant that all was well."
+
+"I know! I know that feeling," said Nicholas. "But I mustn't go
+there- those stockings are to be a surprise for me."
+
+Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew
+still louder.
+
+"Come, Anna Makarovna," Pierre's voice was heard saying, "come
+here into the middle of the room and at the word of command, 'One,
+two,' and when I say 'three'... You stand here, and you in my arms-
+well now! One, two!..." said Pierre, and a silence followed:
+"three!" and a rapturously breathless cry of children's voices
+filled the room. "Two, two!" they shouted.
+
+This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to
+herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the same time on the same
+needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly
+drew, one out of the other, in the children's presence.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Soon after this the children came in to say good night. They
+kissed everyone, the tutors and governesses made their bows, and
+they went out. Only young Nicholas and his tutor remained. Dessalles
+whispered to the boy to come downstairs.
+
+"No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay," replied
+Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper.
+
+"Ma tante, please let me stay," said he, going up to his aunt.
+
+His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary
+glanced at him and turned to Pierre.
+
+"When you are here he can't tear himself away," she said.
+
+"I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good
+night!" said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned
+to young Nicholas with a smile. "You and I haven't seen anything of
+one another yet... How like he is growing, Mary!" he added, addressing
+Countess Mary.
+
+"Like my father?" asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up
+at Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.
+
+Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the
+children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork;
+Natasha did not take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denisov
+rose, asked for their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from
+Sonya- who sat weary but resolute at the samovar- and questioned
+Pierre. The curly-headed, delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed
+in a corner, starting every now and then and muttering something to
+himself, and evidently experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he
+turned his curly head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down
+collar, toward the place where Pierre sat.
+
+The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in
+power, in which most people see the chief interest of home politics.
+Denisov, dissatisfied with the government on account of his own
+disappointments in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done
+in Petersburg which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and
+sharp comments on what Pierre told them.
+
+"One used to have to be a German- now one must dance with Tatawinova
+and Madame Kwudener, and wead Ecka'tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they
+should let that fine fellow Bonaparte lose- he'd knock all this
+nonsense out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semenov wegiment
+to a fellow like that Schwa'tz!" he cried.
+
+Nicholas, though free from Denisov's readiness to find fault with
+everything, also thought that discussion of the government was a
+very serious and weighty matter, and the fact that A had been
+appointed Minister of This and B Governor General of That, and that
+the Emperor had said so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed
+to him very important. And so he thought it necessary to take an
+interest in these things and to question Pierre. The questions put
+by these two kept the conversation from changing its ordinary
+character of gossip about the higher government circles.
+
+But Natasha, knowing all her husband's ways and ideas, saw that he
+had long been wishing but had been unable to divert the conversation
+to another channel and express his own deeply felt idea for the sake
+of which he had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend
+Prince Theodore, and she helped him by asking how his affairs with
+Prince Theodore had gone.
+
+"What was it about?" asked Nicholas.
+
+"Always the same thing," said Pierre, looking round at his
+listeners. "Everybody sees that things are going so badly that they
+cannot be allowed to go on so and that it is the duty of all decent
+men to counteract it as far as they can."
+
+"What can decent men do?" Nicholas inquired, frowning slightly.
+"What can be done?"
+
+"Why, this..."
+
+"Come into my study," said Nicholas.
+
+Natasha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse her baby,
+now heard the nurse calling her and went to the nursery. Countess Mary
+followed her. The men went into the study and little Nicholas
+Bolkonski followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the
+writing table in a shady corner by the window.
+
+"Well, what would you do?" asked Denisov.
+
+"Always some fantastic schemes," said Nicholas.
+
+"Why this," began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the room,
+sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: "the position in
+Petersburg is this: the Emperor does not look into anything. He has
+abandoned himself altogether to this mysticism" (Pierre could not
+tolerate mysticism in anyone now). "He seeks only for peace, and
+only these people sans foi ni loi~^ can give it him- people who
+recklessly hack at and strangle everything- Magnitski, Arakcheev,
+and tutti quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after
+your estates yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your
+steward was the more readily your object might be attained," he said
+to Nicholas.
+
+^~ Without faith or law.
+
+"Well, what does that lead up to?" said Nicholas.
+
+"Well, everything is going to ruin! Robbery in the law courts, in
+the army nothing but flogging, drilling, and Military Settlements; the
+people are tortured, enlightenment is suppressed. All that is young
+and honest is crushed! Everyone sees that this cannot go on.
+Everything is strained to such a degree that it will certainly break,"
+said Pierre (as those who examine the actions of any government have
+always said since governments began). "I told them just one thing in
+Petersburg."
+
+"Told whom?"
+
+"Well, you know whom," said Pierre, with a meaning glance from under
+his brows. "Prince Theodore and all those. To encourage culture and
+philanthropy is all very well of course. The aim is excellent but in
+the present circumstances something else is needed."
+
+At that moment Nicholas noticed the presence of his nephew. His face
+darkened and he went up to the boy.
+
+"Why are you here?"
+
+"Why? Let him be," said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the arm and
+continuing. "That is not enough, I told them. Something else is
+needed. When you stand expecting the overstrained string to snap at
+any moment, when everyone is expecting the inevitable catastrophe,
+as many as possible must join hands as closely as they can to
+withstand the general calamity. Everything that is young and strong is
+being enticed away and depraved. One is lured by women, another by
+honors, a third by ambition or money, and they go over to that camp.
+No independent men, such as you or I, are left. What I say is widen
+the scope of our society, let the mot d'ordre be not virtue alone
+but independence and action as well!"
+
+Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up an
+armchair, sat down in it, and listened to Pierre, coughing
+discontentedly and frowning more and more.
+
+"But action with what aim?" he cried. "And what position will you
+adopt toward the government?"
+
+"Why, the position of assistants. The society need not be secret
+if the government allows it. Not merely is it not hostile to
+government, but it is a society of true conservatives- a society of
+gentlemen in the full meaning of that word. It is only to prevent some
+Pugachev or other from killing my children and yours, and Arakcheev
+from sending me off to some Military Settlement. We join hands only
+for the public welfare and the general safety."
+
+"Yes, but it's a secret society and therefore a hostile and
+harmful one which can only cause harm."
+
+"Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe" (they did not then
+venture to suggest that Russia had saved Europe) "do any harm? The
+Tugendbund is an alliance of virtue: it is love, mutual help... it
+is what Christ preached on the Cross."
+
+Natasha, who had come in during the conversation, looked joyfully at
+her husband. It was not what he was saying that pleased her- that
+did not even interest her, for it seemed to her that was all extremely
+simple and that she had known it a long time (it seemed so to her
+because she knew that it sprang from Pierre's whole soul), but it
+was his animated and enthusiastic appearance that made her glad.
+
+The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the turn-down collar-
+whom everyone had forgotten- gazed at Pierre with even greater and
+more rapturous joy. Every word of Pierre's burned into his heart,
+and with a nervous movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke
+the sealing wax and quill pens his hands came upon on his uncle's
+table.
+
+"It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the German
+Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing."
+
+"No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for the sausage
+eaters, but I don't understand it and can't even pwonounce it,"
+interposed Denisov in a loud and resolute voice. "I agwee that
+evewything here is wotten and howwible, but the Tugendbund I don't
+understand. If we're not satisfied, let us have a bunt of our own.
+That's all wight. Je suis vot'e homme!"~^
+
+^~ "I'm your man."
+
+Pierre smiled, Natasha began to laugh, but Nicholas knitted his
+brows still more and began proving to Pierre that there was no
+prospect of any great change and that all the danger he spoke of
+existed only in his imagination. Pierre maintained the contrary, and
+as his mental faculties were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas
+felt himself cornered. This made him still angrier, for he was fully
+convinced, not by reasoning but by something within him stronger
+than reason, of the justice of his opinion.
+
+"I will tell you this," he said, rising and trying with nervously
+twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but finally
+abandoning the attempt. "I can't prove it to you. You say that
+everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is coming: I don't see
+it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional
+matter, and to that I reply: 'You are my best friend, as you know, but
+if you formed a secret society and began working against the
+government- be it what it may- I know it is my duty to obey the
+government. And if Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you
+and cut you down, I should not hesitate an instant, but should do it.'
+And you may argue about that as you like!"
+
+An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha was the first to
+speak, defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense
+was weak and inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was
+resumed, and no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas'
+last remark.
+
+When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolkonski
+went up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.
+
+"Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree
+with you?" he asked.
+
+And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex,
+and powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in
+this boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said
+he regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had, however, to
+give him an answer.
+
+"Yes, I think so," he said reluctantly, and left the study.
+
+The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time to notice what
+he had done to the things on the table. He flushed and went up to
+Nicholas.
+
+"Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally," he said,
+pointing to the broken sealing wax and pens.
+
+Nicholas started angrily.
+
+"All right, all right," he said, throwing the bits under the table.
+
+And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned
+away from the boy.
+
+"You ought not to have been here at all," he said.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies,
+but turned on the subject Nicholas liked best- recollections of
+1812. Denisov started these and Pierre was particularly agreeable
+and amusing about them. The family separated on the most friendly
+terms.
+
+After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given
+instructions to the steward who had been waiting for him, went to
+the bedroom in his dressing gown, where he found his wife still at her
+table, writing.
+
+"What are you writing, Mary?" Nicholas asked.
+
+Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing
+would not be understood or approved by her husband.
+
+She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at
+the same time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would
+now have to tell him.
+
+"A diary, Nicholas," she replied, handing him a blue exercise book
+filled with her firm, bold writing.
+
+"A diary?" Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up
+the book.
+
+It was in French.
+
+December 4. Today when Andrusha (her eldest boy) woke up he did
+not wish to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was
+naughty and obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then
+I took the matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse's
+help to get the other children up, telling him that I did not love
+him. For a long time he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped
+out of bed, ran to me in his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not
+calm him for a long time. It was plain that what troubled him most was
+that he had grieved me. Afterwards in the evening when I gave him
+his ticket, he again began crying piteously and kissing me. One can do
+anything with him by tenderness.
+
+"What is a 'ticket'?" Nicholas inquired.
+
+"I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening, showing how
+they have behaved."
+
+Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing at him, and
+continued to turn over the pages and read. In the diary was set down
+everything in the children's lives that seemed noteworthy to their
+mother as showing their characters or suggesting general reflections
+on educational methods. They were for the most part quite
+insignificant trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the
+father either, now that he read this diary about his children for
+the first time.
+
+Under the date "5" was entered:
+
+Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding.
+He had none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others
+while they were eating! I think that punishment by depriving
+children of sweets only develops their greediness. Must tell
+Nicholas this.
+
+Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant
+eyes gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her
+diary? There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of
+his admiration for his wife.
+
+Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or
+even done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of
+which the sole aim was the children's moral welfare delighted him. Had
+Nicholas been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that
+his steady, tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling
+of wonder at her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost
+beyond his reach, in which she had her being.
+
+He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own
+insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the
+more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part
+of himself.
+
+"I quite, quite approve, my dearest!" said he with a significant
+look, and after a short pause he added: "And I behaved badly today.
+You weren't in the study. We began disputing- Pierre and I- and I lost
+my temper. But he is impossible: such a child! I don't know what would
+become of him if Natasha didn't keep him in hand.... Have you any idea
+why he went to Petersburg? They have formed..."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Countess Mary. "Natasha told me."
+
+"Well, then, you know," Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere
+recollection of their discussion, "he wanted to convince me that it is
+every honest man's duty to go against the government, and that the
+oath of allegiance and duty... I am sorry you weren't there. They
+all fell on me- Denisov and Natasha... Natasha is absurd. How she
+rules over him! And yet there need only be a discussion and she has no
+words of her own but only repeats his sayings..." added Nicholas,
+yielding to that irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge
+those nearest and dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying
+about Natasha could have been applied word for word to himself in
+relation to his wife.
+
+"Yes, I have noticed that," said Countess Mary.
+
+"When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he
+started proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there- what
+would you have said?"
+
+"As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natasha so. Pierre
+says everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that
+it is our duty to help our neighbor. Of course he is right there,"
+said Countess Mary, "but he forgets that we have other duties nearer
+to us, duties indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might
+expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children."
+
+"Yes, that's it! That's just what I said to him," put in Nicholas,
+who fancied he really had said it. "But they insisted on their own
+view: love of one's neighbor and Christianity- and all this in the
+presence of young Nicholas, who had gone into my study and broke all
+my things."
+
+"Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about little
+Nicholas," said Countess Mary. "He is such an exceptional boy. I am
+afraid I neglect him in favor of my own: we all have children and
+relations while he has no one. He is constantly alone with his
+thoughts."
+
+"Well, I don't think you need reproach yourself on his account.
+All that the fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are
+doing for him, and of course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine
+lad! This evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and
+fancy- as we were going in to supper I looked and he had broken
+everything on my table to bits, and he told me of it himself at
+once! I never knew him to tell an untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!"
+repeated Nicholas, who at heart was not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but
+was always anxious to recognize that he was a fine lad.
+
+"Still, I am not the same as his own mother," said Countess Mary. "I
+feel I am not the same and it troubles me. A wonderful boy, but I am
+dreadfully afraid for him. It would be good for him to have
+companions."
+
+"Well it won't be for long. Next summer I'll take him to
+Petersburg," said Nicholas. "Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and
+always will be," he continued, returning to the talk in the study
+which had evidently disturbed him. "Well, what business is it of
+mine what goes on there- whether Arakcheev is bad, and all that?
+What business was it of mine when I married and was so deep in debt
+that I was threatened with prison, and had a mother who could not
+see or understand it? And then there are you and the children and
+our affairs. Is it for my own pleasure that I am at the farm or in the
+office from morning to night? No, but I know I must work to comfort my
+mother, to repay you, and not to leave the children such beggars as
+I was."
+
+Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live by bread
+alone and that he attached too much importance to these matters. But
+she knew she must not say this and that it would be useless to do
+so. She only took his hand and kissed it. He took this as a sign of
+approval and a confirmation of his thoughts, and after a few
+minutes' reflection continued to think aloud.
+
+"You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofanych" (this was his overseer)
+"came back from the Tambov estate and told me they are already
+offering eighty thousand rubles for the forest."
+
+And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the possibility of
+repurchasing Otradnoe before long, and added: "Another ten years of
+life and I shall leave the children... in an excellent position."
+
+Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood all that he
+told her. She knew that when he thought aloud in this way he would
+sometimes ask her what he had been saying, and be vexed if he
+noticed that she had been thinking about something else. But she had
+to force herself to attend, for what he was saying did not interest
+her at all. She looked at him and did not think, but felt, about
+something different. She felt a submissive tender love for this man
+who would never understand all that she understood, and this seemed to
+make her love for him still stronger and added a touch of passionate
+tenderness. Besides this feeling which absorbed her altogether and
+hindered her from following the details of her husband's plans,
+thoughts that had no connection with what he was saying flitted
+through her mind. She thought of her nephew. Her husband's account
+of the boy's agitation while Pierre was speaking struck her
+forcibly, and various traits of his gentle, sensitive character
+recurred to her mind; and while thinking of her nephew she thought
+also of her own children. She did not compare them with him, but
+compared her feeling for them with her feeling for him, and felt
+with regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for
+young Nicholas.
+
+Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose from the
+difference in their ages, but she felt herself to blame toward him and
+promised in her heart to do better and to accomplish the impossible-
+in this life to love her husband, her children, little Nicholas, and
+all her neighbors, as Christ loved mankind. Countess Mary's soul
+always strove toward the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute,
+and could therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of the
+lofty, secret suffering of a soul burdened by the body appeared on her
+face. Nicholas gazed at her. "O God! What will become of us if she
+dies, as I always fear when her face is like that?" thought he, and
+placing himself before the icon he began to say his evening prayers.
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband
+and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity,
+understanding and expressing each other's thoughts in ways contrary to
+all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions,
+and in a quite peculiar way. Natasha was so used to this kind of
+talk with her husband that for her it was the surest sign of something
+being wrong between them if Pierre followed a line of logical
+reasoning. When he began proving anything, or talking
+argumentatively and calmly and she, led on by his example, began to do
+the same, she knew that they were on the verge of a quarrel.
+
+From the moment they were alone and Natasha came up to him with
+wide-open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his head pressed it to her
+bosom, saying: "Now you are all mine, mine! You won't escape!"- from
+that moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic
+and contrary to them because quite different subjects were talked
+about at one and the same time. This simultaneous discussion of many
+topics did not prevent a clear understanding but on the contrary was
+the surest sign that they fully understood one another.
+
+Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and
+contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this
+intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the words themselves
+were not consecutive and clear but only the feeling that prompted
+them.
+
+Natasha spoke to Pierre about her brother's life and doings, of
+how she had suffered and lacked life during his own absence, and of
+how she was fonder than ever of Mary, and how Mary was in every way
+better than herself. In saying this Natasha was sincere in
+acknowledging Mary's superiority, but at the same time by saying it
+she made a demand on Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her
+to Mary and to all other women, and that now, especially after
+having seen many women in Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh.
+
+Pierre, answering Natasha's words, told her how intolerable it had
+been for him to meet ladies at dinners and balls in Petersburg.
+
+"I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies," he said. "It was
+simply dull. Besides, I was very busy."
+
+Natasha looked intently at him and went on:
+
+"Mary is so splendid," she said. "How she understands children! It
+is as if she saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance,
+Mitya was naughty..."
+
+"How like his father he is," Pierre interjected.
+
+Natasha knew why he mentioned Mitya's likeness to Nicholas: the
+recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and
+he wanted to know what Natasha thought of it.
+
+"Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not
+generally accepted. But I understand that you value what opens up a
+fresh line," said she, repeating words Pierre had once uttered.
+
+"No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are
+an amusement- almost a pastime," said Pierre. "For instance, he is
+collecting a library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book till
+he has read what he had already bought- Sismondi and Rousseau and
+Montesquieu," he added with a smile. "You know how much I..." he began
+to soften down what he had said; but Natasha interrupted him to show
+that this was unnecessary.
+
+"So you say ideas are an amusement to him...."
+
+"Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in Petersburg
+I saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all
+else is mere amusement."
+
+"Ah, I'm so sorry I wasn't there when you met the children," said
+Natasha. "Which was most delighted? Lisa, I'm sure."
+
+"Yes," Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind.
+"Nicholas says we ought not to think. But I can't help it. Besides,
+when I was in Petersburg I felt (I can this to you) that the whole
+affair would go to pieces without me- everyone was pulling his own
+way. But I succeeded in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear
+and simple. You see, I don't say that we ought to oppose this and
+that. We may be mistaken. What I say is: 'Join hands, you who love the
+right, and let there be but one banner- that of active virtue.' Prince
+Sergey is a fine fellow and clever."
+
+Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre's
+idea, but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man so important and
+necessary to society be also my husband? How did this happen?" She
+wished to express this doubt to him. "Now who could decide whether
+he is really cleverer than all the others?" she asked herself, and
+passed in review all those whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what
+he had said there was no one he had respected so highly as Platon
+Karataev.
+
+"Do you know what I am thinking about?" she asked. "About Platon
+Karataev. Would he have approved of you now, do you think?"
+
+Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood
+his wife's line of thought.
+
+"Platon Karataev?" he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely
+trying to imagine Karataev's opinion on the subject. "He would not
+have understood... yet perhaps he would."
+
+"I love you awfully!" Natasha suddenly said. "Awfully, awfully!"
+
+"No, he would not have approved," said Pierre, after reflection.
+"What he would have approved of is our family life. He was always so
+anxious to find seemliness, happiness, and peace in everything, and
+I should have been proud to let him see us. There now- you talk of
+my absence, but you wouldn't believe what a special feeling I have for
+you after a separation...."
+
+"Yes, I should think..." Natasha began.
+
+"No, it's not that. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn't
+love more, but this is something special.... Yes, of course-" he did
+not finish because their eyes meeting said the rest.
+
+"What nonsense it is," Natasha suddenly exclaimed, "about
+honeymoons, and that the greatest happiness is at first! On the
+contrary, now is the best of all. If only you did not go away! Do
+you remember how we quarreled? And it was always my fault. Always
+mine. And what we quarreled about- I don't even remember!"
+
+"Always about the same thing," said Pierre with a smile. "Jealo..."
+
+"Don't say it! I can't bear it!" Natasha cried, and her eyes
+glittered coldly and vindictively. "Did you see her?" she added, after
+a pause.
+
+"No, and if I had I shouldn't have recognized her."
+
+They were silent for a while.
+
+"Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study I was
+looking at you," Natasha began, evidently anxious to disperse the
+cloud that had come over them. "You are as like him as two peas-
+like the boy." (She meant her little son.) "Oh, it's time to go to
+him.... The milk's come.... But I'm sorry to leave you."
+
+They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one
+another at the same time they both began to speak. Pierre began with
+self-satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natasha with a quiet, happy smile.
+Having interrupted one another they both stopped to let the other
+continue.
+
+"No. What did you say? Go on, go on."
+
+"No, you go on, I was talking nonsense," said Natasha.
+
+Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to his
+complacent reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment it
+seemed to him that he was chosen to give a new direction to the
+whole of Russian society and to the whole world.
+
+"I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are
+always simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious people are united
+and constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now
+that's simple enough."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what were you going to say?"
+
+"I? Only nonsense."
+
+"But all the same?"
+
+"Oh nothing, only a trifle," said Natasha, smilingly still more
+brightly. "I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today nurse was
+coming to take him from me, and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung
+to me. I'm sure he thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now
+he's crying. Well, good-by!" and she left the room.
+
+Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski's bedroom a
+little lamp was burning as usual. (The boy was afraid of the dark
+and they could not cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four
+pillows and his Roman nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring.
+Little Nicholas, who had just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat
+up in bed and gazed before him with wide-open eyes. He had awaked from
+a terrible dream. He had dreamed that he and Uncle Pierre, wearing
+helmets such as were depicted in his Plutarch, were leading a huge
+army. The army was made up of white slanting lines that filled the air
+like the cobwebs that float about in autumn and which Dessalles called
+les fils de la Vierge. In front was Glory, which was similar to
+those threads but rather thicker. He and Pierre were borne along
+lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their goal. Suddenly the
+threads that moved them began to slacken and become entangled and it
+grew difficult to move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before them in a
+stern and threatening attitude.
+
+"Have you done this?" he said, pointing to some broken sealing wax
+and pens. "I loved you, but I have orders from Arakcheev and will kill
+the first of you who moves forward." Little Nicholas turned to look at
+Pierre but Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his father-
+Prince Andrew- and his father had neither shape nor form, but he
+existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with
+love: he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father
+caressed and pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer and nearer
+to them. Terror seized young Nicholas and he awoke.
+
+"My father!" he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of
+Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human
+form.) "My father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of
+me and of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it.
+Mucius Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing
+happen to me? I know they want me to learn. And I will learn. But
+someday I shall have finished learning, and then I will do
+something. I only pray God that something may happen to me such as
+happened to Plutarch's men, and I will act as they did. I will do
+better. Everyone shall know me, love me, and be delighted with me!"
+And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and he began to cry.
+
+"Are you ill?" he heard Dessalles' voice asking.
+
+"No," answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.
+
+"He is good and kind and I am fond of him!" he thought of Dessalles.
+"But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father?
+Oh, Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he
+would be satisfied...."
+
+SECOND EPILOGUE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put
+into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a
+single nation, appears impossible.
+
+The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to
+describe and seize the apparently elusive- the life of a people.
+They described the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and
+regarded the activity of those men as representing the activity of the
+whole nation.
+
+The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished
+and by what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the
+ancients met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations
+to the will of a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so
+as to accomplish ends that were predestined.
+
+For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the
+direct participation of the Deity in human affairs.
+
+Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.
+
+It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in
+man's subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward
+which nations are led, modern history should study not the
+manifestations of power but the causes that produce it. But modern
+history has not done this. Having in theory rejected the view held
+by the ancients, it still follows them in practice.
+
+Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided
+by the will of God, modern history has given us either heroes
+endowed with extraordinary, superhuman capacities, or simply men of
+very various kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses.
+Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or
+Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the
+progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims-
+the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its
+highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in
+general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a
+small northwesterly portion of a large continent.
+
+Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without
+replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has
+obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the
+divine authority of the kings and the "fate" of the ancients, to reach
+the same conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations
+guided by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to
+which these nations and humanity at large are tending.
+
+At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon
+to Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent
+novelty of their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.
+
+In the first place the historian describes the activity of
+individuals who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian
+considers only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men,
+while another includes also orators, learned men, reformers,
+philosophers, and poets). Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward
+which humanity is being led is known to the historians: to one of them
+this goal is the greatness of the Roman, Spanish, or French realm;
+to another it is liberty, equality, and a certain kind of civilization
+of a small corner of the world called Europe.
+
+In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is
+expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it
+moves eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east
+westward. In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with
+remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west,
+attracting to it, as the first movement had done, the nations of
+middle Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point of
+the first movement in the west- Paris- and subsides.
+
+During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
+untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions of
+men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions of
+Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
+another.
+
+What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people
+burn houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these
+events? What force made men act so? These are the instinctive,
+plain, and most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it
+encounters the monuments and tradition of that period.
+
+For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns
+to the science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity
+to know themselves.
+
+If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have
+said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and
+directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that
+reply, would have been clear and complete. One might believe or
+disbelieve in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone
+believing in it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the
+history of that period, nor would there have been any contradictions.
+
+But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit
+the conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the
+Deity in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other
+answers.
+
+Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know
+what this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced
+these events? Then listen:
+
+"Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such
+and such mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France
+badly. His descendants were weak men and they too ruled France
+badly. And they had such and such favorites and such and such
+mistresses. Moreover, certain men wrote some books at that time. At
+the end of the eighteenth century there were a couple of dozen men
+in Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal. This
+caused people all over France to begin to slash at and drown one
+another. They killed the king and many other people. At that time
+there was in France a man of genius- Napoleon. He conquered
+everybody everywhere- that is, he killed many people because he was
+a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and
+killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he
+returned to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all
+obeyed him. Having become an Emperor he again went out to kill
+people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he killed a great
+many. In Russia there was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to
+restore order in Europe and therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807
+he suddenly made friends with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled
+and again began killing many people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand
+men into Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from
+Moscow, and the Emperor Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and
+others, united Europe to arm against the disturber of its peace. All
+Napoleon's allies suddenly became his enemies and their forces
+advanced against the fresh forces he raised. The Allies defeated
+Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent him
+to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of Emperor and
+showing him every respect, though five years before and one year later
+they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand. Then Louis XVIII,
+who till then had been the laughingstock both of the French and the
+Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old
+Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then the skillful
+statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who managed to
+sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and thereby extended
+the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by these conversations
+made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists and
+monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of again ordering
+their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon arrived in
+France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating him,
+immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were angry
+at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated
+the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent
+him to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the
+beloved France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that
+rock and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a
+reaction occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress
+their subjects."
+
+It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic- a caricature
+of the historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild
+expression of the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions,
+which all the historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the
+histories of separate states to the writers of general histories and
+the new histories of the culture of that period.
+
+The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact
+that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has
+asked.
+
+If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement
+of humanity and of the peoples, the first question- in the absence
+of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible- is: what is
+the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously
+replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was
+very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.
+
+All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it
+is not what was asked. All that would be interesting if we
+recognized a divine power based on itself and always consistently
+directing its nations through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we
+do not acknowledge such a power, and therefore before speaking about
+Napoleons, Louis-es, and authors, we ought to be shown the
+connection existing between these men and the movement of the nations.
+
+If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it
+should be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole
+interest of history lies precisely in that force.
+
+History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to
+everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone
+reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new
+force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really
+quite well known to everybody.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+What force moves the nations?
+
+Biographical historians and historians of separate nations
+understand this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers. In
+their narration events occur solely by the will of a Napoleon, and
+Alexander, or in general of the persons they describe. The answers
+given by this kind of historian to the question of what force causes
+events to happen are satisfactory only as long as there is but one
+historian to each event. As soon as historians of different
+nationalities and tendencies begin to describe the same event, the
+replies they give immediately lose all meaning, for this force is
+understood by them all not only differently but often in quite
+contradictory ways. One historian says that an event was produced by
+Napoleon's power, another that it was produced by Alexander's, a third
+that it was due to the power of some other person. Besides this,
+historians of that kind contradict each other even in their
+statement as to the force on which the authority of some particular
+person was based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon's power
+was based on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it was
+based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the historians
+of this class, by mutually destroying one another's positions, destroy
+the understanding of the force which produces events, and furnish no
+reply to history's essential question.
+
+Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to
+recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians' view of the
+force which produces events. They do not recognize it as a power
+inherent in heroes and rulers, but as the resultant of a
+multiplicity of variously directed forces. In describing a war or
+the subjugation of a people, a general historian looks for the cause
+of the event not in the power of one man, but in the interaction of
+many persons connected with the event.
+
+According to this view the power of historical personages,
+represented as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would
+seem, be regarded as a force that itself produces events. Yet in
+most cases universal historians still employ the conception of power
+as a force that itself produces events, and treat it as their cause.
+In their exposition, an historic character is first the product of his
+time, and his power only the resultant of various forces, and then his
+power is itself a force producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and
+others, for instance, at one time prove Napoleon to be a product of
+the Revolution, of the ideas of 1789 and so forth, and at another
+plainly say that the campaign of 1812 and other things they do not
+like were simply the product of Napoleon's misdirected will, and
+that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in their development by
+Napoleon's caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the general temper
+of the age produced Napoleon's power. But Napoleon's power
+suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of the
+age.
+
+This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only does it occur
+at every step, but the universal historians' accounts are all made
+up of a chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs
+because after entering the field of analysis the universal
+historians stop halfway.
+
+To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant
+force, the sum of the components must equal the resultant. This
+condition is never observed by the universal historians, and so to
+explain the resultant forces they are obliged to admit, in addition to
+the insufficient components, another unexplained force affecting the
+resultant action.
+
+Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813 or the
+restoration of the Bourbons plainly assert that these events were
+produced by the will of Alexander. But the universal historian
+Gervinus, refuting this opinion of the specialist historian, tries
+to prove that the campaign of 1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons
+were due to other things beside Alexander's will- such as the activity
+of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte
+Chateaubriand, and others. The historian evidently decomposes
+Alexander's power into the components: Talleyrand, Chateaubriand,
+and the rest- but the sum of the components, that is, the interactions
+of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the others,
+evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of
+millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That
+Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and others spoke certain words to
+one another only affected their mutual relations but does not
+account for the submission of millions. And therefore to explain how
+from these relations of theirs the submission of millions of people
+resulted- that is, how component forces equal to one A gave a
+resultant equal to a thousand times A- the historian is again
+obliged to fall back on power- the force he had denied- and to
+recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is, he has to
+admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is just
+what the universal historians do, and consequently they not only
+contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves.
+
+Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according
+to whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the
+clouds away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the
+same way the universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them
+and fits in with their theory, say that power is the result of events,
+and sometimes, when they want to prove something else, say that
+power produces events.
+
+A third class of historians- the so-called historians of culture-
+following the path laid down by the universal historians who sometimes
+accept writers and ladies as forces producing events- again take
+that force to be something quite different. They see it in what is
+called culture- in mental activity.
+
+The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their
+progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical
+events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one
+another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that
+such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense
+number of indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these
+historians select the indication of intellectual activity and say that
+this indication is the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove
+that the cause of events lies in intellectual activity, only by a
+great stretch can one admit that there is any connection between
+intellectual activity and the movement of peoples, and in no case
+can one admit that intellectual activity controls people's actions,
+for that view is not confirmed by such facts as the very cruel murders
+of the French Revolution resulting from the doctrine of the equality
+of man, or the very cruel wars and executions resulting from the
+preaching of love.
+
+But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised arguments
+with which these histories are filled- admitting that nations are
+governed by some undefined force called an idea- history's essential
+question still remains unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs
+and to the influence of advisers and other people introduced by the
+universal historians, another, newer force- the idea- is added, the
+connection of which with the masses needs explanation. It is
+possible to understand that Napoleon had power and so events occurred;
+with some effort one may even conceive that Napoleon together with
+other influences was the cause of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat
+social, had the effect of making Frenchmen begin to drown one
+another cannot be understood without an explanation of the causal
+nexus of this new force with the event.
+
+Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live
+contemporaneously, and so it is possible to find some connection
+between the intellectual activity of men and their historical
+movements, just as such a connection may be found between the
+movements of humanity and commerce, handicraft, gardening, or anything
+else you please. But why intellectual activity is considered by the
+historians of culture to be the cause or expression of the whole
+historical movement is hard to understand. Only the following
+considerations can have led the historians to such a conclusion: (1)
+that history is written by learned men, and so it is natural and
+agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class
+supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity, just as a
+similar belief is natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists,
+and soldiers (if they do not express it, that is merely because
+traders and soldiers do not write history), and (2) that spiritual
+activity, enlightenment, civilization, culture, ideas, are all
+indistinct, indefinite conceptions under whose banner it is very
+easy to use words having a still less definite meaning, and which
+can therefore be readily introduced into any theory.
+
+But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this
+kind (which may possibly even be of use to someone for something)
+the histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and
+more to approximate, are significant from the fact that after
+seriously and minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and
+political doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to
+describe an actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for
+instance, they involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise
+of power- and say plainly that that was the result of Napoleon's will.
+Speaking so, the historians of culture involuntarily contradict
+themselves, and show that the new force they have devised does not
+account for what happens in history, and that history can only be
+explained by introducing a power which they apparently do not
+recognize.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?" A peasant
+says the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because
+its wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement
+lies in the smoke which the wind carries away.
+
+The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation.
+To refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no
+devil, or another peasant would have to explain to him that it is
+not the devil but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as
+a result of the contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong.
+But the man who says that the movement of the wheels is the cause
+refutes himself, for having once begun to analyze he ought to go on
+and explain further why the wheels go round; and till he has reached
+the ultimate cause of the movement of the locomotive in the pressure
+of steam in the boiler, he has no right to stop in his search for
+the cause. The man who explains the movement of the locomotive by
+the smoke that is carried back has noticed that the wheels do not
+supply an explanation and has taken the first sign that occurs to
+him and in his turn has offered that as an explanation.
+
+The only conception that can explain the movement of the
+locomotive is that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.
+
+The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples
+is that of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the
+peoples.
+
+Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces of
+different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement
+observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the
+peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force
+resulting from several other forces, like the movement of the
+wheels; others again as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that
+is blown away.
+
+So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether
+Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories of
+all, absolutely all those who take part in an event, it is quite
+impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception
+of a force compelling men to direct their activity toward a certain
+end. And the only such conception known to historians is that of
+power.
+
+This conception is the one handle by means of which the material
+of history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone who
+breaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some other
+method of treating historical material, merely deprives himself of the
+one possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the conception
+of power as an explanation of historical events is best demonstrated
+by the universal historians and historians of culture themselves,
+for they professedly reject that conception but inevitably have
+recourse to it at every step.
+
+In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history up to now
+is like money in circulation- paper money and coin. The biographies
+and special national histories are like paper money. They can be
+used and can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to
+anyone and even advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the
+security behind them. You need only forget to ask how the will of
+heroes produces events, and such histories as Thiers' will be
+interesting and instructive and may perhaps even possess a tinge of
+poetry. But just as doubts of the real value of paper money arise
+either because, being easy to make, too much of it gets made or
+because people try to exchange it for gold, so also doubts
+concerning the real value of such histories arise either because too
+many of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart someone
+inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?- that is, wants to
+exchange the current paper money for the real gold of actual
+comprehension.
+
+The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture are
+like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to
+substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific
+gravity of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more
+than that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is
+deceived by tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle.
+As gold is gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange
+but also for use, so universal historians will be valuable only when
+they can reply to history's essential question: what is power? The
+universal historians give contradictory replies to that question,
+while the historians of culture evade it and answer something quite
+different. And as counters of imitation gold can be used only among
+a group of people who agree to accept them as gold, or among those who
+do not know the nature of gold, so universal historians and historians
+of culture, not answering humanity's essential question, serve as
+currency for some purposes of their own, only in universities and
+among the mass of readers who have a taste for what they call "serious
+reading."
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divine
+subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and the
+subjection of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot without
+contradictions take a single step till it has chosen one of two
+things: either a return to the former belief in the direct
+intervention of the Deity in human affairs or a definite explanation
+of the meaning of the force producing historical events and termed
+"power."
+
+A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been
+destroyed; and so it is essential to explain what is meant by power.
+
+Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so
+accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that the
+question: why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleon
+uttered certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power and
+so what he ordered was done.
+
+This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was
+given him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes
+essential to determine what is this power of one man over others.
+
+It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak
+one- a domination based on the application or threat of physical
+force, like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect
+of moral force, as in their simplicity some historians think who say
+that the leading figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted
+with a special strength of soul and mind called genius. This power
+cannot be based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not to
+mention heroes such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions
+differ widely, history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a
+Metternich, who ruled over millions of people, had any particular
+moral qualities, but on the contrary were generally morally weaker
+than any of the millions they ruled over.
+
+If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral
+qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for
+elsewhere- in the relation to the people of the man who wields the
+power.
+
+And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence,
+that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history's
+understanding of power for true gold.
+
+Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed
+or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.
+
+In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of how
+a state and power might be arranged were it possible for all that to
+be arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied to history that
+definition of power needs explanation.
+
+The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as the
+ancients regarded fire- namely, as something existing absolutely.
+But for history, the state and power are merely phenomena, just as for
+modern physics fire is not an element but a phenomenon.
+
+From this fundamental difference between the view held by history
+and that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tell
+minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and what
+power- existing immutably outside time- is, but to history's questions
+about the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answer
+nothing.
+
+If power be the collective will of the people transferred to their
+ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the people? If
+not, then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when
+he was taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were those
+criminals whom he arrested?
+
+Do palace revolutions- in which sometimes only two or three people
+take part- transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? In
+international relations, is the will of the people also transferred to
+their conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine
+transferred to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people
+transferred to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the
+French went to fight the Austrians?
+
+To these questions three answers are possible:
+
+Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always
+unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen,
+and that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle
+against the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded as
+an infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the
+people is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite
+and known conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, and
+even destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers
+of the conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or
+(3) that the will of the people is delegated to the rulers
+conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, and
+that the appearance of several authorities, their struggles and
+their falls, result solely from the greater or lesser fulfillment by
+the rulers of these unknown conditions on which the will of the people
+is transferred from some people to others.
+
+And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain
+the relation of the people to their rulers.
+
+Some historians- those biographical and specialist historians
+already referred to- in their simplicity failing to understand the
+question of the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collective
+will of the people is unconditionally transferred to historical
+persons, and therefore when describing some single state they assume
+that particular power to be the one absolute and real power, and
+that any other force opposing this is not a power but a violation of
+power- mere violence.
+
+Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods of
+history, has the inconvenience- in application to complex and stormy
+periods in the life of nations during which various powers arise
+simultaneously and struggle with one another- that a Legitimist
+historian will prove that the National Convention, the Directory,
+and Bonaparte were mere infringers of the true power, while a
+Republican and a Bonapartist will prove: the one that the Convention
+and the other that the Empire was the real power, and that all the
+others were violations of power. Evidently the explanations
+furnished by these historians being mutually contradictory can only
+satisfy young children.
+
+Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of
+historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the
+will of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have
+power only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will
+of the people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this
+program consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they
+continually contradict one another.
+
+Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation's
+progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth,
+freedom, or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country.
+But not to mention the historians' contradictions as to the nature
+of this program- or even admitting that some one general program of
+these conditions exists- the facts of history almost always contradict
+that theory. If the conditions under which power is entrusted
+consist in the wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how
+is it that Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible end their reigns
+tranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are executed by their
+people? To this question historians reply that Louis XIV's activity,
+contrary to the program, reacted on Louis XVI. But why did it not
+react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV- why should it react just on Louis
+XVI? And what is the time limit for such reactions? To these questions
+there are and can be no answers. Equally little does this view explain
+why for several centuries the collective will is not withdrawn from
+certain rulers and their heirs, and then suddenly during a period of
+fifty years is transferred to the Convention, to the Directory, to
+Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to
+Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican government, and to
+Napoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers of the people's
+will from from one individual to another, especially in view of
+international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians
+are obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normal
+delegations of the people's will but are accidents dependent on
+cunning, on mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a
+ruler, or a party leader. So that the greater part of the events of
+history- civil wars, revolutions, and conquests- are presented by
+these historians not as the results of free transferences of the
+people's will, but as results of the ill-directed will of one or
+more individuals, that is, once again, as usurpations of power. And so
+these historians also see and admit historical events which are
+exceptions to the theory.
+
+These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that some
+plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist that
+all that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and that the
+palm, the mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full growth
+and no longer resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory.
+
+Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people
+is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the
+conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages have
+power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has
+been delegated to them.
+
+But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in the
+historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance have
+those leaders?
+
+The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of the
+people: the activity of the leaders represents the activity of the
+people.
+
+But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of the
+leaders serves as an expression of the people's will or only some part
+of it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves as the expression
+of the people's will, as some historians suppose, then all the details
+of the court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon or
+a Catherine serve to express the life of the nation, which is
+evident nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of the
+activity of an historical leader which serves to express the
+people's life, as other so-called "philosophical" historians
+believe, then to determine which side of the activity of a leader
+expresses the nation's life, we have first of all to know in what
+the nation's life consists.
+
+Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most
+obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all
+conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of
+humanity's movement. The most usual generalizations adopted by
+almost all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment,
+progress, civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization
+as the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians study the
+men of whom the greatest number of monuments have remained: kings,
+ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to
+the extent to which in their opinion these persons have promoted or
+hindered that abstraction. But as it is in no way proved that the
+aim of humanity does consist in freedom, equality, enlightenment, or
+civilization, and as the connection of the people with the rulers
+and enlighteners of humanity is only based on the arbitrary assumption
+that the collective will of the people is always transferred to the
+men whom we have noticed, it happens that the activity of the millions
+who migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture, and destroy one another
+never is expressed in the account of the activity of some dozen people
+who did not burn houses, practice agriculture, or slay their fellow
+creatures.
+
+History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoples
+of the west at the end of the eighteenth century and their drive
+eastward explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, their
+mistresses and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau,
+Diderot, Beaumarchais, and others?
+
+Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and
+Siberia expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan the
+Terrible and by his correspondence with Kurbski?
+
+Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained
+by the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and their
+ladies? For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, without
+leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit,
+remains incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the
+cessation of that movement when a rational and sacred aim for the
+Crusade- the deliverance of Jerusalem- had been clearly defined by
+historic leaders. Popes, kings, and knights incited the peoples to
+free the Holy Land; but the people did not go, for the unknown cause
+which had previously impelled them to go no longer existed. The
+history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers can evidently not cover
+the life of the peoples. And the history of the Godfreys and the
+Minnesingers has remained the history of Godfreys and Minnesingers,
+but the history of the life of the peoples and their impulses has
+remained unknown.
+
+Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us
+the life of the peoples.
+
+The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions of
+life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had a
+hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was
+suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why
+after the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor why
+during the French Revolution they guillotined one another.
+
+If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the newest
+historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but not
+the history of the life of the peoples.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a few
+men, for the connection between those men and the nations has not been
+found. The theory that this connection is based on the transference of
+the collective will of a people to certain historical personages is an
+hypothesis unconfirmed by the experience of history.
+
+The theory of the transference of the collective will of the
+people to historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of
+jurisprudence and be essential for its purposes, but in its
+application to history, as soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil
+wars occur- that is, as soon as history begins- that theory explains
+nothing.
+
+The theory seems irrefutable just because the act of transference of
+the people's will cannot be verified, for it never occurred.
+
+Whatever happens and whoever may stand at the head of affairs, the
+theory can always say that such and such a person took the lead
+because the collective will was transferred to him.
+
+The replies this theory gives to historical questions are like the
+replies of a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and
+paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in
+different parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman,
+should attribute the direction the herd takes to what animal happens
+to be at its head.
+
+"The herd goes in that direction because the animal in front leads
+it and the collective will of all the other animals is vested in
+that leader." This is what historians of the first class say- those
+who assume the unconditional transference of the people's will.
+
+"If the animals leading the herd change, this happens because the
+collective will of all the animals is transferred from one leader to
+another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them
+in the direction selected by the whole herd." Such is the reply
+historians who assume that the collective will of the people is
+delegated to rulers under conditions which they regard as known. (With
+this method of observation it often happens that the observer,
+influenced by the direction he himself prefers, regards those as
+leaders who, owing to the people's change of direction, are no
+longer in front, but on one side, or even in the rear.)
+
+"If the animals in front are continually changing and the
+direction of the whole herd is constantly altered, this is because
+in order to follow a given direction the animals transfer their will
+to the animals that have attracted our attention, and to study the
+movements of the herd we must watch the movements of all the prominent
+animals moving on all sides of the herd." So say the third class of
+historians who regard all historical persons, from monarchs to
+journalists, as the expression of their age.
+
+The theory of the transference of the will of the people to historic
+persons is merely a paraphrase- a restatement of the question in other
+words.
+
+What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the
+collective will of the people transferred to one person. Under what
+condition is the will of the people delegated to one person? On
+condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people.
+That is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning
+of which we do not understand.
+
+If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning,
+then having subjected to criticism the explanation of "power" that
+juridical science gives us, humanity would conclude that power is
+merely a word and has no real existence. But to understand phenomena
+man has, besides abstract reasoning, experience by which he verifies
+his reflections. And experience tells us that power is not merely a
+word but an actually existing phenomenon.
+
+Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective
+activity of men can do without the conception of power, the
+existence of power is proved both by history and by observing
+contemporary events.
+
+Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men appear, by whose
+will the event seems to have taken place. Napoleon III issues a decree
+and the French go to Mexico. The King of Prussia and Bismarck issue
+decrees and an army enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree and
+an army enters Russia. Alexander I gives a command and the French
+submit to the Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever event occurs
+it is always related to the will of one or of several men who have
+decreed it.
+
+The historians, in accord with the old habit of acknowledging divine
+intervention in human affairs, want to see the cause of events in
+the expression of the will of someone endowed with power, but that
+supposition is not confirmed either by reason or by experience.
+
+On the one side reflection shows that the expression of a man's
+will- his words- are only part of the general activity expressed in an
+event, as for instance in a war or a revolution, and so without
+assuming an incomprehensible, supernatural force- a miracle- one
+cannot admit that words can be the immediate cause of the movements of
+millions of men. On the other hand, even if we admitted that words
+could be the cause of events, history shows that the expression of the
+will of historical personages does not in most cases produce any
+effect, that is to say, their commands are often not executed, and
+sometimes the very opposite of what they order occurs.
+
+Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of humanity
+we cannot regard "power" as the cause of events.
+
+Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation
+that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution
+of that will by others.
+
+To explain the conditions of that relationship we must first
+establish a conception of the expression of will, referring it to
+man and not to the Deity.
+
+If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as ancient
+history tells us, the expression of that will is independent of time
+and is not caused by anything, for the Divinity is not controlled by
+an event. But speaking of commands that are the expression of the will
+of men acting in time and in relation to one another, to explain the
+connection of commands with events we must restore: (1) the
+condition of all that takes place: the continuity of movement in
+time both of the events and of the person who commands, and (2) the
+inevitability of the connection between the person commanding and
+those who execute his command.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time,
+can relate to a whole series of events occurring over a period of
+years or centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can
+by His sole will determine the direction of humanity's movement; but
+man acts in time and himself takes part in what occurs.
+
+Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we see that
+no command can be executed without some preceding order having been
+given rendering the execution of the last command possible.
+
+No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole
+series of occurrences; but each command follows from another, and
+never refers to a whole series of events but always to one moment only
+of an event.
+
+When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies to go to
+war, we combine in one simultaneous expression a whole series of
+consecutive commands dependent one on another. Napoleon could not have
+commanded an invasion of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered
+such and such papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to
+Petersburg; tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army, the
+fleet, the commissariat, and so on and so on- millions of commands,
+which formed a whole series corresponding to a series of events
+which brought the French armies into Russia.
+
+If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an
+invasion of England and expended on no other undertaking so much
+time and effort, and yet during his whole reign never once attempted
+to execute that design but undertook an expedition into Russia, with
+which country he considered it desirable to be in alliance (a
+conviction he repeatedly expressed)- this came about because his
+commands did not correspond to the course of events in the first case,
+but did so correspond in the latter.
+
+For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that a man
+should order what can be executed. But to know what can and what
+cannot be executed is impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon's
+invasion of Russia in which millions participated, but even in the
+simplest event, for in either case millions of obstacles may arise
+to prevent its execution. Every order executed is always one of an
+immense number unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with
+the course of events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones get
+linked up with a consecutive series of commands corresponding to a
+series of events, and are executed.
+
+Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which
+precedes it is due to the fact that when the event has taken place and
+out of thousands of others those few commands which were consistent
+with that event have been executed, we forget about the others that
+were not executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the
+chief source of our error in this matter is due to the fact that in
+the historical accounts a whole series of innumerable, diverse, and
+petty events, such for instance as all those which led the French
+armies to Russia, is generalized into one event in accord with the
+result produced by that series of events, and corresponding with
+this generalization the whole series of commands is also generalized
+into a single expression of will.
+
+We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In
+reality in all Napoleon's activity we never find anything resembling
+an expression of that wish, but find a series of orders, or
+expressions of his will, very variously and indefinitely directed.
+Amid a long series of unexecuted orders of Napoleon's one series,
+for the campaign of 1812, was carried out- not because those orders
+differed in any way from the other, unexecuted orders but because they
+coincided with the course of events that led the French army into
+Russia; just as in stencil work this or that figure comes out not
+because the color was laid on from this side or in that way, but
+because it was laid on from all sides over the figure cut in the
+stencil.
+
+So that examining the relation in time of the commands to the
+events, we find that a command can never be the cause of the event,
+but that a certain definite dependence exists between the two.
+
+To understand in what this dependence consists it is necessary to
+reinstate another omitted condition of every command proceeding not
+from the Deity but from a man, which is, that the man who gives the
+command himself takes part in
+
+This relation of the commander to those he commands is just what
+is called power. This relation consists in the following:
+
+For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in
+which regardless of the difference of the aims set for the common
+action, the relation between those taking part in it is always the
+same.
+
+Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations
+toward one another that the larger number take a more direct share,
+and the smaller number a less direct share, in the collective action
+for which they have combined.
+
+Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one
+of the most striking and definite examples is an army.
+
+Every army is composed of lower grades of the service- the rank
+and file- of whom there are always the greatest number; of the next
+higher military rank- corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom
+there are fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are
+still fewer, and so on to the highest military command which is
+concentrated in one person.
+
+A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone,
+of which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and
+file; the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of
+the next higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point
+of which will represent the commander in chief.
+
+The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section
+of the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing,
+hacking, burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for
+these actions from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The
+noncommissioned officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the
+action itself less frequently than the soldiers, but they already give
+commands. An officer still less often acts directly himself, but
+commands still more frequently. A general does nothing but command the
+troops, indicates the objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon
+himself. The commander in chief never takes direct part in the
+action itself, but only gives general orders concerning the movement
+of the mass of the troops. A similar relation of people to one another
+is seen in every combination of men for common activity- in
+agriculture, trade, and every administration.
+
+And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of
+a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in
+any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to
+the highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action,
+combine in such relations that the more directly they participate in
+performing the action the less they can command and the more
+numerous they are, while the less their direct participation in the
+action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them there
+are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the man at the top,
+who takes the least direct share in the action and directs his
+activity chiefly to commanding.
+
+This relation of the men who command to those they command is what
+constitutes the essence of the conception called power.
+
+Having restored the condition of time under which all events
+occur, find that a command is executed only when it is related to a
+corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of
+relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that
+by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest
+part in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively
+directed to commanding.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+When an event is taking place people express their opinions and
+wishes about it, and as the event results from the collective activity
+of many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure
+to be fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions
+expressed is fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event
+as a command preceding it.
+
+Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as to
+how and where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens
+that this is done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we have
+command and power in their primary form. The man who worked most
+with his hands could not think so much about what he was doing, or
+reflect on or command what would result from the common activity;
+while the man who commanded more would evidently work less with his
+hands on account of his greater verbal activity.
+
+When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a
+common aim there is a yet sharper division of those who, because their
+activity is given to directing and commanding, take less less part
+in the direct work.
+
+When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflections
+which as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his
+present activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Just
+the same is done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do not
+take a direct part in the activity to devise considerations,
+justifications, and surmises concerning their collective activity.
+
+For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and
+kill one another. And corresponding to the event its justification
+appears in people's belief that this was necessary for the welfare
+of France, for liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill one
+another, and this event was accompanied by its justification in the
+necessity for a centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and
+so on. Men went from the west to the east killing their fellow men,
+and the event was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France,
+the baseness of England, and so on. History shows us that these
+justifications of the events have no common sense and are all
+contradictory, as in the case of killing a man as the result of
+recognizing his rights, and the killing of millions in Russia for
+the humiliation of England. But these justifications have a very
+necessary significance in their own day.
+
+These justifications release those who produce the events from moral
+responsibility. These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in front
+of a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: they
+clear men's moral responsibilities from their path.
+
+Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplest
+question that presents itself when examining each historical event.
+How is it that millions of men commit collective crimes- make war,
+commit murder, and so on?
+
+With the present complex forms of political and social life in
+Europe can any event that is not prescribed, decreed, or ordered by
+monarchs, ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Is
+there any collective action which cannot find its justification in
+political unity, in patriotism, in the balance of power, or in
+civilization? So that every event that occurs inevitably coincides
+with some expressed wish and, receiving a justification, presents
+itself as the result of the will of one man or of several men.
+
+In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cuts
+will always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the ship
+the movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion.
+
+Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of that
+flow and comparing it with the movement of the ship do we convince
+ourselves that every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement
+of the ship, and that we were led into error by the fact that we
+ourselves were imperceptibly moving.
+
+We see the same if we watch moment by moment the movement of
+historical characters (that is, re-establish the inevitable
+condition of all that occurs- the continuity of movement in time)
+and do not lose sight of the essential connection of historical
+persons with the masses.
+
+When the ship moves in one direction there is one and the same
+wave ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave ahead of it also
+turns frequently. But wherever it may turn there always will be the
+wave anticipating its movement.
+
+Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseen
+and decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the rush of water which neither
+directs nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at a
+distance seems to us not merely to move of itself but to govern the
+ship's movement also.
+
+Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons
+which, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumed
+that the events depended on those commands. But examining the events
+themselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood to
+the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent on
+events. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that, however
+many commands were issued, the event does not take place unless
+there are other causes for it, but as soon as an event occurs- be it
+what it may- then out of all the continually expressed wishes of
+different people some will always be found which by their meaning
+and their time of utterance are related as commands to the events.
+
+Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and positively
+to these two essential questions of history:
+
+(1) What is power?
+
+(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?
+
+(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals, in
+which the more this person expresses opinions, predictions, and
+justifications of the collective action that is performed, the less is
+his participation in that action.
+
+(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor by
+intellectual activity, nor even by a combination of the two as
+historians have supposed, but by the activity of all the people who
+participate in the events, and who always combine in such a way that
+those taking the largest direct share in the event take on
+themselves the least responsibility and vice versa.
+
+Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event;
+physically it is those who submit to the power. But as the moral
+activity is inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event
+is neither in the one nor in the other but in the union of the two.
+
+Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to
+the phenomena we are examining.
+
+In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity- that final
+limit to which in every domain of thought man's reason arrives if it
+is not playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heat
+produces electricity. Atoms attract each other and atoms repel one
+another.
+
+Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, we
+cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it is
+inconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law.
+The same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur we
+do not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action,
+people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, and
+we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in
+other words that it is a law.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+If history dealt only with external phenomena, the establishment
+of this simple and obvious law would suffice and we should have
+finished our argument. But the law of history relates to man. A
+particle of matter cannot tell us that it does not feel the law of
+attraction or repulsion and that that law is untrue, but man, who is
+the subject of history, says plainly: I am free and am therefore not
+subject to the law.
+
+The presence of the problem of man's free will, though
+unexpressed, is felt at every step of history.
+
+All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered
+this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and
+the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the
+lack of a solution of that question.
+
+If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act
+as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected
+incidents.
+
+If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely,
+that is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that
+man's in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy
+the possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of
+humanity.
+
+If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will
+cannot exist, for then man's will is subject to that law.
+
+In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which from most
+ancient times has occupied the best human minds and from most
+ancient times has been presented in its whole tremendous significance.
+
+The problem is that regarding man as a subject of observation from
+whatever point of view- theological, historical, ethical, or
+philosophic- we find a general law of necessity to which he (like
+all that exists) is subject. But regarding him from within ourselves
+as what we are conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free.
+
+This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite apart from
+and independent of reason. Through his reason man observes himself,
+but only through consciousness does he know himself.
+
+Apart from consciousness of self no observation or application of
+reason is conceivable.
+
+To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man must first of
+all be conscious of himself as living. A man is only conscious of
+himself as a living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is
+conscious of his volition. But his will- which forms the essence of
+his life- man recognizes (and can but recognize) as free.
+
+If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed
+by one and the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking
+food, using his brain, or anything else) he cannot recognize this
+never-varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation
+of it. Were it not free it could not be limited. A man's will seems to
+him to be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as
+free.
+
+You say: I am not and am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let
+it fall. Everyone understands that this illogical reply is an
+irrefutable demonstration of freedom.
+
+That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not
+subject to reason.
+
+If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and
+independent source of self-consciousness it would be subject to
+reasoning and to experience, but in fact such subjection does not
+exist and is inconceivable.
+
+A series of experiments and arguments proves to every man that he,
+as an object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and man
+submits to them and never resists the laws of gravity or
+impermeability once he has become acquainted with them. But the same
+series of experiments and arguments proves to him that the complete
+freedom of which he is conscious in himself is impossible, and that
+his every action depends on his organization, his character, and the
+motives acting upon him; yet man never submits to the deductions of
+these experiments and arguments. Having learned from experiment and
+argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this
+and always expects the law that he has learned to be fulfilled.
+
+But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws,
+he does not and cannot believe this.
+
+However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the
+same conditions and with the same character he will do the same
+thing as before, yet when under the same conditions and with the
+same character he approaches for the thousandth time the action that
+always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before
+the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or
+sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him
+that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in
+precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational
+conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot
+imagine life. He feels that however impossible it may be, it is so,
+for without this conception of freedom not only would he be unable
+to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single
+moment.
+
+He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to
+life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame
+and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness,
+health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion
+and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of
+freedom.
+
+A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of
+life.
+
+If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a senseless
+contradiction like the possibility of performing two actions at one
+and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that
+only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.
+
+This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom,
+uncontrolled by experiment or argument, recognized by all thinkers and
+felt by everyone without exception, this consciousness without which
+no conception of man is possible constitutes the other side of the
+question.
+
+Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-seeing
+God. What is sin, the conception of which arises from the
+consciousness of man's freedom? That is a question for theology.
+
+The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws expressed
+in statistics. What is man's responsibility to society, the conception
+of which results from the conception of freedom? That is a question
+for jurisprudence.
+
+Man's actions proceed from his innate character and the motives
+acting upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and
+wrong in actions that follows from the consciousness of freedom?
+That is a question for ethics.
+
+Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears
+subject to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from
+that connection appears to free. How should the past life of nations
+and of humanity be regarded- as the result of the free, or as the
+result of the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for
+history.
+
+Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of knowledge-
+thanks to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the diffusion of
+printed matter- has the question of the freedom of will been put on
+a level on which the question itself cannot exist. In our time the
+majority of so-called advanced people- that is, the crowd of
+ignoramuses- have taken the work of the naturalists who deal with
+one side of the question for a solution of the whole problem.
+
+They say and write and print that the soul and freedom do not exist,
+for the life of man is expressed by muscular movements and muscular
+movements are conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul
+and free will do not exist because at an unknown period of time we
+sprang from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that
+thousands of years ago that same law of necessity which with such
+ardor they are now trying to prove by physiology and comparative
+zoology was not merely acknowledged by all the religions and all the
+thinkers, but has never been denied. They do not see that the role
+of the natural sciences in this matter is merely to serve as an
+instrument for the illumination of one side of it. For the fact
+that, from the point of view of observation, reason and the will are
+merely secretions of the brain, and that man following the general law
+may have developed from lower animals at some unknown period of
+time, only explains from a fresh side the truth admitted thousands
+of years ago by all the religious and philosophic theories- that
+from the point of view of reason man is subject to the law of
+necessity; but it does not advance by a hair's breadth the solution of
+the question, which has another, opposite, side, based on the
+consciousness of freedom.
+
+If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is
+as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at
+a certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is
+the time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of
+how man's consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of
+necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative
+physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or an ape, we can
+observe only the muscular nervous activity, but in man we observe
+consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity.
+
+The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this
+question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls
+of a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief
+superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over
+the windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should
+be delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything
+is now so smooth and regular.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability,
+history has this advantage over other branches of knowledge in which
+the question is dealt with, that for history this question does not
+refer to the essence of man's free will but its manifestation in the
+past and under certain conditions.
+
+In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences
+as experimental science stands to abstract science.
+
+The subject for history is not man's will itself but our
+presentation of it.
+
+And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by the
+incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist as it
+does for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History surveys a
+presentation of man's life in which the union of these two
+contradictions has already taken place.
+
+In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very
+clearly and definitely understood without any sense of
+contradiction, although each event presents itself as partly free
+and partly compulsory.
+
+To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are combined
+and what constitutes the essence of these two conceptions, the
+philosophy of history can and should follow a path contrary to that
+taken by other sciences. Instead of first defining the conceptions
+of freedom and inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the
+phenomena of life under those definitions, history should deduce a
+definition of the conception of freedom and inevitability themselves
+from the immense quantity of phenomena of which it is cognizant and
+that always appear dependent on these two elements.
+
+Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of an
+individual we may consider, we always regard it as the result partly
+of man's free will and partly of the law of inevitability.
+
+Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and the
+incursions of the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of
+someone's action an hour ago in choosing one direction out of
+several for his walk, we are unconscious of any contradiction. The
+degree of freedom and inevitability governing the actions of these
+people is clearly defined for us.
+
+Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to
+differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but
+every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom
+and inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure
+of freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more
+freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive,
+and the more inevitability the less freedom.
+
+The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases
+according to the point of view from which the action is regarded,
+but their relation is always one of inverse proportion.
+
+A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry
+mother exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man
+trained to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a
+defenseless man- seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject
+to the law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which
+these people were placed, and more free to one who does not know
+that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was hungry, that
+the soldier was in the ranks, and so on. Similarly a man who committed
+a murder twenty years ago and has since lived peaceably and harmlessly
+in society seems less guilty and his action more due to the law of
+inevitability, to someone who considers his action after twenty
+years have elapsed than to one who examined it the day after it was
+committed. And in the same way every action of an insane, intoxicated,
+or highly excited man appears less free and more inevitable to one who
+knows the mental condition of him who committed the action, and
+seems more free and less inevitable to one who does not know it. In
+all these cases the conception of freedom is increased or diminished
+and the conception of compulsion is correspondingly decreased or
+increased, according to the point of view from which the action is
+regarded. So that the greater the conception of necessity the
+smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa.
+
+Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence,
+and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity
+and freedom.
+
+All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and
+necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations:
+
+(1) The relation to the external world of the man who commits the
+deeds.
+
+(2) His relation to time.
+
+(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.
+
+The first consideration is the clearness of our perception of the
+man's relation to the external world and the greater or lesser
+clearness of our understanding of the definite position occupied by
+the man in relation to everything coexisting with him. This is what
+makes it evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject
+to necessity than one standing on dry ground, and that makes the
+actions of a man closely connected with others in a thickly
+populated district, or of one bound by family, official, or business
+duties, seem certainly less free and more subject to necessity than
+those of a man living in solitude and seclusion.
+
+If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything
+around him, each action of his seems to us free. But if we see his
+relation to anything around him, if we see his connection with
+anything whatever- with a man who speaks to him, a book he reads,
+the work on which he is engaged, even with the air he breathes or
+the light that falls on the things about him- we see that each of
+these circumstances has an influence on him and controls at least some
+side of his activity. And the more we perceive of these influences the
+more our conception of his freedom diminishes and the more our
+conception of the necessity that weighs on him increases.
+
+The second consideration is the more or less evident time relation
+of the man to the world and the clearness of our perception of the
+place the man's action occupies in time. That is the ground which
+makes the fall of the first man, resulting in the production of the
+human race, appear evidently less free than a man's entry into
+marriage today. It is the reason why the life and activity of people
+who lived centuries ago and are connected with me in time cannot
+seem to me as free as the life of a contemporary, the consequences
+of which are still unknown to me.
+
+The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends
+in this respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the
+performance of the action and our judgment of it.
+
+If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the
+same circumstances as those I am in now, my action appears to me
+undoubtedly free. But if I examine an act performed a month ago,
+then being in different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing
+that if that act had not been committed much that resulted from it-
+good, agreeable, and even essential- would not have taken place. If
+I reflect on an action still more remote, ten years ago or more,
+then the consequences of my action are still plainer to me and I
+find it hard to imagine what would have happened had that action not
+been performed. The farther I go back in memory, or what is the same
+thing the farther I go forward in my judgment, the more doubtful
+becomes my belief in the freedom of my action.
+
+In history we find a very similar progress of conviction
+concerning the part played by free will in the general affairs of
+humanity. A contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing
+of all the known participants, but with a more remote event we already
+see its inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else
+possible. And the farther we go back in examining events the less
+arbitrary do they appear.
+
+The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of
+the crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still
+seem to us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their
+heroes' will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying
+its definite place in history and without which we cannot imagine
+the modern history of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the
+Crusades that event appeared as merely due to the will of certain
+people. In regard to the migration of the peoples it does not enter
+anyone's head today to suppose that the renovation of the European
+world depended on Attila's caprice. The farther back in history the
+object of our observation lies, the more doubtful does the free will
+of those concerned in the event become and the more manifest the law
+of inevitability.
+
+The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that
+endless chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which
+each phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man's every action, must
+have its definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a
+cause of what will follow.
+
+The better we are acquainted with the physiological,
+psychological, and historical laws deduced by observation and by which
+man is controlled, and the more correctly we perceive the
+physiological, psychological, and historical causes of the action, and
+the simpler the action we are observing and the less complex the
+character and mind of the man in question, the more subject to
+inevitability and the less free do our actions and those of others
+appear.
+
+When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a
+crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we
+ascribe a greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we
+most urgently demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of
+a virtuous act we rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case
+we recognize in it more individuality, originality, and
+independence. But if even one of the innumerable causes of the act
+is known to us we recognize a certain element of necessity and are
+less insistent on punishment for the crime, or the acknowledgment of
+the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom of the apparently
+original action. That a criminal was reared among male factors
+mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or
+mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more
+comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems
+less deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The
+founder of a sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when
+we know how or by what the way was prepared for his activity. If we
+have a large range of examples, if our observation is constantly
+directed to seeking the correlation of cause and effect in people's
+actions, their actions appear to us more under compulsion and less
+free the more correctly we connect the effects with the causes. If
+we examined simple actions and had a vast number of such actions under
+observation, our conception of their inevitability would be still
+greater. The dishonest conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the
+misconduct of a woman who had fallen into bad company, a drunkard's
+relapse into drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to us less
+free the better we understand their cause. If the man whose actions we
+are considering is on a very low stage of mental development, like a
+child, a madman, or a simpleton- then, knowing the causes of the act
+and the simplicity of the character and intelligence in question, we
+see so large an element of necessity and so little free will that as
+soon as we know the cause prompting the action we can foretell the
+result.
+
+On these three considerations alone is based the conception of
+irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted
+by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less
+according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in
+which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according
+to the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of
+the action and its investigation, and according to the greater or
+lesser understanding of the causes that led to the action.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually
+diminishes or increases according to the greater or lesser
+connection with the external world, the greater or lesser remoteness
+of time, and the greater or lesser dependence on the causes in
+relation to which we contemplate a man's life.
+
+So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the
+external world is well known, where the time between the action and
+its examination is great, and where the causes of the action are
+most accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability
+and a minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on
+external conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the
+causes of whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of
+a minimum of inevitability and a maximum of freedom.
+
+In neither case- however we may change our point of view, however
+plain we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and
+the external world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long
+or short the period of time, however intelligible or
+incomprehensible the causes of the action may be- can we ever conceive
+either complete freedom or complete necessity.
+
+(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the
+influence of the external world, we never get a conception of
+freedom in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what
+surrounds him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My
+action seems to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my
+arm in every direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in
+which there was least obstruction to that action either from things
+around me or from the construction of my own body. I chose one out
+of all the possible directions because in it there were fewest
+obstacles. For my action to be free it was necessary that it should
+encounter no obstacles. To conceive of a man being free we must
+imagine him outside space, which is evidently impossible.
+
+(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time
+of the deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I
+examine an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it
+as not being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which
+it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself:
+could I have abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has
+already passed? To convince myself of this I do not lift it the next
+moment. But I am not now abstaining from doing so at the first
+moment when I asked the question. Time has gone by which I could not
+detain, the arm I then lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now
+refrain from lifting, nor is the air in which I lifted it the same
+that now surrounds me. The moment in which the first movement was made
+is irrevocable, and at that moment I could make only one movement, and
+whatever movement I made would be the only one. That I did not lift my
+arm a moment later does not prove that I could have abstained from
+lifting it then. And since I could make only one movement at that
+single moment of time, it could not have been any other. To imagine it
+as free, it is necessary to imagine it in the present, on the boundary
+between the past and the future- that is, outside time, which is
+impossible.
+
+(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be
+increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is,
+an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of
+the expression of will in any action, our own or another's, the
+first demand of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause,
+for without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to
+perform an action independently of any cause, but my wish to perform
+an action without a cause is the cause of my action.
+
+But even if- imagining a man quite exempt from all influences,
+examining only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any
+cause- we were to admit so infinitely small a remainder of
+inevitability as equaled zero, we should even then not have arrived at
+the conception of complete freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by
+the external world, standing outside of time and independent of cause,
+is no longer a man.
+
+In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite
+devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.
+
+(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space
+in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for
+the number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of
+space. And therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men
+are defined, there is no complete inevitability but a certain
+measure of freedom remains.
+
+(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action
+we are examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite,
+while time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never
+be absolute inevitability.
+
+(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any
+action, we shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and
+so again we never reach absolute inevitability.
+
+But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of
+freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some given case- as for
+instance in that of a dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot- complete
+absence of freedom, by so doing we should destroy the very
+conception of man in the case we are examining, for as soon as there
+is no freedom there is also no man. And so the conception of the
+action of a man subject solely to the law of inevitability without any
+element of freedom is just as impossible as the conception of a
+man's completely free action.
+
+And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of
+inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of
+an infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of
+time, and an infinite series of causes.
+
+To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of
+inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond
+time, and free from dependence on cause.
+
+In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom we
+should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of
+inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.
+
+In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability
+we should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time,
+and cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and
+unlimited would be nothing, or mere content without form.
+
+We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man's
+whole outlook on the universe is constructed- the incomprehensible
+essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.
+
+Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it
+visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time
+is infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable
+otherwise. (3) The connection between cause and effect has no
+beginning and can have no end.
+
+Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me,
+consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the
+fixed moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as
+living, consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I
+feel myself to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.
+
+Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability.
+Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom.
+
+Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man's
+consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason in its
+three forms.
+
+Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines.
+Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form.
+
+Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one
+another as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and
+separately incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.
+
+Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life.
+
+Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define
+one another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.
+
+All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation
+of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws
+of reason.
+
+All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain
+relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence
+of life to the laws of reason.
+
+The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious
+of them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity,
+animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life
+in man and we call that freedom.
+
+But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but
+felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which
+we know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the
+first knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton's law), so
+too the force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which
+everyone is conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know
+the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that
+every man dies, up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and
+historic laws).
+
+All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the
+laws of reason.
+
+Man's free will differs from every other force in that man is
+directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way
+differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation,
+electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one
+another in that they are differently defined by reason. Just so the
+force of man's free will is distinguished by reason from the other
+forces of nature only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom,
+apart from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that
+define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or the force
+that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable
+sensation of life.
+
+And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly
+bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity,
+or of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of
+astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the
+same way does the force of free will form the content of history.
+But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of
+this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the
+subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free
+will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause
+forms the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of
+metaphysics.
+
+In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of
+inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital
+force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above
+what we know of the essence of life.
+
+So also in history what is known to us we call laws of
+inevitability, what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for
+history only an expression for the unknown remainder of what we know
+about the laws of human life.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+History examines the manifestations of man's free will in connection
+with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is,
+it defines this freedom by the laws of reason, and so history is a
+science only in so far as this free will is defined by those laws.
+
+The recognition of man's free will as something capable of
+influencing historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the
+same for history as the recognition of a free force moving the
+heavenly bodies would be for astronomy.
+
+That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of
+laws, that is, of any science whatever. If there is even a single body
+moving freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton are negatived and no
+conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists.
+If any single action is due to free will, then not a single historical
+law can exist, nor any conception of historical events.
+
+For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills, one end
+of which is hidden in the unknown but at the other end of which a
+consciousness of man's will in the present moves in space, time, and
+dependence on cause.
+
+The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes, the
+more evident are the laws of that movement. To discover and define
+those laws is the problem of history.
+
+From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards
+its subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events
+in man's freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is
+impossible, for however man's free will may be restricted, as soon
+as we recognize it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law
+becomes impossible.
+
+Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal,
+that is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we
+convince ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes,
+and then instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of
+laws as its problem.
+
+The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of
+thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously
+with the self-destruction toward which- ever dissecting and dissecting
+the causes of phenomena- the old method of history is moving.
+
+All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at
+infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons
+the process of analysis and enters on the new process of the
+integration of unknown, infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the
+conception of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property
+common to all unknown, infinitely small, elements.
+
+In another form but along the same path of reflection the other
+sciences have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity
+he did not say that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction;
+he said that all bodies from the largest to the smallest have the
+property of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the
+question of the cause of the movement of the bodies, he expressed
+the property common to all bodies from the infinitely large to the
+infinitely small. The same is done by the natural sciences: leaving
+aside the question of cause, they seek for laws. History stands on the
+same path. And if history has for its object the study of the movement
+of the nations and of humanity and not the narration of episodes in
+the lives of individuals, it too, setting aside the conception of
+cause, should seek the laws common to all the inseparably
+interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the
+mere recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth
+that moves sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the
+ancients. By disproving that law it might have been possible to retain
+the old conception of the movements of the bodies, but without
+disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue studying the
+Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the discovery of the law of
+Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long time.
+
+From the time the first person said and proved that the number of
+births or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this
+or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical and
+economic conditions, and that certain relations of population to
+soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history
+had been built were destroyed in their essence.
+
+By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have
+been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to
+continue studying historic events as the results of man's free will.
+For if a certain mode of government was established or certain
+migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such
+geographic, ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will
+of those individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of
+government or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as
+the cause.
+
+And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with
+the laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative
+philology, and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.
+
+The struggle between the old views and the new was long and
+stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on
+guard for the old views and accused the new of violating revelation.
+But when truth conquered, theology established itself just as firmly
+on the new foundation.
+
+Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding
+between the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the
+same way stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of
+subverting revelation.
+
+In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes
+passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret
+for the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the
+other is the passion for destruction.
+
+To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical
+philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would
+destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the
+miracle of Joshua the son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of
+Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire for example, it seemed that the
+laws of astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized the law of
+gravitation as a weapon against religion.
+
+Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of
+inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and
+evil, and all the institutions of state and church that have been
+built up on those conceptions.
+
+So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of
+inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion,
+though the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus
+in astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation
+on which the institutions of state and church are erected.
+
+As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of
+history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the
+recognition or nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the
+measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability
+of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality- free
+will.
+
+As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the
+earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's
+fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the
+difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of
+space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the
+independence of one's own personality. But as in astronomy the new
+view said: "It is true that we do not feel the movement of the
+earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while
+by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,"
+so also in history the new view says: "It is true that we are not
+conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we
+arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external
+world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."
+
+In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness
+of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did
+not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce
+a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of
+which we are not conscious.
+
+% Notes:
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+% Syntax: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/sample/syntax/war_and_peace.leo_tolstoy.sst.html