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 Title : War and Peace


 
 Author : graf Leo Tolstoy



 Translator : Aylmer Maude


 Louise Maude


 


 
 Release date : April 1, 2001 [eBook #2600]

 Most recently updated: June 14, 2022



 Language : English



 Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600 



 Credits : An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger



 
 *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAR AND PEACE *** 
 
 
 
 
 WAR AND PEACE 
 By Leo Tolstoy/Tolstoi 
 
 Contents 
 
 
 BOOK ONE: 1805 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 

 
 
 
 BOOK TWO: 1805 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 

 
 
 
 BOOK THREE: 1805 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 

 
 
 
 BOOK FOUR: 1806 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 

 
 
 
 BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 

 
 
 
 BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 

 
 
 
 BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 

 
 
 
 BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 

 
 
 
 BOOK NINE: 1812 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 

 
 
 
 BOOK TEN: 1812 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 

 
 
 
 BOOK ELEVEN: 1812 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 

 
 
 
 BOOK TWELVE: 1812 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 

 
 
 
 BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 

 
 
 
 BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 

 
 
 
 BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 
 CHAPTER XX 

 
 
 
 FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 

 
 
 
 SECOND EPILOGUE 
 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 
 
 
 
 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 Pávlovna
 Schérer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Márya Fëdorovna. With
 these words she greeted Prince Vasíli Kurágin, a man of high rank and
 importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pávlovna
 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 Schérer.”
 


 
 “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 Pávlovna, 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 Pávlovna. “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 Novosíltsev’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 Vasíli always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale
 part. Anna Pávlovna Schérer 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 Pávlovna 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 Novosíltsev 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. À 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 émigrés , the good ones.
 And also the Abbé 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 Vasíli wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were
 trying through the Dowager Empress Márya Fëdorovna to secure it for the
 baron.
 


 
 Anna Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna’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 Pávlovna wished both
 to rebuke him (for daring to speak as 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 Pávlovna,
 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 Pávlovna 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 Bolkónskaya.”
 


 
 Prince Vasíli 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 Bolkónski 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 Kutúzov’s and will be here tonight.”
 


 
 “Listen, dear Annette,” said the prince, suddenly taking Anna Pávlovna’s
 hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. “Arrange that affair for me
 and I shall always be your most devoted slave- slafe with 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 Pávlovna, reflecting, “I’ll speak to Lise,
 young Bolkónski’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 Pávlovna’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 Vasíli’s
 daughter, the beautiful Hélène, 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 Bolkónskaya, known as la femme la
 plus séduisante de Pétersbourg , * 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 Vasíli’s son, Hippolyte,
 had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced. The Abbé Morio and many
 others had also come.
 


 
* The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.



 
 To each new arrival Anna Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna
 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 Pávlovna 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 Bolkónskaya 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 Pávlovna.
 


 
 “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 Vasíli, and without waiting for an answer she turned to
 speak to his daughter, the beautiful Hélène.
 


 
 “What a delightful woman this little princess is!” said Prince Vasíli to
 Anna Pávlovna.
 


 
 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 Bezúkhov, 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 Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna, 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 Pávlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the aunt
 without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty’s health. Anna
 Pávlovna in dismay detained him with the words: “Do you know the Abbé
 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 Pávlovna 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 abbé’s plan chimerical.
 


 
 “We will talk of it later,” said Anna Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna 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 abbé.
 


 
 Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna Pávlovna’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 Pávlovna’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 abbé. Another,
 of young people, was grouped round the beautiful Princess Hélène, Prince
 Vasíli’s daughter, and the little Princess Bolkónskaya, very pretty and
 rosy, though rather too plump for her age. The third group was gathered
 round Mortemart and Anna Pávlovna.
 


 
 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 Pávlovna was obviously serving him up as a treat to
 her guests. As a clever maître d’hôtel 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 Pávlovna served up to her guests, first the
 vicomte and then the abbé, 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 Pávlovna, with a
 pleasant feeling that there was something à la Louis XV in the
 sound of that sentence: “Contez nous çela, Vicomte.” 



 
 The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness to
 comply. Anna Pávlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone to
 listen to his tale.
 


 
 “The vicomte knew the duc personally,” whispered Anna Pávlovna to one 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, Hélène, dear,” said Anna Pávlovna 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
 Pávlovna. Hélène 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 Pávlovna, 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 Hélène.
 


 
 “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
 effrayée , 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 Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna, 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 abbé, so she hurried to the rescue. Pierre had
 managed to start a conversation with the abbé 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 Pávlovna disapproved.
 


 
 “The means are ... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the
 people,” the abbé 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 Pávlovna 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 abbé and Pierre escape, Anna Pávlovna, the more
 conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the larger
 circle.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV
 
 
 Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
 Bolkónski, 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 Pávlovna’s hand, and screwing up
 his eyes scanned the whole company.
 


 
 “You are off to the war, Prince?” said Anna Pávlovna.
 


 
 “General Kutúzov,” said Bolkónski, 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?”
 


 
 “André,” 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli 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 Pávlovna.
 


 
 His daughter, Princess Hélène, 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 Vasíli seized Pierre’s hand and said to Anna Pávlovna:
 “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 Pávlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew his
 father to be a connection of Prince Vasíli’s. The elderly lady who had
 been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook Prince Vasíli
 in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had assumed had left
 her kindly and tear-worn face and it now expressed only anxiety and fear.
 


 
 “How about my son Borís, 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 Vasíli 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
 Vasíli, “but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I should advise
 you to appeal to Rumyántsev through Prince Golítsyn. That would be the
 best way.”
 


 
 The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskáya, 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 Vasíli that she had obtained an
 invitation to Anna Pávlovna’s reception and had sat listening to the
 vicomte’s story. Prince Vasíli’s words frightened her, an embittered look
 clouded her once handsome face, but only for a moment; then she smiled
 again and clutched Prince Vasíli’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 Golítsyn 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 Hélène, 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 Vasíli 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
 Drubetskáya’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 Mikháylovna,” 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 Ilariónovich Kutúzov ...
 recommend Borís to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at rest, and then...”
 


 
 Prince Vasíli smiled.
 


 
 “No, I won’t promise that. You don’t know how Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov, I don’t promise.”
 


 
 “Do promise, do promise, Vasíli!” cried Anna Mikháylovna 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 Pávlovna, “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 Pávlovna straight in the face with a sarcastic
 smile.
 


 
 “‘Dieu me la donne, gare à 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 Pávlovna 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 Condé coat of
 arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much gravity as if she
 had asked him to do it.
 


 
 “Bâton de gueules, engrêlé de gueules d’azur—maison Condé,” 
 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 Pávlovna, 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 Pávlovna, “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 Pávlovna and the others had time to smile their appreciation
 of the vicomte’s epigram, Pierre again broke into the conversation, and
 though Anna Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna.
 


 
 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 Pávlovna.
 


 
 “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 Pávlovna, 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 Pávlovna, 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 Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna 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, how 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 Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna, 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 Pávlovna. “It is settled,” she added in a low voice.
 


 
 Anna Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna, 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 Schérer? 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 abbé 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 abbé as tutor, and
 had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow his
 father dismissed the abbé 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 Vasíli, 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 abbé 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 naïve 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 Pávlovna’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 Apráksins’ 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, André...” (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 naïve 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 Bolkónski who
 had lolled in Anna Pávlovna’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
 Pávlovna’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
 Kurágins 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 Kurágins’ set of women,
 ‘women and wine’ I don’t understand!”
 


 
 Pierre was staying at Prince Vasíli Kurágin’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 Kurágin 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 Kurágin’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 Kurágin’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 Dólokhov!” cried a third. “Kurágin, 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 Pétya!
 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 Dólokhov, an
 officer of the Semënov 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,
 and 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 Dólokhov 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov was holding the Englishman’s hand and clearly and distinctly
 repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself particularly to Anatole
 and Pierre.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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. Dólokhov was a man of small means and no connections.
 Yet, though Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dólokhov 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.
 Dólokhov could play all games and nearly always won. However much he
 drank, he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kurágin and Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?” said Anatole.
 


 
 “First-rate,” said Pierre, looking at Dólokhov, 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov, 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 Dólokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill to
 attract attention. “Wait a bit, Kurágin. 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
 Dólokhov’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 Dólokhov, 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,
 Dólokhov 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. Dólokhov’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 Dólokhov’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?”
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov’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. Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov 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 open them again.
 Suddenly he was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dólokhov 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. Dólokhov
 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.
 Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov, 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 Vasíli kept the promise he had given to Princess Drubetskáya who
 had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Borís on the evening of Anna
 Pávlovna’s soiree. The matter was mentioned to the Emperor, an exception
 made, and Borís transferred into the regiment of Semënov Guards with the
 rank of cornet. He received, however, no appointment to Kutúzov’s staff
 despite all Anna Mikháylovna’s endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna
 Pávlovna’s reception Anna Mikháylovna returned to Moscow and went straight
 to her rich relations, the Rostóvs, with whom she stayed when in the town
 and where her darling Bóry, 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
 Radzivílov.
 


 
 It was St. Natalia’s day and the name day of two of the Rostóvs—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 Rostóva’s big house on the Povarskáya,
 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 Mikháylovna
 Drubetskáya, 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 chère” —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 chère! 
 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 Dmítri
 Vasílevich, a man of good family and the manager of all his affairs, and
 while looking with pleasure at the enormous table would say: “Well,
 Dmítri, 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.
 


 
 “Márya Lvóvna Karágina 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
 Razumóvski’s ball ... and Countess Apráksina ... 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 Apráksina...” 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 Bezúkhov, and about his
 illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna
 Pávlovna’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
 Bezúkhov’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 Mikháylovna. “Prince
 Vasíli’s son, he, and a certain Dólokhov have, it is said, been up to
 heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it. Dólokhov has
 been degraded to the ranks and Bezúkhov’s son sent back to Moscow. Anatole
 Kurágin’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 Dólokhov,” replied the visitor. “He
 is a son of Márya Ivánovna Dólokhova, 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 Vladímirovich Bezúkhov’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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna. “Well, as I was
 saying, Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli.
 Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles! I know it all very well for
 Prince Vasíli told me himself. Besides, Cyril Vladímirovich is my mother’s
 second cousin. He’s also my Bóry’s godfather,” she added, as if she
 attached no importance at all to the fact.
 


 
 “Prince Vasíli 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 Vladímirovich, 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 chère , there is a time for everything,” said the countess with
 feigned severity. “You spoil her, Ilyá,” 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 Natásha 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.”
 


 
 Natásha, 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 Natásha, “is Mimi a relation of yours? A
 daughter, I suppose?”
 


 
 Natásha 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: Borís, the officer, Anna Mikháylovna’s
 son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count’s eldest son; Sónya, the
 count’s fifteen-year-old niece, and little Pétya, 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 Apráksina. 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. Borís
 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. Borís on
 the contrary at once found his footing, and related quietly and humorously
 how he had known 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 Natásha. 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. Borís 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.
 


 
 Borís quietly left the room and went in search of Natásha. 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 Sónya, the niece. Sónya 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 Natásha and Borís, escape
 from the drawing room.
 


 
 “Ah yes, my dear,” said the count, addressing the visitor and pointing to
 Nicholas, “his friend Borís 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 Pávlograd 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 Sónya 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 Karágina turned to young
 Rostóv.
 


 
 “What a pity you weren’t at the Arkhárovs’ 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 Sónya,
 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 Sónya.
 


 
 “How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their sleeves!”
 said Anna Mikháylovna, 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 Borís already. Just fancy!” said the countess with
 a gentle smile, looking at Borís 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 Véra, with a smile.
 


 
 But the smile did not enhance Véra’s beauty as smiles generally do; on the
 contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant, expression.
 Véra 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 Véra,” said the count. “Well, what of that? She’s turned out
 splendidly all the same,” he added, winking at Véra.
 


 
 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 Natásha 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 Borís 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 Natásha dashed swiftly among the flower tubs and hid
 there.
 


 
 Borís 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. Natásha, 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. Natásha was about to call him but
 changed her mind. “Let him look for me,” thought she. Hardly had Borís
 gone than Sónya, flushed, in tears, and muttering angrily, came in at the
 other door. Natásha 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. Sónya, muttering to herself, kept looking round toward the
 drawing room door. It opened and Nicholas came in.
 


 
 “Sónya, what is the matter with you? How can you?” said he, running up to
 her.
 


 
 “It’s nothing, nothing; leave me alone!” sobbed Sónya.
 


 
 “Ah, I know what it is.”
 


 
 “Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!”
 


 
 “Só-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like that, for
 a mere fancy?” said Nicholas taking her hand.
 


 
 Sónya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natásha, not stirring and
 scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with sparkling eyes. “What
 will happen now?” thought she.
 


 
 “Sónya! 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, Sónya!” He drew her to him and
 kissed her.
 


 
 “Oh, how nice,” thought Natásha; and when Sónya and Nicholas had gone out
 of the conservatory she followed and called Borís to her.
 


 
 “Borís, 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.
 


 
 Borís 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.
 


 
 Borís 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.
 


 
 Borís 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.
 


 
 “Natásha,” he said, “you know that I love you, but....”
 


 
 “You are in love with me?” Natásha 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.”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Borís.
 


 
 “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
 tête-à-tête talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna
 Mikháylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from
 Petersburg. Anna Mikháylovna, 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 Mikháylovna. “There are not
 many left of us old friends! That’s why I so value your friendship.”
 


 
 Anna Mikháylovna looked at Véra and paused. The countess pressed her
 friend’s hand.
 


 
 “Véra,” 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 Véra 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. Sónya was sitting
 close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the first he
 had ever written. Borís and Natásha were at the other window and ceased
 talking when Véra entered. Sónya and Natásha looked at Véra 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 Véra.
 


 
 “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 Véra. “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 Natásha and Borís, or
 between you two? It’s all nonsense!”
 


 
 “Now, Véra, what does it matter to you?” said Natásha in defense, speaking
 very gently.
 


 
 She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to
 everyone.
 


 
 “Very silly,” said Véra. “I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!”
 


 
 “All have secrets of their own,” answered Natásha, getting warmer. “We
 don’t interfere with you and Berg.”
 


 
 “I should think not,” said Véra, “because there can never be anything
 wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma how you are behaving with
 Borís.”
 


 
 “Natálya Ilyníchna behaves very well to me,” remarked Borís. “I have
 nothing to complain of.”
 


 
 “Don’t, Borís! You are such a diplomat that it is really tiresome,” said
 Natásha 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 Véra, “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 Véra 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 Véra, “I said none to
 anyone.”
 


 
 “Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!” shouted laughing voices through the
 door.
 


 
 The handsome Véra, 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 Mikháylovna, “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 Bóry?” 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 Vasíli. He was so kind. He at once agreed to everything, and
 put the matter before the Emperor,” said Princess Anna Mikháylovna
 enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she had endured to
 gain her end.
 


 
 “Has Prince Vasíli aged much?” asked the countess. “I have not seen him
 since we acted together at the Rumyántsovs’ 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 Mikháylovna, “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 Mikháylovna, 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 Borís.” 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 Vladímirovich Bezúkhov. If he will not assist his godson—you
 know he is Bóry’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 Vladímirovich Bezúkhov so rich, all alone... that
 tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It’s a burden to him,
 and Bóry’s life is only just beginning....”
 


 
 “Surely he will leave something to Borís,” said the countess.
 


 
 “Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish. Still, I
 will take Borís 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 Mikháylovna 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 Vladímirovich, 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 Tarás distinguishes himself today. He says Count Orlóv never gave such
 a dinner as ours will be!”
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV
 
 
 “My dear Borís,” said Princess Anna Mikháylovna to her son as Countess
 Rostóva’s carriage in which they were seated drove over the straw covered
 street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril Vladímirovich
 Bezúkhov’s house. “My dear Borís,” 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 Vladímirovich is
 your godfather after all, and 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.
 


 
 Borís said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without taking
 off his cloak.
 


 
 “My friend,” said Anna Mikháylovna in gentle tones, addressing the hall
 porter, “I know Count Cyril Vladímirovich 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 Vasíli Sergéevich: he is staying here, is he not? Please
 announce me.”
 


 
 The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and turned
 away.
 


 
 “Princess Drubetskáya to see Prince Vasíli Sergéevich,” 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 Vasíli.
 


 
 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 Vasíli
 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 Mikháylovna and her son, Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli stared at her and at Borís questioningly and perplexed.
 Borís bowed politely. Prince Vasíli without acknowledging the bow turned
 to Anna Mikháylovna, answering her query by a movement of the head and
 lips indicating very little hope for the patient.
 


 
 “Is it possible?” exclaimed Anna Mikháylovna. “Oh, how awful! It is
 terrible to think.... This is my son,” she added, indicating Borís. “He
 wanted to thank you himself.”
 


 
 Borís 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 Mikháylovna,” said
 Prince Vasíli, arranging his lace frill, and in tone and manner, here in
 Moscow to Anna Mikháylovna whom he had placed under an obligation,
 assuming an air of much greater importance than he had done in Petersburg
 at Anna Schérer’s reception.
 


 
 “Try to serve well and show yourself worthy,” added he, addressing Borís
 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
 Borís, 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 Rostóva’s,” replied Borís, again adding, “your
 excellency.”
 


 
 “That is, with Ilyá Rostóv who married Nataly Shinshiná,” said Anna
 Mikháylovna.
 


 
 “I know, I know,” answered Prince Vasíli 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 Mikháylovna with a pathetic
 smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostóv 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 Borís. He is his godson,” she added, her tone suggesting that this
 fact ought to give Prince Vasíli much satisfaction.
 


 
 Prince Vasíli became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikháylovna saw that he
 was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezúkhov’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 Pávlovna’s, that it would be difficult to get rid of Anna
 Mikháylovna.
 


 
 “Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna Mikháylovna?”
 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 Vasíli turned to
 her.
 


 
 “Well, how is he?”
 


 
 “Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise...” said the
 princess, looking at Anna Mikháylovna as at a stranger.
 


 
 “Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you,” said Anna Mikháylovna 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 as
 Anna Mikháylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position she had
 conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasíli to take a
 seat beside her.
 


 
 “Borís,” 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 Rostóvs’ 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 Borís 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 Rostóv’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 Mikháylovna. 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 Vasíli 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 Borís 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 Borís was a boy
 of fourteen, and had quite forgotten him, but in his usual impulsive and
 hearty way he took Borís by the hand with a friendly smile.
 


 
 “Do you remember me?” asked Borís 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.
 


 
 Borís 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 Rostóv asks you to come to dinner today,” said he, after a
 considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.
 


 
 “Ah, Count Rostóv!” exclaimed Pierre joyfully. “Then you are his son,
 Ilyá? 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 Borís deliberately, with a bold and slightly
 sarcastic smile. “I am Borís, son of Princess Anna Mikháylovna
 Drubetskáya. Rostóv, the father, is Ilyá, 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 Borís? 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!”
 


 
 Borís 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
 Borís spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly, looking straight into Pierre’s
 eyes.
 


 
 “Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip,” Borís 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 Borís 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 Borís under the elbow in his quick, clumsy way, and,
 blushing far more than Borís, 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 Borís 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 Rostóvs’?”
 


 
 And Borís, 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 Borís’ 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 Borís
 with a smile.
 


 
 Pierre saw that Borís 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 Borís—the princess was going. Pierre, in
 order to make Borís’ better acquaintance, promised to come to dinner, and
 warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his spectacles into
 Borís’ 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli 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 Mikháylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count Cyril
 Vladímirovich Bezúkhov, Countess Rostóva 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 sauté of game au madère we
 are to have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Tarás
 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 sauté , 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 Dmítri to me!”
 


 
 Dmítri, 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, Dmítri, clean ones, please,” said the countess, sighing deeply.
 


 
 “When would you like them, your excellency?” asked Dmítri. “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 Dmítri 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 Mikháylovna returned from Count Bezúkhov’s the money, all in
 clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the countess’ little
 table, and Anna Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be ready
 to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.
 


 
 “This is for Borís from me, for his outfit.”
 


 
 Anna Mikháylovna 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 Rostóva, 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 Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, known in society as le terrible
 dragon , a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for common sense and
 frank plainness of speech. Márya Dmítrievna 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 the 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,
 Shinshín, 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 Semënov
 regiment with whom Borís was to travel to join the army, and about whom
 Natásha had teased her elder sister Véra, 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 très honorable Alphonse Kárlovich,” said
 Shinshín, 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’état ; *
 you want to make something out of your company?”
 


 
 * You expect to make an income out of the government.



 
 “No, Peter Nikoláevich; 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 Nikoláevich...”
 


 
 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 Nikoláevich. 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 Shinshín 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 Nikoláevich, 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 Shinshín, 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 Shinshín 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 naïveté 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 Shinshín, patting him on the shoulder and taking his
 feet off the sofa.
 


 
 Berg smiled joyously. The count, followed 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 zakúska , * 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
 naïvely 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 Mikháylovna. 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 Razumóvskis... It was
 charming... You are very kind... Countess Apráksina...” was heard on all
 sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.
 


 
 “Márya Dmítrievna?” came her voice from there.
 


 
 “Herself,” came the answer in a rough voice, and Márya Dmítrievna entered
 the room.
 


 
 All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very oldest
 rose. Márya Dmítrievna 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.
 Márya Dmítrievna 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?” (Márya Dmítrievna always called
 Natásha 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 Natásha, 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 clearly 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 Márya Dmítrievna.
 


 
 The count went in first with Márya Dmítrievna, 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 Mikháylovna
 with Shinshín. Berg gave his arm to Véra. The smiling Julie Karágina 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 Márya
 Dmítrievna on her right and Anna Mikháylovna 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 Shinshín and the other male visitors on his
 right. Midway down the long table on one side sat the grown-up young
 people: Véra beside Berg, and Pierre beside Borís; 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 Véra
 that love is not an earthly but a heavenly feeling. Borís was telling his
 new friend Pierre who the guests were and exchanging glances with Natásha,
 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. Natásha, who sat
 opposite, was looking at Borís 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 Sónya, beside Julie Karágina, to whom
 he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sónya 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 Shinshín.
 “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 Shinshín’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 Shinshín, puckering his brows and smiling.
 “ Cela nous convient à merveille .*(2) Suvórov now—he knew what
 he was about; yet they beat him à plate couture ,*(3) and where are
 we to find Suvórovs now? Je vous demande un peu ,” *(4) said he,
 continually changing from French to Russian.
 


 
 * Do you know the proverb?
 


 
 *(2) That suits us down to the ground.
 


 
 *(3) Hollow.
 


 
 *(4) 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.
 


 
 Sónya 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?” Márya Dmítrievna’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, Márya Dmítrievna? 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
 Márya Dmítrievna’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,” Natásha’s little brother was saying; “I know you won’t
 ask!”
 


 
 “I will,” replied Natásha.
 


 
 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 Natásha’s voice sounded
 still more firm and resolute.
 


 
 The countess tried to frown, but could not. Márya Dmítrievna 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?” Natásha again cried boldly,
 with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in good part.
 


 
 Sónya and fat little Pétya doubled up with laughter.
 


 
 “You see! I have asked,” whispered Natásha to her little brother
 and to Pierre, glancing at him again.
 


 
 “Ice pudding, but you won’t get any,” said Márya Dmítrievna.
 


 
 Natásha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even Márya
 Dmítrievna.
 


 
 “Márya Dmítrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don’t like ice cream.”
 


 
 “Carrot ices.”
 


 
 “No! What kind, Márya Dmítrievna? What kind?” she almost screamed; “I want
 to know!”
 


 
 Márya Dmítrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the guests
 joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Márya Dmítrievna’s answer but at the
 incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who had dared to
 treat Márya Dmítrievna in this fashion.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha and Nicholas, who were noted for their musical talent,
 to sing something. Natásha, 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. Borís, come here,” said Natásha. “But where
 is Sónya?”
 


 
 She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room ran to
 look for her.
 


 
 Running into Sónya’s room and not finding her there, Natásha ran to the
 nursery, but Sónya was not there either. Natásha 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 Rostóv household. And
 there in fact was Sónya 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. Natásha’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.
 


 
 “Sónya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!” And
 Natásha’s large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she began
 to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sónya was crying.
 Sónya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and hid her face
 still deeper in the bed. Natásha wept, sitting on the blue-striped feather
 bed and hugging her friend. With an effort Sónya 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 Borís
 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” (Sónya 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 Véra... 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....”
 


 
 Sónya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in the
 feather bed. Natásha began consoling her, but her face showed that she
 understood all the gravity of her friend’s trouble.
 


 
 “Sónya,” she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true reason of
 her friend’s sorrow, “I’m sure Véra 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... Natásha, what
 have I done to deserve it?...”
 


 
 And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natásha lifted her
 up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began comforting her.
 


 
 “Sónya, 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 Shinshín’s brother has married his first cousin. And we are
 only second cousins, you know. And Borís says it is quite possible. You
 know I have told him all about it. And he is so clever and so good!” said
 Natásha. “Don’t you cry, Sónya, dear love, darling Sónya!” and she kissed
 her and laughed. “Véra’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.”
 


 
 Natásha kissed her on the hair.
 


 
 Sónya 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 Natásha, 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
 Natásha, stopping suddenly. “I feel so happy!”
 


 
 And she set off at a run along the passage.
 


 
 Sónya, 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
 Natásha 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:
 


 
 At nighttime in the moon’s fair glow

    How sweet, as fancies wander free,

 To feel that in this world there’s one

    Who still is thinking but of thee!



 That while her fingers touch the harp

    Wafting sweet music o’er the lea,

 It is for thee thus swells her heart,

    Sighing its message out to thee...



 A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,

    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 Shinshín 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 Natásha
 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. Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 Natásha blushed and laughed.
 


 
 “Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be surprised at?”
 


 





 
 In the midst of the third écossaise there was a clatter of chairs
 being pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Márya Dmítrievna
 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
 Márya Dmítrievna and the count, both with merry countenances. The count,
 with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to
 Márya Dmítrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up
 his face and as soon as the last figure of the écossaise was ended,
 he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery,
 addressing the first violin:
 


 
 “Semën! 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 Natásha 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,
 Márya Dmítrievna, 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 Márya Dmítrievna 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, Márya Dmítrievna 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 Márya Dmítrievna. Natásha 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 Márya Dmítrievna, 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 Natásha. 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 chère ,” said the
 count.
 


 
 “That was a Daniel Cooper! ” exclaimed Márya Dmítrievna,
 tucking up her sleeves and puffing heavily.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI
 
 
 While in the Rostóvs’ 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 Bezúkhov 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 Bezúkhov.
 


 
 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 possible from the glances fixed on him by the
 doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince Vasíli, 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 Vasíli 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
 naïvely 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli, 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli
 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli’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 Semënovna,”
 continued Prince Vasíli, 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 Vasíli
 went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at her. “You
 know, Catiche, that we—you three sisters, Mámontov, 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli, 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 Vasíli 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
 bâtard! ”* she added, as if supposing that this translation of the word
 would effectively prove to Prince Vasíli 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 Bezúkhov, 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 Semënovna,” began Prince Vasíli 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 Dmítri Onúfrich” (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 Vasíli.
 


 
 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 Vasíli,
 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 princess 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 protégé of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskáya, that Anna
 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him) was driving
 into the court of Count Bezúkhov’s house. As the wheels rolled softly over
 the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikháylovna, 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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna 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
 Mikháylovna. 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 Mikháylovna’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 Mikháylovna
 pass and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there.
 


 
 “Is this the way to the princesses’ apartments?” asked Anna Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna, 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 Mikháylovna in passing
 instinctively glanced into the room, where Prince Vasíli and the eldest
 princess were sitting close together talking. Seeing them pass, Prince
 Vasíli 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 Vasíli’s face so out of keeping with his dignity that Pierre
 stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his guide. Anna
 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna as she entered, and
 at the big stout figure of Pierre who, hanging his head, meekly followed
 her.
 


 
 Anna Mikháylovna’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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna 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 naïve 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli in
 perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of illness.
 Prince Vasíli 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 Mikháylovna,
 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 Bezúkhov, 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 Mikháylovna,
 with a meek, sorrowful, and all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by
 the door near the strange lady. Prince Vasíli 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 Mikháylovna, 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 Mikháylovna 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 Vasíli
 left the chair on which he had been leaning, and—with an 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 Vasíli 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 Mikháylovna’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 Mikháylovna, 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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna to
 see what he was to do next. Anna Mikháylovna with her eyes indicated a
 chair that stood beside the bed. Pierre obediently sat down, his eyes
 asking if he were doing right. Anna Mikháylovna nodded approvingly. Again
 Pierre fell into the naïvely 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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna
 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 Vasíli
 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 Mikháylovna, 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli
 to Anna Mikháylovna. “Go and take something, my poor Anna Mikháylovna, 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 Mikháylovna 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 Bezúkhov’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 Vasíli and the eldest princess. Pierre
 concluded that this also was essential, and after a short interval
 followed her. Anna Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna 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 Vasíli 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 Mikháylovna, 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 Vasíli 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 Mikháylovna, but the latter sprang so as to bar her
 path.
 


 
 “I know, my dear, kind princess,” said Anna Mikháylovna, 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 Mikháylovna.
 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 Mikháylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold on the
 portfolio, and changed her grip.
 


 
 Prince Vasíli 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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna, “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 Vasíli.
 


 
 “Remember that you will answer for the consequences,” said Prince Vasíli
 severely. “You don’t know what you are doing.”
 


 
 “Vile woman!” shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna
 Mikháylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.
 


 
 Prince Vasíli 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 Mikháylovna, stooping, quickly
 caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom. The eldest
 princess and Prince Vasíli, 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 Vasíli 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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna left him, and when she returned he was fast
 asleep with his head on his arm.
 


 
 In the morning Anna Mikháylovna 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 Borís. 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 Mikháylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna Mikháylovna
 returned to the Rostóvs’ and went to bed. On waking in the morning she
 told the Rostóvs and all her acquaintances the details of Count Bezúkhov’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 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 Vasíli she spoke disapprovingly, but in whispers and as a great
 secret.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXV
 
 
 At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andréevich Bolkónski’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 Andréevich (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
 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 Héloïse?” 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 Héloïse 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 Karágina who had been at the Rostóvs’ 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 Rostóv, 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 Bezúkhov, and his inheritance. Fancy!
 The three princesses have received very little, Prince Vasíli 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 Bezúkhov and
 possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince
 Vasíli 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 Bezúkhov 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 Bezúkhova. But you will understand that I
 have no desire for the post. À propos of marriages: do you know
 that a while ago that universal auntie Anna Mikháylovna told me,
 under the seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for you. It is
 neither more nor less than with Prince Vasíli’s son Anatole, whom they
 wish to reform by marrying him to someone rich and distinguée , 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 Apráksins’. 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 Bezúkhov’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
 Vasíli, 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli. 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 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 Ivánovich. 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 Tíkhon, 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. Tíkhon 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 Tíkhon; 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 Tíkhon, 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, Tíkhon,” 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 Spásski 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 Odýntsova
 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, Tíkhon 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 Tíkhon.
 


 
 “Ah! here’s the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?” said the old man,
 shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tíkhon 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 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—Tolstóy‘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 Tíkhon, 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 Tíkhon 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 Ivánovich (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 Ivánovich was “not a whit worse
 than you or I.” At dinner the prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael
 Ivánovich 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 Bolkónski,
 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 Rúrik and ancestor of
 the Bolkónskis. 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 Ivánovich!”
 


 
 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 retelling the town gossip.
 


 
 “Countess Apráksina, 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 Ivánovich.
 


 
 “Well, Michael Ivánovich, 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 Ivánovich 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 Potëmkins or
 Suvórovs 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 Suvórov 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. “Suvórov!” And he jerked away
 his plate, which Tíkhon briskly caught. “Suvórov!... Consider, Prince
 Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvórov; Moreau!... Moreau would have been a
 prisoner if Suvórov 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! Suvórov
 couldn’t manage them so what chance has Michael Kutúzov? 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 Potëmkins, Suvórovs, and Orlóvs 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 general!”
 


 
 “Michael Ivánovich!” 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 the 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 off 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 Ochákov. 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, Andrúsha,” she added, as if to explain
 such a question.
 


 
 She smiled as she uttered his pet name, “Andrúsha.” It was obviously
 strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be Andrúsha—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 what it
 must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to, to be parted
 from her husband and be left alone in 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 Ivánovich
 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,
 Andrúsha!...” 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, Másha, 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, Másha: 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. Petrúshka!” 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, maybe!” said Prince Andrew. “Go, Másha; 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 Zúbova, 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 Zúbova 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 Ivánovich, 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 Ilariónovich. * 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
 Bolkónski’s son need not serve under anyone if he is in disfavor. Now come
 here.”
 


 
 * Kutúzov.



 
 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 Suvórov’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
 Bolkónski, 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, Kutúzov.
 


 
 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 Mítrich, 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 Tsarítsin 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-de-camp 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 Kutúzov the day
 before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army of the
 Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutúzov, 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 Mítrich, 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 Dólokhov, 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 Dólokhov with his bluish-gray uniform.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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...” Dólokhov
 hurriedly interrupted.
 


 
 “No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!”
 


 
 “Not bound to endure insults,” Dólokhov 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 calèche , slightly creaking on its springs and
 drawn by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the calèche galloped
 the suite and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutúzov sat an Austrian general,
 in a white uniform that looked strange among the Russian black ones. The
 calèche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutúzov and the Austrian
 general were talking in low voices and Kutúzov 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
 Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov, 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
 Bolkónski. Beside him was his comrade Nesvítski, a tall staff officer,
 extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes.
 Nesvítski 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. Nesvítski laughed and nudged the others to make
 them look at the wag.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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, Timókhin!” 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 Timókhin 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 Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov 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 Nesvítski could not help laughing. Kutúzov
 turned round. The officer evidently had complete control of his face, and
 while Kutúzov was turning managed to make a grimace and then assume a most
 serious, deferential, and innocent expression.
 


 
 The third company was the last, and Kutúzov 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 Dólokhov, reduced to the ranks
 in this regiment.”
 


 
 “Where is Dólokhov?” asked Kutúzov.
 


 
 Dólokhov, 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?” Kutúzov asked with a slight frown.
 


 
 “This is Dólokhov,” said Prince Andrew.
 


 
 “Ah!” said Kutúzov. “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,” Dólokhov 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!”
 


 
 Kutúzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had turned
 from Captain Timókhin again flitted over his face. He turned away with a
 grimace as if to say that everything Dólokhov 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, Prokhór Ignátych?” said the regimental
 commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its quarters and
 riding up to Captain Timókhin 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. Dólokhov that I won’t forget him—he may be quite easy.
 And tell me, please—I’ve been meaning 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 Timókhin.
 


 
 “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 Timókhin, showing by his smile that he
 understood his commander’s wish.
 


 
 “Well, of course, of course!”
 


 
 The regimental commander sought out Dólokhov in the ranks and, reining in
 his horse, said to him:
 


 
 “After the next affair... epaulettes.”
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Timókhin
 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 Kutúzov 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, Fédeshon!... 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 Kámenski.” This song had been composed in the Turkish
 campaign and now being sung in Austria, the only change being that the
 words “Father Kámenski” were replaced by “Father Kutúzov.”
 


 
 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. Kutúzov 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 Dólokhov 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
 Kutúzov’s suite who had mimicked the regimental commander, fell back from
 the carriage and rode up to Dólokhov.
 


 
 Hussar cornet Zherkóv had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to the wild
 set led by Dólokhov. Zherkóv had met Dólokhov abroad as a private and had
 not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutúzov 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?” Dólokhov answered coldly. “I am as you see.”
 


 
 The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy gaiety
 with which Zherkóv spoke, and to the intentional coldness of Dólokhov’s
 reply.
 


 
 “And how do you get on with the officers?” inquired Zherkóv.
 


 
 “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 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “The devil only knows! They say so.”
 


 
 “I’m glad,” answered Dólokhov briefly and clearly, as the song demanded.
 


 
 “I say, come round some evening and we’ll have a game of faro!” said
 Zherkóv.
 


 
 “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...”
 


 
 Dólokhov 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...”
 


 
 “It’s a long, long way.

 To my native land...” 



 
 Zherkóv 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, Kutúzov 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 Bolkónski came into the room with the required papers.
 Kutúzov and the Austrian member of the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the
 table on which a plan was spread out.
 


 
 “Ah!...” said Kutúzov glancing at Bolkónski 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov.
 


 
 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 Kutúzov’s suggestion of an Austrian victory
 sounded much like irony. But Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov turning to Prince Andrew. “Please have
 a look at it”—and Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov, also turning to Prince Andrew.
 “Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlóvski 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 Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov’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 Kutúzov’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,
 Kozlóvski, who was sitting at the window with a book.
 


 
 “Well, Prince?” asked Kozlóvski.
 


 
 “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 Kutúzov?” 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 Kozlóvski, 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 Kozlóvski, who was rather
 short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.
 


 
 “The commander in chief is engaged,” repeated Kozlóvski 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 Kozlóvski, 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 Kutúzov 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
 Kutúzov.
 


 
 “Vous voyez le malheureux Mack,” he uttered in a broken voice.
 


 
 Kutúzov’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 Suvórov 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
 Nesvítski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag Zherkóv; they were as
 usual laughing.
 


 
 “Why are you so glum?” asked Nesvítski noticing Prince Andrew’s pale face
 and glittering eyes.
 


 
 “There’s nothing to be gay about,” answered Bolkónski.
 


 
 Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvítski and Zherkóv, there came toward them
 from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian general who was on
 Kutúzov’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 Zherkóv, pushing Nesvítski 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 Zherkóv 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!”
 


 
 Nesvítski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but Bolkónski,
 turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and turned to
 Zherkóv. 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 Zherkóv’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.”
 


 
 Nesvítski and Zherkóv were so surprised by this outburst that they gazed
 at Bolkónski silently with wide-open eyes.
 


 
 “What’s the matter? I only congratulated them,” said Zherkóv.
 


 
 “I am not jesting with you; please be silent!” cried Bolkónski, and taking
 Nesvítski’s arm he left Zherkóv, who did not know what to say.
 


 
 “Come, what’s the matter, old fellow?” said Nesvítski 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 massacrés et l’armée de
 nos alliés détruite, et vous trouvez là le mot pour rire,” * he said, as
 if strengthening his views by this French sentence. “C’est bien pour un
 garçon de rien comme cet individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas
 pour vous, pas pour vous . *(2) Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself in
 this way,” he added in Russian—but pronouncing the word with a
 French accent—having noticed that Zherkóv could still hear him.
 


 
 * “Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies
 destroyed, and you find that a cause for jesting!”
 


 
 * (2) “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 Pávlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The squadron
 in which Nicholas Rostóv served as a cadet was quartered in the German
 village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were assigned to
 cavalry-captain Denísov, the squadron commander, known throughout the
 whole cavalry division as Váska Denísov. Cadet Rostóv, 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. Denísov, who had been losing at cards all night, had
 not yet come home when Rostóv rode back early in the morning from a
 foraging expedition. Rostóv 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, Bondarénko, 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 Bondarénko 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. Rostóv 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 Rostóv. “Schön gut Morgen! Schön 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 Rostóv with the same gay brotherly smile which
 did not leave his eager face. “Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen! Kaiser
 Alexander hoch!” *(2) said he, quoting words often repeated by the German
 landlord.
 


 
 * “Busy already?”
 


 
 * (2) “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!”
 


 
 Rostóv waved his cap above his head like the German and cried laughing,
 “Und vivat die ganze Welt!” Though neither the German cleaning his cowshed
 nor Rostóv 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 Rostóv going to the
 cottage he occupied with Denísov.
 


 
 “What about your master?” he asked Lavrúshka, Denísov’s orderly, whom all
 the regiment knew for a rogue.
 


 
 “Hasn’t been in since the evening. Must have been losing,” answered
 Lavrúshka. “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 Lavrúshka brought the coffee. “He’s coming!” said he.
 “Now for trouble!” Rostóv looked out of the window and saw Denísov coming
 home. Denísov 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.
 


 
 “Lavwúska!” he shouted loudly and angrily, “take it off, blockhead!”
 


 
 “Well, I am taking it off,” replied Lavrúshka’s voice.
 


 
 “Ah, you’re up already,” said Denísov, entering the room.
 


 
 “Long ago,” answered Rostóv, “I have already been for the hay, and have
 seen Fräulein Mathilde.”
 


 
 “Weally! And I’ve been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a damned
 fool!” cried Denísov, 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “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 Lavrúshka.
 


 
 Denísov’s face puckered still more.
 


 
 “Wetched!” he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in it.
 “Wostóv, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove the purse
 undah the pillow,” he said, and went out to the quartermaster.
 


 
 Rostóv took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new coins in
 separate piles, began counting them.
 


 
 “Ah! Telyánin! How d’ye do? They plucked me last night,” came Denísov’s
 voice from the next room.
 


 
 “Where? At Bykov’s, at the rat’s... I knew it,” replied a piping voice,
 and Lieutenant Telyánin, a small officer of the same squadron, entered the
 room.
 


 
 Rostóv thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little hand
 which was offered him. Telyánin for some reason had been transferred from
 the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very well in the regiment
 but was not liked; Rostóv 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 Telyánin had sold to Rostóv.)
 


 
 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 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “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 Rostóv wishing to avoid Telyánin,
 and he went out to give the order.
 


 
 In the passage Denísov, with a pipe, was squatting on the threshold facing
 the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing Rostóv, Denísov
 screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder with his thumb to the
 room where Telyánin 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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Telyánin.
 


 
 Telyánin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostóv had left
 him, rubbing his small white hands.
 


 
 “Well there certainly are disgusting people,” thought Rostóv as he
 entered.
 


 
 “Have you told them to bring the horse?” asked Telyánin, getting up and
 looking carelessly about him.
 


 
 “I have.”
 


 
 “Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denísov about yesterday’s
 order. Have you got it, Denísov?”
 


 
 “Not yet. But where are you off to?”
 


 
 “I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse,” said Telyánin.
 


 
 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 Rostóv went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on the
 table. Denísov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a sheet of
 paper. He looked gloomily in Rostóv’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
 Rostóv 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 fihst day of cweation... Who’s that now? Send him to the
 devil, I’m busy!” he shouted to Lavrúshka, 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.”
 


 
 Denísov 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “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 Lavrúshka.
 


 
 “Please, Denísov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know,” said
 Rostóv, blushing.
 


 
 “Don’t like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don’t,” growled Denísov.
 


 
 “But if you won’t accept money from me like a comrade, you will offend me.
 Really I have some,” Rostóv repeated.
 


 
 “No, I tell you.”
 


 
 And Denísov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.
 


 
 “Where have you put it, Wostóv?”
 


 
 “Under the lower pillow.”
 


 
 “It’s not there.”
 


 
 Denísov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.
 


 
 “That’s a miwacle.”
 


 
 “Wait, haven’t you dropped it?” said Rostóv, 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 Rostóv. “I put it just here. Where
 is it?” he asked, turning to Lavrúshka.
 


 
 “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 Rostóv, “but I
 remember putting it there.”
 


 
 Lavrúshka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and under the
 table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of the room.
 Denísov silently watched Lavrúshka’s movements, and when the latter threw
 up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found Denísov glanced
 at Rostóv.
 


 
 “Wostóv, you’ve not been playing schoolboy twicks...”
 


 
 Rostóv felt Denísov’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 Lavrúshka.
 


 
 “Now then, you devil’s puppet, look alive and hunt for it!” shouted
 Denísov, 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.”
 


 
 Rostóv, his eyes avoiding Denísov, began buttoning his coat, buckled on
 his saber, and put on his cap.
 


 
 “I must have that purse, I tell you,” shouted Denísov, shaking his orderly
 by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.
 


 
 “Denísov, let him alone, I know who has taken it,” said Rostóv, going
 toward the door without raising his eyes. Denísov paused, thought a
 moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostóv 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 Rostóv in an unsteady voice, and went
 to the door.
 


 
 “And I tell you, don’t you dahe to do it!” shouted Denísov, rushing at the
 cadet to restrain him.
 


 
 But Rostóv pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though Denísov
 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 Rostóv
 heard.
 


 
 Rostóv went to Telyánin’s quarters.
 


 
 “The master is not in, he’s gone to headquarters,” said Telyánin’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 Rostóv,
 without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was an inn in
 the village which the officers frequented. Rostóv rode up to it and saw
 Telyánin’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 Rostóv 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 Telyánin 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. Rostóv rose and went up to Telyánin.
 


 
 “Allow me to look at your purse,” he said in a low, almost inaudible,
 voice.
 


 
 With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyánin handed him the
 purse.
 


 
 “Yes, it’s a nice purse. Yes, yes,” he said, growing suddenly pale, and
 added, “Look at it, young man.”
 


 
 Rostóv took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in it, and
 looked at Telyánin. 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.”
 


 
 Rostóv did not speak.
 


 
 “And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite decently
 here,” continued Telyánin. “Now then, let me have it.”
 


 
 He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostóv let go of it.
 Telyánin 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 one else’s business.”
 


 
 “Well, young man?” he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted brows he
 glanced into Rostóv’s eyes.
 


 
 Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyánin’s eyes to Rostóv’s
 and back, and back again and again in an instant.
 


 
 “Come here,” said Rostóv, catching hold of Telyánin’s arm and almost
 dragging him to the window. “That money is Denísov’s; you took it...” he
 whispered just above Telyánin’s ear.
 


 
 “What? What? How dare you? What?” said Telyánin.
 


 
 But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an entreaty for
 pardon. As soon as Rostóv 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 Telyánin,
 taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room. “We must have an
 explanation...”
 


 
 “I know it and shall prove it,” said Rostóv.
 


 
 “I...”
 


 
 Every muscle of Telyánin’s pale, terrified face began to quiver, his eyes
 still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not rising to
 Rostóv’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!...”
 


 
 Rostóv took the money, avoiding Telyánin’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 Telyánin drawing nearer to him.
 


 
 “Don’t touch me,” said Rostóv, 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 Denísov’s quarters.
 


 
 “And I tell you, Rostóv, 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 Rostóv who was crimson with excitement.
 


 
 The staff captain, Kírsten, 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 Rostóv. “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 Denísov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet to demand
 satisfaction of his regimental commander?”
 


 
 Denísov 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 Bogdánich” (the colonel was
 called Bogdánich) “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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “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 Bogdánich 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 Bogdánich 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 Pávlograd
 officers!’ But it’s not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denísov? It’s
 not the same!”
 


 
 Denísov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked with his
 glittering black eyes at Rostóv.
 


 
 “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
 Bogdánich 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “That’s twue, devil take it!” shouted Denísov, jumping up. “Now then,
 Wostóv, now then!”
 


 
 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv on the shoulder with his big hand.
 


 
 “I tell you,” shouted Denísov, “he’s a fine fellow.”
 


 
 “That’s better, Count,” said the staff captain, beginning to address
 Rostóv 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
 Rostóv 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?”
 


 
 Denísov began to laugh.
 


 
 “It’ll be worse for you. Bogdánich is vindictive and you’ll pay for your
 obstinacy,” said Kírsten.
 


 
 “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 Denísov.
 


 
 “He has weported himself sick, he’s to be stwuck off the list tomowwow,”
 muttered Denísov.
 


 
 “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
 Denísov in a bloodthirsty tone.
 


 
 Just then Zherkóv 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, Rostóv? 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 Zherkóv.
 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
 
 
 Kutúzov 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 Nesvítski, 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 Nesvítski was treating some officers to pies and real
 doppelkümmel . 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?” Nesvítski 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 Nesvítski. “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.
 


 
 Nesvítski 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 Nesvítski.
 


 
 “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 Nesvítski.
 


 
 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 Nesvítski, who had alighted from
 his horse and whose big 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 Nesvítski 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 Nesvítski 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 Nesvítski 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, Fedótov, 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. Nesvítski 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, Nesvítski
 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. Nesvítski 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.
 


 
 “Nesvítski, Nesvítski! you numskull!” came a hoarse voice from behind him.
 


 
 Nesvítski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but separated by
 the living mass of moving infantry, Váska Denísov, 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 Denísov
 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, Váska!” joyfully replied Nesvítski. “What’s up with you?”
 


 
 “The squadwon can’t pass,” shouted Váska Denísov, 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 Denísov
 joined Nesvítski.
 


 
 “How’s it you’re not drunk today?” said Nesvítski when the other had
 ridden up to him.
 


 
 “They don’t even give one time to dwink!” answered Váska Denísov. “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 Nesvítski, looking at Denísov’s new
 cloak and saddlecloth.
 


 
 Denísov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that diffused a
 smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvítski’s nose.
 


 
 “Of course. I’m going into action! I’ve shaved, bwushed my teeth, and
 scented myself.”
 


 
 The imposing figure of Nesvítski followed by his Cossack, and the
 determination of Denísov 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 Nesvítski
 found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the order, and having done
 this he rode back.
 


 
 Having cleared the way Denísov 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, Zíkin, 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 Denísov’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
 Denísov’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 Denísov’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 Mirónov ducked every time a ball flew past. Rostóv 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 Miwónov! That’s not wight! Look at
 me,” cried Denísov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept turning his
 horse in front of the squadron.
 


 
 The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Váska Denísov, 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 Kírsten. 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 Denísov. “It won’t come to a fight.
 You’ll see—we shall retire.”
 


 
 “The devil only knows what they’re about!” muttered Denísov. “Ah, Wostóv,”
 he cried noticing the cadet’s bright face, “you’ve got it at last.”
 


 
 And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet. Rostóv felt
 perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the bridge. Denísov
 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 Pávlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up the
 hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdánich Schubert, came up
 to Denísov’s squadron and rode at a footpace not far from Rostóv, without
 taking any notice of him although they were now meeting for the first time
 since their encounter concerning Telyánin. Rostóv, 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 Rostóv
 that Bogdánich 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 Bogdánich 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—Rostóv. Then
 he imagined how, after the attack, Bogdánich would come up to him as he
 lay wounded and would magnanimously extend the hand of reconciliation.
 


 
 The high-shouldered figure of Zherkóv, familiar to the Pávlograds as he
 had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After his
 dismissal from headquarters Zherkóv 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 Bagratión. He now came to his
 former chief with an order from the commander of the rear guard.
 


 
 “Colonel,” he said, addressing Rostóv’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.’”
 


 
 Zherkóv was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the colonel
 of hussars with the same order. After him the stout Nesvítski 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 Nesvítski.
 


 
 “You spoke to me of inflammable material,” said he, “but you said nothing
 about firing it.”
 


 
 “But, my dear sir,” said Nesvítski 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 burn it, I could
 not know by the holy spirit!”
 


 
 “Ah, that’s always the way!” said Nesvítski with a wave of the hand. “How
 did you get here?” said he, turning to Zherkóv.
 


 
 “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 Zherkóv, 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 Rostóv was serving under Denísov, to return to the bridge.
 


 
 “There, it’s just as I thought,” said Rostóv 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. Rostóv watched his enemy, the
 colonel, closely—to find in his face confirmation of his own
 conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostóv, 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. Rostóv 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.
 Denísov rode past him, leaning back and shouting something. Rostóv saw
 nothing but the hussars running all around him, their spurs catching and
 their sabers clattering.
 


 
 “Stretchers!” shouted someone behind him.
 


 
 Rostóv 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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Bogdánich, without looking at or recognizing Rostóv, 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 Denísov, 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 Váska Denísov, turning in his
 saddle.
 


 





 
 Meanwhile Nesvítski, Zherkóv, 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 Nesvítski; “they are within
 grapeshot range now.”
 


 
 “He shouldn’t have taken so many men,” said the officer of the suite.
 


 
 “True enough,” answered Nesvítski; “two smart fellows could have done the
 job just as well.”
 


 
 “Ah, your excellency,” put in Zherkóv, his eyes fixed on the hussars, but
 still with that naïve 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 Vladímir 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 Bogdánich 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 Nesvítski 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 Nesvítski, 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 Nesvítski 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.
 


 
 Rostóv, absorbed by his relations with Bogdánich, 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. Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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 wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there,” thought
 Rostóv. “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 Rostóv. 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!”
 Rostóv 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 Váska Denísov just above
 his ear.
 


 
 “It’s all over; but I am a coward—yes, a coward!” thought Rostóv,
 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 Denísov.
 


 
 “Yes and no mistake!” cried Denísov. “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 Denísov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostóv, composed of
 the colonel, Nesvítski, Zherkóv, and the officer from the suite.
 


 
 “Well, it seems that no one has noticed,” thought Rostóv. 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 Zherkóv. “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
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov at Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Brünn. 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 Dokhtúrov to Kutúzov, he was
 sent immediately with a special dispatch to Brünn. 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 Brünn 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 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 Kutúzov’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 Kutúzov?” 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 Brünn with Bilíbin, a Russian acquaintance of his
 in the diplomatic service.
 


 
 “Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,” said
 Bilíbin 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 Bolkónski
 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. Bilíbin
 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.
 


 
 Bilíbin 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 Kutúzov. Just
 as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising high in the
 military profession, so to an even greater extent Bilíbin gave promise of
 rising in his diplomatic career. He was 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. Bilíbin’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.
 


 
 Bilíbin 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, Bilíbin’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.
 


 
 Bolkónski, 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.
 


 
 Bilíbin 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, “malgré 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 Bilíbin 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 Bilíbin, “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 Bolkónski. “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. Kutúzov 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 Schönbrunn, 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, Bolkónski felt that he could not take in
 the full significance of the words he heard.
 


 
 “Count Lichtenfels was here this morning,” Bilíbin 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 Dürrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that will decide the
 matter, but those who devised it,” said Bilíbin 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 Bilíbin 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 Schönbrunn, il faut lui faire grâce 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 Bilíbin, 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, Bilíbin, 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 Bilíbin’s study fresh, animated, and handsome,
 with his hand bandaged. In the study were four gentlemen of the diplomatic
 corps. With Prince Hippolyte Kurágin, who was a secretary to the embassy,
 Bolkónski was already acquainted. Bilíbin introduced him to the others.
 


 
 The gentlemen assembled at Bilíbin’s were young, wealthy, gay society men,
 who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which Bilíbin, their leader,
 called les nôtres . * 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 Kurágin 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, Bolkónski, don’t know,” said Bilíbin 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.”
 


 
 Bilíbin 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,” Bilíbin whispered to Bolkónski. “Kurágin 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 Bolkónski’s arm to indicate that he had now quite finished.
 


 
 “Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden
 mouth!” said Bilíbin, 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 Bilíbin, “Bolkónski is my guest in this house
 and in Brünn 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. Brünn’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 Bilíbin.
 


 
 “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 , Bolkónski! 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 Bilíbin,
 accompanying him to the hall.
 


 
 “I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I know the facts, I
 can’t,” replied Bolkónski, 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 his long head. But after it was over, the
 adjutant he had seen the previous day ceremoniously informed Bolkónski
 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
 Kutúzov 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 Dürrenstein, where I was, our attack began after five in the
 afternoon,” replied Bolkónski 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 Dürrenstein 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 Bilíbin’s forecast the news he had brought was joyfully
 received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutúzov was awarded the
 Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army received rewards.
 Bolkónski 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 Bilíbin’s
 house thinking out a letter to his father about the battle and his visit
 to Brünn. At the door he found a vehicle half full of luggage. Franz,
 Bilíbin’s man, was dragging a portmanteau with some difficulty out of the
 front door.
 


 
 Before returning to Bilíbin’s Prince Andrew had gone to a 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.
 


 
 Bilíbin 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 Brünn 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.”
 


 
 Bolkónski 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 Bilíbin. “Listen! The French entered Vienna as
 I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday, those gentlemen,
 messieurs les maréchaux , * Murat, Lannes, and Belliard, mount and ride to
 the 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 Bilíbin 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,” Bilíbin 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 tête-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
 tête-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!” *(2) In spite of the
 animation of his speech, Bilíbin 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.
 


 
 * (2) 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
 Bilíbin. “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 mackés (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 Bilíbin 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 Olmütz, and Olmütz is a very
 decent town. You and I will travel comfortably in my calèche .”
 


 
 “Do stop joking, Bilíbin,” cried Bolkónski.
 


 
 “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 Kutúzov’s whole army.”
 


 
 And Bilíbin 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 Bilíbin.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII
 
 
 That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War, Bolkónski 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 Brünn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the heavy
 baggage was already being dispatched to Olmütz. 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 armée russe que l’or de l’Angleterre a transportée des extrémités
 de l’univers, nous allons lui faire éprouver le même sort—(le sort
 de l’armée 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 Bolkónski, recalling
 Bilíbin’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 calèche . 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 who 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. Nesvítski’s handsome face looked out of the little
 window. Nesvítski, moving his moist lips as he chewed something, and
 flourishing his arm, called him to enter.
 


 
 “Bolkónski! Bolkónski!... Don’t you hear? Eh? Come quick...” he shouted.
 


 
 Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvítski 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 Nesvítski’s usually laughing countenance.
 


 
 “Where is the commander in chief?” asked Bolkónski.
 


 
 “Here, in that house,” answered the adjutant.
 


 
 “Well, is it true that it’s peace and capitulation?” asked Nesvítski.
 


 
 “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 Nesvítski. “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 Nesvítski.
 “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 Nesvítski.
 


 
 “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 Kutúzov’s carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his
 suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince Andrew
 entered the passage. Kutúzov himself, he was told, was in the house with
 Prince Bagratión and Weyrother. Weyrother was the Austrian general who had
 succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little Kozlóvski 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. Kozlóvski’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 Kozlóvski.
 


 
 Through the door came the sounds of Kutúzov’s voice, excited and
 dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the sound
 of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlóvski looked at him, the
 disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk and
 Kozlóvski 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 Kozlóvski with urgent questions.
 


 
 “Immediately, Prince,” said Kozlóvski. “Dispositions for Bagratión.”
 


 
 “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 Kutúzov
 with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the doorway. Prince Andrew
 stood right in front of Kutúzov 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 Kozlóvski.
 


 
 “One moment, your excellency.”
 


 
 Bagratión, 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 Kutúzov an envelope.
 


 
 “Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!”
 


 
 Kutúzov went out into the porch with Bagratión.
 


 
 “Well, good-by, Prince,” said he to Bagratión. “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 Bagratión 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 Bagratión kissed him on the neck
 instead.
 


 
 “Christ be with you!” Kutúzov repeated and went toward his carriage. “Get
 in with me,” said he to Bolkónski.
 


 
 “Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to remain with
 Prince Bagratión’s detachment.”
 


 
 “Get in,” said Kutúzov, and noticing that Bolkónski 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 Bolkónski’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 Kutúzov’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 Bolkónski.
 


 
 “That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment,” he said.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov’s line of communication with the troops that were
 arriving from Russia. If Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Buxhöwden. If Kutúzov decided to retreat along the road from
 Krems to Olmütz, 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov’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, Kutúzov sent Bagratión’s vanguard, four
 thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the Krems-Znaim to the
 Vienna-Znaim road. Bagratión 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. Kutúzov
 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, Bagratión came out on the Vienna-Znaim road at Hollabrünn a few
 hours ahead of the French who were approaching Hollabrünn from Vienna.
 Kutúzov with his transport had still to march for some days before he
 could reach Znaim. Hence Bagratión with his four thousand hungry,
 exhausted men would have to detain for days the whole enemy army that came
 upon him at Hollabrünn, 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 Kutúzov in a similar way. Meeting Bagratión’s weak detachment
 on the Znaim road he supposed it to be Kutúzov’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 Bagratión’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.
 Bagratión replied that he was not authorized either to accept or refuse a
 truce and sent his adjutant to Kutúzov to report the offer he had
 received.
 


 
 A truce was Kutúzov’s sole chance of gaining time, giving Bagratión’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 Kutúzov sent his adjutants back to
 hasten to the utmost the movements of the baggage trains of the entire
 army along the Krems-Znaim road. Bagratión’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.
 


 
 Kutúzov’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 Schönbrunn, sixteen miles from
 Hollabrünn) received Murat’s dispatch with the proposal of a truce and a
 capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the following letter to Murat:
 


 
 Schönbrunn, 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
 Bagratión’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 Kutúzov, arrived at Grunth and reported
 himself to Bagratión. Bonaparte’s adjutant had not yet reached Murat’s
 detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In Bagratión’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. Bagratión, knowing Bolkónski
 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 Bagratión
 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 Bagratión. 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 Túshin?” 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
 Túshin, 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 Túshin
 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.
 


 
 “Voilà l’agrément 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 pockmarked, 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, Sídorov!”
 


 
 “Wait a bit and listen. It’s fine!” answered Sídorov, who
 was considered an adept at French.
 


 
 The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dólokhov. Prince Andrew
 recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying. Dólokhov 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?”
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov 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
 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “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 Suvórov...,” * said Dólokhov.
 


 
 * “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 Dólokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
 


 
 “Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacré nom...!” cried he angrily.
 


 
 “The devil skin your Emperor.”
 


 
 And Dólokhov swore at him in coarse soldier’s Russian and shouldering his
 musket walked away.
 


 
 “Let us go, Iván Lukích,” he said to the captain.
 


 
 “Ah, that’s the way to talk French,” said the picket soldiers. “Now,
 Sídorov, you have a try!”
 


 
 Sídorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless
 sounds very fast: “Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaská,” 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, 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 Schön 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 Túshin’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 Schön 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 Bagratión. 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 Podólsk
 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, Túshin,” 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 Túshin. “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 Túshin, 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 Bagratión. 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 Bagratión. Prince Andrew stopped, waiting for him to
 come up; Prince Bagratión 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
 Bagratión’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 Bagratión 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 Bagratión, 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 Túshin’s battery. Prince Andrew
 followed with the suite. Behind Prince Bagratión rode an officer of the
 suite, the prince’s personal adjutant, Zherkóv, 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 naïve 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 Zherkóv to Bolkónski, 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 Zherkóv’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 Túshin’s battery, and a ball struck
 the ground in front of them.
 


 
 “What’s that that has fallen?” asked the accountant with a naïve smile.
 


 
 “A French pancake,” answered Zherkóv.
 


 
 “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. Zherkóv 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 Bagratión 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 care 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 Suvórov giving his
 saber to Bagratión 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 Bagratión 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 Túshin’s, your excellency!” shouted the red-haired, freckled
 gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.
 


 
 “Yes, yes,” muttered Bagratión 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 Túshin, 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, Medvédev!”
 


 
 Bagratión called to him, and Túshin, 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 Túshin’s guns had
 been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing incendiary balls at
 the village of Schön Grabern visible just opposite, in front of which
 large masses of French were advancing.
 


 
 No one had given Túshin orders where and at what to fire, but after
 consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchénko, 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 Bagratión 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 Bagratión a French column that was outflanking us. To the left the
 horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagratión 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
 Bagratión 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 Bagratión 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 Bagratión.
 


 
 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 Bagratión sent Zherkóv to tell the general in command (the one who
 had paraded his regiment before Kutúzov 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 Túshin and the battalion that had been in support of his battery all
 was forgotten. Prince Andrew listened attentively to Bagratión’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
 Bagratión 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 Bagratión 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 Bagratión, 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 Bagratión rushed shouting after the crowd of retreating
 soldiers, ordering them back. Bagratión 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 Bagratión 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 Bagratión 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
 Bagratión’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 Bagratión, 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
 Bagratión 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 Bagratión’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
 Bagratión, the weighty tread of the mass of men marching in step could be
 heard. On their left flank, nearest to Bagratión, 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
 Bagratión 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 Bagratión.
 


 
 “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 Bagratión
 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.
 


 
 Bagratión 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 Bagratión, 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 Bagratión,
 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 Bagratión
 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,
 Bagratión looked round and shouted, “Hurrah!”
 


 
 “Hurrah—ah!—ah!” rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and
 passing Bagratión 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 Túshin’s forgotten battery, which had managed to set fire to
 the Schön 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 Azóv and
 Podólsk infantry and the Pávlograd hussars—was simultaneously
 attacked and outflanked by superior French forces under Lannes and was
 thrown into confusion. Bagratión had sent Zherkóv to the general
 commanding that left flank with orders to retreat immediately.
 


 
 Zherkóv, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse about and
 galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagratión 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 Kutúzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which Dólokhov was
 serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left flank had been
 assigned to the commander of the Pávlograd regiment in which Rostóv 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 Pávlograd 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 be 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 a way through
 for themselves.
 


 
 The squadron in which Rostóv 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 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 Rostóv, 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 Denísov’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, Rostóv 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 Rostóv felt Rook’s flanks drooping
 as he broke into a gallop.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv, gripping the hilt of his saber.
 


 
 “Hur-a-a-a-ah!” came a roar of voices. “Let anyone come my way now,”
 thought Rostóv 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. Rostóv raised his saber, ready to strike, but at that instant
 the trooper Nikítenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away from him, and
 Rostóv 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
 Bondarchúk, an hussar he knew, jolted against him and looked angrily at
 him. Bondarchúk’s horse swerved and galloped past.
 


 
 “How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!” Rostóv 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. Rostóv 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 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv. 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. Rostóv 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. Rostóv 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 Timókhin’s company,
 which alone had maintained its order in the wood and, having lain in
 ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French unexpectedly. Timókhin, 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. Dólokhov, running beside Timókhin,
 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 Ekonómov
 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 Ekonómov, he could not help
 taking notice of the soldier.
 


 
 “Your excellency, here are two trophies,” said Dólokhov, pointing to the
 French sword and pouch. “I have taken an officer prisoner. I stopped the
 company.” Dólokhov 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
 Ekonómov.
 


 
 But Dólokhov 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!”
 


 





 
 Túshin’s battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of the action
 did Prince Bagratión, 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 Túshin’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 Bagratión had left him, Túshin had succeeded in setting
 fire to Schön 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 Túshin’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. Túshin’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 Túshin, 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, Túshin 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, Túshin 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 Túshin 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 Matvévna!” he said to himself. “Matvévna” * 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”; Túshin 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, Matvévna, 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 Túshin! Captain!”
 


 
 Túshin 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 Túshin, 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 Túshin’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 Túshin, 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 Túshin. 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 Túshin.
 


 
 “Well, till we meet again...” he said, holding out his hand to Túshin.
 


 
 “Good-by, my dear fellow,” said Túshin. “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 Túshin 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 Zherkóv, who had been twice sent to Túshin’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. Túshin 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 Túshin’s wattle shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach,
 on “Matvévna’s” carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet,
 supporting one hand with the other, came up to Túshin 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 Túshin. “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,
 Antónov.”
 


 
 The cadet was Rostóv. With one hand he supported the other; he was pale
 and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on “Matvévna,”
 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 Túshin, approaching the gun on which
 Rostóv sat.
 


 
 “No, it’s a sprain.”
 


 
 “Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?” inquired Túshin.
 


 
 “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 Túshin’s guns could not move, and the artillerymen, Túshin, 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, Petróv?” 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 Túshin’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 Túshin,
 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. Rostóv, 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 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 Túshin who was sitting cross-legged like a Turk beside him.
 Túshin’s large, kind, intelligent eyes were fixed with sympathy and
 commiseration on Rostóv, who saw that Túshin 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.
 Rostóv 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 Túshin. “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 Túshin 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.
 


 
 Túshin 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 their load.
 


 
 “Still aching?” Túshin asked Rostóv in a whisper.
 


 
 “Yes.”
 


 
 “Your honor, you’re wanted by the general. He is in the hut here,” said a
 gunner, coming up to Túshin.
 


 
 “Coming, friend.”
 


 
 Túshin 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 Bagratión 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 Zherkóv,
 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 naïve 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 Bagratión 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
 Dólokhov’s conversation with Kutúzov and his last interview with the
 gentleman-ranker—“that Private Dólokhov, who was reduced to the
 ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my presence and particularly
 distinguished himself.”
 


 
 “I saw the Pávlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,” chimed in
 Zherkóv, 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 Zherkóv’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 Bagratión 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
 Bagratión 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 Túshin was bivouacking close to the village
 and had already been sent for.
 


 
 “Oh, but you were there?” said Prince Bagratión, addressing Prince Andrew.
 


 
 “Of course, we only just missed one another,” said the staff officer, with
 a smile to Bolkónski.
 


 
 “I had not the pleasure of seeing you,” said Prince Andrew, coldly and
 abruptly.
 


 
 All were silent. Túshin 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 Bagratión, frowning, not so much
 at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom Zherkóv 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 Túshin 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 Bagratión 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.”
 


 
 Túshin 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 Bagratión as a schoolboy who has blundered
 looks at an examiner.
 


 
 The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagratión, apparently not wishing to
 be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture to intervene.
 Prince Andrew looked at Túshin 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 Túshin’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 Bagratión and Túshin looked with equal intentness at Bolkónski, 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 Túshin and his company,” and without
 awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.
 


 
 Prince Bagratión looked at Túshin, evidently reluctant to show distrust in
 Bolkónski’s emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to credit it, bent
 his head, and told Túshin that he could go. Prince Andrew went out with
 him.
 


 
 “Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!” said Túshin.
 


 
 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 Rostóv, 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, Sónya’s
 thin little shoulders, Natásha’s eyes and laughter, Denísov with his voice
 and mustache, and Telyánin and all that affair with Telyánin and
 Bogdánich. 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 impossible 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. Túshin 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 Rostóv. “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!”
 


 
 Rostóv 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
 Bagratión’s detachment was reunited to Kutúzov’s army.
 


 
 
 
 BOOK THREE: 1805
 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER I
 
 
 Prince Vasíli 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 a man of position his instinct immediately told him that this man
 could be useful, and without any premeditation Prince Vasíli 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
 Vasíli 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 Bezúkhov 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 Vasíli to him, handing him a deed to
 sign for the princess’ benefit.
 


 
 Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli took possession of Pierre’s affairs
 and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of Count
 Bezúkhov 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 Bezúkhov, 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 Vasíli
 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 Vasíli 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
 Vasíli 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 Ryazán estate and will keep it; you won’t require it. We’ll go into
 the accounts later.”
 


 
 By “what was due from the Ryazán estate” Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli 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; Dólokhov 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 Vasíli’s house in the
 company of the stout princess, his wife, and his beautiful daughter
 Hélène.
 


 
 Like the others, Anna Pávlovna Schérer showed Pierre the change of
 attitude toward him that had taken place in society.
 


 
 Formerly in Anna Pávlovna’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 Pávlovna 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
 Pávlovna’s usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added: “You
 will find the beautiful Hélène 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 Hélène, 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 Pávlovna’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 Pávlovna received Pierre with a shade of melancholy,
 evidently relating to the young man’s recent loss by the death of Count
 Bezúkhov (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 Márya Fëdorovna. Pierre
 felt flattered by this. Anna Pávlovna arranged the different groups in her
 drawing room with her habitual skill. The large group, in which were
 Prince Vasíli and the generals, had the benefit of the diplomat. Another
 group was at the tea table. Pierre wished to join the former, but Anna
 Pávlovna—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 Hélène and smiled at her.) “My dear Hélène, 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 Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna let Pierre go.
 


 
 Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Hélène’s perfection of
 manner. If he ever thought of Hélène, 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 Hélène and inclined rather to show
 her fear of Anna Pávlovna. She looked at her niece, as if inquiring what
 she was to do with these people. On leaving them, Anna Pávlovna again
 touched Pierre’s sleeve, saying: “I hope you won’t say that it is dull in
 my house again,” and she glanced at Hélène.
 


 
 Hélène 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 Hélène, then she
 turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome and the same look. In the
 middle of a dull and halting conversation, Hélène 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 Bezúkhov, and showed them her
 own box. Princess Hélène 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 Hélène’s back. Hélène 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 of it, just as we cannot
 renew an illusion we have once seen through.
 


 
 “So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?” Hélène 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 Hélène 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 Pávlovna’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 Pávlovna 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 Vasíli’s. It is good to
 have a friend like the prince,” she said, smiling at Prince Vasíli. “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 Hélène
 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli, 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 Pávlovna’s words and looks when she spoke to him about his
 house, recalled thousands of such hints from Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli 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 Bolkónski 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 Vasíli
 had to settle matters with Pierre, who, it is true, had latterly spent
 whole days at home, that is, in Prince Vasíli’s house where he was
 staying, and had been absurd, excited, and foolish in Hélène’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 Vasíli 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 Lëlya’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 Pávlovna’s “At Home” and after the sleepless night
 when he had decided that to marry Hélène would be a calamity and that he
 ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision, had not
 left Prince Vasíli’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 Vasíli (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 Vasíli, 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 Vasíli, 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 Pávlovna’s, an
 unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire paralyzed his will.
 


 
 On Hélène’s name day, a small party of just their own people—as his
 wife said—met for supper at Prince Vasíli’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 Kurágina, 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 Pávlovna
 Schérer. At the other end sat the younger and less important guests, and
 there too sat the members of the family, and Pierre and Hélène, side by
 side. Prince Vasíli 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 Hélène, 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 Víktorovna or other. At the center of the table, Prince Vasíli
 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 Sergéy Kuzmích Vyazmítinov, the new military governor
 general of Petersburg, had received and read the then famous rescript of
 the Emperor Alexander from the army to Sergéy Kuzmích, 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:
 “Sergéy Kuzmích, From all sides reports reach me,” etc.
 


 
 “Well, and so he never got farther than: ‘Sergéy Kuzmích’?” asked one of
 the ladies.
 


 
 “Exactly, not a hair’s breadth farther,” answered Prince Vasíli, laughing,
 “‘Sergéy Kuzmích... From all sides... From all sides... Sergéy Kuzmích...’
 Poor Vyazmítinov could not get any farther! He began the rescript again
 and again, but as soon as he uttered ‘Sergéy’ he sobbed, ‘Kuz-mí-ch,’ 
 tears, and ‘From all sides’ was smothered in sobs and he could get no
 farther. And again his handkerchief, and again: ‘Sergéy Kuzmích, From all
 sides,’ ... and tears, till at last somebody else was asked to read it.”
 


 
 “Kuzmích... From all sides... and then tears,” someone repeated laughing.
 


 
 “Don’t be unkind,” cried Anna Pávlovna from her end of the table holding
 up a threatening finger. “He is such a worthy and excellent man, our dear
 Vyazmítinov....”
 


 
 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 Hélène 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
 Sergéy Kuzmích—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, sauté , 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 Sergéy
 Kuzmích, the laughter, and the food were all a pretense, and that the
 whole attention of that company was directed to—Pierre and Hélène.
 Prince Vasíli mimicked the sobbing of Sergéy Kuzmích 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 Pávlovna threatened him on behalf of “our dear Vyazmítinov,”
 and in her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasíli
 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
 Hélène 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 was 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 Vasíli. 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 Bolkónski,” repeated Prince
 Vasíli a third time. “How absent-minded you are, my dear fellow.”
 


 
 Prince Vasíli smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling at him
 and Hélène. “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 Hélène smiled too.
 


 
 “When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmütz?” repeated Prince Vasíli,
 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 Olmütz,” 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 Hélène.
 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 Hélène will be beautiful still when she’s fifty.”
 


 
 “I think I may congratulate you,” whispered Anna Pávlovna 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 Hélène 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 Hélène. “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 Vasíli came up to Pierre with languid
 footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasíli 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, Lëlya?” 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 Vasíli had only
 acquired by imitating other parents.
 


 
 And he again turned to Pierre.
 


 
 “Sergéy Kuzmích—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 Sergéy Kuzmích that interested Prince Vasíli just then, and Prince
 Vasíli 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 Hélène 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 Sergéy Kuzmích,
 asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it properly.
 Hélène answered with a smile that she too had missed it.
 


 
 When Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli 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
 Hélène still sat talking just as before.
 


 
 “Still the same,” she said to her husband.
 


 
 Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli. “My wife has told me everything!” (He put
 one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)—“My dear
 boy... Lëlya... 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 Hélène’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.
 


 
 “Hélène!” 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 Bezúkhov’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 Bolkónski received a letter from Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli. “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 Vasíli’s servants came one evening in
 advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.
 


 
 Old Bolkónski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasíli’s character,
 but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and Alexander Prince
 Vasíli 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 Vasíli’s arrival, Prince Bolkónski was particularly discontented
 and out of temper. Whether he was in a bad temper because Prince Vasíli
 was coming, or whether his being in a bad temper made him specially
 annoyed at Prince Vasíli’s visit, he was in a bad temper, and in the
 morning Tíkhon had already advised the architect not to go to the prince
 with his report.
 


 
 “Do you hear how he’s walking?” said Tíkhon, 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! Blackguards!... I’ll teach you
 to think!” and lifting his stick he swung it and would have hit Alpátych,
 the overseer, had not the latter instinctively avoided the blow.
 “Thought... Blackguards...” shouted the prince rapidly.
 


 
 But although Alpátych, 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:
 “Blackguards!... 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. Tíkhon 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
 Vasíli Kurágin 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 Alpátych called him this
 morning?”
 


 
 “No, mon père .”
 


 
 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 Másha, 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 père .”
 


 
 “Well, all right, all right.”
 


 
 He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpátych 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 Alpátych to kiss, and then proceeded to
 his study.
 


 
 Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli 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
 Vasíli’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 Másha, 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 pretty face 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 naïve 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 Vasíli 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: “Voilà Marie!” Princess Mary saw
 them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince Vasíli’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 Vasíli 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 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 Vasíli 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 Vasíli 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
 Vasíli. “It’s not as at Annette’s * receptions where you
 always ran away; you remember cette chère Annette! ”
 


 
 * Anna Pávlovna.



 
 “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 Vasíli, 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 Vasíli and that son of his to me? Prince Vasíli 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 Bolkónski while dressing, and yet the
 question he was always putting off demanded an immediate answer. Prince
 Vasíli 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 Vasíli.
 


 
 “Well! How d’ye do? How d’ye do? Glad to see you!”
 


 
 “Friendship laughs at distance,” began Prince Vasíli in his usual rapid,
 self-confident, familiar tone. “Here is my second son; please love and
 befriend him.”
 


 
 Prince Bolkónski 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 Bolkónski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the sofa
 and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasíli, pointed to it and began
 questioning him about political affairs and news. He seemed to listen
 attentively to what Prince Vasíli said, but kept glancing at Princess
 Mary.
 


 
 “And so they are writing from Potsdam already?” he said, repeating Prince
 Vasíli’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 père ,” interceded the little princess, with a blush.
 


 
 “You must do as you please,” said Prince Bolkónski, 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
 Vasíli.
 


 
 “Now you, young prince, what’s your name?” said Prince Bolkónski,
 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 Bolkónski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly
 Prince Bolkónski frowned.
 


 
 “You may go,” he said to Anatole.
 


 
 Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.
 


 
 “And so you’ve had him educated abroad, Prince Vasíli, haven’t
 you?” said the old prince to Prince Vasíli.
 


 
 “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
 Vasíli’s arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were alone
 together, Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli in the tone of a crafty man
 convinced of the futility of being cunning with so keen-sighted a
 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 Bolkónski’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 Bolkónski, 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 mère ) 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 mère 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 naïve 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
 Amélie” (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 mère 
 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. Tíkhon, 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
 Tíkhon and began to undress.
 


 
 “What devil brought them here?” thought he, while Tíkhon 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.
 


 
 Tíkhon 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.
 


 
 Tíkhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of his
 master’s thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince Vasíli
 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 mère ; 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 Tíkhon’s face and in that of Prince Vasíli’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 Vasíli has not
 come and brought his pupil with him” (for some reason Prince Bolkónski
 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 père? ” said the princess,
 growing pale and then blushing.
 


 
 “How understand me!” cried her father angrily. “Prince Vasíli
 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, Tíkhon came to call Princess Mary to the old prince; he
 added that Prince Vasíli was also there. When Tíkhon 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 Vasíli, 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 Bolkónski. “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 Kurágin’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 Bolkónski, turning to
 Prince Vasíli 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
 Vasíli and at her father with her beautiful eyes.
 


 
 “Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!” cried Prince Bolkónski,
 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 Vasíli 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 have seen you,” repeated he, embracing Prince Vasíli.
 


 
 “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 Amélie’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 Rostóvs 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 Mikháylovna, 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 Mikháylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still living
 with the Rostóvs.
 


 
 “My dear friend?” said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry, prepared to
 sympathize in any way.
 


 
 The count sobbed yet more.
 


 
 “Nikólenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling boy... the
 countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How tell the little
 countess!”
 


 
 Anna Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna talked the whole time about the war news and
 about Nikólenka, 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 Mikháylovna, the latter very adroitly turned the conversation
 to insignificant matters. Natásha, 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
 Mikháylovna, that it had something to do with her brother, and that Anna
 Mikháylovna was preparing them for it. Bold as she was, Natásha, who knew
 how sensitive her mother was to anything relating to Nikólenka, 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 headlong after Anna
 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna shook her head.
 


 
 “You are a little slyboots,” she said.
 


 
 “A letter from Nikólenka! I’m sure of it!” exclaimed Natásha, reading
 confirmation in Anna Mikháylovna’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 Mikháylovna, 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 Natásha, crossing herself, “I won’t
 tell anyone!” and she ran off at once to Sónya.
 


 
 “Nikólenka... wounded... a letter,” she announced in gleeful triumph.
 


 
 “Nicholas!” was all Sónya said, instantly turning white.
 


 
 Natásha, seeing the impression the news of her brother’s wound produced on
 Sónya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.
 


 
 She rushed to Sónya, 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 Pétya,
 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.”
 


 
 Natásha smiled through her tears.
 


 
 “You haven’t read the letter?” asked Sónya.
 


 
 “No, but she said that it was all over and that he’s now an officer.”
 


 
 “Thank God!” said Sónya, crossing herself. “But perhaps she
 deceived you. Let us go to Mamma.”
 


 
 Pétya paced the room in silence for a time.
 


 
 “If I’d been in Nikólenka’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, Pétya, what a goose you are!”
 


 
 “I’m not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles,” said Pétya.
 


 
 “Do you remember him?” Natásha suddenly asked, after a moment’s silence.
 


 
 Sónya smiled.
 


 
 “Do I remember Nicholas? ”
 


 
 “No, Sónya, but do you remember so that you remember him perfectly,
 remember everything?” said Natásha, with an expressive gesture, evidently
 wishing to give her words a very definite meaning. “I remember Nikólenka
 too, I remember him well,” she said. “But I don’t remember
 Borís. I don’t remember him a bit.”
 


 
 “What! You don’t remember Borís?” asked Sónya in surprise.
 


 
 “It’s not that I don’t remember—I know what he is like,
 but not as I remember Nikólenka. Him—I just shut my eyes and remember, but
 Borís... No!” (She shut her eyes.) “No! there’s nothing at all.”
 


 
 “Oh, Natásha!” said Sónya, 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.”
 


 
 Natásha looked at Sónya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and said
 nothing. She felt that Sónya was speaking the truth, that there was such
 love as Sónya was speaking of. But Natásha had not yet felt anything like
 it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.
 


 
 “Shall you write to him?” she asked.
 


 
 Sónya 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?”
 


 
 Sónya smiled.
 


 
 “No.”
 


 
 “And I should be ashamed to write to Borís. 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 Pétya, offended by Natásha’s
 previous remark. “It’s because she was in love with that fat one in
 spectacles” (that was how Pétya described his namesake, the new Count
 Bezúkhov) “and now she’s in love with that singer” (he meant Natásha’s
 Italian singing master), “that’s why she’s ashamed!”
 


 
 “Pétya, you’re stupid!” said Natásha.
 


 
 “Not more stupid than you, madam,” said the nine-year-old Pétya, with the
 air of an old brigadier.
 


 
 The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikháylovna’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 Mikháylovna, 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 Mikháylovna’s
 voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then silence, then both voices
 together with glad intonations, and then footsteps. Anna Mikháylovna
 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. Véra, Natásha, Sónya, and Pétya 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 Véra, Natásha, and Pétya. Besides that, he
 sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old nurse,
 and asked them to kiss for him “dear Sónya, whom he loved and thought of
 just the same as ever.” When she heard this Sónya 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 Véra. “From all he says
 one should be glad and not cry.”
 


 
 This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natásha 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 Dmítri, and
 several acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter each time with
 fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it fresh proofs of Nikólenka’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 Denísov 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 Mikháylovna, 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
 Pávlovich, who commanded the Guards. The Rostóvs 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 Pávlograd 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 Borís and Borís was to forward them to
 Nicholas. The letters were from the old count, the countess, Pétya, Véra,
 Natásha, and Sónya, 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, Kutúzov’s active army, in camp before Olmütz,
 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 Olmütz and next morning were to come straight to the
 review, reaching the field at Olmütz by ten o’clock.
 


 
 That day Nicholas Rostóv received a letter from Borís, telling him that
 the Ismáylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles from Olmütz
 and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money for him. Rostóv
 was particularly in need of money now that the troops, after their active
 service, were stationed near Olmütz and the camp swarmed with
 well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all sorts of tempting
 wares. The Pávlograds held feast after feast, celebrating awards they had
 received for the campaign, and made expeditions to Olmütz to visit a
 certain Caroline the Hungarian, who had recently opened a restaurant there
 with girls as waitresses. Rostóv, who had just celebrated his promotion to
 a cornetcy and bought Denísov’s horse, Bedouin, was in debt all round, to
 his comrades and the sutlers. On receiving Borís’ letter he rode with a
 fellow officer to Olmütz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and then
 set off alone to the Guards’ camp to find his old playmate. Rostóv 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 Borís 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. Borís 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. Borís, 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 Bolkónski, through whom he hoped to obtain a post on the
 commander in chief’s staff. Berg and Borís, 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. Borís, 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 Rostóv. “And Berg too! Oh, you
 petisenfans, allay cushay dormir! ” he exclaimed, imitating his Russian
 nurse’s French, at which he and Borís used to laugh long ago.
 


 
 “Dear me, how you have changed!”
 


 
 Borís rose to meet Rostóv, 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, Borís 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 Rostóv, with martial swagger and with
 baritone notes in his voice, new to Borís, pointing to his own
 mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostóv’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 Borís.
 “I did not expect you today,” he added. “I only sent you the
 note yesterday by Bolkónski—an adjutant of Kutúzov’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 Borís.
 


 
 Without answering, Rostóv 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 Borís, 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 Tsarévich 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 Rostóv. “I say, send for some wine.”
 


 
 Borís 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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv, “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 Borís.
 


 
 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 Rostóv looked at it that his coat had been noticed, left the room
 with a pleasant smile.
 


 
 “Oh dear, what a beast I am!” muttered Rostóv, 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
 Bagratión which the old countess at Anna Mikháylovna’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 Rostóv, throwing the letter under
 the table.
 


 
 “Why have you thrown that away?” asked Borís.
 


 
 “It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want it for!”
 


 
 “Why ‘What the devil’?” said Borís, 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 Borís.
 


 
 “It’s a lackey’s job!”
 


 
 “You are still the same dreamer, I see,” remarked Borís, shaking his head.
 


 
 “And you’re still the same diplomatist! But that’s not the
 point... Come, how are you?” asked Rostóv.
 


 
 “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 Rostóv, 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 Borís. “He would
 drink with you. I can’t.”
 


 
 “Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?” asked
 Rostóv, with a contemptuous smile.
 


 
 “He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow,” answered Borís.
 


 
 Again Rostóv looked intently into Borís’ eyes and sighed. Berg returned,
 and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three officers became
 animated. The Guardsmen told Rostóv 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 Tsarévich’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 Rostóv, smiling.
 


 
 But Borís 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 Rostóv and he began talking about it, and as
 he went on became more and more animated. He told them of his Schön
 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. Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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 Borís 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 Borís, who had managed to please him the day before,
 he wished to do what the young man wanted. Having been sent with papers
 from Kutúzov to the Tsarévich, he looked in on Borís, 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 Borís a pleasant smile, frowned as with half-closed eyes he looked at
 Rostóv, bowed slightly and wearily, and sat down languidly on the sofa: he
 felt it unpleasant to have dropped in on bad company. Rostóv flushed up on
 noticing this, but he did not care, this was a mere stranger. Glancing,
 however, at Borís, 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 Rostóv, from his fighting army point of view, regarded
 all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the newcomer was evidently
 one, Rostóv felt confused, blushed, and became silent. Borís inquired what
 news there might be on the staff, and what, without indiscretion, one
 might ask about our plans.
 


 
 “We shall probably advance,” replied Bolkónski, 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 Borís, “we will
 talk of it later” (and he looked round at Rostóv). “Come to me after the
 review and we will do what is possible.”
 


 
 And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to Rostóv, 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 Schön
 Grabern affair? Were you there?”
 


 
 “I was there,” said Rostóv angrily, as if intending to insult the
 aide-de-camp.
 


 
 Bolkónski 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 Rostóv loudly, looking with eyes suddenly grown
 furious, now at Borís, now at Bolkónski. “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 Rostóv’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, Drubetskóy, 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, Drubetskóy. Au
 revoir! ” exclaimed Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them both he went out.
 


 
 Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostóv 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 Borís, 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 Rostóv had been to see Borís, a review was held of the
 Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia and
 those who had been campaigning under Kutúzov. The two Emperors, the
 Russian with his heir the Tsarévich, 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 drawn 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: Kutúzov’s fighting army
 (with the Pávlograds 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 Olmütz 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.
 


 
 Rostóv, standing in the front lines of Kutúzov’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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 of 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 Pávlograds, the Tsar said something in French to
 the Austrian Emperor and smiled.
 


 
 Seeing that smile, Rostóv 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
 Rostóv. “I should die of happiness!”
 


 
 The Tsar addressed the officers also: “I thank you all, gentlemen, I thank
 you with my whole heart.” To Rostóv 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 The Tsar said something more which Rostóv did not hear, and the soldiers,
 straining their lungs, shouted “Hurrah!”
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv from amid the suites that surrounded
 the Emperors.
 


 
 Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostóv noticed Bolkónski, sitting his
 horse indolently and carelessly. Rostóv recalled their quarrel of
 yesterday and the question presented itself whether he ought or ought not
 to challenge Bolkónski. “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 Rostóv on Bedouin, recently purchased from
 Denísov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron—that is, alone
 and in full view of the Emperor.
 


 
 Before he reached him, Rostóv, 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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Denísov expressed it.
 


 
 “Fine fellows, the Pávlograds!” remarked the Emperor.
 


 
 “My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the fire this
 instant!” thought Rostóv.
 


 
 When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also Kutúzov’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 Rostóv
 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, Borís, in his best uniform and with his comrade
 Berg’s best wishes for success, rode to Olmütz to see Bolkónski, 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 Rostóv, 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 Olmütz 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, Kutúzov, where he
 inquired for Bolkónski, 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 Olmütz and, entering the house occupied by
 Kutúzov, asked for Bolkónski. Prince Andrew was in and Borís 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 Nesvítski, 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. Bolkónski was not
 there. None of these gentlemen changed his position on seeing Borís. The
 one who was writing and whom Borís addressed turned round crossly and told
 him Bolkónski was on duty and that he should go through the door on the
 left into the reception room if he wished to see him. Borís 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 Borís, 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 Borís 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 Drubetskóy. More than ever
 was Borís 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!”
 


 
 Borís smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to as
 something generally known. But it was 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 Borís could not help blushing—“of
 asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter from Prince Kurágin
 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 Borís’ 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 Borís 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 Borís), “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 Dolgorúkov; and though you may not know it, the fact is
 that now Kutúzov with his staff and all of us count for nothing.
 Everything is now centered round the Emperor. So we will go to Dolgorúkov;
 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 Borís’ cause and went with him to Dolgorúkov.
 


 
 It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmütz 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 Kutúzov 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 Borís
 arrived at the palace to find Dolgorúkov. 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.
 


 
 Dolgorúkov, 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 protégé, but Prince
 Dolgorúkov politely and firmly pressing his hand said nothing to Borís
 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 Bolkónski.
 


 
 “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.” Dolgorúkov smiled significantly.
 


 
 “Is that so? And what did he say?” inquired Bolkónski.
 


 
 “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 Bolkónski.
 


 
 “That’s just it,” interrupted Dolgorúkov quickly, laughing. “You know
 Bilíbin—he’s a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him as
 ‘Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.’”
 


 
 Dolgorúkov laughed merrily.
 


 
 “Only that?” said Bolkónski.
 


 
 “All the same, it was Bilíbin 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
 français ,” said Dolgorúkov, with grave satisfaction. “Good, wasn’t it?”
 


 
 “Yes, but he will dislike it extremely,” said Bolkónski.
 


 
 “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 Markóv? Count Markóv was the only man who knew how to handle him.
 You know the story of the handkerchief? It is delightful!”
 


 
 And the talkative Dolgorúkov, turning now to Borís, now to Prince Andrew,
 told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markóv, our ambassador, purposely
 dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking at Markóv,
 probably expecting Markóv to pick it up for him, and how Markóv
 immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up without touching
 Bonaparte’s.
 


 
 “Delightful!” said Bolkónski. “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 Dolgorúkov to the
 Emperor.
 


 
 “Oh, what a nuisance,” said Dolgorúkov, getting up hurriedly and pressing
 the hands of Prince Andrew and Borís. “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!”
 


 
 Borís 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 Dolgorúkov out into the corridor
 and met—coming out of the door of the Emperor’s room by which
 Dolgorúkov 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
 Dolgorúkov 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 Borís.
 


 
 “He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of men—the
 Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartorýski.... It is such men as
 he who decide the fate of nations,” added Bolkónski 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, Borís was unable to see either Prince Andrew or Dolgorúkov
 again and remained for a while with the Ismáylov regiment.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER X
 
 
 At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denísov’s squadron, in which
 Nicholas Rostóv served and which was in Prince Bagratión’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. Rostóv 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 Bagratión and
 Dolgorúkov 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 Rostóv 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 sótnya 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 Rostóv 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, Wostóv. Let’s dwink to dwown our gwief!” shouted Denísov, who
 had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some food.
 


 
 The officers gathered round Denísov’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!” Denísov 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 Rostóv, 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
 Rostóv when the animal was handed over to the hussar.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv saw coming up the road behind him
 several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment everyone was
 in his place, waiting.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv’s feeling, there
 was a deathly stillness amid which was heard the Emperor’s voice.
 


 
 “The Pávlograd hussars?” he inquired.
 


 
 “The reserves, sire!” replied a voice, a very human one compared to that
 which had said: “The Pávlograd hussars?”
 


 
 The Emperor drew level with Rostóv 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 Rostóv’s and rested on them for not more than two seconds.
 Whether or no the Emperor understood what was going on in Rostóv’s soul
 (it seemed to Rostóv that he understood everything), at any rate his
 light-blue eyes gazed for about two seconds into Rostóv’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 Pávlograd
 division was ordered to advance. In Wischau itself, a petty German town,
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv. Rostóv 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.
 


 
 Rostóv saw tears filling the Emperor’s eyes and heard him, as he was
 riding away, say to Czartorýski: “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. Denísov celebrated his promotion to the rank
 of major, and Rostóv, 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 Schön
 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, Kírsten, shouted enthusiastically and no less
 sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostóv.
 


 
 When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kírsten 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, Denísov with his short hand
 patted his favorite, Rostóv, 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.
 


 
 “Denísov, don’t make fun of it!” cried Rostóv. “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 Rostóv 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 Dolgorúkov 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 Dolgorúkov,
 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 Dolgorúkov 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 Kutúzov’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, Kutúzov 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 Tolstóy.
 


 
 Bolkónski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the coming
 action from Dolgorúkov. He felt that Kutúzov 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 Dolgorúkov.
 


 
 “Well, how d’you do, my dear fellow?” said Dolgorúkov, who was sitting at
 tea with Bilíbin. “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 Dolgorúkov, 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 Dolgorúkov, looking round at
 Bilíbin with a smile.
 


 
 “Despite my great respect for old Kutúzov,” 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 Suvórov 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 Dolgorúkov a plan of attack he had himself formed.
 


 
 “Oh, that is all the same,” Dolgorúkov said quickly, and getting up he
 spread a map on the table. “All eventualities have been foreseen. If he is
 standing before Brünn...”
 


 
 And Prince Dolgorúkov 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 Dolgorúkov
 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 Kutúzov’s tonight, though; you can say
 all this there,” remarked Dolgorúkov.
 


 
 “I will do so,” said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.
 


 
 “Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?” said Bilíbin, 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 Kutúzov, 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 Dolgorúkov. “It is not true; there are now two
 Russians, Milorádovich, and Dokhtúrov, and there would be a third, Count
 Arakchéev, if his nerves were not too weak.”
 


 
 “However, I think General Kutúzov has come out,” said Prince Andrew. “I
 wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!” he added and went out after
 shaking hands with Dolgorúkov and Bilíbin.
 


 
 On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking Kutúzov, who
 was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of tomorrow’s battle.
 


 
 Kutúzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause, replied: “I
 think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstóy 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
 Kutúzov’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 Bagratión, 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 Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov’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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov himself, Weyrother, and the members
 of the council of war. They were drinking tea, and only awaited Prince
 Bagratión to begin the council. At last Bagratión’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 Kutúzov to be present at the council, he remained in the
 room.
 


 
 “Since Prince Bagratión 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 Brünn was spread out.
 


 
 Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Buxhöwden 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 Milorádovich 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 Milorádovich 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 Milorádovich 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.
 


 
 Przebyszéwski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his hand to
 his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in attention.
 Dohktúrov, 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 Dohktúrov 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, Kutúzov 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 Milorádovich who was near him.
 


 
 But Milorádovich 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Dolgorúkov and Weyrother, or Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov 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 Nesvítski 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 Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov’s staff, but he does everything alone. The
 next battle is won by him alone. Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov’s
 courtyard. The voices were those of the orderlies who were packing up; one
 voice, probably a coachman’s, was teasing Kutúzov’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, Rostóv was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in front of
 Bagratión’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. Rostóv 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 Denísov, 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 Rostóv, “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, Rostóv 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,
 Olmütz. 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
 Rostóv 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 ...
 Natásha... sister, black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won’t she be surprised
 when I tell her how I’ve seen the Emperor?) Natásha... take my
 sabretache...”—“Keep to the right, your honor, there are bushes
 here,” came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostóv was riding in the act
 of falling asleep. Rostóv 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! Natásha... sabretache... saber them... Whom? The
 hussars... Ah, the hussars with mustaches. Along the Tverskáya Street rode
 the hussar with mustaches... I thought about him too, just opposite
 Gúryev’s house... Old Gúryev.... Oh, but Denísov’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-tásha, 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 Rostóv, waking up. At the moment he opened
 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. Rostóv 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 Rostóv to the hussar beside
 him. “That must be the enemy’s camp!”
 


 
 The hussar did not reply.
 


 
 “Why, don’t you hear it?” Rostóv 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “It may be he or it may be nothing,” muttered the hussar. “It’s dark...
 Steady!” he cried to his fidgeting horse.
 


 
 Rostóv’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. Rostóv 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 Rostóv, 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 Bagratión and Prince Dolgorúkov with their
 adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the lights and
 shouts in the enemy’s camp. Rostóv rode up to Bagratión, reported to him,
 and then joined the adjutants listening to what the generals were saying.
 


 
 “Believe me,” said Prince Dolgorúkov, addressing Bagratión, “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 Bagratión. “I saw them this evening on that knoll; if they
 had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too.... Officer!” said
 Bagratión to Rostóv, “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 Rostóv.
 


 
 Bagratión stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostóv’s face in the
 mist.
 


 
 “Well, go and see,” he said, after a pause.
 


 
 “Yes, sir.”
 


 
 Rostóv spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fédchenko 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. Bagratión called to him from
 the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostóv 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
 Rostóv 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. Rostóv turned his horse
 and galloped back. Four more reports followed at intervals, and the
 bullets passed somewhere in the fog singing in different tones. Rostóv
 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 Bagratión did Rostóv let his horse gallop again, and
 with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.
 


 
 Dolgorúkov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had only
 lit fires to deceive us.
 


 
 “What does that prove?” he was saying as Rostóv rode up. “They might
 retreat and leave the pickets.”
 


 
 “It’s plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince,” said Bagratión.
 “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 Rostóv, 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 Bagratión. “Thank you, officer.”
 


 
 “Your excellency,” said Rostóv, “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 Rostóv.”
 


 
 “Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me.”
 


 
 “Count Ilyá Rostóv’s son?” asked Dolgorúkov.
 


 
 But Rostóv 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “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 Hollabrünn 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 Bagratión’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 Iván Mítrich, 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 Kúrskies 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth column,
 Milorádovich’s, the one that was to take the place of Przebyszéwski’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 Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov bitterly. “Who told you that?...
 Kindly do as you are ordered.”
 


 
 “Yes, sir.”
 


 
 “My dear fellow,” Nesvítski 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 Kutúzov and asked in the Emperor’s name had the fourth
 column advanced into action.
 


 
 Kutúzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to fall upon
 Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutúzov’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 Bolkónski.
 


 
 “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. Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov in the midst of a
 yawn. “Plenty of time,” he repeated.
 


 
 Just then at a distance behind Kutúzov 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
 Kutúzov 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. Kutúzov, 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 Olmütz
 where Bolkónski 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 Olmütz 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. Czartorýski, Novosíltsev, Prince
 Volkónsky, Strógonov, 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 Brünn. 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 Kutúzov’s cheerless staff with the galloping advent of all these
 brilliant young men.
 


 
 “Why aren’t you beginning, Michael Ilariónovich?” said the Emperor
 Alexander hurriedly to Kutúzov, glancing courteously at the same time at
 the Emperor Francis.
 


 
 “I am waiting, Your Majesty,” answered Kutúzov, bending forward
 respectfully.
 


 
 The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had not
 quite heard.
 


 
 “Waiting, Your Majesty,” repeated Kutúzov. (Prince Andrew noted that
 Kutúzov’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 Novosíltsev who was near him, as if
 complaining of Kutúzov.
 


 
 “You know, Michael Ilariónovich, we 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 Kutúzov 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 he 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 Kutúzov’s eye waiting to
 hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutúzov, with respectfully
 bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence lasted for about a
 minute.
 


 
 “However, if you command it, Your Majesty,” said Kutúzov, lifting his
 head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning, but submissive
 general.
 


 
 He touched his horse and having called Milorádovich, the commander of the
 column, gave him the order to advance.
 


 
 The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Nóvgorod and one
 of the Ápsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.
 


 
 As this Ápsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Milorádovich, 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 possibilité, 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.”
 


 
 Milorádovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a little
 behind the Emperor. The Ápsheron men, excited by the Tsar’s presence,
 passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a bold, brisk pace.
 


 
 “Lads!” shouted Milorádovich 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 Ápsherons, his comrades in Suvórov’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 Ápsherons.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI
 
 
 Kutúzov 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. Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov was standing, a dense French
 column coming up to meet the Ápsherons.
 


 
 “Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come,” thought
 Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutúzov.
 


 
 “The Ápsherons 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 naïve 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. Bolkónski only tried not to lose touch with
 it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp what was happening in
 front of him. Nesvítski with an angry face, red and unlike himself, was
 shouting to Kutúzov that if he did not ride away at once he would
 certainly be taken prisoner. Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov himself rode. Having by a
 great effort got away to the left from that flood of men, Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov. Of Kutúzov’s
 suite only four remained. They were all pale and exchanged looks in
 silence.
 


 
 “Stop those wretches!” gasped Kutúzov 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
 Kutúzov’s suite like a flock of little birds.
 


 
 The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov despairingly and looked around....
 “Bolkónski!” he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness of the
 feebleness of age, “Bolkónski!” 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 Bagratión, at nine o’clock the battle had
 not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorúkov’s demand to commence the
 action, and wishing to avert responsibility from himself, Prince Bagratión
 proposed to Dolgorúkov to send to inquire of the commander in chief.
 Bagratión 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.
 


 
 Bagratión cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his suite, and
 the boyish face of Rostóv, 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 Rostóv, with his hand to his cap.
 


 
 “You can give the message to His Majesty,” said Dolgorúkov, hurriedly
 interrupting Bagratión.
 


 
 On being relieved from picket duty Rostóv 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 Kutúzov, 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 Bagratión’s troops,
 which had not yet advanced into action but were standing motionless; then
 he came to the region occupied by Uvárov’s cavalry and here he noticed a
 stir and signs of preparation for battle; having passed Uvárov’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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 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. Rostóv 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. Rostóv 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.
 Rostóv 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. Rostóv
 could already see their faces and heard the command: “Charge!” shouted by
 an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to full speed. Rostóv, 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 Rostóv before him, with whom he would inevitably collide. This
 Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostóv and his Bedouin over (Rostóv
 felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to these gigantic men and
 horses) had it not occurred to Rostóv 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 Rostóv
 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, Rostóv 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. Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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.
 


 
 “Rostóv!”
 


 
 “What?” he answered, not recognizing Borís.
 


 
 “I say, we’ve been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!” said Borís
 with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have been under
 fire for the first time.
 


 
 Rostóv stopped.
 


 
 “Have you?” he said. “Well, how did it go?”
 


 
 “We drove them back!” said Borís 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. Rostóv without hearing Borís to the end spurred his horse.
 


 
 “Where are you off to?” asked Borís.
 


 
 “With a message to His Majesty.”
 


 
 “There he is!” said Borís, thinking Rostóv 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 Rostóv, and was about to spur his horse.
 


 
 “Count! Count!” shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager as
 Borís. “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 Rostóv did not wait to hear it and rode away.
 


 
 Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostóv, 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 Rostóv 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?”
 Rostóv 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. Rostóv
 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 Rostóv’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
 
 
 Rostóv had been ordered to look for Kutúzov 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 calèches , 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 Kutúzov?” Rostóv 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, Rostóv 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 Rostóv. “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 Ilyá Iványch. I don’t think Ilyá drives anyone except the Tsar!”
 


 
 Rostóv 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? Kutúzov?” asked Rostóv.
 


 
 “Not Kutúzov, 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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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. Rostóv 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 Kutúzov, 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.”
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv. 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
 Rostóv’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 Rostóv asked could tell him where the Emperor or Kutúzov 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 Tolstóy, who had ridden out
 to the battlefield with others in the Emperor’s suite. One officer told
 Rostóv that he had seen someone from headquarters behind the village to
 the left, and thither Rostóv 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 Rostóv; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse
 (which Rostóv 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 Rostóv and
 involuntarily riveted his attention, made a gesture of refusal with his
 head and hand and by that gesture Rostóv instantly recognized his lamented
 and adored monarch.
 


 
 “But it can’t be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!” thought
 Rostóv. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostóv 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. Rostóv 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 Dolgorúkov 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 Rostóv, 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,” Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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. Rostóv 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 Rostóv, 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 of 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 Kutúzov’s staff were not far off,
 in the village the vehicles were going to. Rostóv followed them. In front
 of him walked Kutúzov’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.
 


 
 Przebyszéwski 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 Dokhtúrov’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, Dokhtúrov 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov—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 Dólokhov 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov. 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 Bolkónski 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 Bolkónski.
 


 
 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.
 


 
 Bolkónski recognized Prince Repnín 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 Repnín.
 


 
 “You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander’s regiment of Horse
 Guards?” asked Napoleon.
 


 
 “I commanded a squadron,” replied Repnín.
 


 
 “Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably,” said Napoleon.
 


 
 “The praise of a great commander is a soldier’s highest reward,” said
 Repnín.
 


 
 “I bestow it with pleasure,” said Napoleon. “And who is that young man
 beside you?”
 


 
 Prince Repnín named Lieutenant Sukhtélen.
 


 
 After looking at him Napoleon smiled.
 


 
 “He’s very young to come to meddle with us.”
 


 
 “Youth is no hindrance to courage,” muttered Sukhtélen 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
 Repnín!” 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 Rostóv returned home on leave. Denísov was
 going home to Vorónezh and Rostóv 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, Denísov 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 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv, when their
 leave permits had been passed at the town gate and they had entered
 Moscow.
 


 
 “Denísov! 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.
 


 
 Denísov gave no answer.
 


 
 “There’s the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhár, has his
 stand, and there’s Zakhár 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 Rostóv. “Of course, it’s our house! Denísov, Denísov! We’re
 almost there!”
 


 
 Denísov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.
 


 
 “Dmítri,” said Rostóv 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 Rostóv, fingering his new mustache.
 “Now then, get on,” he shouted to the driver. “Do wake up, Váska!” he went
 on, turning to Denísov, whose head was again nodding. “Come, get on! You
 shall have three rubles for vodka—get on!” Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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. Prokófy, 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 Prokófy, 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 Rostóv, 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!”
 


 
 Rostóv, who had completely forgotten Denísov, 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 Natásha, and which
 Pétya. 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... Kólya, * dear fellow... How he has changed!...
 Where are the candles?... Tea!...”
 


 
 * Nicholas.



 
 “And me, kiss me!”
 


 
 “Dearest... and me!”
 


 
 Sónya, Natásha, Pétya, Anna Mikháylovna, Véra, 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.
 


 
 Pétya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, “And me too!”
 


 
 Natásha, 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.
 


 
 Sónya 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. Sónya
 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. Denísov, who had come into
 the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there and wiped his eyes at the sight.
 


 
 “Vasíli Denísov, 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 Denísov. “Nicholas wrote us... Natásha, Véra, look! Here is
 Denísov!”
 


 
 The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of Denísov.
 


 
 “Darling Denísov!” screamed Natásha, beside herself with rapture,
 springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This
 escapade made everybody feel confused. Denísov blushed too, but smiled
 and, taking Natásha’s hand, kissed it.
 


 
 Denísov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostóvs 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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 to 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, Gwíska—my pipe!” came Vasíli Denísov’s husky voice. “Wostóv,
 get up!”
 


 
 Rostóv, 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 Natásha’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
 Natásha, Sónya, and Pétya, who had come to see whether they were getting
 up.
 


 
 “Nicholas! Get up!” Natásha’s voice was again heard at the door.
 


 
 “Directly!”
 


 
 Meanwhile, Pétya, 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. Denísov hid his hairy legs under the blanket,
 looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door, having let
 Pétya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from behind it.
 


 
 “Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!” said Natásha’s voice.
 


 
 “Is this your saber?” asked Pétya. “Or is it yours?” he said, addressing
 the black-mustached Denísov with servile deference.
 


 
 Rostóv hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing gown, and
 went out. Natásha had put on one spurred boot and was just getting her
 foot into the other. Sónya, 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.
 Sónya ran away, but Natásha, 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. Natásha 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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Sónya run away?” asked Rostóv.
 


 
 “Ah, yes! That’s a whole long story! How are you going to speak to
 her— thou or you? ”
 


 
 “As may happen,” said Rostóv.
 


 
 “No, call her you , please! I’ll tell you all about it some other time. No,
 I’ll tell you now. You know Sónya’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 Natásha’s wildly bright eyes,
 Rostóv 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.”
 


 
 Natásha 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
 Natásha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that what she was
 now saying she had talked of before, with tears.
 


 
 Rostóv became thoughtful.
 


 
 “I never go back on my word,” he said. “Besides, Sónya is so charming that
 only a fool would renounce such happiness.”
 


 
 “No, no!” cried Natásha, “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.”
 


 
 Rostóv saw that it had been well considered by them. Sónya 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,
 Rostóv 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 Borís?” he continued.
 


 
 “Oh, what nonsense!” cried Natásha, 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 to now?”
 


 
 “Now?” repeated Natásha, 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, Natásha 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.”
 


 
 Rostóv laughed so loud and merrily that Denísov, in his bedroom, felt
 envious and Natásha 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 Borís?”
 


 
 Natásha flared up. “I don’t want to marry anyone. And I’ll tell him so
 when I see him!”
 


 
 “Dear me!” said Rostóv.
 


 
 “But that’s all rubbish,” Natásha chattered on. “And is Denísov nice?” she
 asked.
 


 
 “Yes, indeed!”
 


 
 “Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible, Denísov?”
 


 
 “Why terrible?” asked Nicholas. “No, Váska is a splendid fellow.”
 


 
 “You call him Váska? That’s funny! And is he very nice?”
 


 
 “Very.”
 


 
 “Well then, be quick. We’ll all have breakfast together.”
 


 
 And Natásha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet dancer,
 but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When Rostóv met
 Sónya 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—Sónya . But their eyes met
 and said thou , and exchanged tender kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive
 her for having dared, by Natásha’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 Véra, selecting a moment when all were silent,
 “that Sónya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet like
 strangers.”
 


 
 Véra’s remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like most of
 her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not only Sónya,
 Nicholas, and Natásha, but even the old countess, who—dreading this
 love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a brilliant match—blushed
 like a girl.
 


 
 Denísov, to Rostóv’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 Rostóv had ever expected to see him.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER II
 
 
 On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostóv was welcomed by his
 home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their darling Nikólenka; 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 Rostóvs 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 Gavríl to pay a sleigh driver, his
 kissing Sónya 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 Arkhárovs’ ball, talked about the war with Field
 Marshal Kámenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with
 a colonel of forty to whom Denísov had introduced him.
 


 
 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 Rostóv’s short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, he did
 not draw closer to Sónya, 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 Sónya,
 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 Denísov, 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 Ilyá Rostóv was very busy arranging a
 dinner in honor of Prince Bagratión 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 Feoktíst, 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 Bagratión, 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 entrée. Ah, goodness gracious!” he
 clutched at his head. “Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmítri! Eh,
 Dmítri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate,” he said to the factotum who
 appeared at his call. “Hurry off and tell Maksím, 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 Bagratión worried himself less before the
 battle of Schön 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, Feoktíst?” 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 Bezúkhov’s, and tell him ‘Count Ilyá 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 Rasgulyáy—the coachman
 Ipátka knows—and look up the gypsy Ilyúshka, the one who danced at
 Count Orlóv’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
 Mikháylovna 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 Bezúkhov’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 Borís. Thank God, Borís is now on the staff.”
 


 
 The count was delighted at Anna Mikháylovna’s taking upon herself one of
 his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.
 


 
 “Tell Bezúkhov to come. I’ll put his name down. Is his wife with him?” he
 asked.
 


 
 Anna Mikháylovna 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
 Bezúkhov! 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 Anna Mikháylovna sighed deeply.
 


 
 “Dólokhov, Mary Ivánovna’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 Mikháylovna, wishing to show her sympathy for
 Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half smile betraying her
 sympathy for the “daredevil,” as she called Dólokhov. “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 Bagratión, 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 foregathered 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
 Rostopchín, Prince Yúri Dolgorúkov, Valúev, Count Markóv, and Prince
 Vyázemski—did not show themselves at the club, but met in private
 houses in intimate circles, and the Moscovites who took their opinions
 from others—Ilyá Rostóv 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 Przebyszéwski and of the Frenchman Langeron, Kutúzov’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 Bagratión, distinguished by his Schön 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 Bagratión’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 Suvórov. Moreover,
 paying such honor to Bagratión was the best way of expressing disapproval
 and dislike of Kutúzov.
 


 
 “Had there been no Bagratión, it would have been necessary to invent him,”
 said the wit Shinshín, parodying the words of Voltaire. Kutúzov no one
 spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers, calling him a court
 weathercock and an old satyr.
 


 
 All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorúkov’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 Rostopchín,
 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 Bolkónski, 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 kaftáns . 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 Denísov, Rostóv, and Dólokhov—who was now
 again an officer in the Semënov regiment. The faces of these young people,
 especially those who were military men, 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.”
 


 
 Nesvítski 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 of 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
 Rostopchín, Valúev, and Narýshkin. Rostopchín was describing how the
 Russians had been overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to force
 their way through them with bayonets.
 


 
 Valúev was confidentially telling that Uvárov had been sent from
 Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.
 


 
 In the third circle, Narýshkin was speaking of the meeting of the Austrian
 Council of War at which Suvórov crowed like a cock in reply to the
 nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshín, standing close by,
 tried to make a joke, saying that Kutúzov had evidently failed to learn
 from Suvórov 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 Kutúzov.
 


 
 Count Ilyá Rostóv, 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 Rostóv stood at a window with
 Dólokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately made and highly valued. The old
 count came up to them and pressed Dólokhov’s hand.
 


 
 “Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been together out
 there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasíli Ignátovich... 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.
 


 
 Bagratión 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 Rostóv 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 naïvely festive
 in his air, which, in conjunction with his firm and virile features, gave
 him a rather comical expression. Bekleshëv and Theodore Uvárov, who had
 arrived with him, paused at the doorway to allow him, as the guest of
 honor, to enter first. Bagratión 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 Schön 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 Bagratión
 over each other’s shoulders, as if he were some rare animal. Count Ilyá
 Rostóv, 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 Ilyá, 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 Bagratión. On
 the salver lay some verses composed and printed in the hero’s honor.
 Bagratión, 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 Bagratión (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!” Bagratión 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. Bagratión bowed his head and listened:
 


 
 Bring glory then to Alexander’s reign

 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, Bagratión,

 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:
 


 
 Conquest’s joyful thunder waken,

 Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...



 
 and Count Rostóv, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading his
 verses, bowed to Bagratión. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was more
 important than verses, and Bagratión, again preceding all the rest, went
 in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between two Alexanders—Bekleshëv
 and Narýshkin—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 Ilyá Rostóv presented his son to Bagratión, who
 recognized him and said a few words to him, disjointed and awkward, as
 were all the words he spoke that day, and Count Ilyá looked joyfully and
 proudly around while Bagratión spoke to his son.
 


 
 Nicholas Rostóv, with Denísov and his new acquaintance, Dólokhov, sat
 almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre, beside Prince
 Nesvítski. Count Ilyá Rostóv with the other members of the committee sat
 facing Bagratión 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
 Ilyá Rostóv 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!” Bagratión also rose and shouted “Hurrah!” in exactly
 the same voice in which he had shouted it on the field at Schön Grabern.
 Young Rostóv’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 Ivánovich Bagratión!” 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 Ivánovich
 Kutúzov:
 


 
 Russians! O’er all barriers on!

 Courage conquest guarantees;

 Have we not Bagratión?

 He brings foemen to their knees,... etc.



 
 As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was proposed
 and Count Ilyá Rostóv became more and more moved, more glass was smashed,
 and the shouting grew louder. They drank to Bekleshëv, Narýshkin, Uvárov,
 Dolgorúkov, Apráksin, Valúev, to the committee, to all the club members
 and to all the club guests, and finally to Count Ilyá Rostóv 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 Dólokhov and Nicholas Rostóv. 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 Dólokhov’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 Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov, who
 was sitting opposite him. Every time he chanced to meet Dólokhov’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 Dólokhov, 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 Dólokhov,
 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, Dólokhov had come straight to
 his house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled
 how Hélène had smilingly expressed disapproval of Dólokhov’s living at
 their house, and how cynically Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov’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 Dólokhov’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. Dólokhov, Denísov, and Rostóv
 were now sitting opposite Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostóv 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. Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “Why, I didn’t recognize you!” he said. But Rostóv was otherwise engaged;
 he was shouting “Hurrah!”
 


 
 “Why don’t you renew the acquaintance?” said Dólokhov to Rostóv.
 


 
 “Confound him, he’s a fool!” said Rostóv.
 


 
 “One should make up to the husbands of pretty women,” said Denísov.
 


 
 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 Dólokhov, 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
 Dólokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing leaflets with
 Kutúzov’s cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of the principal guests.
 He was just going to take it when Dólokhov, leaning across, snatched it
 from his hand and began reading it. Pierre looked at Dólokhov 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, Nesvítski and the
 neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezúkhov.
 


 
 “Don’t! Don’t! What are you about?” whispered their frightened voices.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Denísov’s request that he would
 take no part in the matter, Rostóv agreed to be Dólokhov’s second, and
 after dinner he discussed the arrangements for the duel with Nesvítski,
 Bezúkhov’s second. Pierre went home, but Rostóv with Dólokhov and Denísov
 stayed on at the club till late, listening to the gypsies and other
 singers.
 


 
 “Well then, till tomorrow at Sokólniki,” said Dólokhov, as he took leave
 of Rostóv in the club porch.
 


 
 “And do you feel quite calm?” Rostóv asked.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Kostromá 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. À demain, mon
 cher .” *
 


 
 * Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.



 
 Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvítski drove to the
 Sokólniki forest and found Dólokhov, Denísov, and Rostóv 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 Dólokhov, 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, Nesvítski 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 Nesvítski (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 wish to confess.
 


 
 “Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot,” said he.
 


 
 “No apologies, none whatever,” said Dólokhov to Denísov (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 Nesvítski’s and
 Dólokhov’s sabers, which were stuck into the 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 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “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.
 


 
 Denísov 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. Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov’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. Rostóv ran
 toward him and said something.
 


 
 “No-o-o!” muttered Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word.
 


 
 “Please,” he uttered with an effort.
 


 
 Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dólokhov and was
 about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dólokhov cried:
 


 
 “To your barrier!” and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by his
 saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dólokhov 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 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 Nesvítski.
 


 
 “Cover yourself!” even Denísov 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 Dólokhov
 and looked sorrowfully at him. Denísov, Rostóv, and Nesvítski closed their
 eyes. At the same instant they heard a report and Dólokhov’s angry cry.
 


 
 “Missed!” shouted Dólokhov, 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.
 


 
 Nesvítski stopped him and took him home.
 


 
 Rostóv and Denísov drove away with the wounded Dólokhov.
 


 
 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 Rostóv, who was sitting
 beside him, by the hand. Rostóv was struck by the totally altered and
 unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression on Dólokhov’s face.
 


 
 “Well? How do you feel?” he asked.
 


 
 “Bad! But it’s not that, my friend—” said Dólokhov 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother,” and Dólokhov
 pressed Rostóv’s hand and burst into tears.
 


 
 When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostóv that he was
 living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not survive it.
 He implored Rostóv to go on and prepare her.
 


 
 Rostóv went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise
 learned that Dólokhov the brawler, Dólokhov 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 Bezúkhov 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 Dólokhov’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 Vasíli’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
 Dólokhov 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,
 Molière’s words: “Mais que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?” *
 occurred to him, and he began to laugh at himself.
 


 
 * “But what the devil was he doing in that galley?”
 


 
 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...” Hélène went on. “You believe
 everything you’re told. You were told...” Hélène laughed, “that Dólokhov
 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 êtes 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.” Hélène 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 Hélène.
 “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.
 


 
 Hélène’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 Hélène 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 Kutúzov
 informing the prince of the fate that had befallen his son.
 


 
 “Your son,” wrote Kutúzov, “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! Kutúzov
 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 Fóka the cook
 calls it—has disagreed with me.”
 


 
 * Frühstück: 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 Bogdánovna be sent for?” said one of the
 maids who was present. (Mary Bogdánovna 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 Bogdánovna.
 


 
 “ 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 Bogdánovna, 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 Bogdánovna, 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 Bogdánovna. “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,
 Praskóvya Sávishna, 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, Másha,” 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 Tíkhon to ask
 Mary Bogdánovna 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 Bogdánovna, giving the
 messenger a significant look.
 


 
 Tíkhon went and told the prince.
 


 
 “Very good!” said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tíkhon 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 Sávishna, 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
 Kishenëv 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 Demyán the house steward, who was
 downstairs.
 


 
 Then the voice said something more, Demyán 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, Másha 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 Bogdánovna 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 he 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 Bogdánovna’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 Andréevich
 was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her chin, 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
 
 
 Rostóv’s share in Dólokhov’s duel with Bezúkhov 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. Dólokhov recovered,
 and Rostóv became very friendly with him during his convalescence.
 Dólokhov lay ill at his mother’s who loved him passionately and tenderly,
 and old Mary Ivánovna, who had grown fond of Rostóv for his friendship to
 her Fédya, 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
 Bezúkhov? And Fédya, 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! Bezúkhov got
 off scotfree, while Fédya 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 Fédya not fighting because
 he owed him money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you understand
 Fédya, 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!”
 


 
 Dólokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostóv 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 Rostóv, who was under his new
 friend’s influence.
 


 
 In the autumn the Rostóvs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter Denísov
 also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the winter of 1806,
 which Nicholas Rostóv 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. Véra was a handsome girl of twenty; Sónya a girl of
 sixteen with all the charm of an opening flower; Natásha, half grown up
 and half child, was now childishly amusing, now girlishly enchanting.
 


 
 At that time in the Rostóvs’ 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 Rostóvs’ household a readiness
 to fall in love and an expectation of happiness.
 


 
 Among the young men introduced by Rostóv one of the first was Dólokhov,
 whom everyone in the house liked except Natásha. She almost quarreled with
 her brother about him. She insisted that he was a bad man, and that in the
 duel with Bezúkhov, Pierre was right and Dólokhov wrong, and further that
 he was disagreeable and unnatural.
 


 
 “There’s nothing for me to understand,” she cried out with resolute
 self-will, “he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denísov
 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 Denísov...”
 


 
 “Oh, Denísov is quite different,” replied Nicholas, implying that even
 Denísov was nothing compared to Dólokhov—“you must understand what a
 soul there is in Dólokhov, 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 Sónya?”
 


 
 “What nonsense...”
 


 
 “I’m certain of it; you’ll see.”
 


 
 Natásha’s prediction proved true. Dólokhov, 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 Sónya. And Sónya, though she would never have dared to say
 so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time Dólokhov appeared.
 


 
 Dólokhov often dined at the Rostóvs’, never missed a performance at which
 they were present, and went to Iogel’s balls for young people which the
 Rostóvs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sónya 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 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Rostóv noticed something new in Dólokhov’s relations with Sónya, but he
 did not explain to himself what these new relations were. “They’re always
 in love with someone,” he thought of Sónya and Natásha. But he was not as
 much at ease with Sónya and Dólokhov 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 Rostóv 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 Denísov’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 Denísov
 were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany. About twenty people
 were present, including Dólokhov and Denísov.
 


 
 Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous
 atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostóvs’ 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. Sónya, Dólokhov, and the old
 countess were especially disturbed, and to a lesser degree Natásha.
 Nicholas understood that something must have happened between Sónya and
 Dólokhov 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 during the holidays.
 


 
 “Nicholas, will you come to Iogel’s? Please do!” said Natásha. “He asked
 you, and Vasíli Dmítrich * is also going.”
 


 
 * Denísov.



 
 “Where would I not go at the countess’ command!” said Denísov, who at the
 Rostóvs’ had jocularly assumed the role of Natásha’s knight. “I’m even
 weady to dance the pas de châle .”
 


 
 “If I have time,” answered Nicholas. “But I promised the Arkhárovs; they
 have a party.”
 


 
 “And you?” he asked Dólokhov, but as soon as he had asked the question he
 noticed that it should not have been put.
 


 
 “Perhaps,” coldly and angrily replied Dólokhov, glancing at Sónya, 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 Dólokhov left immediately after dinner.
 He called Natásha and asked her what was the matter.
 


 
 “And I was looking for you,” said Natásha running out to him. “I told you,
 but you would not believe it,” she said triumphantly. “He has proposed to
 Sónya!”
 


 
 Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sónya of late, something
 seemed to give way within him at this news. Dólokhov 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 Sónya.... 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 Natásha began again.
 


 
 “And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!” adding, after a pause, “she
 told him she loved another.”
 


 
 “Yes, my Sónya 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 Natásha. “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 you don’t know that at all!” said Nicholas. “But I must talk to her.
 What a darling Sónya is!” he added with a smile.
 


 
 “Ah, she is indeed a darling! I’ll send her to you.”
 


 
 And Natásha kissed her brother and ran away.
 


 
 A minute later Sónya 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...”
 


 
 Sónya interrupted him.
 


 
 “I have already refused,” she said hurriedly.
 


 
 “If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I...”
 


 
 Sónya 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 Sónya, 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 Dólokhov’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 Gorchakóv 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 Natásha, who was exceptionally
 graceful, was first, even danced the pas de châle , but at this last ball
 only the écossaise , the anglaise , and the mazurka, which was just coming
 into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a ballroom in Bezúkhov’s house,
 and the ball, as everyone said, was a great success. There were many
 pretty girls and the Rostóv girls were among the prettiest. They were both
 particularly happy and gay. That evening, proud of Dólokhov’s proposal,
 her refusal, and her explanation with Nicholas, Sónya twirled about before
 she left home so that the maid could hardly get her hair plaited, and she
 was transparently radiant with impulsive joy.
 


 
 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Sónya.
 


 
 Nicholas and Denísov were walking up and down, looking with kindly
 patronage at the dancers.
 


 
 “How sweet she is—she will be a weal beauty!” said Denísov.
 


 
 “Who?”
 


 
 “Countess Natásha,” answered Denísov.
 


 
 “And how she dances! What gwace!” he said again after a pause.
 


 
 “Who are you talking about?”
 


 
 “About your sister,” ejaculated Denísov testily.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Denísov who was also a
 former pupil of his.
 


 
 “No, my dear fellow, I’ll be a wallflower,” said Denísov. “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 Sónya to dance. Denísov 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha, who, though
 shy, went on carefully executing her steps. Denísov 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 Rostóv
 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 Denísov had a reputation even in Poland for the masterly way
 in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to Natásha:
 


 
 “Go and choose Denísov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!” he said.
 


 
 When it came to Natásha’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 Denísov sat. She saw that everybody was looking at her and
 waiting. Nicholas saw that Denísov was refusing though he smiled
 delightedly. He ran up to them.
 


 
 “Please, Vasíli Dmítrich,” Natásha was saying, “do come!”
 


 
 “Oh no, let me off, Countess,” Denísov replied.
 


 
 “Now then, Váska,” said Nicholas.
 


 
 “They coax me as if I were Váska the cat!” said Denísov jokingly.
 


 
 “I’ll sing for you a whole evening,” said Natásha.
 


 
 “Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!” said Denísov, 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 Denísov’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. Natásha 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, Natásha 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 Denísov’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. Denísov, flushed after the mazurka and mopping himself with his
 handkerchief, sat down by Natásha and did not leave her for the rest of
 the evening.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII
 
 
 For two days after that Rostóv did not see Dólokhov at his own or at
 Dólokhov’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 Rostóv went to the English Hotel straight from the
 theater, where he had been with his family and Denísov. He was at once
 shown to the best room, which Dólokhov had taken for that evening. Some
 twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dólokhov sat between two
 candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper money, and he was
 keeping the bank. Rostóv had not seen him since his proposal and Sónya’s
 refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought of how they would meet.
 


 
 Dólokhov’s clear, cold glance met Rostóv 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 Ilyúshka will come with his chorus.”
 


 
 “I called once or twice at your house,” said Rostóv, reddening.
 


 
 Dólokhov made no reply.
 


 
 “You may punt,” he said.
 


 
 Rostóv recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once had with
 Dólokhov. “None but fools trust to luck in play,” Dólokhov had then said.
 


 
 “Or are you afraid to play with me?” Dólokhov now asked as if guessing
 Rostóv’s thought.
 


 
 Beneath his smile Rostóv 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.
 


 
 Rostóv felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke with
 which to reply to Dólokhov’s words. But before he had thought of anything,
 Dólokhov, 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?” Rostóv asked himself.
 


 
 “Well, you’d better not play,” Dólokhov added, and springing a new pack of
 cards said: “Bank, gentlemen!”
 


 
 Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostóv sat down by his side
 and at first did not play. Dólokhov 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.”
 


 
 Rostóv staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and again
 lost. Dólokhov “killed,” that is, beat, ten cards of Rostóv’s running.
 


 
 “Gentlemen,” said Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov. “Don’t stint
 yourself, we’ll settle afterwards,” he added, turning to Rostóv.
 


 
 The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.
 


 
 All Rostóv’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 Dólokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking at
 Rostóv, “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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Dólokhov’s words, and with a sinking heart, waiting for a
 seven to turn up, gazed at Dólokhov’s hands which held the pack. Much
 depended on Rostóv’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 Dólokhov’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 Denísov, Natásha, and Sónya, and will certainly never touch a
 card again.” At that moment his home life, jokes with Pétya, talks with
 Sónya, duets with Natásha, piquet with his father, and even his
 comfortable bed in the house on the Povarskáya 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
 Dólokhov’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 Dólokhov, 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “Oh, those Moscow gossips!” said Dólokhov, and he took up the cards with a
 smile.
 


 
 “Aah!” Rostóv 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 Dólokhov with a side glance at Rostóv
 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 Rostóv. 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. Dólokhov was no longer listening to stories or telling
 them, but followed every movement of Rostóv’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 Sónya’s joint ages. Rostóv, 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?” Rostóv pondered.
 Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov 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.
 Rostóv 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 Dólokhov,
 slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside and began rapidly adding up
 the total of Rostóv’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 Dólokhov, 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. Rostóv 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.”
 


 
 Dólokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostóv 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 Dólokhov, and stretching
 himself he rose from the table. “One does get tired sitting so long,” he
 added.
 


 
 “Yes, I’m tired too,” said Rostóv.
 


 
 Dólokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for him to
 jest.
 


 
 “When am I to receive the money, Count?”
 


 
 Rostóv, flushing, drew Dólokhov into the next room.
 


 
 “I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?” he said.
 


 
 “I say, Rostóv,” said Dólokhov 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
 Rostóv. 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 Dólokhov 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...” Dólokhov 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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv household that winter and, now after
 Dólokhov’s proposal and Iogel’s ball, seemed to have grown thicker round
 Sónya and Natásha as the air does before a thunderstorm. Sónya and
 Natásha, 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. Véra was playing chess with Shinshín 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. Denísov, 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:
 


 
 Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre

 What magic power is this recalls me still?

 What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,

 What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?



 
 He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with his sparkling black-agate
 eyes at the frightened and happy Natásha.
 


 
 “Splendid! Excellent!” exclaimed Natásha. “Another verse,” she said,
 without noticing Nicholas.
 


 
 “Everything’s still the same with them,” thought Nicholas, glancing into
 the drawing room, where he saw Véra and his mother with the old lady.
 


 
 “Ah, and here’s Nicholas!” cried Natásha, running up to him.
 


 
 “Is Papa at home?” he asked.
 


 
 “I am so glad you’ve come!” said Natásha, without answering him. “We are
 enjoying ourselves! Vasíli Dmítrich is staying a day longer for my sake!
 Did you know?”
 


 
 “No, Papa is not back yet,” said Sónya.
 


 
 “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 Natásha
 to sing.
 


 
 “All wight! All wight!” shouted Denísov. “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.
 


 
 Sónya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to Denísov’s
 favorite barcarolle. Natásha was preparing to sing. Denísov 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.
 


 
 Sónya 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 Denísov and the girls
 and avoiding their eyes.
 


 
 “Nikólenka, what is the matter?” Sónya’s eyes fixed on him seemed to ask.
 She noticed at once that something had happened to him.
 


 
 Nicholas turned away from her. Natásha 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, Sónya!” 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, Natásha, 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
 Denísov followed her.
 


 
 “And what is she so pleased about?” thought Nicholas, looking at his
 sister. “Why isn’t she dull and ashamed?”
 


 
 Natásha 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 and 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.
 


 
 Natásha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously,
 mainly because Denísov 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 Dólokhov, and
 anger, and honor—it’s all nonsense... but this is real.... Now then,
 Natásha, 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 Rostóv’s soul! And this something was apart from everything else in the
 world and above everything in the world. “What were losses, and Dólokhov,
 and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be
 happy....”
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI
 
 
 It was long since Rostóv had felt such enjoyment from music as he did that
 day. But no sooner had Natásha 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 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. Natásha 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. Denísov had proposed. To whom? To
 this chit of a girl, Natásha, who not so long ago was playing with dolls
 and who was still having lessons.
 


 
 “Don’t, Natásha! What nonsense!” she said, hoping it was a joke.
 


 
 “Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact,” said Natásha indignantly.
 “I come to ask you what to do, and you call it ‘nonsense!’”
 


 
 The countess shrugged her shoulders.
 


 
 “If it is true that Monsieur Denísov has made you a proposal, tell him he
 is a fool, that’s all!”
 


 
 “No, he’s not a fool!” replied Natásha 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 Natásha, 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
 Natásha as grown up.
 


 
 “No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you’ll listen at the
 door,” and Natásha ran across the drawing room to the dancing hall, where
 Denísov 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.”
 


 
 “Vasíli Dmítrich, 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.”
 


 
 Denísov 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.
 


 
 “Vasíli Dmítrich, I thank you for the honor,” she said, with an
 embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denísov—“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 Denísov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He tried
 to say more, but faltered.
 


 
 Natásha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She began to
 sob aloud.
 


 
 “Countess, I have done w’ong,” Denísov 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 Natásha.
 


 





 
 Next day Rostóv saw Denísov off. He did not wish to stay another day in
 Moscow. All Denísov’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 Denísov’s departure, Rostóv 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.
 


 
 Sónya 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
 Dólokhov 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
 Torzhók 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 Torzhók
 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 Sokólniki 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 Dólokhov 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 Torzhók 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 Bezúkhov. 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 Bezúkhov, 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 any 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 Bezúkhov, 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 Alexéevich Bazdéev, as Pierre saw from the
 postmaster’s book. Bazdéev had been one of the best-known Freemasons and
 Martinists, even in Novíkov’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 à 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 Alexéevich 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 Dólokhov’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 I 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 shoulders 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 Alexéevich. 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 a
 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,
 Smolyanínov, 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 Smolyanínov, 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 blindfolded) questioned him as to who
 he was, when and where he was born, and so on. Then he was again led
 somewhere still blindfolded, 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 abbé whom Pierre had met at Anna Pávlovna’s two years before.
 There were also present a very distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had
 formerly been tutor at the Kurágins’. 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 Vasíli suddenly entered the room.
 


 
 “My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you
 quarreled with Hélène, mon cher? You are under a delusion,” said Prince
 Vasíli, as he entered. “I know all about it, and I can tell you positively
 that Hélène is as innocent before you as Christ was before the Jews.”
 


 
 Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasíli 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
 who 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 Vasíli 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 Hélène.”
 


 
 Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli’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 Vasíli playfully, “say ‘yes,’ and I’ll write
 to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf.”
 


 
 But before Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli’s face.
 


 
 “What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?”
 


 
 “Go!” the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasíli 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 Dólokhov 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 Hélène 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 Hélène
 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 Vasíli 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 Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna’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 Auerstädt 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
 Pávlovna gave one of her soirees. The “cream of really good society”
 consisted of the fascinating Hélène, 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 mérite ), a newly
 appointed maid of honor and her mother, and several other less noteworthy
 persons.
 


 
 The novelty Anna Pávlovna was setting before her guests that evening was
 Borís Drubetskóy, 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
 of 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 Borís, 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 Pávlovna, was about our diplomatic relations with Austria and the
 hope of an alliance with her.
 


 
 Borís, 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 Pávlovna 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.
 


 
 “Prince Hippolyte Kurágin—charming young fellow; M. Kronq,—chargé
 d’affaires from Copenhagen—a profound intellect,” and simply,
 “Mr. Shítov—a man of great merit”—this of the man
 usually so described.
 


 
 Thanks to Anna Mikháylovna’s efforts, his own tastes, and the
 peculiarities of his reserved nature, Borís 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 Olmütz 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 Rostóvs’ house and
 of his childish love for Natásha was unpleasant to him and he had not once
 been to see the Rostóvs since the day of his departure for the army. To be
 in Anna Pávlovna’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 Hélène 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 chargé 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 Pávlovna, “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 alliée sincère.” *
 


 
 * “Europe will never be our sincere ally.”
 


 
 After that Anna Pávlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the King of
 Prussia, in order to draw Borís into the conversation.
 


 
 Borís listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his turn, but
 managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his neighbor, the beautiful
 Hélène, whose eyes several times met those of the handsome young
 aide-de-camp with a smile.
 


 
 Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pávlovna very naturally asked
 Borís to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state he found
 the Prussian army. Borís, 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 Pávlovna felt that the novelty she had served up was received with
 pleasure by all her visitors. The greatest attention of all to Borís’
 narrative was shown by Hélène. 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.”
 


 
 Borís promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a conversation
 with her, when Anna Pávlovna called him away on the pretext that her aunt
 wished to hear him.
 


 
 “You know her husband, of course?” said Anna Pávlovna, closing her eyes
 and indicating Hélène 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 Borís and Anna Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna 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 all turned toward him, excused himself and said no more.
 


 
 Anna Pávlovna 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! ”
 


 
 Borís 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 Pávlovna, 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, Hélène who had spoken very little all the
 evening again turned to Borís, 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 Pávlovna, and Anna Pávlovna, with the same sad smile with which she
 spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Hélène’s wish.
 


 
 It seemed as if from some words Borís had spoken that evening about the
 Prussian army, Hélène 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 Hélène’s splendid salon, Borís
 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, Borís 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 Bolkónski, 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 cruel 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 Sávishna 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, Boguchárovo, 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 Boguchárovo, 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, Pétrusha 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.
 


 
 “Pétrusha 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 Ivánich 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 Ivánich!” 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 Kórchevo—a
 certain Khandrikóv—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 Pétenka—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 Kórchevo 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 Bilíbin. He folded it up without
 reading it and reread his father’s letter, ending with the words: “Gallop
 off to Kórchevo 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 Bilíbin’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
 
 
 Bilíbin 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. Bilíbin 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 Bilíbin, “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 Prozoróvski and Kámenski the latter
 was preferred. The general comes to us, Suvórov-like, in a kibítka , 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 Pultúsk, routed: here it is exposed,
 and without fuel or forage, so something must be done, and, as you
 yourself reported to Count Buxhöwden 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 Buxhöwden, 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 Sedmorétzki, 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.
 Buxhöwden 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 Pultúsk, 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 Pultúsk. 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 Buxhöwden. 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
 Buxhöwden 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 Buxhöwden. General Buxhöwden 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. Buxhöwden pursues us—we scuttle. He
 hardly crosses the river to our side before we recross to the other. At
 last our enemy, Buxhöwden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are
 angry, and the result is a challenge on Buxhöwden’s part and an epileptic
 fit on Bennigsen’s. But at the critical moment the courier who carried the
 news of our victory at Pultúsk to Petersburg returns bringing our
 appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhöwden, 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 Bilíbin),
 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 Bezúkhov’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 70,000 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 Kostromá, 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 naïve 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 Bolkónski, whom he had not seen for two years.
 


 
 Boguchárovo 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 façade 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. Antón, 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 Antón ran
 ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.
 


 
 “Well, what is it?” came a sharp, unpleasant voice.
 


 
 “A visitor,” answered Antón.
 


 
 “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 naïve,
 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 Smolénsk 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 Yúkhnovna 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 a smile 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.
 


 
 “Charmée de vous voir. Je suis très 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 Ivánushka 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! ” *(2) Princess Mary repeated.
 


 
 * “You must know that this is a woman.”
 


 
 * (2) “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’être reconnaissante de ce que j’explique à Pierre votre intimité 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
 Ivánushka’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.
 Ivánushka, 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 Kolyázin, master,
 where a great and wonderful blessing has been revealed.”
 


 
 “And was Ivánushka with you?”
 


 
 “I go by myself, benefactor,” said Ivánushka, trying to speak in a bass
 voice. “I only came across Pelagéya in Yúkhnovo....”
 


 
 Pelagéya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell what she
 had seen.
 


 
 “In Kolyázin, 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, Pelagéya.”
 


 
 “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 Kolyázin 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, naïvely, who had
 listened attentively to the pilgrim.
 


 
 “Oh, master, what are you saying?” exclaimed the horrified Pelagéya,
 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.
 


 
 Pelagéya 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, Pelagéya, 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.”
 


 
 Pelagéya 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 Rostóv, 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 Ivánovich 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, Rostóv felt, for the first time, how close
 was the bond that united him to Denísov and the whole regiment.
 


 
 On approaching it, Rostóv 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 Deméntyev and saw the picket ropes
 of the roan horses, when Lavrúshka gleefully shouted to his master, “The
 count has come!” and Denísov, 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, Rostóv experienced the same feeling as
 when 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 of 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 Sónya 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 Dólokhov. Here, in the
 regiment, all was clear and simple. The whole world was divided into two
 unequal parts: one, our Pávlograd 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 Pávlograd 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, Rostóv 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 Dólokhov (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 Pultúsk and
 Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It was awaiting the
 Emperor’s arrival and the beginning of a new campaign.
 


 
 The Pávlograd 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 Pultúsk nor at Preussisch-Eylau and, when it joined
 the army in the field in the second half of the campaign, was attached to
 Plátov’s division.
 


 
 Plátov’s division was acting independently of the main army. Several times
 parts of the Pávlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the enemy, had
 taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal Oudinot’s carriages.
 In April the Pávlograds 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 Pávlograd 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 “Máshka’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
 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 Denísov’s squadron fed chiefly on “Máshka’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 Potëmkin’s and Suvórov’s campaigns, or to legends of Alësha
 the Sly, or the priest’s laborer Mikólka.
 


 
 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.
 


 
 Rostóv lived, as before, with Denísov, and since their furlough they had
 become more friendly than ever. Denísov never spoke of Rostóv’s family,
 but by the tender friendship his commander showed him, Rostóv felt that
 the elder hussar’s luckless love for Natásha played a part in
 strengthening their friendship. Denísov evidently tried to expose Rostóv
 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, Rostóv
 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. Rostóv 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
 Rostóv, 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. Rostóv took the joke as an insult, flared up, and said such
 unpleasant things to the officer that it was all Denísov could do to
 prevent a duel. When the officer had gone away, Denísov, who did not
 himself know what Rostóv’s relations with the Polish girl might be, began
 to upbraid him for his quickness of temper, and Rostóv 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....”
 


 
 Denísov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room
 without looking at Rostóv, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.
 


 
 “Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostóvs are!” he muttered, and Rostóv noticed
 tears in his eyes.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVI
 
 
 In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor’s arrival, but
 Rostóv had no chance of being present at the review he held at
 Bartenstein, as the Pávlograds were at the outposts far beyond that place.
 


 
 They were bivouacking. Denísov and Rostóv 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. Denísov, 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 Denísov called that part of the hut—and it
 was then so warm that the officers, of whom there were always some with
 Denísov and Rostóv, sat in their shirt sleeves.
 


 
 In April, Rostóv 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 Denísov, who had gone out
 somewhere and with whom he wanted a talk.
 


 
 Suddenly he heard Denísov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the hut,
 evidently much excited. Rostóv moved to the window to see whom he was
 speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topchéenko.
 


 
 “I ordered you not to let them eat that Máshka woot stuff!” Denísov was
 shouting. “And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchúk bwought some fwom the
 fields.”
 


 
 “I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they don’t obey,”
 answered the quartermaster.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Lavrúshka—that sly, bold orderly of Denísov’s—was
 talking, as well as the quartermaster. Lavrúshka was saying something
 about loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when he had gone out
 for provisions.
 


 
 Then Denísov’s voice was heard shouting farther and farther away. “Saddle!
 Second platoon!”
 


 
 “Where are they off to now?” thought Rostóv.
 


 
 Five minutes later, Denísov 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
 Rostóv’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 Denísov going
 out, and Rostóv heard the hoofs of several horses splashing through the
 mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denísov had gone. Having
 got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not leave the hut till
 toward evening. Denísov had not yet returned. The weather had cleared up,
 and near the next hut two officers and a cadet were playing sváyka ,
 laughing as they threw their missiles which buried themselves in the soft
 mud. Rostóv 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, Denísov has been worrying,” said Rostóv, “and here are the
 provisions.”
 


 
 “So they are!” said the officers. “Won’t the soldiers be glad!”
 


 
 A little behind the hussars came Denísov, accompanied by two infantry
 officers with whom he was talking.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Denísov.
 


 
 “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 Denísov.
 


 
 “It is robbery! You’ll answer for it, sir!” said the infantry officer,
 raising his voice.
 


 
 “Now, what are you pestewing me for?” cried Denísov, 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 Denísov
 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 Denísov after
 him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a mounted
 infantryman) and riding up to Rostóv, 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 Lavrúshka that the transport was unescorted,
 Denísov 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 Denísov, 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, Denísov 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 Rostóv had never yet seen him in. Denísov could
 not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostóv asked what was the matter, he
 only uttered some incoherent oaths and threats in a hoarse, feeble voice.
 


 
 Alarmed at Denísov’s condition, Rostóv 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 Denísov. 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 Denísov. “‘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 Denísov, 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. “Telyánin! ‘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 a...!’ and I sta’ted fwashing him... Well, I’ve had a bit
 of fun I can tell you!” cried Denísov, gleeful and yet angry, his white
 teeth 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 Rostóv. “You’ve set
 your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again.”
 


 
 Denísov 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 Rostóv’s and Denísov’s
 dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully showed them a paper
 addressed to Major Denísov 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 Denísov, 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 Rostóv’s renewed questions, Denísov 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.
 


 
 Denísov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostóv 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, Denísov 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
 Plátov reconnoitered with two Cossack regiments and two squadrons of
 hussars. Denísov, 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 Denísov 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 Pávlograds did
 not take part, and after that an armistice was proclaimed. Rostóv, 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 Denísov 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 Rostóv 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 Makár
 Alexéevich 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
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “Typhus, sir. It’s death to go in. Only we two, Makéev 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.”
 


 
 Rostóv explained that he wanted to see Major Denísov 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 Denísov,” Rostóv said again. “He was wounded at Molliten.”
 


 
 “Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makéev?” 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.
 


 
 Rostóv described Denísov’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, Makéev?”
 


 
 “Makár Alexéevich has the list,” answered the assistant. “But if you’ll
 step into the officers’ wards you’ll see for yourself,” he added, turning
 to Rostóv.
 


 
 “Ah, you’d better not go, sir,” said the doctor, “or you may have to stay
 here yourself.”
 


 
 But Rostóv 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.
 


 
 Rostóv and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell was so
 strong there that Rostóv 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, Rostóv 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,
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv with the
 same expression of hope, of relief, reproach, and envy of another’s
 health. Rostóv 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. Rostóv listened and made out
 the word. It was “drink, drink, a drink!” Rostóv 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “Good day, your honor!” he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostóv and
 evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.
 


 
 “Get him to his place and give him some water,” said Rostóv, 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 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv. The man’s neighbor on one
 side whispered something to him, pointing at Rostóv, 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.
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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. Rostóv looked at him, trying
 to remember where he had seen him before.
 


 
 “See where we’ve met again!” said the little man. “Túshin, Túshin, don’t
 you remember, who gave you a lift at Schön 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 Vasíli Dmítrich Denísov? My neighbor,” he
 added, when he heard who Rostóv wanted. “Here, here,” and Túshin 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 Rostóv, 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.
 


 
 Denísov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket, though it
 was nearly noon.
 


 
 “Ah, Wostóv? How are you, how are you?” he called out, still in the same
 voice as in the regiment, but Rostóv noticed sadly that under this
 habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling showed
 itself in the expression of Denísov’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 Rostóv.
 What struck him was that Denísov 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 Rostóv spoke of these matters did not
 listen.
 


 
 Rostóv even noticed that Denísov 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 Rostóv’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 Rostóv’s attention to the stinging rejoinders he made to
 his enemies. His hospital companions, who had gathered round Rostóv—a
 fresh arrival from the world outside—gradually began to disperse as
 soon as Denísov began reading his answer. Rostóv 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 Túshin still listened, shaking his head disapprovingly.
 In the middle of the reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denísov.
 


 
 “But what I say is,” he said, turning to Rostóv, “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 Denísov, 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 Túshin, “but that’s not the point,
 Vasíli Dmítrich,” and he also turned to Rostóv. “One has to submit, and
 Vasíli Dmítrich doesn’t want to. You know the auditor told you it was a
 bad business.”
 


 
 “Well, let it be bad,” said Denísov.
 


 
 “The auditor wrote out a petition for you,” continued Túshin, “and you
 ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he”
 (indicating Rostóv) “has connections on the staff. You won’t find a better
 opportunity.”
 


 
 “Haven’t I said I’m not going to gwovel?” Denísov interrupted him, went on
 reading his paper.
 


 
 Rostóv had not the courage to persuade Denísov, though he instinctively
 felt that the way advised by Túshin and the other officers was the safest,
 and though he would have been glad to be of service to Denísov. He knew
 his stubborn will and straightforward hasty temper.
 


 
 When the reading of Denísov’s virulent reply, which took more than an
 hour, was over, Rostóv said nothing, and he spent the rest of the day in a
 most dejected state of mind amid Denísov’s hospital comrades, who had
 gathered round him, telling them what he knew and listening to their
 stories. Denísov was moodily silent all the evening.
 


 
 Late in the evening, when Rostóv was about to leave, he asked Denísov
 whether he had no commission for him.
 


 
 “Yes, wait a bit,” said Denísov, 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 Rostóv a large envelope. In it was the petition
 to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which Denísov, 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
 Denísov’s affairs, Rostóv rode to Tilsit with the letter to the Emperor.
 


 
 On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in
 Tilsit. Borís Drubetskóy 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.
 


 
 Borís 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.
 


 
 Borís 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 Borís 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, Borís 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.
 


 
 Borís lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilínski. Zhilínski,
 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 Borís.
 


 
 On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilínski 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, Rostóv, profiting by the darkness to avoid being recognized in
 civilian dress, came to Tilsit and went to the lodging occupied by Borís
 and Zhilínski.
 


 
 Rostóv, 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 Borís. In the army, Bonaparte and the French were
 still regarded with mingled feelings of anger, contempt, and fear. Only
 recently, talking with one of Plátov’s Cossack officers, Rostóv 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, Rostóv had maintained with heat that peace was
 impossible between a legitimate sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte.
 Rostóv was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of French
 officers in Borís’ 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 Drubetskóy lived there. Borís, 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “Ah, it’s you? Very glad, very glad to see you,” he said, however, coming
 toward him with a smile. But Rostóv 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 à vous ,” * he said, answering someone who called him.
 


 
 * “In a minute I shall be at your disposal.”
 


 
 “I see I’m intruding,” Rostóv repeated.
 


 
 The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Borís’ face: having
 evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly took both
 Rostóv’s hands and led him into the next room. His eyes, looking serenely
 and steadily at Rostóv, seemed to be veiled by something, as if screened
 by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it seemed to Rostóv.
 


 
 “Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!” said Borís, 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 Zhilínski— le Comte N. N.— le Capitaine S.
 S.,” said he, naming his guests. Rostóv looked frowningly at the Frenchmen,
 bowed reluctantly, and remained silent.
 


 
 Zhilínski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very willingly
 into his circle and did not speak to Rostóv. Borís 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
 Rostóv, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the Frenchmen, with the
 politeness characteristic of his countrymen, addressed the obstinately
 taciturn Rostóv, saying that the latter had probably come to Tilsit to see
 the Emperor.
 


 
 “No, I came on business,” replied Rostóv, briefly.
 


 
 Rostóv had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look of
 dissatisfaction on Borís’ 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 Borís.
 


 
 “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 Borís. “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 Borís slept. Rostóv, without sitting
 down, began at once, irritably (as if Borís were to blame in some way)
 telling him about Denísov’s affair, asking him whether, through his
 general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor on Denísov’s behalf
 and get Denísov’s petition handed in. When he and Borís were alone, Rostóv
 felt for the first time that he could not look Borís in the face without a
 sense of awkwardness. Borís, with one leg crossed over the other and
 stroking his left hand with the slender fingers of his right, listened to
 Rostóv as a general listens to the report of a subordinate, now looking
 aside and now gazing straight into Rostóv’s eyes with the same veiled
 look. Each time this happened Rostóv 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!” Rostóv almost
 shouted, not looking Borís in the face.
 


 
 Borís smiled.
 


 
 “On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought...”
 


 
 At that moment Zhilínski’s voice was heard calling Borís.
 


 
 “Well then, go, go, go...” said Rostóv, 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
 
 
 Rostóv had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on
 Denísov’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
 Borís, 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 Preobrazhénsk battalion. The Emperors were to be present at that
 banquet.
 


 
 Rostóv felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Borís that, when the
 latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and early next
 morning went away, avoiding Borís. 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 huge monograms A and N . In the windows of the
 houses also flags and bunting were displayed.
 


 
 “Borís 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 Denísov and certainly not without
 getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is here!” thought
 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv. “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 Drubetskóy who drives me to it!” And suddenly with a
 determination he himself did not expect, Rostóv 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,’” Rostóv 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 on duty” (he was shown the door
 leading downstairs), “only it won’t be accepted.”
 


 
 On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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
 Rostóv’s attention. This man was speaking to someone in the adjoining
 room.
 


 
 “A good figure and in her first bloom,” he was saying, but on seeing
 Rostóv, 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...”
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Denísov,” answered Rostóv.
 


 
 “Are you an officer?”
 


 
 “Lieutenant Count Rostóv.”
 


 
 “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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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, Rostóv, 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
 Rostóv was serving.
 


 
 Rostóv, 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 Denísov, whom the
 general knew. Having heard Rostóv to the end, the general shook his head
 gravely.
 


 
 “I’m sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter.”
 


 
 Hardly had Rostóv handed him the letter and finished explaining Denísov’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 Rostóv knew at once was heard on the stairs.
 Forgetting the danger of being recognized, Rostóv 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 Rostóv’s soul in all its old force.
 In the uniform of the Preobrazhénsk regiment—white chamois-leather
 breeches and high boots—and wearing a star Rostóv did not know (it
 was that of the Légion 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 Rostóv’s division, smiled and beckoned to him.
 


 
 All the suite drew back and Rostóv 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
 Rostóv) 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, Rostóv ran
 after him with the crowd.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI
 
 
 The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a battalion of
 the Preobrazhénsk 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 Rostóv 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, Rostóv, 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, Rostóv 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 Preobrazhénsk battalion and came straight up to the
 crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly found itself so close to the
 Emperors that Rostóv, 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 Rostóv, 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 Kozlóvski, 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 Kozlóvski, 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.”
 


 
 Kozlóvski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostóv in his
 scrutiny.
 


 
 “Can it be me?” thought Rostóv.
 


 
 “Lázarev!” the colonel called, with a frown, and Lázarev, the first
 soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.
 


 
 “Where are you off to? Stop here!” voices whispered to Lázarev who did not
 know where to go. Lázarev 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 Rostóv had seen the
 previous evening at Borís’—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 Lázarev (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 Lázarev’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 Lázarev’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. Lázarev 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 Preobrazhénsk battalion,
 breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the tables
 prepared for them.
 


 
 Lázarev 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “What d’you think of the treat? All on silver plate,” one of them was
 saying. “Have you seen Lázarev?”
 


 
 “I have.”
 


 
 “Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhénskis will give them a dinner.”
 


 
 “Yes, but what luck for Lázarev! Twelve hundred francs’ pension for life.”
 


 
 “Here’s a cap, lads!” shouted a Preobrazhénsk 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 ‘Napoléon, 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.”
 


 
 Borís, too, with his friend Zhilínski, came to see the Preobrazhénsk
 banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostóv standing by the corner of a
 house.
 


 
 “Rostóv! 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 Rostóv’s face.
 


 
 “Nothing, nothing,” replied Rostóv.
 


 
 “You’ll call round?”
 


 
 “Yes, I will.”
 


 
 Rostóv stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from 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
 Denísov 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 Lázarev rewarded and Denísov
 punished and unpardoned. He caught himself harboring such strange thoughts
 that he was frightened.
 


 
 The smell of the food the Preobrazhénskis 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, Rostóv 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 aims or his actions!”
 


 
 “But I never said a word about the Emperor!” said the officer, justifying
 himself, and unable to understand Rostóv’s outburst, except on the
 supposition that he was drunk.
 


 
 But Rostóv 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 Boguchárovo 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
 “Boguchárovo 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 survey of 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 Ryazán estates which had been
 inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.
 


 
 Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the calèche 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 Ryazán estate of which he was trustee.
 This Marshal was Count Ilyá Rostóv, 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 Rostóvs’ house at Otrádnoe. He heard merry girlish cries behind some
 trees on the right and saw a group of girls running to cross the path of
 his calèche . 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 Ryazán serfs’ quitrents.
 Of what is she thinking? Why is she so happy?” Prince Andrew asked himself
 with instinctive curiosity.
 


 
 In 1809 Count Ilyá Rostóv was living at Otrádnoe 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 Natásha, 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 Rostóv), 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
 grew some 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.
 


 
 “Sónya! Sónya!” he again heard the first speaker. “Oh, how can you sleep?
 Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up, Sónya!” she
 said almost with tears in her voice. “There never, never was such a lovely
 night before!”
 


 
 Sónya 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 Sónya’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 series 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 Ryazán 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 à 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 Speránski 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 calèche , injured his leg, and remained three
 weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speránski 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,
 Czartorýski, Novosíltsev, Kochubéy, and Strógonov—whom he himself in
 jest had called his Comité de salut public —were taking shape and
 being realized.
 


 
 Now all these men were replaced by Speránski on the civil side, and
 Arakchéev 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 Bolkónski’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
 Arakchéev.
 


 





 
 On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakchéev’s waiting room
 at nine in the morning.
 


 
 He did not know Arakchéev 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 Arakchéev’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 Arakchéev’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 “Síla Andréevich”
 and the words, “ Uncle will give it to us hot,” in reference to Count
 Arakchéev. 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.
 Arakchéev turned his head toward him without looking at him.
 


 
 “What is your petition?” asked Arakchéev.
 


 
 “I am not petitioning, your excellency,” returned Prince Andrew quietly.
 


 
 Arakchéev’s eyes turned toward him.
 


 
 “Sit down,” said he. “Prince Bolkónski?”
 


 
 “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 Arakchéev,
 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 Arakchéev, 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 Arakchéev. “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—Speránski. And this movement of
 reconstruction of which Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speránski 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, in 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 Arakchéev, Prince Andrew spent the
 evening at Count Kochubéy’s. He told the count of his interview with Síla
 Andréevich (Kochubéy spoke of Arakchéev 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 Mikháylovich
 Speránski. He manages everything. I’ll speak to him. He has promised to
 come this evening.”
 


 
 “What has Speránski to do with the army regulations?” asked Prince Andrew.
 


 
 Kochubéy shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkónski’s
 simplicity.
 


 
 “We were talking to him about you a few days ago,” Kochubéy 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 Bolkónski.
 


 
 “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 Kochubéy.
 


 
 “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 Kochubéy, crossing
 his legs and glancing round.
 


 
 “Well, I have Pryánichnikov 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 Kochubéy 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 Speránski.
 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. Speránski’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
 Speránski, Secretary of State, reporter to the Emperor and his companion
 at Erfurt, where he had more than once met and talked with Napoleon.
 


 
 Speránski 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 Speránski’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 Speránski, he knew by reputation—expected to
 discover in him the perfection of human qualities.
 


 
 Speránski told Kochubéy 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
 Kochubéy introduced Prince Andrew, Speránski slowly turned his eyes to
 Bolkónski 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.
 


 
 Kochubéy said a few words about the reception Arakchéev had given
 Bolkónski. Speránski smiled more markedly.
 


 
 “The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend
 Monsieur Magnítski,” 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 Speránski, and the old man who had talked about
 his subordinate Pryánichnikov addressed a question to him.
 


 
 Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every movement
 of Speránski’s: this man, not long since an insignificant divinity
 student, who now, Bolkónski thought, held in his hands—those plump
 white hands—the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the
 extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speránski 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, Speránski
 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, Speránski 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 Bolkónski.
 


 
 “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 re-establishes
 natural justice.”
 


 
 “I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground,” returned
 Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speránski’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 Speránski. He was
 too much absorbed in observing the famous man’s personality.
 


 
 “Grounds of personal ambition maybe,” Speránski put in quietly.
 


 
 “And of state interest to some extent,” said Prince Andrew.
 


 
 “What do you mean?” asked Speránski 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 paraît incontestable.
 Certains droits et privilèges de la noblesse me paraissent être 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 Speránski’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.”
 


 
 Speránski went on to say that honor, l’honneur , 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 Légion 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
 Speránski, 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 Magnítski, 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 à la française , 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 Kochubéy’s, Speránski produced a
 strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when he received him
 tête-à-tête at his own house and talked to him long and confidentially.
 


 
 To Bolkónski 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
 Speránski he had found this ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous
 man. Had Speránski sprung from the same class as himself and possessed the
 same breeding and traditions, Bolkónski would soon have discovered his
 weak, human, unheroic sides; but as it was, Speránski’s strange and
 logical turn of mind inspired him with respect all the more because he did
 not quite understand him. Moreover, Speránski, 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, Speránski 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 Speránski 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 Speránski 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 Speránski’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 Speránski’s opinions entirely. Everything was right and everything was
 as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince Andrew. This was
 Speránski’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 Speránski, 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 Speránski’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
 Speránski’s mind that particularly attracted Prince Andrew.
 


 
 During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkónski felt a passionate
 admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt for Bonaparte.
 The fact that Speránski 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 Bolkónski spent with him, having mentioned the
 Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speránski 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 Speránski’s
 request he took the first part of the Civil Code that was being drawn up
 and, with the aid of the Code Napoléon 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 of 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 Alexéevich 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 Iván Vasílevich 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 Alexéevich 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 Bezúkhov 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 Bezúkhov 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 Vasíli’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
 Alexéevich. 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 Alexéevich 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 Alexéevich, 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 Alexéevich 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
 Alexéevich 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 Hélène 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 Alexéevich’s letters and recalled my conversations
 with him, and deduced from it all that I ought not to refuse a supplicant,
 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
 Alexéevich. 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 Rumyántsev and Caulaincourt. In
 this group Hélène, 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.
 


 
 Hélène 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.” *(2) The distinguished
 Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page letters. Bilíbin saved up his
 epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezúkhova’s presence. To be received
 in the Countess Bezúkhova’s salon was regarded as a diploma of intellect.
 Young men read books before attending Hélène’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 Hélène 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 Hélène
 Bezúkhova’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.”
 


 
 * (2) “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, Borís
 Drubetskóy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was the
 most intimate friend of the Bezúkhov household since Hélène’s return from
 Erfurt. Hélène 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 Borís 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 Borís’ 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
 Alexéevich’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 Urúsov 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 Borís Drubetskóy 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 Dólokhov,
 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 Borís Drubetskóy 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 Alexéevich 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 he 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 Alexéevich’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 Alexéevich 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 Rostóvs’ monetary affairs had not improved during the two years they
 had spent in the country.
 


 
 Though Nicholas Rostóv had kept firmly to his resolution and was still
 serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending comparatively little,
 the way of life at Otrádnoe—Mítenka’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 Véra and was
 accepted.
 


 
 Though in Moscow the Rostóvs 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 Rostóvs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in Moscow,
 and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country neighbors from
 Otrádnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters, Perónskaya a maid
 of honor, Pierre Bezúkhov, 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 Rostóvs’ house in Petersburg were Borís, Pierre
 whom the count had met in the street and dragged home with him, and Berg
 who spent whole days at the Rostóvs’ and paid the eldest daughter,
 Countess Véra, 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 Véra Rostóva 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 Rostóvs’ 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 Rostóva; but
 Berg’s chief characteristic was such a naïve and good natured egotism that
 the Rostóvs 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 Rostóvs’ affairs were seriously embarrassed, as the suitor
 could not but know; and above all, Véra 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 fiancée!... 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 Véra
 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 Véra. 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 Véra. 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 Ryazán 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 Véra’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 Véra 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
 
 
 Natásha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which she
 had counted on her fingers with Borís after they had kissed four years
 ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sónya and her mother, if
 Borís 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
 Borís was a jest or an important, binding promise tormented her.
 


 
 Since Borís left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had not seen the
 Rostóvs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed near
 Otrádnoe, but had never been to see them.
 


 
 Sometimes it occurred to Natásha that he did 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
 Borís was mentioned.
 


 
 Anna Mikháylovna 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 Rostóvs came to Petersburg Borís called on them.
 


 
 He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natásha 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
 Natásha could not be binding either on her or on him. He had a brilliant
 position in society thanks to his intimacy with Countess Bezúkhova, 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 Rostóvs’ drawing
 room Natásha 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.
 


 
 Borís remembered Natásha 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
 Natásha entered, and his face expressed rapturous astonishment. This
 expression on his face pleased Natásha.
 


 
 “Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?” asked the countess.
 


 
 Borís kissed Natásha’s hand and said that he was astonished at the change
 in her.
 


 
 “How handsome you have grown!”
 


 
 “I should think so!” replied Natásha’s laughing eyes.
 


 
 “And is Papa older?” she asked.
 


 
 Natásha sat down and, without joining in Borís’ 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.
 


 
 Borís’ uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were all
 comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natásha 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, Natásha 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 Natásha sat silent, glancing up at him from under her brows.
 This gaze disturbed and confused Borís 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 Borís said to himself that Natásha 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. Borís made up his mind to avoid meeting
 Natásha, but despite that resolution he called again a few days later and
 began calling often and spending whole days at the Rostóvs’. It seemed to
 him that he ought to have an explanation with Natásha 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 Sónya that Natásha was in love with Borís 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
 delightful 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 Hélène and received
 reproachful notes from her every day, and yet he continued to spend whole
 days with the Rostóvs.
 


 
 
 
 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 Natásha, 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?” Natásha, 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. Natásha
 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 Natásha’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 Natásha. “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 Natásha 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha’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...”
 


 
 Natásha put her hand on her mother’s mouth.
 


 
 “About Borís... 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?”
 


 
 “Natásha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say Borís 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. Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “Leave off talking nonsense,” said the countess.
 


 
 “But if I want to...”
 


 
 “Natásha, I am in earnest...”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “I’ll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin...”
 


 
 “I know! Cyril Matvéich... but he is old.”
 


 
 “He was not always old. But this is what I’ll do, Natásha, I’ll have a
 talk with Borís. 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
 Natásha 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.” Natásha 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 Natásha. “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.
 


 
 Natásha continued: “Don’t you really understand? Nicholas would
 understand.... Bezúkhov, 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?” Natásha 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.
 


 
 “Sónya?” 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 Dunyásha the maid to put out the candle, and before
 Dunyásha 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 Borís aside and had a talk with him, after
 which he ceased coming to the Rostóvs’.
 


 
 
 
 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 Rostóvs, who were to
 be present, were still hurrying to get dressed.
 


 
 There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in the
 Rostóv 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.
 


 
 Márya Ignátevna Perónskaya, 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 Rostóvs 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Sónya—should be as well dressed as possible.
 Sónya 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 à
 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. Sónya was finishing dressing and so was the
 countess, but Natásha, 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. Sónya 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, Sónya!” cried Natásha 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!”
 


 
 Sónya sat down and Natásha pinned the ribbon on differently.
 


 
 “Allow me, Miss! I can’t do it like that,” said the maid who was holding
 Natásha’s hair.
 


 
 “Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That’s right, Sónya.”
 


 
 “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 Natásha. “You won’t do it right.”
 


 
 “But it’s already ten.”
 


 
 They had decided to be at the ball by half-past ten, and Natásha had still
 to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.
 


 
 When her hair was done, Natásha, in her short petticoat from under which
 her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother’s dressing jacket, ran up to
 Sónya, 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 Natásha’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
 Sónya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer garment up high on one
 uplifted hand.
 


 
 “Mávra, quicker, darling!”
 


 
 “Give me my thimble, Miss, from there...”
 


 
 “Whenever will you be ready?” asked the count coming to the door. “Here is
 some scent. Perónskaya 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Sónya 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 Natásha, 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 Sónya, in a despairing voice as she looked
 at Natásha, “say what you like, it’s still too long.”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Mávra, crawling on her
 knees after her young lady.
 


 
 “Well, if it’s too long we’ll tack it up... we’ll tack it up in one
 minute,” said the resolute Dunyásha 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 Natásha. “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 Dunyásha.
 


 
 “What a beauty—a very queen!” said the nurse as she came to the
 door. “And Sónya! 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.
 


 
 Perónskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she had gone
 through the same process as the Rostóvs, 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 Rostóvs’ servants had been.
 


 
 She praised the Rostóvs’ 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
 
 
 Natásha 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 Sónya 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha, 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, “Charmé de vous
 voir,” * greeted the Rostóvs and Perónskaya 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 Natásha. 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 Natásha 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. Natásha 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.
 


 
 Perónskaya 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 Bezúkhova,” said
 Perónskaya, indicating Hélène who had just entered. “How lovely! She is
 quite equal to Márya Antónovna. 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 Perónskaya. “And look,
 here come her suitors.”
 


 
 “That is Bezúkhova’s brother, Anatole Kurágin,” 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,
 Drubetskóy, 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 Márya
 Antónovna! 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.
 


 
 Natásha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, “the buffoon,” as
 Perónskaya 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. Natásha at once recognized the
 shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it was Bolkónski, who seemed
 to her to have grown much younger, happier, and better-looking.
 


 
 “There’s someone else we know—Bolkónski, do you see, Mamma?” said
 Natásha, pointing out Prince Andrew. “You remember, he stayed a night with
 us at Otrádnoe.”
 


 
 “Oh, you know him?” said Perónskaya. “I can’t bear him.
 Il fait à présent la pluie et le beau temps. * He’s too proud for
 anything. Takes after his father. And he’s hand in glove with Speránski,
 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 Márya Antónovna Narýshkina; then came ambassadors,
 ministers, and various generals, whom Perónskaya diligently named. More
 than half the ladies already had partners and were taking up, or preparing
 to take up, their positions for the polonaise. Natásha felt that she would
 be left with her mother and Sónya 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
 Perónskaya 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 Natásha’s ears. She wanted
 to cry. Perónskaya had left them. The count was at the other end of the
 room. She and the countess and Sónya 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 Natásha as one looks at a wall.
 Borís 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 Natásha—as if there were
 nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did not
 listen to or look at Véra, 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 Rostóvs
 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 Bezúkhova 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 Hélène’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. Natásha 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 Rostóvs. 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 Speránski 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 protégée, the young Rostóva, here. Ask her,”
 he said.
 


 
 “Where is she?” asked Bolkónski. “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 Natásha’s face caught his eye. He
 recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her début,
 remembered her conversation at the window, and with an expression of
 pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostóva.
 


 
 “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 Perónskaya’s remarks about his rudeness, and approaching Natásha
 he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed his
 invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on Natásha’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 Natásha 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 Hélène’s her shoulders
 looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But Hélène seemed, as it were,
 hardened by a varnish left by the thousands of looks that had scanned her
 person, while Natásha 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 Natásha 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, Borís came up to ask Natásha for a 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 Sónya,
 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 Hélène had great
 success and was honored 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 Otrádnoe avenue, and how she had been unable
 to sleep that moonlight night, and told her how he had involuntarily
 overheard her. Natásha 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 Natásha,
 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, Natásha, 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 Natásha 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 Natásha, 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. Natásha 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. Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Natásha.
 “Especially such a capital fellow as Bezúkhov!” In Natásha’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 Rostóva 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 Bítski, who served on various committees, frequented all
 the societies in Petersburg, and was a passionate devotee of the new ideas and
 of Speránski, 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 Bítski,
 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 Bítski’s enthusiastic account of it. A very
 simple thought occurred to him: “What does it matter to me or to Bítski
 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 Speránski’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 Speránski in his domestic surroundings, but now he
 felt disinclined to go to it.
 


 
 At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house Speránski
 owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room of this small
 house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting that of a
 monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the friendly
 gathering of Speránski’s intimate acquaintances already assembled at five
 o’clock. There were no ladies present except Speránski’s little daughter
 (long-faced like her father) and her governess. The other guests were
 Gervais, Magnítski, and Stolýpin. 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 Speránski—was
 distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha . Prince Andrew had never before heard
 Speránski’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. Speránski, 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. Magnítski, addressing himself to Speránski, was
 relating an anecdote, and Speránski was laughing in advance at what
 Magnítski was going to say. When Prince Andrew entered the room
 Magnítski’s words were again crowned by laughter. Stolýpin gave a deep
 bass guffaw as he munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed
 softly with a hissing chuckle, and Speránski in a high-pitched staccato
 manner.
 


 
 Still laughing, Speránski held out his soft white hand to Prince Andrew.
 


 
 “Very pleased to see you, Prince,” he said. “One moment...” he went on,
 turning to Magnítski 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 Speránski with astonishment, regret,
 and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not Speránski but
 someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared mysterious and
 fascinating in Speránski 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 Magnítski 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. Speránski
 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.
 Stolýpin, 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. Magnítski starting quizzing
 Stolýpin about his vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and the talk
 reverted to its former lively tone.
 


 
 Evidently Speránski 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. Speránski’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 Speránski’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. Speránski 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, Speránski 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
 Speránski 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 Speránski on returning from his study. “A
 wonderful talent!” he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnítski 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 Speránski and took his leave.
 


 
 “Where are you off to so early?” asked Speránski.
 


 
 “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 Speránski and from any of his own activities
 connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance to what
 Speránski 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 Boguchárovo, his occupations in the
 country, his journey to Ryazán; 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 Rostóvs’ 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Rostóv 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 Natásha; but they are kindly folk and form the best
 possible setting for this strikingly poetic, charming girl, overflowing
 with life!”
 


 
 In Natásha 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
 Otrádnoe 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Rostóvs’ 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 Natásha; 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 Hélène, 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 ready
 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 Véra’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. * Véra 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 Véra all men did. Berg, judging by his wife,
 thought all women weak and foolish. Véra, 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 Véra, “I don’t at all want that. We must live for
 society.”
 


 
 “Princess Yusúpova wore one exactly like this,” said Berg, pointing to the
 fichu with a happy and kindly smile.
 


 
 Just then Count Bezúkhov 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 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
 Véra, “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 Véra immediately began their evening party, interrupting each
 other in their efforts to entertain their guest.
 


 
 Véra, 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 Véra 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 Borís, Berg’s old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of
 condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Véra. After Borís
 came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the Rostóvs,
 and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other evening
 parties. Berg and Véra 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 Ilyá Rostóv, 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 Rostóv, the general, and the colonel. At the card table he happened
 to be directly facing Natásha, 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 Borís 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “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 Natásha 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. Natásha on one side was talking with
 Sónya and Borís, and Véra 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. Véra, having noticed Prince
 Andrew’s attentions to Natásha, 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 Véra 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?” Véra 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” (Véra 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 at Pierre who was just approaching them.
 


 
 “Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days,” continued Véra—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 Véra
 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 Borís, 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 Borís, aren’t you?” asked Véra.
 


 
 “Yes, I know him....”
 


 
 “I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natásha?”
 


 
 “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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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
 Rostóvs 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 Natásha all day. Not only in the
 soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natásha, 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 Natásha and timidly started some artificial
 conversation about trifles as soon as he looked her way. Sónya was afraid
 to leave Natásha and afraid of being in the way when she was with them.
 Natásha 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
 Natásha and whispered: “Well, what?”
 


 
 “Mamma! For heaven’s sake don’t ask me anything now! One can’t talk about
 that,” said Natásha.
 


 
 But all the same that night Natásha, now agitated and now frightened, lay
 a 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 Borís.
 


 
 “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 Natásha that even at the time she first saw Prince Andrew at
 Otrádnoe 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 Natásha’s album.
 


 
 “Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?”
 


 
 “Don’t, Natásha! Pray to God. ‘Marriages are made in heaven,’” said her
 mother.
 


 
 “Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!” cried Natásha, 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 Natásha and his firm resolve to make her his wife.
 


 
 That day Countess Hélène 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 protégée Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Natásha Rostóva, 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
 fiancée’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 Rostóvs, Prince
 Andrew returned to Petersburg.
 


 





 
 Next day after her talk with her mother Natásha expected Bolkónski all
 day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the same.
 Pierre did not come either and Natásha, not knowing that Prince Andrew had
 gone to see his father, could not explain his absence to herself.
 


 
 Three weeks passed in this way. Natásha 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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. Natásha 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, Natásha ran into the drawing room.
 


 
 “Mamma! Bolkónski 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 Natásha his face brightened.
 He kissed the countess’ hand and Natásha’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 you 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 Natásha; “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.
 


 
 Natásha 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, Natásha! I will call you,” said the countess in a whisper.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Sónya said that Natásha was in her bedroom. Natásha 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 Natásha. “Go... go,” said the mother, sadly and reproachfully,
 with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.
 


 
 Natásha 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!” Natásha 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 Natásha—“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.”
 


 
 Natásha 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?” Natásha interrupted him. “You know that from the
 very day you first came to Otrádnoe 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!” Natásha 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. Natásha
 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!” Natásha 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 Rostóvs’ as Natásha’s
 affianced lover.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV
 
 
 No betrothal ceremony took place and Natásha’s engagement to Bolkónski 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 Natásha 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 Natásha nor her parents wished to hear of this, but
 Prince Andrew was firm. He came every day to the Rostóvs’, but did not
 behave to Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Natásha, and about albums and fancywork
 with Sónya. 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 Otrádnoe and
 their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natásha 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.
 Natásha 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—Natásha particularly liked it in him—and
 said that his son would not live with them.
 


 
 “Why not?” asked Natásha in a frightened tone.
 


 
 “I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides...”
 


 
 “How I should have loved him!” said Natásha, 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 Pétya’s education or Nicholas’ service. The old countess
 sighed as she looked at them; Sónya 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), Natásha 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. Natásha 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 Rostóvs’ once since the ball. Pierre
 seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the countess, and
 Natásha sat down beside a little chess table with Sónya, thereby inviting
 Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.
 


 
 “You have known Bezúkhov 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 Sónya, nor Prince Andrew himself
 could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would act on
 Natásha. 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 Bolkónski’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
 Karágina 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 Ivánovich 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 Rostóva. 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 Natásha Rostóva. 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 heaven’s 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 Akínfi, 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 Rostóv experienced this blissful condition to the full when,
 after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pávlograd regiment, in which he
 already commanded the squadron he had taken over from Denísov.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Sónya’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 Natásha’s engagement to Bolkónski, 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
 Natásha, 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 Bolkónski that
 connection with him was no such great honor after all, and that if he
 loved Natásha 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 Natásha before she was married, but then came the maneuvers, and
 considerations about Sónya 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 Mítenka
 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 Lavrúshka (Denísov’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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv a
 dinner to which the subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which
 there were two bands and two choirs of singers. Rostóv danced the Trepák
 with Major Básov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostóv;
 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 Kremenchúg to Kiev—all
 Rostóv’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 Dozhoyvéyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder anxiously
 how things would be at Otrádnoe 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 Otrádnoe 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. Sónya 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. Pétya and Natásha surprised Nicholas most. Pétya was a big handsome
 boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was
 already breaking. As for Natásha, 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 Natásha, joyfully.
 


 
 She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit to
 Otrádnoe and showed him his last letter.
 


 
 “Well, are you glad?” Natásha 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 Natásha. “I was in love with Borís, with my
 teacher, and with Denísov, 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 Natásha 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 Bolkónski’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 Natásha. 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
 Mítenka’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 Mítenka. The conversation and the examination of the accounts
 with Mítenka 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 Mítenka out by the scruff of the
 neck and applied his foot and knee to his behind with great agility at
 convenient moments between the words, shouting, “Be off! Never let me see
 your face here again, you villain!”
 


 
 Mítenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the shrubbery.
 (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for culprits at Otrádnoe.
 Mítenka himself, returning tipsy from the town, used to hide there, and
 many of the residents at Otrádnoe, hiding from Mítenka, knew of its
 protective qualities.)
 


 
 Mítenka’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! Mítenka 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 Mikháylovna 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 Mikháylovna and I don’t like Borís, 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 Rostóv 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
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv, 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.
 Mílka, 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 Mílka behind the ears.
 


 
 Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.
 


 
 “I sent Uvárka at dawn to listen,” his bass boomed out after a minute’s
 pause. “He says she’s moved them into the Otrádnoe enclosure.
 They were howling there.” (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom they both
 knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otrádnoe 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
 Uvárka.”
 


 
 “As you please.”
 


 
 “Then put off feeding them.”
 


 
 “Yes, sir.”
 


 
 Five minutes later Daniel and Uvárka 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 Natásha 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. Pétya ran in at the same
 time.
 


 
 “You are going?” asked Natásha. “I knew you would! Sónya 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 Natásha and Pétya. “We
 are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for you.”
 


 
 “You know it is my greatest pleasure,” said Natásha. “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 Pétya.
 


 
 “But you can’t. Mamma said you mustn’t,” said Nicholas to Natásha.
 


 
 “Yes, I’ll go. I shall certainly go,” said Natásha 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 Natásha and Pétya 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
 Donéts, and whistling to his own leash of borzois, set off across the
 threshing ground to a field leading to the Otrádnoe wood. The old count’s
 horse, a sorrel gelding called Viflyánka, 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 Otrádnoe 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 Rostóvs. 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 Rostóvs’, 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 Gírchik says the Ilágins are
 at Kornikí 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. Natásha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide her eager
 face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed by Pétya who
 always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and by a groom appointed
 to look after her. Pétya, who was laughing, whipped and pulled at his
 horse. Natásha sat easily and confidently on her black Arábchik and reined
 him in without effort with a firm hand.
 


 
 “Uncle” looked round disapprovingly at Pétya and Natásha. He did not like
 to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.
 


 
 “Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!” shouted Pétya.
 


 
 “Good morning, good morning! But don’t go overriding the hounds,” said
 “Uncle” sternly.
 


 
 “Nicholas, what a fine dog Truníla is! He knew me,” said Natásha,
 referring to her favorite hound.
 


 
 “In the first place, Truníla 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. Natásha 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 Otrádnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards off,
 the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostóv, having finally settled with
 “Uncle” where they should set on the hounds, and having shown Natásha
 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 Rostóv. “Karáy, here!” he shouted,
 answering “Uncle’s” remark by this call to his borzoi. Karáy 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 huntsmen had not yet reached their places when Count Ilyá
 Rostóv, 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, Viflyánka, which was turning gray, like himself. His
 horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilyá Rostóv, 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 Chekmár, his personal attendant, an old horseman now
 somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmár 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 Mítka, 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 Chekmár, 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, Nastásya Ivánovna.
 


 
 “Well, Nastásya Ivánovna!” 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 Nastásya Ivánovna.
 


 
 “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 Zhárov 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 Lyádov 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
 Zavárzinsk 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
 Sidórych...” 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 Lyádov 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. Nastásya Ivánovna 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 Mítka 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 Rostóv 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 shamefaced 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 Karáy 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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv, “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 Dólokhov 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 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv 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. Rostóv, holding his breath, looked round at the borzois. They
 stood or lay not seeing the wolf or understanding the situation. Old Karáy
 had turned his head and was angrily searching for fleas, baring his yellow
 teeth and snapping at his hind legs.
 


 
 “Ulyulyulyu!” whispered Rostóv, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped up,
 jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karáy 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 Rostóv, 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 Mílka, 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 Mílka suddenly raised her tail and stiffened her forelegs.
 


 
 “Ulyulyulyulyu!” shouted Nicholas.
 


 
 The reddish Lyubím rushed forward from behind Mílka, 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.
 


 
 “Karáy, ulyulyu! ...” he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi
 who was now his only hope. Karáy, 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 Karáy 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.
 


 
 “Karáy? 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 Karáy, tucked
 her tail yet further between her legs, and increased her speed. But here
 Nicholas only saw that something happened to Karáy—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 (Karáy
 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
 (Karáy 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. Karáy, 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 Karáy 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 Karáy 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 Rostóv 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 Natásha and Pétya 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, Voltórn, 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 Ilágin’s huntsman having a row with our Iván,” said Nicholas’
 groom.
 


 
 Nicholas sent the man to call Natásha and Pétya 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 Natásha and Pétya, 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 Pétya to
 wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy’s, Ilágin’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 Ilágin, with whom the Rostóvs had a quarrel and were
 at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the Rostóvs, and had
 now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very woods the Rostóvs were
 hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs had chased.
 


 
 Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilágin, 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 Ilágin a stately and courteous
 gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young count’s
 acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilágin 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.
 


 
 Natásha, 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. Ilágin lifted his beaver cap still higher to Natásha
 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, Ilágin pressed the Rostóvs 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,” Rostóv, and Ilágin 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.
 


 
 Rostóv was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, pure-bred,
 red-spotted bitch on Ilágin’s leash, slender but with muscles like steel,
 a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He had heard of the swiftness
 of Ilágin’s borzois, and in that beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own
 Mílka.
 


 
 In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilágin 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 Ilágin
 indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erzá, 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, Ilágin looked at his borzois and picked out
 Mílka 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 Ilágin, “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 Natásha) “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 Ilágin carelessly. “Yes, we must
 ride up.... Shall we both course it?” answered Nicholas, seeing in Erzá
 and “Uncle’s” red Rugáy two rivals he had never yet had a chance of
 pitting against his own borzois. “And suppose they outdo my Mílka at
 once!” he thought as he rode with “Uncle” and Ilágin toward the hare.
 


 
 “A full-grown one?” asked Ilágin as he approached the whip who had sighted
 the hare—and not without agitation he looked round and whistled to
 Erzá.
 


 
 “And you, Michael Nikanórovich?” 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!”
 


 
 “Rugáy, hey, hey!” he shouted. “Rugáyushka!” he added, involuntarily by
 this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on this
 red borzoi. Natásha 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 Ilágin, Nicholas, Natásha, 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 Ilágin’s red-spotted
 Erzá 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 Erzá rushed the broad-haunched, black-spotted Mílka
 and began rapidly gaining on the hare.
 


 
 “Miláshka, dear!” rose Nicholas’ triumphant cry. It looked as if Mílka
 would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and flew past.
 The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erzá 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.
 


 
 “Erzá, darling!” Ilágin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erzá 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 Erzá and Mílka 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.
 


 
 “Rugáy, Rugáyushka! 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!...”
 


 
 “Rugáy, 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 Ilágin’s groom.
 


 
 “Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take it,”
 Ilágin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop and his
 excitement. At the same moment Natásha, 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 Rugáy 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 seemed 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 Ilágin 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 Mikháylovna.
 


 
 “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 Otrádnoe for a trap,
 while Nicholas rode with Natásha and Pétya 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 Natásha—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.
 


 
 “Arínka! 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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Suvórov, 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. Rugáy, 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. Natásha, Nicholas, and Pétya took off
 their wraps and sat down on the sofa. Pétya, leaning on his elbow, fell
 asleep at once. Natásha 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), Natásha 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 Natásha felt that this costume, the very one she had
 regarded with surprise and amusement at Otrádnoe, 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 Rostóv. How could one help understanding?
 Not only Nicholas, but even Natásha understood the meaning of his puckered
 brow and the happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips when
 Anísya Fëdorovna 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 Anísya Fëdorovna’s housekeeping, gathered and
 prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a smack of Anísya
 Fëdorovna herself: a savor of juiciness, cleanliness, whiteness, and
 pleasant smiles.
 


 
 “Take this, little Lady-Countess!” she kept saying, as she offered Natásha
 first one thing and then another.
 


 
 Natásha 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. Anísya Fëdorovna left the room.
 


 
 After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostóv and “Uncle” talked of past
 and future hunts, of Rugáy and Ilágin’s dogs, while Natásha sat upright on
 the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried several times to wake
 Pétya that he might eat something, but he only muttered incoherent words
 without waking up. Natásha 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’ minds, 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 Rostóv 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 balaláyka
 on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was playing.
 Natásha had been listening to those strains for some time and now went out
 into the passage to hear better.
 


 
 “That’s Mítka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balaláyka. I’m fond
 of it,” said “Uncle.”
 


 
 It was the custom for Mítka to play the balaláyka 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 Natásha 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 Natásha at the door as soon as the balaláyka
 ceased. Mítka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the balaláyka 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 balaláyka 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. Anísya Fëdorovna came in and leaned her portly
 person against the doorpost.
 


 
 “You like listening?” she said to Natásha, 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “Uncle” did not answer, but smiled.
 


 
 “Anísya, 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.”
 


 
 Anísya Fëdorovna, 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 Anísya
 Fëdorovna, 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 Natásha, arousing in them the same kind of sober mirth as
 radiated from Anísya Fëdorovna’s whole being. Anísya Fëdorovna 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 Anísya
 Fëdorovna 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 Natásha 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. Anísya Fëdorovna’s smiling face reappeared in the
 doorway and behind hers other faces...
 


 
 Fetching water clear and sweet,

 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,” Natásha 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
 naïve and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.
 


 
 “Now then, niece!” he exclaimed, waving to Natásha the hand that had just
 struck a chord.
 


 
 Natásha 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 émigrée 
 French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that spirit
 and obtained that manner which the pas de châle * 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
 Anísya Fëdorovna, 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 Anísya and in
 Anísya’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 Natásha, 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
 Bolkónski 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:
 


 
 As ‘twas growing dark last night

 Fell the snow so soft and light... 



 
 “Uncle” sang as peasants sing, with full and naïve 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. Natásha 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 Natásha and Pétya. The count and countess
 did not know where they were and were very anxious, said one of the men.
 


 
 Pétya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two traps.
 Natásha and Nicholas got into the other. “Uncle” wrapped Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha,
 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 Natásha.
 


 
 They were fond of asking one another that question.
 


 
 “I?” said Nicholas, trying to remember. “Well, you see, first I thought
 that Rugáy, 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 Otrádnoe, but in Fairyland. And then I thought... No,
 nothing else.”
 


 
 “I know, I expect you thought of him,” said Nicholas, smiling as Natásha
 knew by the sound of his voice.
 


 
 “No,” said Natásha, 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 Anísya
 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 Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “Ah, there are still lights in the drawing room!” she said, pointing to
 the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the moist velvety
 darkness of the night.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII
 
 
 Count Ilyá Rostóv had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility
 because it involved him in too much expense, but still his affairs did not
 improve. Natásha and Nicholas often noticed their parents conferring
 together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of selling the fine
 ancestral Rostóv house and estate near Moscow. It was not necessary to
 entertain so freely as when the count had been Marshal, and life at
 Otrádnoe 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, Belóva, an old maiden
 lady, an inmate of the house, and many others such as Pétya’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 Rostóv 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 Karágina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, a
 girl the Rostóvs 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. Karágina 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 Karágina.
 


 
 “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, Nikólenka. 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 Sónya 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 Sónya, 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 Sónya. Though she blamed herself for it, she could not
 refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sónya, 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 Sónya 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. Natásha 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 Rostóvs’ 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 Réaumur, 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. Sónya sat in the drawing room at the round table, copying a design
 for embroidery. The countess was playing patience. Nastásya Ivánovna the
 buffoon sat with a sad face at the window with two old ladies. Natásha
 came into the room, went up to Sónya, 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 Natásha, 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, Kondrátevna,” said Natásha. “Go, Mavrúshka, go.”
 


 
 Having released Mavrúshka, Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “Oh, Nikíta, 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.
 


 
 Fóka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house. Natásha
 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 Fóka, pretending to frown at Natásha.
 


 
 No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble as
 Natásha 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.
 


 
 “Nastásya Ivánovna, 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. Natásha 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 Pétya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him he
 was preparing fireworks to let off that night.
 


 
 “Pétya! Pétya!” she called to him. “Carry me downstairs.”
 


 
 Pétya 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, Natásha
 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.
 


 
 Sónya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natásha glanced at
 her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she
 remembered the light falling through that crack once before and Sónya
 passing with a glass in her hand. “Yes it was exactly the same,” thought
 Natásha.
 


 
 “Sónya, what is this?” she cried, twanging a thick string.
 


 
 “Oh, you are there!” said Sónya 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 Natásha, “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 Natásha sang the air of the chorus so that Sónya 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 Natásha. “And where’s
 Nicholas?”
 


 
 “Asleep, I think.”
 


 
 “Sónya, go and wake him,” said Natásha. “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 Natásha enter. “Well,
 sit down by me.” But Natásha 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 Natásha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion rising up
 in her for the whole household, because they were always the same.
 


 
 After tea, Nicholas, Sónya, and Natásha 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 Natásha 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!” Natásha 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 Natásha. “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,” Natásha 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....”
 


 
 “Sónya, do you remember?” asked Nicholas.
 


 
 “Yes, yes, I do remember something too,” Sónya answered timidly.
 


 
 “You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro,” said Natásha,
 “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.
 


 
 Sónya, 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 Sónya’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 Natásha, “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, Pólya. Tell them to take it away,” replied Natásha.
 


 
 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 Natásha, Nicholas, and Sónya,
 remarked: “How quiet you young people are!”
 


 
 “Yes, we’re philosophizing,” said Natásha, glancing round for a moment and
 then continuing the conversation. They were now discussing dreams.
 


 
 Dimmler began to play; Natásha 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 Natásha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas and
 Sónya, “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 Sónya, 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 Natásha, 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?”
 Natásha 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 Natásha. “It is now today, and
 it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday, and the day
 before....”
 


 
 “Natásha! 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha 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, Natásha
 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 Mítenka, 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 Mítenka 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. Sónya, 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 Natásha and of her own
 youth, and of how there was something unnatural and dreadful in this
 impending marriage of Natásha 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
 Natásha had too much of something, and that because of this she would not
 be happy. Before Natásha had finished singing, fourteen-year-old Pétya
 rushed in delightedly, to say that some mummers had arrived.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Pétya 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
 Pétya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natásha, and a Circassian was
 Sónya 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
 Melyukóvs’.”
 


 
 Melyukóva was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and
 governesses, lived three miles from the Rostóvs.
 


 
 “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 Ivánovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies might
 go to the Melyukóvs’, Sónya, generally so timid and shy, more urgently
 than anyone begging Louisa Ivánovna not to refuse.
 


 
 Sónya’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 Ivánovna 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.
 


 
 Natásha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing from
 one to another, grew 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 Orlóv 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.
 


 
 Natásha, Sónya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas’ sleigh;
 Dimmler, his wife, and Pétya, into the old count’s, and the rest of the
 mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.
 


 
 “You go ahead, Zakhár!” 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 Natásha’s voice through the
 frost-bound air.
 


 
 “How light it is, Nicholas!” came Sónya’s voice.
 


 
 Nicholas glanced round at Sónya, 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 Sónya,” 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 Zakhár 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 Kosóy meadow, I
 suppose. But no—this is something new I’ve never seen before. This
 isn’t the Kosóy meadow nor the Dëmkin 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.
 


 
 Zakhár held back his horses and turned his face, which was already covered
 with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.
 


 
 Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhár, 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. Zakhár, 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 Zakhár. 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.
 


 
 “Zakhár is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the left?”
 thought Nicholas. “Are we getting to the Melyukóvs’? Is this Melyukóvka?
 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 Natásha,” 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
 Melyukóvka, it is still stranger that we drove heaven knows where and have
 come to Melyukóvka,” thought Nicholas.
 


 
 It really was Melyukóvka, 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
 
 
 Pelagéya Danílovna Melyukóva, 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 Natásha! 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 Sónya. And who is that? Well, you have
 cheered us up! Nikíta 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.
 


 
 Natásha, the young Melyukóvs’ 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 Melyukóvs joined the mummers.
 


 
 Pelagéya Danílovna, 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 Rostóvs 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 this?” she asked her governess, peering into the face of her
 own daughter dressed up as a Kazán-Tartar. “I suppose it is one of the
 Rostóvs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve in?” she asked
 Natásha. “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, Pelagéya Danílovna hid
 her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook with
 irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.
 


 
 “My little Sásha! Look at Sásha!” she said.
 


 
 After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelagéya Danílovna 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. Pelagéya Danílovna 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 Melyukóvs, during supper.
 


 
 “Why?” said the eldest Melyukóv girl.
 


 
 “You wouldn’t go, it takes courage....”
 


 
 “I’ll go,” said Sónya.
 


 
 “Tell what happened to the young lady!” said the second Melyukóv 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 Natásha, 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 Pelagéya Danílovna.
 


 
 “Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself...” said her daughter.
 


 
 “And how does one do it in a barn?” inquired Sónya.
 


 
 “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.”
 


 
 Pelagéya Danílovna smiled.
 


 
 “Oh, I’ve forgotten...” she replied. “But none of you would go?”
 


 
 “Yes, I will; Pelagéya Danílovna, let me! I’ll go,” said Sónya.
 


 
 “Well, why not, if you’re not afraid?”
 


 
 “Louisa Ivánovna, may I?” asked Sónya.
 


 
 Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game or
 talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sónya’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, Sónya 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 Sónya. “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?”
 


 
 Sónya 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 Sónya 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 Sónya’s voice, and along the path toward
 Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sónya’s feet in her thin
 shoes.
 


 
 Sónya 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 Sónya. 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. Sónya kissed him
 full on the lips, and disengaging her little hands pressed them to his
 cheeks.
 


 
 “Sónya!... 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 Pelagéya Danílovna’s, Natásha, who always
 saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss should go
 back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sónya 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 Sónya’s face and
 searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and his present
 Sónya from whom he had resolved never to be parted again. He looked and
 recognizing in her both the old and the new Sónya, 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.
 


 
 “Sónya, 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 Natásha’s sleigh and stood on its wing.
 


 
 “Natásha!” he whispered in French, “do you know I have made up my mind
 about Sónya?”
 


 
 “Have you told her?” asked Natásha, suddenly beaming all over with joy.
 


 
 “Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!... Natásha—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 Sónya
 was not,” continued Natásha. “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. “Natásha, 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 Sónya, 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 Sónya, and
 that Sónya 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 Melyukóvs’, 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 Natásha’s table stood two looking glasses which Dunyásha had
 prepared beforehand.
 


 
 “Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too good!”
 said Natásha, rising and going to the looking glasses.
 


 
 “Sit down, Natásha; perhaps you’ll see him,” said Sónya.
 


 
 Natásha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking glasses,
 and sat down.
 


 
 “I see someone with a mustache,” said Natásha, seeing her own face.
 


 
 “You mustn’t laugh, Miss,” said Dunyásha.
 


 
 With Sónya’s help and the maid’s, Natásha 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,
 Sónya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I feel so
 frightened!”
 


 
 Sónya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began
 looking.
 


 
 “Now, Miss Sónya is sure to see something,” whispered Dunyásha; “while you
 do nothing but laugh.”
 


 
 Sónya heard this and Natásha’s whisper:
 


 
 “I know she will. She saw something last year.”
 


 
 For about three minutes all were silent.
 


 
 “Of course she will!” whispered Natásha, but did not finish... suddenly
 Sónya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her eyes with her
 hand.
 


 
 “Oh, Natásha!” she cried.
 


 
 “Did you see? Did you? What was it?” exclaimed Natásha, holding up the
 looking glass.
 


 
 Sónya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to get up
 when she heard Natásha say, “Of course she will!” She did not wish to
 disappoint either Dunyásha or Natásha, 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 Natásha, seizing her hand.
 


 
 “Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him,” Sónya could not help saying, not yet
 knowing whom Natásha 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 Sónya’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 Natásha, 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, Sónya?...”
 


 
 “After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and
 red....”
 


 
 “Sónya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how afraid I
 am for him and for myself and about everything!...” Natásha began, and
 without replying to Sónya’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
 Sónya 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 Sónya. 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 Sónya could have been wished for, and that no one but
 himself with his Mítenka 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 Sónya and, with a cruelty neither
 of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to catch Nicholas and
 for ingratitude. Sónya 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 Rostóv 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 Sónya and consent to their marriage, then he threatened that if
 she molested Sónya 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 Natásha, 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
 Natásha.
 


 
 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.
 


 
 Natásha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded that
 Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sónya 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 Sónya, 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 Rostóv household were more
 depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.
 


 
 Sónya 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.
 


 
 Natásha, 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. Natásha’s trousseau
 had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince Andrew was expected
 in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkónski was spending the winter, and Natásha
 felt sure he had already arrived.
 


 
 So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sónya and
 Natásha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.
 


 
 
 
 BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12
 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER I
 
 
 After Prince Andrew’s engagement to Natásha, 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 Natásha and the death of Joseph Alexéevich,
 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 Hélène thought it necessary to speak severely to
 him about it. Pierre felt that she was 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 Krémlin Square
 with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh drivers and hovels of
 the Sívtsev Vrazhók, 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 no 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 off to the club or to Apollón
 Nikoláevich’s, to exchange the gossip of the town.
 


 
 “Hélène, 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 Bolkónski 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 Bolkónski 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 émigré 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 Rostóva
 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—Métivier—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. Métivier 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.
 


 
 Métivier, 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 Métivier’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 Métivier 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...” and he slammed the door.
 


 
 Métivier, 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 Métivier; 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 Métivier’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 Rostopchín, Prince Lopukhín with his
 nephew, General Chatróv an old war comrade of the prince’s, and of the
 younger generation Pierre and Borís Drubetskóy—awaited the prince in
 the drawing room.
 


 
 Borís, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been anxious
 to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkónski, 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.
 Borís had realized this the week before when the commander in chief in his
 presence invited Rostopchín to dinner on St. Nicholas’ Day, and Rostopchín
 had replied that he could not come:
 


 
 “On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince
 Nicholas Bolkónski.”
 


 
 “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 Rostopchín alone
 kept the conversation going, now relating the latest town news, and now
 the latest political gossip.
 


 
 Lopukhín and the old general occasionally took part in the conversation.
 Prince Bolkónski 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
 Rostopchín, 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 Rostopchín 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 Bolkónski. “He shifts the Dukes about as I might
 move my serfs from Bald Hills to Boguchárovo or my Ryazán estates.”
 


 
 “The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength of
 character and resignation,” remarked Borís, joining in respectfully.
 


 
 He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the honor
 of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkónski 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 Rostopchín in the casual tone
 of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.
 


 
 Pierre looked at Rostopchín with naïve 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 Rostopchín.
 


 
 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 Métivier? I turned him out
 of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him in 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 Métivier 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 Rostopchín. “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
 Métivier 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 Rostopchín with a smile and
 wagged his head approvingly.
 


 
 “Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!” said Rostopchín, 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 Rostopchín’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 Borís Drubetskóy, 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?”
 


 
 “Drubetskóy.”
 


 
 “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 Karágina. 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 Karágina,” 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 Rostóvs?” 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 Rostóvs arrived and to try to accustom the
 old prince to her.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER V
 
 
 Borís 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 Karágins’ 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 rimés , which were in vogue at the Karágins’.
 Only a few of these young men, among them Borís, 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 Borís, 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. Borís 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:
 


 
 La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.

 Ah! contre les douleurs il n’y a pas d’autre asile. *



 
 * Death gives relief and death is peaceful.

 Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.
 


 
 Julie said this was charming
 


 
 “There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy,” she said to
 Borís, 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 Borís wrote these lines:
 


 
 Aliment de poison d’une âme trop sensible,

 Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,

 Tendre mélancholie, ah, viens me consoler,

 Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,

 Et mêle une douceur secrète

 A ces pleurs que je sens couler. *



 
 *Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,

 Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,

 Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,

 Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,

 And mingle a secret sweetness

 With these tears that I feel to be flowing.



 
 For Borís, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Borís 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 Borís looked on one another as the only souls who understood one
 another in a world of indifferent people.
 


 
 Anna Mikháylovna, who often visited the Karágins, while playing cards with
 the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie’s dowry (she was to have two
 estates in Pénza and the Nizhegórod forests). Anna Mikháylovna 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. “Borís 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, Borís, Borís!”—she paused. “And how I pity her mother,” she went
 on; “today she showed me her accounts and letters from Pénza (they have
 enormous estates there), and she, poor thing, has no one to help her, and
 they do cheat her so!”
 


 
 Borís smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother. He
 laughed blandly at her naïve diplomacy but listened to what she had to
 say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Pénza and Nizhegórod
 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
 Borís. His leave was expiring. He spent every day and whole days at the
 Karágins’, 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, Borís could not utter the decisive words, though
 in imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor of those
 Pénza and Nizhegórod estates and had apportioned the use of the income
 from them. Julie saw Borís’ 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 Borís’ departure she formed a definite
 plan of action. Just as Borís’ leave of absence was expiring, Anatole
 Kurágin made his appearance in Moscow, and of course in the Karágins’
 drawing room, and Julie, suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became
 cheerful and very attentive to Kurágin.
 


 
 “My dear,” said Anna Mikháylovna to her son, “I know from a reliable
 source that Prince Vasíli 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 Pénza 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 Borís. He drove to the Karágins’
 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 Borís 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...” Borís 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 Borís. “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 Borís 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 Pénza estates and Nizhegórod 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 Rostóv went to Moscow with Natásha and
 Sónya. 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 Bolkónski while he was in Moscow could not
 be missed. The Rostóvs’ 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 Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, who had long
 been pressing her hospitality on them.
 


 
 Late one evening the Rostóvs’ four sleighs drove into Márya Dmítrievna’s
 courtyard in the old Konyúsheny street. Márya Dmítrievna 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 Rostóvs arrived and the pulley of the
 hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the Rostóvs and their
 servants. Márya Dmítrievna, 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 Natásha (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 , Sónya dear!” she added, turning to
 Sónya 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, Márya Dmítrievna 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 Natásha a significant look. “The old man is here
 and his son’s expected any day. You’ll have to make his acquaintance. But
 we’ll speak of that later on,” she added, glancing at Sónya 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?
 Shinshín?” she crooked one of her fingers. “The sniveling Anna
 Mikháylovna? That’s two. She’s here with her son. The son is getting
 married! Then Bezúkhov, 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
 Irína Vasílevna 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 Márya Dmítrievna, touching her goddaughter and favorite, Natásha, on
 the cheek with her large hand.
 


 
 Next morning Márya Dmítrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian shrine
 of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so afraid of
 Márya Dmítrievna that she always let her have costumes at a loss merely to
 get rid of her. Márya Dmítrievna ordered almost the whole trousseau. When
 they got home she turned everybody out of the room except Natásha, 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. Natásha 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.”
 


 
 Natásha remained silent, from shyness Márya Dmítrievna 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,” Natásha answered reluctantly.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII
 
 
 Next day, by Márya Dmítrievna’s advice, Count Rostóv took Natásha to call
 on Prince Nicholas Bolkónski. 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. Natásha, 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 Vozdvízhenka and entered the
 vestibule.
 


 
 “Well, the Lord have mercy on us!” said the count, half in jest, half in
 earnest; but Natásha 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 Rostóvs
 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 Natásha. 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 Rostóvs’ 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 Rostóvs’ 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 Natásha in your hands for a quarter of an
 hour, Princess, I’ll drive round to see Anna Semënovna, 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 Natásha 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
 Semënovna’s, and he departed.
 


 
 Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary—who wished
 to have a tête-à-tête with Natásha—Mademoiselle Bourienne remained
 in the room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements and theaters.
 Natásha 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. Natásha 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 dressing gown and a white
 nightcap, came in.
 


 
 “Ah, madam!” he began. “Madam, Countess... Countess Rostóva,
 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 Natásha.
 


 
 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 Natásha 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. Natásha
 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, Natásha 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 Natásha. The same
 thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary. She knew what she ought to
 have said to Natásha, 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 Natásha, took
 her by the hand, and said with a deep sigh:
 


 
 “Wait, I must...”
 


 
 Natásha 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. Natásha 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 Natásha to come to dinner that day. She sat in
 her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing. Sónya stood
 beside her, kissing her hair.
 


 
 “Natásha, what is it about?” she asked. “What do they matter to you? It
 will all pass, Natásha.”
 


 
 “But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I...”
 


 
 “Don’t talk about it, Natásha. It wasn’t your fault so why should you
 mind? Kiss me,” said Sónya.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha—“It’s
 my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn’t he come?...”
 


 
 She came in to dinner with red eyes. Márya Dmítrievna, who knew how the
 prince had received the Rostóvs, pretended not to notice how upset Natásha
 was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the count and the other
 guests.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII
 
 
 That evening the Rostóvs went to the Opera, for which Márya Dmítrievna had
 taken a box.
 


 
 Natásha did not want to go, but could not refuse Márya Dmítrievna’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 Natásha. “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 Sónya love Nicholas so calmly
 and quietly and wait so long and so patiently?” thought she, looking at
 Sónya, who also came in quite ready, with a fan in her hand. “No, she’s
 altogether different. I can’t!”
 


 
 Natásha 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
 Rostóvs’ carriage drove up to the theater, its wheels squeaking over the
 snow. Natásha and Sónya, 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.
 


 
 “Natásha, your hair!...” whispered Sónya.
 


 
 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
 Natásha. The curtain had not yet risen and the overture was being played.
 Natásha, smoothing her gown, went in with Sónya 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, Natásha and Sónya, with Count Rostóv who
 had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted general attention.
 Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natásha’s engagement to Prince Andrew,
 and knew that the Rostóvs had lived in the country ever since, and all
 looked with curiosity at a fiancée who was making one of the best matches
 in Russia.
 


 
 Natásha’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 Alénina,” said Sónya, “with her
 mother, isn’t it?”
 


 
 “Dear me, Michael Kirílovich has grown still stouter!” remarked the count.
 


 
 “Look at our Anna Mikháylovna—what a headdress she has on!”
 


 
 “The Karágins, Julie—and Borís with them. One can see at once that
 they’re engaged....”
 


 
 “Drubetskóy has proposed?”
 


 
 “Oh yes, I heard it today,” said Shinshín, coming into the Rostóvs’ box.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha knew was
 covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and leaning over with an
 ear to Julie’s mouth, was Borís’ handsome smoothly brushed head. He looked
 at the Rostóvs from under his brows and said something, smiling, to his
 betrothed.
 


 
 “They are talking about us, about me and him!” thought Natásha. “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 Mikháylovna 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 Natásha 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 Dólokhov 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 Sónya and pointed to her former
 adorer.
 


 
 “Do you recognize him?” said he. “And where has he sprung from?” he asked,
 turning to Shinshín. “Didn’t he vanish somewhere?”
 


 
 “He did,” replied Shinshín. “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 ‘Dólokhov the Persian’ that does it! We never hear a
 word but Dólokhov is mentioned. They swear by him, they offer him to you
 as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dólokhov and Anatole Kurágin 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.
 


 
 Natásha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and pearls and
 coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the pearls. While
 Natásha 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 Bezúkhova, 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 Semënova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used to forget us.
 Is he here?”
 


 
 “Yes, he meant to look in,” answered Hélène, and glanced attentively at
 Natásha.
 


 
 Count Rostóv resumed his seat.
 


 
 “Handsome, isn’t she?” he whispered to Natásha.
 


 
 “Wonderful!” answered Natásha. “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. Natásha 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 Natásha. 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 Natásha 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 Hélène 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, Natásha 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 aria 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 Hélène 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 Rostóvs’ box creaked, and
 the steps of a belated arrival were heard. “There’s Kurágin!” whispered
 Shinshín. Countess Bezúkhova turned smiling to the newcomer, and Natásha,
 following the direction of that look, saw an exceptionally handsome
 adjutant approaching their box with a self-assured yet courteous bearing.
 This was Anatole Kurágin 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 Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “Mais charmante!” said he, evidently referring to Natásha, 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
 Dólokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and offhand way that
 Dólokhov 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!”
 


 
 Shinshín, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some intrigue of
 Kurágin’s in Moscow, and Natásha 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.
 


 
 Borís came to the Rostóvs’ box, received their congratulations very
 simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile conveyed to
 Natásha and Sónya his fiancée’s invitation to her wedding, and went away.
 Natásha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and congratulated on
 his approaching wedding that same Borís with whom she had formerly been in
 love. In the state of intoxication she was in, everything seemed simple
 and natural.
 


 
 The scantily clad Hélène smiled at everyone in the same way, and Natásha
 gave Borís a similar smile.
 


 
 Hélène’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 Kurágin stood with Dólokhov in front of
 the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostóvs’ box. Natásha 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 Rostóvs had not seen him since their arrival. His face looked
 sad, and he had grown still stouter since Natásha 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 Rostóvs’ box. On
 seeing Natásha 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,
 Natásha heard a man’s voice in Countess Bezúkhova’s box and something told
 her it was Kurágin. 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 Natásha looked toward the stalls she saw
 Anatole Kurágin 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 Bezúkhova rose, turned to the
 Rostóvs’ 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 them!”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Hélène. “How is it you’re
 not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?”
 


 
 Countess Bezúkhova 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 Natásha with her stereotyped and lovely smile. “I
 had heard about you from my page, Drubetskóy. Have you heard he is getting
 married? And also from my husband’s friend Bolkónski, Prince Andrew
 Bolkónski,” she went on with special emphasis, implying that she knew of
 his relation to Natásha. To get better acquainted she asked that one of
 the young ladies should come into her box for the rest of the performance,
 and Natásha 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!” Natásha no longer thought this strange. She
 looked about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.
 


 
 “Isn’t Duport delightful?” Hélène asked her.
 


 
 “Oh, yes,” replied Natásha.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER X
 
 
 During the entr’acte a whiff of cold air came into Hélène’s box, the door
 opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush against
 anyone.
 


 
 “Let me introduce my brother to you,” said Hélène, her eyes shifting
 uneasily from Natásha to Anatole.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Narýshkins’ ball
 in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered pleasure of seeing her.
 Kurágin was much more sensible and simple with women than among men. He
 talked boldly and naturally, and Natásha 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
 naïve, cheerful, and good-natured.
 


 
 Kurágin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
 previous performance Semënova 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
 Karágins’! 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. Natásha 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.
 Natásha kept turning to Hélène and to her father, as if asking what it all
 meant, but Hélène 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, Natásha, 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.



 
 Natásha 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. Natásha 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 Natásha saw. She
 felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of this was Kurágin 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
 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Hélène with her proud, calm
 smile, rapturously cried “bravo!”—there in the presence of that
 Hélène 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 Natásha have told all she
 was feeling. She knew that Sónya with her severe and simple views would
 either not understand it at all or would be horrified at such a
 confession. So Natásha 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?” Natásha
 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 Kurágin, and again saw the face,
 gestures, and tender smile of that bold handsome man when he pressed her
 arm.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI
 
 
 Anatole Kurágin 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 Karágina.
 


 
 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 Shinshín 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 Danílov’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 it 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.”
 


 
 Dólokhov, 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 Kurágin and made
 use of him for his own ends.
 


 
 Anatole was sincerely fond of Dólokhov for his cleverness and audacity.
 Dólokhov, who needed Anatole Kurágin’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
 Dólokhov.
 


 
 Natásha had made a strong impression on Kurágin. At supper after the opera
 he described to Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “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 Dólokhov who
 knew of Kurágin’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 Rostóvs went nowhere and nobody came to see
 them. Márya Dmítrievna talked to the count about something which they
 concealed from Natásha. Natásha 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 Vozdvízhenka 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 Kurágin 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 Natásha seemed livelier than usual, but she was far less
 tranquil and happy than before.
 


 
 On Sunday morning Márya Dmítrievna 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 everywhere. 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!”
 


 
 Márya Dmítrievna 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 Márya Dmítrievna’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 Márya Dmítrievna 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 Bolkónski to have an explanation with
 him about Natásha.
 


 
 After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited on the
 Rostóvs, and Natásha, 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
 Hélène. Natásha had not time to take off the bodice before the door opened
 and Countess Bezúkhova, 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 Natásha. “Charming! No,
 this is really beyond anything, my dear count,” said she to Count Rostóv
 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 Natásha’s
 beauty. She looked at Natásha’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 Natásha to have one like it.
 


 
 “But anything suits you, my charmer!” she remarked.
 


 
 A smile of pleasure never left Natásha’s face. She felt happy and as if
 she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess Bezúkhova who
 had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and important and was now so
 kind to her. Natásha brightened up and felt almost in love with this
 woman, who was so beautiful and so kind. Hélène for her part was sincerely
 delighted with Natásha and wished to give her a good time. Anatole had
 asked her to bring him and Natásha together, and she was calling on the
 Rostóvs for that purpose. The idea of throwing her brother and Natásha
 together amused her.
 


 
 Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natásha for
 drawing Borís away, she did not think of that now, and in her own way
 heartily wished Natásha well. As she was leaving the Rostóvs she called
 her protégée 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.”
 


 
 Natásha blushed scarlet when she heard this.
 


 
 “How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!” said Hélène. “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 fiancé 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 Hélène’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 Natásha,
 gazing at Hélène with wide-open, wondering eyes.
 


 
 Márya Dmítrievna 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 Bezúkhova’s
 visit and the invitation for that evening, Márya Dmítrievna remarked:
 


 
 “I don’t care to have anything to do with Bezúkhova and don’t advise you
 to; however, if you’ve promised—go. It will divert your thoughts,”
 she added, addressing Natásha.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII
 
 
 Count Rostóv took the girls to Countess Bezúkhova’s. There were a good
 many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natásha. Count Rostóv 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 Métivier who from the time
 Hélène 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 Rostóvs.
 Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natásha 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.
 


 
 Hélène welcomed Natásha 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
 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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!” Natásha 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 Natásha. 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, Natásha!” said the count, as he turned back for his daughter.
 “How beautiful she is!” Natásha 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
 Bezúkhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.
 


 
 The count wished to go home, but Hélène entreated him not to spoil her
 improvised ball, and the Rostóvs stayed on. Anatole asked Natásha 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 écossaise , which she also
 danced with him, Anatole said nothing when they happened to be by
 themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natásha 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.”
 


 
 Natásha, 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 écossaise 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 Hélène had followed her and spoken laughingly
 of her brother’s love, and that she again met Anatole in the little
 sitting room. Hélène 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 Hélène’s footsteps and the rustle of her dress were
 heard in the room. Natásha 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 Hélène came up to them.
 


 
 Hélène returned with Natásha to the drawing room. The Rostóvs went away
 without staying for supper.
 


 
 After reaching home Natásha 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. Márya Dmítrievna appeared, and
 they were called to breakfast. Natásha 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, Márya Dmítrievna sat down in her
 armchair and called Natásha 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
 Bolkónski. 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 Márya Dmítrievna.
 “My advice to you is finish your business and go back home to Otrádnoe...
 and wait there.”
 


 
 “Oh, no!” exclaimed Natásha.
 


 
 “Yes, go back,” said Márya Dmítrievna, “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 Rostóv 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 Otrádnoe.
 


 
 “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 Márya Dmítrievna, 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
 Natásha. 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “Don’t talk nonsense!” cried Márya Dmítrievna.
 


 
 “I shan’t believe anyone, I know she doesn’t like me,” replied Natásha
 boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold and angry
 resolution that caused Márya Dmítrievna 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!”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Natásha to fix a time when she could see her again.
 


 
 After reading the letter Natásha 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 Sónya and began sorting patterns with
 her.
 


 
 After dinner Natásha 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 Kurágin. 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 Natásha a letter.
 


 
 “Only, for Christ’s sake...” the girl went on, as Natásha, 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 Natásha held that passionate love letter which
 Dólokhov 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 Natásha, reading the letter for the
 twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each word of
 it.
 


 
 That evening Márya Dmítrievna was going to the Akhárovs’ and proposed to
 take the girls with her. Natásha, pleading a headache, remained at home.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV
 
 
 On returning late in the evening Sónya went to Natásha’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. Sónya picked it up and read it.
 


 
 As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natásha, 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, Sónya, 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 Kurágin 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 Sónya. “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!”
 


 
 Sónya wiped away her tears and went up to Natásha, again scanning her
 face.
 


 
 “Natásha!” she said, just audibly.
 


 
 Natásha awoke and saw Sónya.
 


 
 “Ah, you’re back?”
 


 
 And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment of
 awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sónya’s look of
 embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.
 


 
 “Sónya, you’ve read that letter?” she demanded.
 


 
 “Yes,” answered Sónya softly.
 


 
 Natásha smiled rapturously.
 


 
 “No, Sónya, I can’t any longer!” she said. “I can’t hide it from you any
 longer. You know, we love one another! Sónya, darling, he writes...
 Sónya...”
 


 
 Sónya stared open-eyed at Natásha, unable to believe her ears.
 


 
 “And Bolkónski?” she asked.
 


 
 “Ah, Sónya, if you only knew how happy I am!” cried Natásha. “You don’t
 know what love is....”
 


 
 “But, Natásha, can that be all over?”
 


 
 Natásha looked at Sónya with wide-open eyes as if she could not grasp the
 question.
 


 
 “Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?” said Sónya.
 


 
 “Oh, you don’t understand anything! Don’t talk nonsense, just listen!”
 said Natásha, with momentary vexation.
 


 
 “But I can’t believe it,” insisted Sónya. “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! Natásha, I don’t believe you, you’re joking! In
 three days to forget everything and so...”
 


 
 “Three days?” said Natásha. “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.... Sónya, wait a bit, sit here,” and Natásha 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, Sónya?” cried
 Natásha with a happy yet frightened expression.
 


 
 “But think what you are doing,” cried Sónya. “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,” Natásha replied. “Why can’t you
 understand? I love him!”
 


 
 “Then I won’t let it come to that... I shall tell!” cried Sónya, bursting
 into tears.
 


 
 “What do you mean? For God’s sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!”
 declared Natásha. “You want me to be miserable, you want us to be
 separated....”
 


 
 When she saw Natásha’s fright, Sónya 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?”
 


 
 Natásha did not answer her questions.
 


 
 “For God’s sake, Sónya, don’t tell anyone, don’t torture me,” Natásha
 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 Sónya.
 “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!
 Natásha, have you considered what these secret reasons can be?”
 


 
 Natásha looked at Sónya 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!”
 


 
 Sónya sighed and shook her head incredulously.
 


 
 “If there were reasons...” she began.
 


 
 But Natásha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.
 


 
 “Sónya, 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?” Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “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 Sónya resolutely.
 


 
 “But I can’t live without him!” cried Natásha.
 


 
 “Natásha, 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 Natásha. “Go away,
 Sónya! I don’t want to quarrel with you, but go, for God’s sake go! You
 see how I am suffering!” Natásha cried angrily, in a voice of despair and
 repressed irritation. Sónya burst into sobs and ran from the room.
 


 
 Natásha 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 freedom, 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 Natásha.
 


 





 
 On Friday the Rostóvs 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, Sónya and Natásha were invited to a big dinner
 party at the Karágins’, and Márya Dmítrievna took them there. At that
 party Natásha again met Anatole, and Sónya 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 Natásha was the first to begin the
 explanation Sónya expected.
 


 
 “There, Sónya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,” Natásha
 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? Natásha, how glad I am you’re not
 angry with me! Tell me everything—the whole truth. What did he say?”
 


 
 Natásha became thoughtful.
 


 
 “Oh, Sónya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I had
 promised Bolkónski. He was glad I was free to refuse him.”
 


 
 Sónya sighed sorrowfully.
 


 
 “But you haven’t refused Bolkónski?” said she.
 


 
 “Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkónski. Why do you
 think so badly of me?”
 


 
 “I don’t think anything, only I don’t understand this...”
 


 
 “Wait a bit, Sónya, 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?”
 


 
 Sónya did not succumb to the tender tone Natásha used toward her. The more
 emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natásha’s face became, the
 more serious and stern grew Sónya’s.
 


 
 “Natásha,” 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, Natásha. Why
 this secrecy?”
 


 
 “Again, again!” interrupted Natásha.
 


 
 “Natásha, I am afraid for you!”
 


 
 “Afraid of what?”
 


 
 “I am afraid you’re going to your ruin,” said Sónya resolutely, and was
 herself horrified at what she had said.
 


 
 Anger again showed in Natásha’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!”
 


 
 “Natásha!” moaned Sónya, aghast.
 


 
 “I hate you, I hate you! You’re my enemy forever!” And Natásha ran out of
 the room.
 


 
 Natásha did not speak to Sónya 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 Sónya, she watched her friend and did not let her out
 of her sight.
 


 
 The day before the count was to return, Sónya noticed that Natásha sat by
 the drawing room window all the morning as if expecting something and that
 she made a sign to an officer who drove past, whom Sónya took to be
 Anatole.
 


 
 Sónya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed that at
 dinner and all that evening Natásha was in a strange and unnatural state.
 She answered questions at random, began sentences she did not finish, and
 laughed at everything.
 


 
 After tea Sónya noticed a housemaid at Natásha’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 Sónya that Natásha had some dreadful plan
 for that evening. Sónya knocked at her door. Natásha did not let her in.
 


 
 “She will run away with him!” thought Sónya. “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,” Sónya 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 Natásha had some
 terrible intention. “The count is away. What am I to do? Write to Kurágin
 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 Bolkónski—she sent a letter
 to Princess Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away....” To tell Márya
 Dmítrievna who had such faith in Natásha seemed to Sónya terrible. “Well,
 anyway,” thought Sónya 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 Dólokhov’s. The plan for Natalie Rostóva’s
 abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by Dólokhov a few
 days before, and on the day that Sónya, after listening at Natásha’s door,
 resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been put into execution. Natásha
 had promised to come out to Kurágin at the back porch at ten that evening.
 Kurágin was to put her into a troyka he would have ready and to drive her
 forty miles to the village of Kámenka, where an unfrocked priest was in
 readiness to perform a marriage ceremony over them. At Kámenka 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
 Dólokhov’s help.
 


 
 Two witnesses for the mock marriage—Khvóstikov, a retired petty
 official whom Dólokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and
 Makárin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an unbounded
 affection for Kurágin—were sitting at tea in Dólokhov’s front room.
 


 
 In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with
 Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dólokhov in a traveling cloak
 and high boots, at an open desk on which lay an 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. Dólokhov was counting the money and noting something down.
 


 
 “Well,” he said, “Khvóstikov must have two thousand.”
 


 
 “Give it to him, then,” said Anatole.
 


 
 “Makárka” (their name for Makárin) “will go through fire and water for you
 for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled,” said Dólokhov, showing
 him the memorandum. “Is that right?”
 


 
 “Yes, of course,” returned Anatole, evidently not listening to Dólokhov
 and looking straight before him with a smile that did not leave his face.
 


 
 Dólokhov banged down the lid of his desk 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 Dólokhov. “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.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov, 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 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “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 Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov
 with his feet turned under him. “It’s the very devil! What? Feel how it
 beats!” He took Dólokhov’s hand and put it on his heart. “What a foot, my
 dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!” he added in French. “What?”
 


 
 Dólokhov 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Khvóstikov and Makárin 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!” Dólokhov shouted to him from the
 other room.
 


 
 “I don’t want to,” answered Anatole continuing to smile.
 


 
 “Come! Balagá is here.”
 


 
 Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balagá was a famous troyka
 driver who had known Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov 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 Balagá 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 Dólokhov liked Balagá too for his masterly driving and because
 he liked the things they liked. With others Balagá 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 Iványch, 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 Dólokhov, when they had money, would give him a thousand
 or a couple of thousand rubles.
 


 
 Balagá 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 Dólokhov, holding out a small, black
 hand.
 


 
 “Theodore Iványch!” 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, Balagá,” 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 Balagá.
 


 
 “Well, listen, Balagá! Drive all three to death but get me there in three
 hours. Eh?”
 


 
 “When they are dead, what shall I drive?” said Balagá 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 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “I’ll stand, Theodore Iványch.”
 


 
 “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, Balagá!
 You’ll get there in time? Eh?”
 


 
 “That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn’t we be there in
 time?” replied Balagá. “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 Makárin who gazed rapturously at him with
 wide-open eyes. “Will you believe it, Makárka, 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!” Balagá continued the tale. “That time I’d harnessed
 two young side horses with the bay in the shafts,” he went on, turning to
 Dólokhov. “Will you believe it, Theodore Iványch, 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 Dólokhov 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 Makárin 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, Balagá. 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 Balagá who also emptied his glass, and wiped his
 mouth with his handkerchief.
 


 
 Makárin 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.
 


 
 Balagá 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 Dólokhov. “Hey, Ignátka! Go to Matrëna
 Matrévna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what elopements are
 like,” continued Dólokhov 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, Matrëna, 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over Matrëna, and
 wrapped her up in it.
 


 
 “That’s the way,” said Dólokhov, “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 Matrëna’s brilliant smile was seen.
 


 
 “Well, good-by, Matrëna,” said Anatole, kissing her. “Ah, my revels here
 are over. Remember me to Stëshka. There, good-by! Good-by, Matrëna, wish
 me luck!”
 


 
 “Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!” said Matrëna in her gypsy
 accent.
 


 
 Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers were
 holding the horses. Balagá took his seat in the front one and holding his
 elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and Dólokhov got in
 with him. Makárin, Khvóstikov, and a valet seated themselves in the other
 sleigh.
 


 
 “Well, are you ready?” asked Balagá.
 


 
 “Go!” he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka tore
 down the Nikítski Boulevard.
 


 
 “Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!...” The shouting of Balagá and
 of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could be heard.
 On the Arbát Square the troyka caught against a carriage; something
 cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the Arbát Street.
 


 
 After taking a turn along the Podnovínski Boulevard, Balagá began to rein
 in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old Konyúsheny Street.
 


 
 The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and Anatole and
 Dólokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the gate Dólokhov
 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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, Márya Dmítrievna’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.”
 


 
 “Kurágin! Come back!” shouted Dólokhov. “Betrayed! Back!”
 


 
 Dólokhov, 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 Dólokhov 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
 
 
 Márya Dmítrievna, having found Sónya weeping in the corridor, made her
 confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natásha she read it and
 went into Natásha’s room with it in her hand.
 


 
 “You shameless good-for-nothing!” said she. “I won’t hear a word.”
 


 
 Pushing back Natásha 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 Natásha’s room fingering the key in her pocket. Sónya was sitting
 sobbing in the corridor. “Márya Dmítrievna, for God’s sake let me in to
 her!” she pleaded, but Márya Dmítrievna 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. Natásha lying on the sofa, her head hidden in her hands,
 and she did not stir. She was in just the same position in which Márya
 Dmítrievna had left her.
 


 
 “A nice girl! Very nice!” said Márya Dmítrievna. “Arranging meetings with
 lovers in my house! It’s no use pretending: you listen when I speak to
 you!” And Márya Dmítrievna touched her arm. “Listen 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.”
 


 
 Natásha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved with
 noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Márya Dmítrievna glanced
 round at Sónya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natásha.
 


 
 “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 Natásha’s face and turned it toward her. Both
 Márya Dmítrievna and Sónya were amazed when they saw how Natásha 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 Márya Dmítrievna’s hands with a vicious effort and sinking
 down again into her former position.
 


 
 “Natalie!” said Márya Dmítrievna. “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 Natásha’s body shook with sobs.
 


 
 “Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?”
 


 
 “I have no betrothed: I have refused him!” cried Natásha.
 


 
 “That’s all the same,” continued Márya Dmítrievna. “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 Natásha, raising herself on the sofa and looking malignantly
 at Márya Dmítrievna.
 


 
 “But what did you want?” cried Márya Dmítrievna, 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 Natásha getting up. “If you
 hadn’t interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it? Sónya,
 why?... Go away!”
 


 
 And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which people
 bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned. Márya
 Dmítrievna was to speak again but Natásha cried out:
 


 
 “Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!” and she threw herself
 back on the sofa.
 


 
 Márya Dmítrievna 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 Natásha herself would undertake to
 forget it all and not let anyone see that something had happened. Natásha
 did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she grew cold and had a
 shivering fit. Márya Dmítrievna put a pillow under her head, covered her
 with two quilts, and herself brought her some lime-flower water, but
 Natásha did not respond to her.
 


 
 “Well, let her sleep,” said Márya Dmítrievna as she went out of the room
 supposing Natásha to be asleep.
 


 
 But Natásha 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 Sónya who got up and went to her several times.
 


 
 Next day Count Rostóv 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. Márya
 Dmítrievna met him and told him that Natásha had been very unwell the day
 before and that they had sent for the doctor, but that she was better now.
 Natásha 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 Natásha 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. Márya Dmítrievna
 confirmed Natásha’s assurances that nothing had happened. From the
 pretense of illness, from his daughter’s distress, and by the embarrassed
 faces of Sónya and Márya Dmítrievna, 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 Rostóvs came to
 Moscow the effect Natásha had on him made him hasten to carry out his
 intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexéevich’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 Márya
 Dmítrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great importance
 relating to Andrew Bolkónski and his betrothed. Pierre had been avoiding
 Natásha because it seemed to him that his feeling for her was stronger
 than a married man’s should be for his friend’s fiancée. 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 Márya Dmítrievna’s. “If only Prince Andrew would hurry up
 and come and marry her!” thought he on his way to the house.
 


 
 On the Tverskóy 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 Makárin 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 Márya Dmítrievna’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 Natásha 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 Márya Dmítrievna’s room.
 


 
 “Fine doings!” answered Dmítrievna. “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, Márya
 Dmítrievna informed him that Natásha had refused Prince Andrew without her
 parents’ knowledge and that the cause of this was Anatole Kurágin into
 whose society Pierre’s wife had thrown her and with whom Natásha 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 Natásha Rostóva who used to be so
 charming—should give up Bolkónski 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 Natásha, 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
 Natásha who had just passed him in the ballroom with such a look of cold
 dignity. He did not know that Natásha’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 Márya Dmítrievna. “He
 could not marry—he is married!”
 


 
 “Things get worse from hour to hour!” ejaculated Márya Dmítrievna. “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, Márya Dmítrievna told
 Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that the count or
 Bolkónski, 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
 Natásha had told him that she had rejected Bolkónski.
 


 
 “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 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Sónya entered the room with an agitated face.
 


 
 “Natásha is not quite well; she’s in her room and would like to see you.
 Márya Dmítrievna is with her and she too asks you to come.”
 


 
 “Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkónski’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 Márya Dmítrievna told Natásha that Anatole was married, Natásha did
 not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by Pierre
 himself. Sónya told Pierre this as she led him along the corridor to
 Natásha’s room.
 


 
 Natásha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Márya Dmítrievna, 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 Márya Dmítrievna pointing to Pierre and
 addressing Natásha. “Let him tell you whether I have told the truth.”
 


 
 Natásha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded animal looks
 at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.
 


 
 “Natálya Ilyníchna,” 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 Kurágin, 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 Zakhárych was in
 the library, but Paul Timoféevich had not yet arrived. One of Pierre’s
 acquaintances, while they were talking about the weather, asked if he had
 heard of Kurágin’s abduction of Rostóva 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 Rostóvs’. 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 Dólokhov,
 consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate affair. It seemed to
 him essential to see Natásha. 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 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “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 Hélène, 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 Rostóva 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 Rostóva. 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 tête-à-tête,” 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 Márya Dmítrievna’s to tell her of the fulfillment of her
 wish that Kurágin should be banished from Moscow. The whole house was in a
 state of alarm and commotion. Natásha was very ill, having, as Márya
 Dmítrievna 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 Sónya 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
 Sónya, who had a tear-stained face, but he could not see Natásha.
 


 
 Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip about the
 attempted abduction of Rostóva. 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 Natásha’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 Bolkónski heard all the rumors current in the town from
 Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which
 Natásha 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
 Natásha’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 Natásha’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
 Natásha 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 Natásha’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 Meshchérski, warmly disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The
 conversation was about Speránski—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 Speránski
 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 Speránski 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 Meshchérski 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 Natásha, 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 Rostóva 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 Kurágin?” 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 Kurágin has not honored Countess Rostóva 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 Rostóva 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 Rostóvs,
 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 Rostóvs’ to fulfill the commission
 entrusted to him. Natásha was in bed, the count at the club, and Pierre,
 after giving the letters to Sónya, went to Márya Dmítrievna who was
 interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken the news. Ten minutes later
 Sónya came to Márya Dmítrievna.
 


 
 “Natásha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirílovich,” 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 Sónya.
 


 
 Márya Dmítrievna 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.”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Kirílovich,” she began rapidly, “Prince Bolkónski 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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?” Natásha’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 Natásha. “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 Natásha.
 


 
 “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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Arbát Square an immense expanse of dark starry sky
 presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the
 Prechístenka 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 1812—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 an 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 naïve 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,
 Rumyántsev, 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 war 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 Smolénsk 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 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 frère , 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 Königsberg. 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 , Beauché;
 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, Gérard, 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 Kóvno,
 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 Víliya, 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 Légion 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 Vílna 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 Vílna 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 Vílna 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 Bezúkhova was present among other Russian ladies who had followed
 the sovereign from Petersburg to Vílna 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.
 


 
 Borís Drubetskóy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the present
 en garçon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not an
 aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Borís 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 Hélène in Vílna after not having seen her for a long time and
 did not recall the past, but as Hélène was enjoying the favors of a very
 important personage and Borís had only recently married, they met as good
 friends of long standing.
 


 
 At midnight dancing was still going on. Hélène, not having a suitable
 partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Borís. They were the
 third couple. Borís, coolly looking at Hélène’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, Borís saw that Adjutant General Balashëv, 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
 Balashëv 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 Balashëv begun to speak before a look of
 amazement appeared on the Emperor’s face. He took Balashëv 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. Borís noticed Arakchéev’s
 excited face when the sovereign went out with Balashëv. Arakchéev 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.
 (Borís understood that Arakchéev envied Balashëv and was displeased that
 evidently important news had reached the Emperor otherwise than through
 himself.)
 


 
 But the Emperor and Balashëv passed out into the illuminated garden
 without noticing Arakchéev who, holding his sword and glancing wrathfully
 around, followed some twenty paces behind them.
 


 
 All the time Borís was going through the figures of the mazurka, he was
 worried by the question of what news Balashëv 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 Hélène 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 Balashëv and
 the Emperor returning to the veranda, he stood still. They were moving
 toward the door. Borís, 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 Borís 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 Borís had
 overheard it.
 


 
 “Let no one know of it!” the Emperor added with a frown.
 


 
 Borís 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.
 


 
 Borís 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, Shishkóv, and told him
 to write an order to the troops and a rescript to Field Marshal Prince
 Saltykóv, 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 frère, 



 
 Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty with 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 Kurákin 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 Balashëv and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him to take it
 and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When dispatching Balashëv,
 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 Balashëv to repeat them
 personally to Napoleon.
 


 
 Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied by a
 bugler and two Cossacks, Balashëv reached the French outposts at the
 village of Rykónty, 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 Balashëv to halt. Balashëv 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 Balashëv, 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? Balashëv 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, Balashëv
 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.
 


 
 Balashëv 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 Balashëv’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 Rykónty, 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 Balashëv 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 Balashëv at a gallop, his plumes flowing and his gems and gold
 lace glittering in the bright June sunshine.
 


 
 Balashëv was only two horses’ length from the equestrian with the
 bracelets, plumes, 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 Balashëv’s mission, whose name he could not pronounce.
 


 
 “De Bal-machève!” 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
 Balashëv’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 Balashëv, “my master, the Emperor, does not desire
 war and as Your Majesty sees...” said Balashëv, 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-machève.” But royauté 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 Balashëv’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.”
 


 
 Balashëv 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.
 


 
 Balashëv 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.
 


 
 Balashëv 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 Arakchéev was to Alexander—though not a
 coward like Arakchéev, 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 Arakchéev, 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.
 


 
 Balashëv 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 Balashëv
 was brought in. He became still more absorbed in his task when the Russian
 general entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at Balashëv’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 Balashëv’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, Balashëv 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.”
 


 
 Balashëv 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.
 


 
 Balashëv 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
 Balashëv, “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 Balashëv’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 Castrès, came in and conducted
 Balashëv 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 Balashëv 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 Castrès.
 


 
 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, Balashëv was brought to Vílna—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
 Balashëv and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon’s wish to honor him with
 an audience.
 


 
 Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhénsk regiment had stood in
 front of the house to which Balashëv 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 Balashëv in the very
 house in Vílna from which Alexander had dispatched him on his mission.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER VI
 
 
 Though Balashëv 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
 Balashëv 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 Balashëv to follow him.
 


 
 Balashëv 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 Balashëv’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 Balashëv’s face and immediately looked past him.
 


 
 It was plain that Balashëv’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, Balashëv 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, Balashëv 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 Balashëv’s
 uniform and sword.
 


 
 Balashëv recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the Emperor
 Alexander did not consider Kurákin’s demand for his passports a sufficient
 cause for war; that Kurákin 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 Balashëv might
 proceed.
 


 
 After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashëv added that the
 Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter into negotiations
 except on condition that... Here Balashëv hesitated: he remembered the
 words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his letter, but had
 specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykóv and had told Balashëv to
 repeat to Napoleon. Balashëv 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 Balashëv’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, Balashëv, 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 Balashëv.
 


 
 “The Niemen?” repeated Napoleon. “So now you want me to retire beyond the
 Niemen—only the Niemen?” repeated Napoleon, looking straight at
 Balashëv.
 


 
 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 Balashëv. Balashëv 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?”
 


 
 Balashëv 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 Balashëv 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 Balashëv, 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. Bagratión 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 Vílna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of the Polish
 provinces. Your army is grumbling.”
 


 
 “On the contrary, Your Majesty,” said Balashëv, 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.
 


 
 Balashëv 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, Balashëv 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. Balashëv 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. Balashëv 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 Balashëv still stood silently before him in
 the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon abruptly turned round,
 drew close to Balashëv’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 Dvína 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 Balashëv. He paused,
 looked ironically straight into Balashëv’s eyes, and said in a quiet
 voice:
 


 
 “And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had! ”
 


 
 Balashëv, 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.
 Balashëv 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 Balashëv 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 him a pocket handkerchief. Napoleon, without
 giving them a glance, turned to Balashëv:
 


 
 “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,” Balashëv 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, Balashëv received, through Duroc, an invitation to
 dine with the Emperor that day.
 


 
 Bessières, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at that dinner.
 


 
 Napoleon met Balashëv 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 Balashëv. 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 Vílna, 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 Balashëv beside him, Napoleon not only treated
 him amiably but behaved as if Balashëv 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
 Balashëv about the Russian capital, not merely as an interested traveler
 asks about a new city he intends to visit, but as if convinced that
 Balashëv, 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 Balashëv.
 


 
 “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.
 


 
 Balashëv 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 Balashëv, “besides Russia there is
 Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries.”
 


 
 This reply of Balashëv’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 Balashëv’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 naïvely asked Balashëv through what towns the direct road from
 there to Moscow passed. Balashëv, 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
 Poltáva , which Charles XII chose.” Balashëv involuntarily flushed with
 pleasure at the aptitude of this reply, but hardly had he uttered the word
 Poltáva 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 Sèvres coffee cup, and motioned Balashëv 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, Balashëv
 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.
 


 
 Balashëv made no reply 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 do the same?” and he
 turned inquiringly to Balashëv, 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 Württemberg, Baden, and
 Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I’ll drive them out. Let him
 prepare an asylum for them in Russia!”
 


 
 Balashëv 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
 Balashëv 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
 Balashëv and with a slight smile, as confidently, quickly, and simply as
 if he were doing something not merely important but pleasing to Balashëv,
 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 Balashëv’s bow. “Let him have mine, he has a long way to go! ”
 


 
 The letter taken by Balashëv 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
 Kurágin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching Petersburg he
 inquired for Kurágin but the latter had already left the city. Pierre had
 warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on his track. Anatole
 Kurágin promptly obtained an appointment from the Minister of War and went
 to join the army in Moldavia. While in Petersburg Prince Andrew met
 Kutúzov, his former commander who was always well disposed toward him, and
 Kutúzov 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 Kurágin. He
 thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause it might
 compromise the young Countess Rostóva and so he wanted to meet Kurágin
 personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel. But he again
 failed to meet Kurágin 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 Boguchárovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but
 he even dreaded to recall 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 Kutúzov’s staff, he
 applied himself to business with zeal and perseverance and surprised
 Kutúzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not having found Kurágin
 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 Kurágin, 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
 Kutúzov had been living for two months, passing his days and nights with a
 Wallachian woman—Prince Andrew asked Kutúzov to transfer him to the
 Western Army. Kutúzov, who was already weary of Bolkónski’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 Smolénsk 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, Mademoiselle 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
 Kámensky’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 Tíkhon, 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 Kurágin, all his unexpended anger
 suddenly swelled up in his heart.
 


 
 “If Mary is already persuading me to 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 Kurágin
 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 Bolkónski
 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 Kurágin, 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
 Kurágin. 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 Vílna, the forces had been divided
 into three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly, secondly, the
 army under Bagratión, and thirdly, the one commanded by Tormásov. 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 Volkónski, 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: Arakchéev, the ex-Minister of War; Count Bennigsen,
 the senior general in rank; the Grand Duke Tsarévich Constantine
 Pávlovich; Count Rumyántsev, 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 émigré ; 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, Arakchéev, or Prince Volkónski, 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. Arakchéev was a
 faithful custodian to enforce order and acted as the sovereign’s
 bodyguard. Bennigsen was a landlord in the Vílna 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 tendencies 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 Vílna 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: Bagratión, Ermólov (who
 was beginning to come to the front), and others. At that time a famous
 joke of Ermólov’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 Suvórov, 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 Arakchéev 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 Tsarévich,
 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 Vílna and
 Vítebsk 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, Rumyántsev, 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 Rostóv 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, Shishkóv,
 the Secretary of State and one of the chief representatives of this party,
 wrote a letter to the Emperor which Arakchéev and Balashëv 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 Bolkónski 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 Chernýshev, the Emperor’s
 aide-de-camp, received Bolkónski 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.
 


 
 Chernýshev 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
 Chernýshev.
 


 
 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 Chernýshev 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 Chernýshev, 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 Chernýshev 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 and 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 Auerstädt, 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 Chernýshev 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 Bolkónski, 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. Chernýshev 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 Bolkónski, 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
 Mikháylovich Volkónski 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 Mikháylovich Volkónski 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
 Volkónski, 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 Volkónski 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 Volkónski 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 Schön 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. Bagratión 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, Rostóv had received a letter from
 his parents in which they told him briefly of Natásha’s illness and the
 breaking off of her engagement to Prince Andrew (which they explained by
 Natásha’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 Natásha was ill and her engagement broken
 off, and that he would do all he could to meet their wishes. To Sónya 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
 Rostóv from returning home as he had promised and marrying Sónya. The
 autumn in Otrádnoe with the hunting, and the winter with the Christmas
 holidays and Sónya’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 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv, 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 Vílna 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 Pávlograd 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 Vílna, 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
 Sventsyáni and destroy any provisions they could not carry away with them.
 Sventsyáni 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. Rostóv remembered Sventsyáni, 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 Sventsyáni 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 Pávlograds 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 1812 was remarkable for its
 storms.
 


 
 The two Pávlograd 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 Rostóv, with a young officer
 named Ilyín, his protégé, 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
 Rostóv’s shelter.
 


 
 “I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of Raévski’s exploit?”
 


 
 And the officer gave them details of the Saltánov battle, which he had
 heard at the staff.
 


 
 Rostóv, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as the water trickled
 down his neck, listened inattentively, with an occasional glance at Ilyín,
 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 Denísov seven years before. Ilyín tried to
 imitate Rostóv in everything and adored him as a girl might have done.
 


 
 Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke grandiloquently of
 the Saltánov dam being “a Russian Thermopylae,” and of how a deed worthy
 of antiquity had been performed by General Raévski. He recounted how
 Raévski had led his two sons onto the dam under terrific fire and had
 charged with them beside him. Rostóv 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 Rostóv
 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 Rostóv
 in the narrow shanty. Rostóv 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 Raévski 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 Raévski 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 Raévski’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 Saltánov 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 Pétya there, or even Ilyín, 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 Ilyín, noticing that Rostóv 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.”
 


 
 Ilyín went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.
 


 
 Five minutes later Ilyín, splashing through the mud, came running back to
 the shanty.
 


 
 “Hurrah! Rostóv, 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 Hendríkhovna’s there.”
 


 
 Mary Hendríkhovna 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.
 


 
 Rostóv threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrúshka to follow
 with the things, and—now slipping in the mud, now splashing right
 through it—set off with Ilyín in the lessening rain and the darkness
 that was occasionally rent by distant lightning.
 


 
 “Rostóv, 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 Hendríkhovna, 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. Rostóv
 and Ilyín, on entering the room, were welcomed with merry shouts and
 laughter.
 


 
 “Dear me, how jolly we are!” said Rostóv 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 Hendríkhovna’s dress!” cried other voices.
 


 
 Rostóv and Ilyín hastened to find a corner where they could change into
 dry clothes without offending Mary Hendríkhovna’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 Hendríkhovna obliged them with the loan of a petticoat to
 be used as a curtain, and behind that screen Rostóv and Ilyín, helped by
 Lavrúshka 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
 Hendríkhovna 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 Hendríkhovna, smiling timidly and happily.
 “He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night.”
 


 
 “Oh, no, Mary Hendríkhovna,” 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 Hendríkhovna’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 Hendríkhovna.
 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 Hendríkhovna
 should stir the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostóv received his tumbler,
 and adding some rum to it asked Mary Hendríkhovna 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 Hendríkhovna assented and began looking for the spoon which someone
 meanwhile had pounced on.
 


 
 “Use your finger, Mary Hendríkhovna, it will be still nicer,” said Rostóv.
 


 
 “Too hot!” she replied, blushing with pleasure.
 


 
 Ilyín put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and brought it to
 Mary Hendríkhovna, 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, Rostóv took a pack of cards and
 proposed that they should play “Kings” with Mary Hendríkhovna. They drew
 lots to settle who should make up her set. At Rostóv’s suggestion it was
 agreed that whoever became “King” should have the right to kiss Mary
 Hendríkhovna’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 Hendríkhovna is ‘King’?” asked Ilyín.
 


 
 “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 Hendríkhovna. 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 Hendríkhovna 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 Rostóv. “What an idea,
 doctor!”
 


 
 “I’ll stand guard on it myself!” said Ilyín.
 


 
 “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 Rostóv, 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
 Ostróvna. Still laughing and talking, the officers began hurriedly getting
 ready and again boiled some muddy water in the samovar. But Rostóv 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, Rostóv and Ilyín 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 Rostóv to Ilyín, who was
 following him.
 


 
 “A charming woman!” said Ilyín, 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. Rostóv
 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. Rostóv, always closely
 followed by Ilyín, rode along the side of the road between two rows of
 birch trees.
 


 
 When campaigning, Rostóv 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, Donéts 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, Rostóv 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 Ilyín 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 Ilyín, 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 Rostóv had had time to consider and determine the distance of that
 firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstóy’s adjutant came galloping from Vítebsk
 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, Rostóv’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 Rostóv 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
 
 
 Rostóv, 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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Sevastyánych!” said Rostóv. “You know, we could crush them....”
 


 
 “A fine thing too!” replied the captain, “and really...”
 


 
 Rostóv, 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. Rostóv 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, Rostóv gave rein to his Donéts 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. Rostóv, 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 Rostóv’s horse dashed its breast against the hindquarters
 of the officer’s horse, almost knocking it over, and at the same instant
 Rostóv, without knowing why, raised his saber and struck the Frenchman
 with it.
 


 
 The instant he had done this, all Rostóv’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.
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv’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. Rostóv 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-Tolstóy met the returning hussars, sent for Rostóv,
 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, Rostóv, 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. “Ilyín?
 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.”
 


 
 Rostóv 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
 Rostóv with a feigned smile and waved his hand in greeting. Rostóv still
 had the same indefinite feeling, as of shame.
 


 
 All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that Rostóv,
 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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 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
 Ostróvna 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 Natásha’s illness, the countess, though not quite
 well yet and still weak, went to Moscow with Pétya and the rest of the
 household, and the whole family moved from Márya Dmítrievna’s house to
 their own and settled down in town.
 


 
 Natásha’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 Natásha 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 Rostóv
 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 Natásha 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 Arbát and got a powder and
 some pills in a pretty box for 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 Sónya 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 Métivier and Feller had not understood the symptoms, but Frise had,
 and Múdrov 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 Sónya 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 Natásha 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 Natásha’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 Rostóvs 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. Natásha’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
 
 
 Natásha 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 Nastásya Ivánovna, 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 Otrádnoe 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.
 Natásha 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 Pétya. 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 Bezúkhov. Natásha 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 Natásha 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
 Natásha 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 Natásha felt very strongly with him that moral
 barrier the absence of which she had experienced with Kurágin 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, Agraféna Ivánovna Belóva, a
 country neighbor of the Rostóvs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions at
 the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natásha should fast
 and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natásha gladly welcomed the idea.
 Despite the doctor’s orders that she should not go out early in the
 morning, Natásha insisted on fasting and preparing for the sacrament, not
 as they generally prepared for it in the Rostóv family by attending three
 services in their own house, but as Agraféna Ivánovna did, by going to
 church every day for a week and not once missing Vespers, Matins, or Mass.
 


 
 The countess was pleased with Natásha’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 Natásha’s wish and
 entrusted her to Belóva. Agraféna Ivánovna used to come to wake Natásha 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, Natásha, shivering in the fresh
 air, went out into the deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn. By
 Agraféna Ivánovna’s advice Natásha prepared herself not in their own
 parish, but at a church where, according to the devout Agraféna Ivánovna,
 the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were never many
 people in the church; Natásha always stood beside Belóva 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, Natásha 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 Agraféna
 Ivánovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natásha 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 Smolénsk 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 Rostóvs’, promised to
 come to dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a copy of the manifesto and
 appeal, which he would obtain from Count Rostopchín.
 


 
 That Sunday, the Rostóvs went to Mass at the Razumóvskis’ private chapel
 as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o’clock, when the Rostóvs 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 Rostóvs’ acquaintances, were at the Razumóvskis’ 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 Natásha,
 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 Rostóva, the one who...”
 


 
 “She’s much thinner, but all the same she’s pretty!”
 


 
 She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kurágin and Bolkónski. 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, Natásha 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
 Natásha’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 Natásha.
 


 
 “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
 Natásha.
 


 
 When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her brother and Denísov.
 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 Sónya, 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,” Natásha 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 Natásha,
 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
 Natásha 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 Pávlovich; 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 Natásha’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 Rostóvs’ with Natásha’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. has 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 Rostóvs’ 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 Natásha’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 Napoléon in numbers, it appears that the
 sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon was 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 Natásha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion,
 the comet, 666, L’Empereur Napoléon , 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 Rostóvs to bring them, from Count Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín’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 Rostóv to his father. Pierre
 took that letter, and Rostopchín 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 Rostóv, awarded a St. George’s Cross of the Fourth Class for
 courage shown in the Ostróvna affair, and in the same order the name of
 Prince Andrew Bolkónski, appointed to the command of a regiment of
 Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind the Rostóvs of Bolkónski,
 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 Rostóvs, keeping the appeal, the bulletin, and the
 other orders to take with him when he went to dinner.
 


 
 His conversation with Count Rostopchín 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 Rostóvs 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 Rostóvs’ he stayed till midnight. The Rostóvs’ 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 Natásha. 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 a long 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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,” Natásha 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 , Bolkónski” (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 Pétya came running in from the drawing room.
 


 
 Pétya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips and
 resembled Natásha. He was preparing to enter the university, but he and
 his friend Obolénski had lately, in secret, agreed to join the hussars.
 


 
 Pétya 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 Pétya
 was saying.
 


 
 Pétya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.
 


 
 “Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirílych, for heaven’s sake! You are my
 only hope,” said Pétya.
 


 
 “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 Razumóvskis’ 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 Smolénsk,” 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 Natásha,
 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Sónya, 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, Shinshín told them the town news, of the illness of the old
 Georgian princess, of Métivier’s disappearance from Moscow, and of how
 some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchín and accused of being a
 French “spyer” (so Count Rostopchín had told the story), and how
 Rostopchín 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?” Shinshín asked. “Prince Golítsyn has engaged a
 master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak French in
 the streets.”
 


 
 “And how about you, Count Peter Kirílych? 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 Sónya, 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.”
 


 
 Sónya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count listened
 with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.
 


 
 Natásha 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. Shinshín, with a sarcastic smile on his
 lips, was evidently preparing to make fun of anything that gave him the
 opportunity: Sónya’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,
 Sónya, 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 other 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 Shinshín had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on the
 count’s patriotism, Natásha 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 Shinshín.
 


 
 “Not a patriot at all, but simply...” Natásha 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, Pétya, 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. Fédya Obolénski is younger than I, and he’s
 going too. Besides, all the same I can’t study now when...” Pétya 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.”
 


 
 “Pétya! 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 Kirílych 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 Kirílych, let’s go and have a smoke,” he said.
 


 
 Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natásha’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 Natásha, “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 Natásha, 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!” Natásha 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 Rostóvs’ any more.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXI
 
 
 After the definite refusal he had received, Pétya 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 Rostóvs’
 domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him. That morning
 Pétya 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. Pétya
 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 Rostóv, 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, Pétya 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 Pétya 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 Krémlin, the less he remembered
 to walk with the sedateness and deliberation of a man. As he approached
 the Krémlin 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 Pétya stood a peasant woman, a footman, two tradesmen,
 and a discharged soldier. After standing some time in the gateway, Pétya
 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 Pétya into a very filthy corner of the
 gateway.
 


 
 Pétya 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 Rostóvs’, and Pétya 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 Pétya with
 it, streamed forward into the Krémlin 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 Pétya found himself in the square
 he clearly heard the sound of bells and the joyous voices of the crowd
 that filled the whole Krémlin.
 


 
 For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all heads were bared,
 and everyone rushed forward in one direction. Pétya was being pressed so
 that he could scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted, “Hurrah! hurrah!
 hurrah!” Pétya 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 Pétya 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, Pétya, 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 Pétya. “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
 Pétya 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 Pétya—pale and breathless—to
 the Tsar-cannon. Several people were sorry for Pétya, 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.
 


 
 Pétya 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. Pétya 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 kvass, gingerbread,
 and poppyseed sweets (of which Pétya 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 Pétya 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 Pétya 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 Pétya 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. Pétya 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 Pétya in a tearful voice, of those around him,
 but no one answered him, everybody was too excited; and Pétya, 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 Pétya 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, Valúev, 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 Pétya among them, rushed
 toward the balcony.
 


 
 “Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!...” cried the crowd, and Pétya with it,
 and again the women and men of weaker mold, Pétya 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. Pétya’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. Pétya 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 Pétya 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
 Krémlin, but called on his friend Obolénski, who was fifteen and was also
 entering the regiment. On returning home Pétya announced resolutely and
 firmly that if he was not allowed to enter the service he would run away.
 And next day, Count Ilyá Rostóv—though he had not yet quite yielded—went
 to inquire how he could arrange for Pétya 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 Slobóda 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 Pétya
 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, Zinaída Dmítrievna’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
 états généraux (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 Ilyá Rostóv, 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 Smolénsk people have offahd to waise militia for the Empewah?
 Ah we to take Smolénsk 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 Ilyá Rostóv 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 Rostóv’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 très honorable préopinant” —“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 à
 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 Rostóv 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, Stepán
 Stepánovich Adráksin. Adráksin 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,
 Adráksin 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 Adráksin.
 


 
 “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, everyone 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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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.
 


 
 Glínka, 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 Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín. “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 Smolénsk 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 Rostóv, 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 otkupshchík . 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 otkupshchík 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 Mamónov was furnishing
 a regiment, Bezúkhov at once informed Rostopchín that he would give a
 thousand men and their maintenance.
 


 
 Old Rostóv could not tell his wife of what had passed without tears, and
 at once consented to Pétya’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 Kurákin and then of Balashëv.
 


 
 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.
 Rostóv 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 Smolénsk, 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 Smolénsk, still less could he
 contemplate the burning of Moscow, and when our armies did unite he was
 displeased that Smolénsk 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
 Smolénsk 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 Smolénsk. 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 Bagratión (who would come under his
 command), and Bagratión—being in command of the second army—tried
 to postpone joining up and coming under Barclay’s command as long as he
 could. Bagratión 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 Tsarévich, 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 Tsarévich hinted at treachery and demanded
 a general engagement. Lubomírski, Bronnítski, 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
 Tsarévich.
 


 
 At Smolénsk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagratión disliked it.
 


 
 Bagratión drove up in a carriage to the house occupied by Barclay. Barclay
 donned his sash and came out to meet and report to his senior officer
 Bagratión.
 


 
 Despite his seniority in rank Bagratión, in this contest of magnanimity,
 took his orders from Barclay, but, having submitted, agreed with him less
 than ever. By the Emperor’s orders Bagratión reported direct to him. He
 wrote to Arakchéev, 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 Bronnítskis 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
 Smolénsk. 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 Nevérovski’s division and reached
 the walls of Smolénsk.
 


 
 It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolénsk to save our
 lines of communication. The battle was fought and thousands were killed on
 both sides.
 


 
 Smolénsk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the Emperor and of the
 whole people. But Smolénsk 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. Tíkhon 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 Drubetskáya), 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 Raévski, 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 a
 distance. Prince Andrew’s second letter, written near Vítebsk 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 Vítebsk, 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 Ivánovich.”
 


 
 Michael Ivánovich 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 Ivánovich, 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 Vítebsk....”
 


 
 “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 Ivánovich,” he suddenly went on, raising his
 head and pointing to the plan of the building, “tell me how you mean to
 alter it....”
 


 
 Michael Ivánovich 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 Ivánovich, 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 Ivánovich 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
 Ivánovich 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 Alpátych is being sent to Smolénsk?” asked Princess Mary.
 


 
 “Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time.”
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER III
 
 
 When Michael Ivánovich 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 Ivánovich 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 Ivánovich’s hand, put it in
 his pocket, folded up his papers, and called in Alpátych who had long been
 waiting.
 


 
 The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolénsk and, walking up
 and down the room past Alpátych 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 Ivánovich’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 Alpátych 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. Alpátych made a slight movement.
 


 
 “Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I’ll send after you.”
 


 
 Alpátych 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 Tíkhon 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 Tíkhon 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
 Tíkhon 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....”
 


 
 “Tíkhon, 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 Vítebsk. 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 Vítebsk, in four days’ march they may be at Smolénsk;
 perhaps are already there! Tíkhon!” Tíkhon 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 Potëmkin’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
 Potëmkin. 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 Zúbov 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 Bolkónski’s estate, lay forty miles east from
 Smolénsk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.
 


 
 The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to Alpátych,
 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
 Alpátych to the Provincial Governor at Smolénsk, 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 Alpátych 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 Alpátych, 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 Alpátych 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 Alpátych, 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, Alpátych, 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, Yákov Alpátych! 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 Alpátych 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.
 


 
 Alpátych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains and troops on the
 road. As he approached Smolénsk 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
 Alpátych, 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 Alpátych.
 


 
 On reaching Smolénsk on the evening of the fourth of August he put up in
 the Gáchina suburb across the Dnieper, at the inn kept by Ferapóntov,
 where he had been in the habit of putting up for the last thirty years.
 Some thirty years ago Ferapóntov, by Alpátych’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, Ferapóntov was standing before
 his shop which opened onto the street. On seeing Alpátych he went up to
 him.
 


 
 “You’re welcome, Yákov Alpátych. Folks are leaving the town, but you have
 come to it,” said he.
 


 
 “Why are they leaving the town?” asked Alpátych.
 


 
 “That’s what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the French.”
 


 
 “Women’s fuss, women’s fuss!” said Alpátych.
 


 
 “Just what I think, Yákov Alpátych. 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!”
 


 
 Yákov Alpátych 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 Alpátych
 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 Alpátych.
 


 
 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. Alpátych 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 Alpátych 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 Alpátych.
 


 
 “Oh, Yákov Alpátych! What have you come for?”
 


 
 “To see the Governor by his excellency’s order,” answered Alpátych,
 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.
 


 
 Alpátych 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. Alpátych 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 Bolkónski,” he
 announced with such solemnity and significance that the official turned to
 him and took the letters.
 


 
 A few minutes later the Governor received Alpátych 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 Alpátych.
 “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 Alpátych, and began questioning the
 officer.
 


 
 Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on Alpátych when he came
 out of the Governor’s room. Involuntarily listening now to the firing,
 which had drawn nearer and was increasing in strength, Alpátych hurried to
 his inn. The paper handed to him by the Governor said this:
 


 
 “I assure you that the town of Smolénsk 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 Bagratión from the other are marching to unite our forces
 before Smolénsk, 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 Smolénsk, 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 Smolénsk, 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 Ferapóntov’s and women were wailing and
 lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran round barking in
 front of the harnessed horses.
 


 
 Alpátych 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 Ferapóntov. The cook
 began running hither and thither in the passage like a frightened hen,
 just as Alpátych entered.
 


 
 “He’s done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her... dragged her
 about so!...”
 


 
 “What for?” asked Alpátych.
 


 
 “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 Alpátych 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.
 


 
 Ferapóntov came out after her, but on seeing Alpátych adjusted his
 waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpátych into the
 opposite room.
 


 
 “Going already?” said he.
 


 
 Alpátych, 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
 Ferapóntov. “What has been decided?”
 


 
 Alpátych replied that the Governor had not told him anything definite.
 


 
 “With our business, how can we get away?” said Ferapóntov. “We’d have to
 pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobúzh and I tell them they’re not
 Christians to ask it! Selivánov, 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 Alpátych and Ferapóntov 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 Ferapóntov, 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 Iványch Plátov drove them into the river Márina and
 drowned some eighteen thousand in one day.”
 


 
 Alpátych 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. Alpátych 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.
 Ferapóntov’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. Alpátych 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. Alpátych,
 his coachman, Ferapóntov’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 Smolénsk.
 


 
 Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpátych 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
 Ferapóntov’s yard before Alpátych’s eyes. Alpátych 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!”
 


 
 Alpátych went back to the house, called the coachman, and told him to set
 off. Ferapóntov’s whole household came out too, following Alpátych 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 Alpátych and the coachman arranged the tangled reins and traces of
 their horses with trembling hands.
 


 
 As Alpátych was driving out of the gate he saw some ten soldiers in
 Ferapóntov’s open shop, talking loudly and filling their bags and
 knapsacks with flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapóntov 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 Alpátych, Ferapóntov turned to him:
 


 
 “Russia is done for!” he cried. “Alpátych, I’ll set the place on fire
 myself. We’re done for!...” and Ferapóntov ran into the yard.
 


 
 Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the street blocking it
 completely, so that Alpátych could not pass out and had to wait.
 Ferapóntov’s wife and children were also sitting in a cart waiting till 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
 Alpátych’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, Alpátych 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.
 


 
 Alpátych 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 Alpátych watched for
 it too.
 


 
 “Alpátych!” a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man.
 


 
 “Mercy on us! Your excellency!” answered Alpátych, immediately recognizing
 the voice of his young prince.
 


 
 Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black horse, was looking
 at Alpátych from the back of the crowd.
 


 
 “Why are you here?” he asked.
 


 
 “Your... your excellency,” stammered Alpátych 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. Alpátych 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:
 


 
 “Smolénsk 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 Usvyázh.”
 


 
 Having written this and given the paper to Alpátych, 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 évidence .”
 


 
 Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went on speaking to
 Alpátych.
 


 
 “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 Alpátych, “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 Smolénsk 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 Smolénsk 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 Timókhin 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 Smolénsk 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 was 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 Tarás 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. Alpátych, 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
 Boguchárovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also been carted away. The hay
 and the spring corn, of which Alpátych 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
 Boguchárovo, 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.
 


 
 Alpátych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for
 Boguchárovo, 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 Alpátych, “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.
 


 
 Alpátych 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 Alpátych. “You must
 go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go to the Ryazán
 estate or to the one near Moscow.”
 


 
 Alpátych 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 with 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, Timókhin, 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 Timókhin, 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 wash 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 Bagratión wrote as follows from his
 quarters at Mikháylovna on the Smolénsk road:
 


 
 Dear Count Aléxis Andréevich—(He was writing to Arakchéev 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 Smolénsk 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 Smolénsk. 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 everyone 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 Pávlovna and Hélène remained just as they had been—the
 one seven and the other five years before. At Anna Pávlovna’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 Pávlovna was the
 representative. And in Hélène’s salon, which Rumyántsev himself honored
 with his visits, regarding Hélène 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
 Pávlovna’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 Hélène and
 Rumyántsev 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 Kazán of the court and the girls’ educational
 establishments under the patronage of the Dowager Empress. In Hélène’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 Bilíbin—who now in Petersburg was quite at home in
 Hélène’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 Pávlovna’s circle on the contrary was enraptured by this enthusiasm
 and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the ancients. Prince
 Vasíli, who still occupied his former important posts, formed a connecting
 link between these two circles. He visited his “good friend Anna Pávlovna”
 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
 Hélène’s what he should have said at Anna Pávlovna’s and vice versa.
 


 
 Soon after the Emperor’s return Prince Vasíli in a conversation about the
 war at Anna Pávlovna’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 Kutúzov, the newly chosen chief of the Petersburg
 militia, presiding over the enrollment of recruits at the Treasury,
 cautiously ventured to suggest that Kutúzov would be the man to satisfy
 all requirements.
 


 
 Anna Pávlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutúzov had done
 nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.
 


 
 “I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility,” Prince Vasíli
 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
 Vasíli continued, forgetting for a moment that though at Hélène’s one had
 to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at Anna Pávlovna’s one had to be
 ecstatic about it. But he retrieved his mistake at once. “Now, is it
 suitable that Count Kutúzov, 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 a decrepit, blind old man, positively
 blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can’t see anything. To play
 blindman’s buff? 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 Kutúzov received the title of Prince. This might
 indicate a wish to get rid of him, and therefore Prince Vasíli’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
 Saltykóv, Arakchéev, Vyazmítinov, Lopukhín, and Kochubéy 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 Kutúzov, after a
 short deliberation they agreed to advise his appointment as commander in
 chief. That same day Kutúzov 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 Vasíli at Anna Pávlovna’s again met the “man
 of great merit.” The latter was very attentive to Anna Pávlovna because he
 wanted to be appointed director of one of the educational establishments
 for young ladies. Prince Vasíli 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 Kutúzov 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 Vasíli of his former
 opinion. Though this was impolite to Prince Vasíli in Anna Pávlovna’s
 drawing room, and also to Anna Pávlovna 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 Vasíli of
 his own words.
 


 
 “Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough,” said Prince Vasíli 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 Pávlovna.
 


 
 The “man of great merit,” who was still a novice in court circles,
 wishing to flatter Anna Pávlovna by defending her former position on this
 question, observed:
 


 
 “It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutúzov those powers.
 They say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read, when he said to
 Kutúzov: ‘Your Emperor and the Fatherland award you this honor.’”
 


 
 “Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech,” said Anna Pávlovna.
 


 
 “Oh, no, no!” warmly rejoined Prince Vasíli, who would not now yield
 Kutúzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov assumes real power and does not allow
 anyone to put a spoke in his wheel,” observed Anna Pávlovna.
 


 
 Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince Vasíli said in a
 whisper:
 


 
 “I know for a fact that Kutúzov made it an absolute condition that the
 Tsarévich should not be with the army. Do you know what he said to the
 Emperor?”
 


 
 And Prince Vasíli repeated the words supposed to have been spoken by
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov! 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 Vasíli and Anna Pávlovna turned away
 from him and glanced sadly at one another with a sigh at his naïveté.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII
 
 
 While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already passed
 Smolénsk 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 Smolénsk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobúzh at Vyázma, and
 then at Tsárevo-Zaymíshche, but it happened that owing to a conjunction of
 innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give battle till they
 reached Borodinó, seventy miles from Moscow. From Vyázma Napoleon ordered
 a direct advance on Moscow.
 


 
 Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacrée des
 peuples d’Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables églises en forme de
 pagodes chinoises , * this Moscow gave Napoleon’s imagination no rest. On
 the march from Vyázma to Tsárevo-Zaymíshche 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 Plátov’s Cossacks says that Plátov’s corps is joining up with the
 main army and that Kutúzov 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, Lavrúshka, the serf Denísov had handed over to
 Rostóv, 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 Lavrúshka,
 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. Lavrúshka 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, Lavrúshka 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 Rostóv’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, Lavrúshka 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.
 


 
 Lavrúshka 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 Lavrúshka.
 


 
 Lavrúshka, 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 naïve
 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 Plátov’s detachment and
 by evening found his master, Nicholas Rostóv, quartered at Yankóvo. Rostóv
 was just mounting to go for a ride round the neighboring villages with
 Ilyín; he let Lavrúshka 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 Alpátych from Smolénsk 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 Boguchárovo 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 calèche 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 a seizure paralyzing his right side.
 


 
 It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain at Bald Hills, and next
 day they moved the prince to Boguchárovo, the doctor accompanying him.
 


 
 By the time they reached Boguchárovo, 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 Boguchárovo, 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 Boguchárovo. News of the approach
 of the French came from all sides, and in one village, ten miles from
 Boguchárovo, 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 Boguchárovo 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
 Tíkhon 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 Smolénsk.”
 


 
 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
 Tíkhon, 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 Tíkhon 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
 Boguchárovo 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 Dunyásha 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 Dunyásha in a breaking voice.
 


 
 “Immediately, I’m coming, I’m coming!” replied the princess hurriedly, not
 giving Dunyásha 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 Tíkhon 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 Boguchárovo 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 Boguchárovo, 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 Fëdorovich’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 Boguchárovo 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 Boguchárovo 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.
 


 
 Alpátych, who had reached Boguchárovo 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
 Boguchárovo 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. Alpátych also knew that on the previous day another peasant had
 even brought from the village of Visloúkhovo, 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 Visloúkhovo
 a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that they were false) paid to
 him in advance for hay.
 


 
 More important still, Alpátych learned that on the morning of the very day
 he gave the village Elder orders to collect carts to move the princess’
 luggage from Boguchárovo, 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 Boguchárovo had been managed by the village Elder,
 Dron, whom the old prince called by the diminutive “Drónushka.”
 


 
 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 Boguchárovo,
 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 Boguchárovo fields.
 


 
 Alpátych, 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 Boguchárovo. Though the peasants paid quitrent, Alpátych
 thought no difficulty would be made about complying with this order, for
 there were two hundred and thirty households at work in Boguchárovo and
 the peasants were well to do. But on hearing the order Dron lowered his
 eyes and remained silent. Alpátych 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. Alpátych
 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.
 


 
 Alpátych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as Dron was a model
 village Elder, so Alpátych had not managed the prince’s estates for twenty
 years in vain. He was 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 Boguchárovo
 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, Drónushka,” 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.
 


 
 Alpátych 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!” Alpátych 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 Alpátych 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.
 


 
 “Yákov Alpátych, discharge me! Take the keys from me and discharge me, for
 Christ’s sake!”
 


 
 “Stop that!” cried Alpátych 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 Alpátych 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 Alpátych. “Are they drinking?” he asked
 abruptly.
 


 
 “Quite beside themselves, Yákov Alpátych; 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.”
 


 
 Alpátych 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, Alpátych 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,
 Alpátych 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 Alpátych 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 Alpátych
 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, chère 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.... Alpátych 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, chère 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
 I 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.
 


 
 “Dunyásha, send Alpátych, or Drónushka, 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 Bolkónski, 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 Général 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 Boguchárovo 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 Ivánovich
 and now for Tíkhon or Dron. Dunyásha, the nurse, and the other maids could
 not say in how far Mademoiselle Bourienne’s statement was correct.
 Alpátych was not at home, he had gone to the police. Neither could the
 architect Michael Ivánovich, 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 Tíkhon, 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.
 


 
 “Drónushka,” she said, regarding as a sure friend this Drónushka who
 always used to bring a special kind of gingerbread from his visit to the
 fair at Vyázma every year and smilingly offer it to her, “Drónushka, 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.
 


 
 “Drónushka, Alpátych has gone off somewhere and I have no one to turn to.
 Is it 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 Yákov Alpátych 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, Drónushka? 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 Boguchárovo 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 Dunyásha 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 Dunyásha, “and when Yákov Alpátych
 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 Boguchárovo as you ordered.”
 


 
 “You’re making some mistake. I never ordered them to go away,” said
 Princess Mary. “Call Drónushka.”
 


 
 Dron came and confirmed Dunyásha’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 Dunyásha’s protests she went out into the porch; Dron,
 Dunyásha, the nurse, and Michael Ivánovich 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. “Drónushka 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 Tíkhon,
 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 Tíkhon?” 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 Tíkhon 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 Tíkhon 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 Tíkhon 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 Tíkhon 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.
 


 
 “Dunyásha,” she whispered. “Dunyásha!” 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 Rostóv and Ilyín, accompanied by Lavrúshka
 who had just returned from captivity and by an hussar orderly, left their
 quarters at Yankóvo, ten miles from Boguchárovo, and went for a ride—to
 try a new horse Ilyín had bought and to find out whether there was any hay
 to be had in the villages.
 


 
 For the last three days Boguchárovo 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; Rostóv, as a careful squadron commander, wished
 to take such provisions as remained at Boguchárovo before the French could
 get them.
 


 
 Rostóv and Ilyín were in the merriest of moods. On the way to Boguchárovo,
 a princely estate with a dwelling house and farm where they hoped to find
 many domestic serfs and pretty girls, they questioned Lavrúshka about
 Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and raced one another to try Ilyín’s
 horse.
 


 
 Rostóv had no idea that the village he was entering was the property of
 that very Bolkónski who had been engaged to his sister.
 


 
 Rostóv and Ilyín gave rein to their horses for a last race along the
 incline before reaching Boguchárovo, and Rostóv, outstripping Ilyín, was
 the first to gallop into the village street.
 


 
 “You’re first!” cried Ilyín, flushed.
 


 
 “Yes, always first both on the grassland and here,” answered Rostóv,
 stroking his heated Donéts horse.
 


 
 “And I’d have won on my Frenchy, your excellency,” said Lavrúshka 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 Rostóv laughing. “Is there any hay here?”
 


 
 “And how like one another,” said Ilyín.
 


 
 “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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “Who do you belong to?” he asked.
 


 
 “The French,” replied Ilyín jestingly, “and here is Napoleon himself”—and
 he pointed to Lavrúshka.
 


 
 “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 Rostóv. “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 Ilyín on seeing Dunyásha
 running resolutely toward him.
 


 
 “She’ll be ours!” said Lavrúshka to Ilyín, winking.
 


 
 “What do you want, my pretty?” said Ilyín with a smile.
 


 
 “The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your name.”
 


 
 “This is Count Rostóv, 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 Ilyín talking to the girl. Following Dunyásha, Alpátych advanced
 to Rostóv, 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 Bolkónski 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 Alpátych 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!... Alpátych... Ah, Yákov Alpátych... Grand! Forgive us for Christ’s
 sake, eh?” said the peasants, smiling joyfully at him.
 


 
 Rostóv looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.
 


 
 “Or perhaps they amuse your honor?” remarked Alpátych 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 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “I have the honor to report to you the actual truth,” said Alpátych.
 


 
 Rostóv dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and followed Alpátych 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 Alpátych 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. Alpátych 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 Rostóv and Ilyín were galloping along the road,
 Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpátych, 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
 Rostóv passed through the anteroom.
 


 
 Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large sitting
 room, when Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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 voice 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 Rostóv’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 Rostóv, 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.
 


 
 Rostóv’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.
 


 
 Rostóv, 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 Dunyásha....”
 


 
 But on glancing at Rostóv’s face Ilyín stopped short. He saw that his hero
 and commander was following quite a different train of thought.
 


 
 Rostóv glanced angrily at Ilyín 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.
 


 
 Alpátych 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.
 


 
 Rostóv stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned on
 Alpátych.
 


 
 “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 yourself! I know you. I’ll flay you all alive!...” And as if
 afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alpátych and went rapidly
 forward. Alpátych, mastering his offended feelings, kept pace with Rostóv
 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 Rostóv
 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
 Alpátych felt that this unreasonable action might produce good results.
 The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed when they saw Rostóv’s
 rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.
 


 
 After the hussars had come to the village and Rostóv 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 Vánka 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 Rostóv, followed by Ilyín,
 Lavrúshka, and Alpátych, 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 Rostóv, 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 Rostóv in a wrathful voice. “Where’s the
 Elder?” he cried furiously.
 


 
 “The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakhárych, 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 Rostóv 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 Lavrúshka and Alpátych.
 


 
 Lavrúshka, 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.
 


 
 Alpátych 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 Rostóv in a loud voice.
 


 
 With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the crowd.
 


 
 “Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrúshka!” shouted Rostóv, 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 Rostóv 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 Alpátych, coming into his own
 again. “It’s wrong, lads!”
 


 
 “All our stupidity, Yákov Alpátych,” 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
 Boguchárovo 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, Rostóv 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 Boguchárovo to where the road was occupied by our troops. At
 the inn at Yankóvo 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 not 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, Dunyásha, 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
 Dunyásha noticed her smiling as she looked out of the carriage window.
 


 
 “Was it not fate that brought him to Boguchárovo, 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 Rostóv was a very agreeable one. To
 remember her gave him pleasure, and when his comrades, hearing of his
 adventure at Boguchárovo, 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 Sónya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostóv grew angry when he
 was rallied about Princess Bolkónskaya.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XV
 
 
 On receiving command of the armies Kutúzov remembered Prince Andrew and
 sent an order for him to report at headquarters.
 


 
 Prince Andrew arrived at Tsárevo-Zaymíshche on the very day and at the
 very hour that Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov. 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 Kutúzov’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 Bolkónski with a slight bow. Bolkónski 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!
 Ermólov 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 Smolénsk.”
 


 
 “Ah? You’re Pwince Bolkónski? Vewy glad to make your acquaintance! I’m
 Lieutenant Colonel Denísov, better known as ‘Váska,’” said Denísov,
 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 Bolkónski?” 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 Denísov from what Natásha 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 Smolénsk, 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 Denísov, too, the memories awakened by the name of
 Bolkónski belonged to a distant, romantic past, when after supper and
 after Natásha’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 Natásha, 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
 Kutúzov. The plan was based on the fact that the French line of operation
 was too 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!”
 


 
 Denísov rose and began gesticulating as he explained his plan to
 Bolkónski. 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.
 


 
 Bolkónski and Denísov moved to the gate, at which a knot of soldiers (a
 guard of honor) was standing, and they saw Kutúzov 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. Kutúzov 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 Denísov.
 


 
 “Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” shouted those behind him.
 


 
 Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov’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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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
 Kutúzov’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 Denísov, 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. Kutúzov, his hands
 still pressed on the seat, glanced at him glumly. Denísov, having given
 his name, announced that he had to communicate to his Serene Highness a
 matter of great importance for their country’s welfare. Kutúzov 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!” Denísov 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 Smolénsk and Vyázma. Denísov 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. Kutúzov 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
 Denísov was speaking, a general with a portfolio under his arm really did
 appear.
 


 
 “What?” said Kutúzov, in the midst of Denísov’s explanations, “are you
 ready so soon?”
 


 
 “Ready, your Serene Highness,” replied the general.
 


 
 Kutúzov swayed his head, as much as to say: “How is one man to deal with
 it all?” and again listened to Denísov.
 


 
 “I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer,” said Denísov, “that I can
 bweak Napoleon’s line of communication!”
 


 
 “What relation are you to Intendant General Kiríl Andréevich Denísov?”
 asked Kutúzov, interrupting him.
 


 
 “He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness.”
 


 
 “Ah, we were friends,” said Kutúzov cheerfully. “All right, all right,
 friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow we’ll have a talk.”
 


 
 With a nod to Denísov he turned away and put out his hand for the papers
 Konovnítsyn 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 Kutúzov 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.
 Kutúzov’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 Kutúzov looked round. He was listening to the general’s report—which
 consisted chiefly of a criticism of the position at Tsárevo-Zaymíshche—as
 he had listened to Denísov, 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 Denísov 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 Kutúzov despised
 knowledge and cleverness, and knew of something else that would decide the
 matter—something independent of cleverness 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 Kutúzov despised cleverness and
 learning and even the patriotic feeling shown by Denísov, 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 Kutúzov 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, Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov.
 


 
 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 Kutúzov. 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 Kutúzov. “It’s
 sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that I am a father to you, a
 second father....”
 


 
 Prince Andrew told Kutúzov 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!” Kutúzov 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 no longer fit for the
 staff,” replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutúzov noticed.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov’s podgy
 face. He cut Bolkónski 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 Kutúzov, and a flush of pleasure suffused
 Prince Andrew’s face at this recollection.
 


 
 Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutúzov offered his cheek to be
 kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man’s eyes.
 Though Prince Andrew knew that Kutúzov’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, Kutúzov 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 à point à 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. Kámenski 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, not
 storming and attacking but patience and time are wanted. Kámenski sent
 soldiers to Rustchuk, but I only employed these two things and took more
 fortresses than Kámenski and made them Turks 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,
 voilà 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” *(2)—he articulated the French proverb
 deliberately.
 


 
 * “Don’t see it that way, that’s the trouble.”
 


 
 * (2) “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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Rostopchín’s broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a potman,
 and a Moscow burgher called Karpúshka Chigírin, “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 Vasíli Lvóvich Púshkin’s bouts rimés .
 


 
 In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these
 broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpúshka 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
 Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín’s witty remark on that
 occasion. The foreigners were deported to Nízhni by boat, and Rostopchín
 had said to them in French: “Rentrez en vous-mêmes; 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
 Shinshín’s witticism was added—that for that alone Moscow ought to
 be grateful to Napoleon. It was said that Mamónov’s regiment would cost
 him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezúkhov had spent even more
 on his, but that the best thing about Bezúkhov’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 Drubetskáya 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.
 


 
 “ Bezúkhov 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 Nízhni.
 


 
 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 Galítsyn, 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 Mamónov’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 Rostóvs.
 


 
 “I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way,” said Julie. “And he is
 so unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The Razumóvskis 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 “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
 Obolénski’s Cossacks and went to Bélaya Tsérkov 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 Arkhárovs’. 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 Véra—that dear Véra.”
 


 
 “No, madame!” Pierre continued in a tone of displeasure, “I have not taken
 on myself the role of Natalie Rostóva’s knight at all, and have not been
 to 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 Bolkónskaya 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 Rostóv! 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 Bolkónskaya 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 Rostopchín’s broadsheets
 that had been brought that day.
 


 
 The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchín 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 scoundrel 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 Vyázma, 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 Chigírin 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 Ivánovna 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 Rostopchín 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 Ivánovna 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
 Rostóvs remained, but he did not go to see them.
 


 
 To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of Vorontsóvo 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 Rostopchín 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 Kutúzov 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 Vorontsóvo, as he was passing the Bolótnoe Place
 Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lóbnoe 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 Lóbnoe 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
 Lubyánka 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
 Lóbnoe 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 Evstáfey—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 Mozháysk, and that his saddle
 horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged that day, so
 on Evstáfey’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
 Perkhúshkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that evening.
 (This was the battle of Shevárdino.) He was told that there in
 Perkhúshkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could answer
 his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was approaching
 Mozháysk.
 


 
 Every house in Mozháysk 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 Mozháysk 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 Slobóda 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 Shevárdino Redoubt was
 fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either side, and on
 the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodinó itself took place.
 


 
 Why and how were the battles of Shevárdino and Borodinó given and
 accepted? Why was the battle of Borodinó 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 Kutúzov 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
 Kutúzov that by accepting battle and risking the loss of a quarter of his
 army he would certainly lose Moscow. For Kutúzov 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 Borodinó 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 Kutúzov 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 Smolénsk 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 Smolénsk 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 Borodinó, Kutúzov acted involuntarily
 and irrationally. But later on, to fit what had occurred, the historians
 provided cunningly devised evidence of the foresight and genius of 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 Borodinó and the preceding battle
 of Shevárdino 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 Smolénsk sought out for
 itself the best position for a general engagement and found such a
 position at Borodinó. 



 
 The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the left of
 the highroad (from Moscow to Smolénsk) and almost at a right angle to it,
 from Borodinó to Utítsa, at the very place where the battle was fought. 



 
 In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set up on the
 Shevárdino 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 Borodinó. 



 
 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 Borodinó. They did
 not stop at any one of these positions because Kutúzov 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
 Milorádovich 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 Borodinó (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
 Borodinó 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
 Shevárdino 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 Shevárdino Redoubt was not an advanced post of that position, we
 have the fact that up to the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and Bagratión
 were convinced that the Shevárdino Redoubt was the left flank of the
 position, and that Kutúzov himself in his report, written in hot haste
 after the battle, speaks of the Shevárdino Redoubt as the left flank of
 the position. It was much later, when reports on the battle of Borodinó
 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 Shevárdino Redoubt was an
 advanced post—whereas in reality it was simply a fortified point on
 the left flank—and that the battle of Borodinó was fought by us on
 an entrenched position previously selected, whereas it was fought on a
 quite unexpected spot which was almost unentrenched.
 


 
 The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river
 Kolochá—which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an
 acute angle—so that the left flank was at Shevárdino, the right
 flank near the village of Nóvoe, and the center at Borodinó at the
 confluence of the rivers Kolochá and Vóyna.
 


 
 To anyone who looks at the field of Borodinó without thinking of how the
 battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the river Kolochá,
 presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was to prevent an
 enemy from advancing along the Smolénsk road to Moscow.
 


 
 Napoleon, riding to Valúevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as the
 history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utítsa to
 Borodinó (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 Shevárdino Redoubt—and unexpectedly for the Russians moved his
 army across the Kolochá. 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 Kolochá 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 Utítsa, Semënovsk, and Borodinó—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
 Kolochá, 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
 Shevárdino Redoubt was the left flank of our position, and the battle
 would have taken place where we expected it. In that case we should
 probably have defended the Shevárdino 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 rear guard (that
 is, immediately after the fight at Gridnëva), 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 Borodinó 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 Shevárdino 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
 Nóvoe to Utítsa, 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 Utítsa, and
 Uvárov’s on the right flank against the French, were actions distinct from
 the main course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodinó 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 Borodinó 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 Shevárdino Redoubt, the
 Russians fought the battle of Borodinó 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 Mozháysk. 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 naïve, 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:
 


 
 Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen,

 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 Kutúzov.
 


 
 “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
 Tatárinova, 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 Mozháysk 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 Tatárinova.
 


 
 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 Górki.
 


 
 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
 Mozháysk 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 Smolénsk
 highroad, passing through a village with a white church some five hundred
 paces in front of the knoll and below it. This was Borodinó. Below the
 village the road crossed the river by a bridge and, winding down and up,
 rose higher and higher to the village of Valúevo visible about four miles
 away, where Napoleon was then stationed. Beyond Valúevo 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 Kolochá 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
 Kolochá and Moskvá rivers—was broken and hilly. Between the hollows
 the villages of Bezúbova and Zakhárino showed in the distance. On the left
 the ground was more level; there were fields of grain, and the smoking
 ruins of Semënovsk, 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?”
 


 
 “Búrdino, isn’t it?” said the officer, turning to his companion.
 


 
 “Borodinó,” 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 Shevárdino 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 Borodinó, just
 there,” and he pointed to the village in front of them with the white
 church. “That’s where one crosses the Kolochá. 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 Moskvá 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 Shevárdino, 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 Semënovsk, yes,
 there,” he pointed to Raévski’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 Moskvá. 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 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 Borodinó. 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 Smolénsk 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 Smolénsk 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 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 Mozháysk 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 Kutúzov, who had been riding round the position and on his way back
 to Tatárinova 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 exceedingly stout, round-shouldered body, with
 uncovered white head and puffy face showing the white ball of the eye he
 had lost, Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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, Kutúzov 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 naïvely 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 Kirílovich! How did you get here?” said a voice.
 


 
 Pierre looked round. Borís Drubetskóy, brushing his knees with his hand
 (he had probably soiled them when he, too, had knelt before the icon),
 came up to him smiling. Borís was elegantly dressed, with a slightly
 martial touch appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long coat and like
 Kutúzov had a whip slung across his shoulder.
 


 
 Meanwhile Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov, talking to Borís.
 


 
 He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to see the position.
 


 
 “This is what you must do,” said Borís. “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 Dmítri Sergéevich? Those are
 his quarters,” and he pointed to the third house in the village of Górki.
 


 
 “But I should like to see the right flank. They say it’s very strong,”
 said Pierre. “I should like to start from the Moskvá 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 Bolkónski’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 Borís confidentially lowering his voice. “It is
 not at all what Count Bennigsen intended. He meant to fortify that knoll
 quite differently, but...” Borís shrugged his shoulders, “his Serene
 Highness would not have it, or someone persuaded him. You see...” but
 Borís did not finish, for at that moment Kaysárov, Kutúzov’s adjutant,
 came up to Pierre. “Ah, Kaysárov!” said Borís, 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 foresee the
 intentions of the French!”
 


 
 “You mean the left flank?” asked Kaysárov.
 


 
 “Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong.”
 


 
 Though Kutúzov had dismissed all unnecessary men from the staff, Borís had
 contrived to remain at headquarters after the changes. He had established
 himself with Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom Borís had been in
 attendance, considered young Prince Drubetskóy an invaluable man.
 


 
 In the higher command there were two sharply defined parties: Kutúzov’s
 party and that of Bennigsen, the chief of staff. Borís belonged to the
 latter and no one else, while showing servile respect to Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov would be destroyed and the power pass to Bennigsen, or even
 if Kutúzov 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 Borís was full
 of nervous vivacity all day.
 


 
 After Kaysárov, 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. Kutúzov
 noticed Pierre’s figure and the group gathered round him.
 


 
 “Call him to me,” said Kutúzov.
 


 
 An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness’ wish, and Pierre went
 toward Kutúzov’s bench. But a militiaman got there before him. It was
 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “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 Kutúzov.
 


 
 “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...” Dólokhov 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...” Kutúzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more and more
 as he looked at Pierre.
 


 
 Just then Borís, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped up to Pierre’s
 side near Kutúzov 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!”
 


 
 Borís evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by his Serene
 Highness. He knew Kutúzov’s attention would be caught by those words, and
 so it was.
 


 
 “What are you saying about the militia?” he asked Borís.
 


 
 “Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness—for death—they
 have put on clean shirts.”
 


 
 “Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!” said Kutúzov; 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, Kutúzov 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
 Kaysárov, his adjutant’s brother.
 


 
 “Those verses... those verses of Márin’s... how do they go, eh? Those he
 wrote about Gerákov: ‘Lectures for the corps inditing’... Recite them,
 recite them!” said he, evidently preparing to laugh.
 


 
 Kaysárov recited.... Kutúzov smilingly nodded his head to the rhythm of
 the verses.
 


 
 When Pierre had left Kutúzov, Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov with a smile, not knowing what to say to him.
 With tears in his eyes Dólokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him.
 


 
 Borís 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 Kutúzov left for Tatárinova, and Bennigsen and his
 suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the line.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII
 
 
 From Górki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the bridge which, when
 they had looked at 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 Borodinó
 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 Raévski
 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 Borodinó.
 


 
 They then crossed the hollow to Semënovsk, 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 flèches * which were still being dug.
 


 
 * A kind of entrenchment.



 
 At the flèches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the Shevárdino
 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 flèches 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 Túchkov’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 Túchkov’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 Knyazkóvo 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 Timókhin, formerly Dólokhov’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 Drubetskáya 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 you think of Kutúzov’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 Timókhin 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 Timókhin 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 Sventsyáni 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 Timókhin 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
 straightforward. Now we see light....”
 


 
 “Then why was it forbidden?”
 


 
 Timókhin 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
 Smolénsk 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 Timókhin, “and in
 each soldier.”
 


 
 Prince Andrew glanced at Timókhin, 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
 Timókhin. “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 schwächen, 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 Timókhin 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 Timókhin 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 Mozháysk 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
 kindhearted 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 Smolénsk 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 Ivánovich had offended Michael Ivánovich. 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 Górki!”
 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 Górki.
 


 
 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. Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Borodinó, M. de Beausset, prefect
 of the French Emperor’s palace, arrived at Napoleon’s quarters at Valúevo
 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 absent-mindedly, 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 Gérard, 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, Vítebsk, and Smolénsk. 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 Kolochá had been
 dislocated by the capture of the Shevárdino 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’Eckmühl, 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 flèches ) 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 Shevárdino 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’Eckmühl 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:
 


 
 24 guns of the artillery of the Guards
 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 Fouché, 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
 méthode ) as far as possible retaining troops in reserve.
 


 
 The Imperial Camp near Mozháysk,
 


 
 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 Fouché; which were to
 come in line with them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and shower
 shells on the Russian flèches 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 Túchkov 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 (Borodinó) and
 cross by its three bridges, advancing to the same heights as Morand’s and
 Gérard’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 Borodinó to the redoubt while the
 divisions of Morand and Gérard 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 Borodinó the vice-King was driven back
 to the Kolochá and could get no farther; while the divisions of Morand and
 Gérard 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 Borodinó
 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 Borodinó, 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 Borodinó
 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 Borodinó 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 Borodinó
 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 Borodinó 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 of
 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 Borodinó 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 in 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 time 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 Smolénsk?”
 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
 Smolénsk. 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; the 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 Kutúzov!” 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 Shevárdino.
 


 
 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 Shevárdino Redoubt where he
 dismounted. The game had begun.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXX
 
 
 On returning to Górki 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 Borís 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 Kutúzov’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 Valúevo by the Smolénsk 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 Borodinó and the hollows on
 both sides of the Kolochá.
 


 
 Above the Kolochá, in Borodinó and on both sides of it, especially to the
 left where the Vóyna flowing between its marshy banks falls into the
 Kolochá, 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 Borodinó. A white church could be seen through the mist, and here and
 there the roofs of huts in Borodinó 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 Borodinó, 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 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 Kutúzov 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!” Kutúzov 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 the same preoccupied 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 Kolochá between Górki and Borodinó, which the French (having
 occupied Borodinó) 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 Raévski’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 Bagratión 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 Raévski’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 Raévski’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 Bagratión’s
 flèches 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 Kámenka 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 Ermólov 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 Semënovsk, 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 Borodinó was fought within the seven
 thousand feet between Borodinó and Bagratión’s flèches . Beyond that
 space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the Russians with
 Uvárov’s cavalry at midday, and on the other side, beyond Utítsa,
 Poniatowski’s collision with Túchkov; but these two were detached and
 feeble actions in comparison with what took place in the center of the
 battlefield. On the field between Borodinó and the flèches , 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 Borodinó from their left.
 


 
 From the Shevárdino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the flèches were
 two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as the crow flies
 to Borodinó, 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 flèches could
 only be seen till they had entered the hollow that lay between them and the
 flèches . As soon as they had descended into that hollow, the smoke of the
 guns and musketry on the flèches 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 Shevárdino 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
 flèches . 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 flèches 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 flèches 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 Borodinó had been
 occupied and the bridge over the Kolochá 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 Borodinó—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 flèches 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 flèches 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 Semënovsk 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 Claparède’s division, sire,” replied Berthier, who knew all the
 division’s regiments, and battalions by heart.
 


 
 Napoleon nodded assent.
 


 
 The adjutant galloped to Claparède’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 Claparède. Send Friant’s
 division.”
 


 
 Though there was no advantage in sending Friant’s division instead of
 Claparède’s, and even an obvious inconvenience and delay in stopping
 Claparède 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
 énergique , 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 flèches , 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 Semënovsk.
 


 
 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 Semënovsk, 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 Semënovsk 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 Shevárdino.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV
 
 
 On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in the morning sat
 Kutúzov, 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov’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 flèches captured by
 the French had been retaken, but that Prince Bagratión was wounded. Kutúzov
 groaned and swayed his head.
 


 
 “Ride over to Prince Peter Ivánovich and find out about it exactly,” he
 said to one of his adjutants, and then turned to the Duke of Württemberg
 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 Semënovsk—his adjutant came back from him and told Kutúzov
 that the duke asked for more troops.
 


 
 Kutúzov made a grimace and sent an order to Dokhtúrov 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, Kutúzov 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 Scherbínin came galloping from the left flank with news that the
 French had captured the flèches and the village of Semënovsk, Kutúzov,
 guessing by the sounds of the battle and by Scherbínin’s looks that the
 news was bad, rose as if to stretch his legs and, taking Scherbínin’s arm,
 led him aside.
 


 
 “Go, my dear fellow,” he said to Ermólov, “and see whether something can’t
 be done.”
 


 
 Kutúzov was in Górki, 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 Borodinó, and on
 their left flank Uvárov’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, Kutúzov
 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 Bagratión so detested,
 rode up while Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov) “is making himself very comfortable,” thought
 Wolzogen, and looking severely at the dishes in front of Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze on Wolzogen, as if not
 understanding 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?...” Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov to a portly, handsome, dark-haired
 general who was just ascending the knoll.
 


 
 This was Raévski, who had spent the whole day at the most important part
 of the field of Borodinó.
 


 
 Raévski reported that the troops were firmly holding their ground and that
 the French no longer ventured to attack.
 


 
 After hearing him, Kutúzov 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 Raévski, “and in my opinion...”
 


 
 “Kaysárov!” Kutúzov 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 announce that tomorrow we attack.”
 


 
 While Kutúzov was talking to Raévski 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov, 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, Kutúzov’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 Kutúzov 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 Semënovsk, 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
 Semënovsk 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, Fëdor... I say, Fëdor!” 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 Timókhin, 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 the 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 Smolénsk road. Yes, it was the same flesh, the same chair à
 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 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 Kurágin. 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
 Natásha 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 Shevárdino 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 Semënovsk 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
 Knyazkóvo. 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, Württembergers, 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
 Vílna 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 time it reached Vílna it numbered only fifty
 thousand, and at Kálisch 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 Davýdov family and to
 the crown serfs—those fields and meadows where for hundreds of years
 the peasants of Borodinó, Górki, Shevárdino, and Semënovsk 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 Mozháysk from the one army
 and back to Valúevo 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 any more!” 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 who 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 permit it.
 


 
 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 Borodinó. 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 Borodinó. The direct consequence of the battle of
 Borodinó was Napoleon’s senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along
 the old Smolénsk road, the destruction of the invading army of five
 hundred thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at
 Borodinó 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 study
 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 Smolénsk was reached, and again from
 Smolénsk to Borodinó. 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 Borodinó 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 Kalúga road, and (after a victory—for at
 Málo-Yaroslávets the field of conflict again remained theirs) without
 undertaking a single serious battle, they fled still more rapidly back to
 Smolénsk, beyond Smolénsk, beyond the Berëzina, beyond Vílna, and farther
 still.
 


 
 On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutúzov and the whole
 Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodinó was a victory.
 Kutúzov 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. Kutúzov’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 anyone 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 Kutúzov during the retreat not do
 this or that? Why did he not take up a position before reaching Filí? Why
 did he not retire at once by the Kalúga 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 at all resemble
 the activity we imagine to ourselves when we sit at ease 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 Kutúzov should
 have moved his army to the Kalúga road long before reaching Filí, 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
 Kalúga road, but just then an adjutant gallops up from Milorádovich 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 Kalúga 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
 Kalúga 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 Filí 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 Smolénsk and most palpably of all
 on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevárdino and on the twenty-sixth at
 Borodinó, and each day and hour and minute of the retreat from Borodinó to
 Filí.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER III
 
 
 When Ermólov, having been sent by Kutúzov to inspect the position, told
 the field marshal that it was impossible to fight there before Moscow and
 that they must retreat, Kutúzov 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!”
 


 
 Kutúzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond Moscow
 without a battle.
 


 
 On the Poklónny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomílov gate of Moscow,
 Kutúzov got out of his carriage and sat down on a bench by the roadside. A
 great crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count Rostopchín, 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 Rostopchín 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. Kutúzov’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 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
 Kutúzov knew well.
 


 
 Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian
 patriotism (Kutúzov could not listen to this without wincing) by insisting
 that Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as daylight to Kutúzov:
 if the defense failed, to throw the blame on Kutúzov 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 Plátov 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
 Prozoróvski, 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 Filí 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 Savostyánov’s hut. The men, women, and children
 of the large peasant family crowded into the back room across the passage.
 Only Malásha, 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. Malásha
 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 Malásha in her own mind called Kutúzov, 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 Kaysárov was about to draw back
 the curtain of the window facing Kutúzov, but the latter moved his hand
 angrily and Kaysárov 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. Ermólov, Kaysárov, 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 Uvárov, who with rapid gesticulations was giving him some
 information, speaking in low tones as they all did. Chubby little
 Dokhtúrov was listening attentively with eyebrows raised and arms folded
 on his stomach. On the other side sat Count Ostermann-Tolstóy, seemingly
 absorbed in his own thoughts. His broad head with its bold features and
 glittering eyes was resting on his hand. Raévski, twitching forward the
 black hair on his temples as was his habit, glanced now at Kutúzov and now
 at the door with a look of impatience. Konovnítsyn’s firm, handsome, and
 kindly face was lit up by a tender, sly smile. His glance met Malásha’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 but
 talked in low tones of other matters.
 


 
 Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov’s angry grunts and occasional cough broke the
 silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malásha 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 Filí
 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.
 Ermólov, Dokhtúrov, and Raévski 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, spoke of the
 direction the army should take in its retreat. Malásha, 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 she
 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 Kutúzov’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 Kutúzov, “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...” Kutúzov seemed to reflect,
 searching for an example, then with a clear, naïve 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 Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Malásha, 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov
 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, Rostopchín,
 who is usually represented as being the instigator of that event, acted in
 an altogether different manner from Kutúzov.
 


 
 After the battle of Borodinó 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 Smolénsk, without the
 participation of Count Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín 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 Borodinó and
 still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchín’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 Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín’s orders, had already in
 June moved with her Negroes and her women jesters from Moscow to her
 Sarátov 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 Rostopchín, 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-Chalmé (the center of the whole
 French colony in Moscow) to remain, but ordered the venerable old
 postmaster Klyucharëv 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
 
 
 Hélène, having returned with the court from Vílna 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 Vílna 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.
 Hélène 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 Bezúkhova, 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 Hélène, 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 Hélène 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 Hélène,
 beginning to cry.
 


 
 The prince tried to comfort her, but Hélène, 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 Hélène.
 


 
 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 Hélène 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 à
 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. Hélène
 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 Hélène 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 grâce .
 


 
 After that a long-frocked abbé 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 Hélène 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, Hélène—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. Hélène was wearing a white dress,
 transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbé, 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 Hélène 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. Hélène 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 abbé, 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 Hélène, 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
 
 
 Hélène 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 Hélène’s
 imperturbable conviction that it was as simple and natural as marrying a
 maiden had its effect on him too. Had Hélène 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 naïveté 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 Hélène 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 Hélène 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 Hélène’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 Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, who 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 Hélène 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
 Márya Dmítrievna, turning up her wide sleeves with her usual threatening
 gesture and glancing sternly round, moved across the room.
 


 
 Though people were afraid of Márya Dmítrievna 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 Vasíli, 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:
 


 
 “Hélène, 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.
 


 
 Bilíbin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever man, and
 who was one of the disinterested friends so brilliant a woman as Hélène
 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, Bilíbin,” said Hélène (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?”
 


 
 Bilíbin 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 mésalliance 
 by marrying you,” and Bilíbin smoothed out his forehead.
 


 
 “That’s a true friend!” said Hélène beaming, and again touching Bilíbin’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.”
 


 
 Bilíbin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he could
 help in that difficulty.
 


 
 “Une maîtresse-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?” Bilíbin asked,
 his reputation being so well established that he did not fear to ask so
 naïve a question. “Will he agree?”
 


 
 “Oh, he loves me so!” said Hélène, who for some reason imagined that
 Pierre too loved her. “He will do anything for me.”
 


 
 Bilíbin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.
 


 
 “Even divorce you?” said he.
 


 
 Hélène laughed.
 


 
 Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed
 marriage was Hélène’s mother, Princess Kurágina. 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 forbids 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, Hélène 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 bêtises. Vous ne comprenez rien. Dans ma
 position j’ai des devoirs,” * said Hélène 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 Hélène 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 manqué parole.” *
 


 
 * “No, tell him I don’t wish to see him, I am furious with
 him for not keeping his word to me.”
 


 
 “Comtesse, à tout péché miséricorde,” * 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 Hélène’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 Hélène.
 


 
 This letter was brought to Pierre’s house when he was on the field of
 Borodinó.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII
 
 
 Toward the end of the battle of Borodinó, Pierre, having run down from
 Raévski’s battery a second time, made his way through a gully to Knyazkóvo
 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 Mozháysk 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 face 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 Mozháysk.”
 


 
 “You’re a gentleman, aren’t you?”
 


 
 “Yes.”
 


 
 “And what’s your name?”
 


 
 “Peter Kirílych.”
 


 
 “Well then, Peter Kirílych, come along with us, we’ll take you there.”
 


 
 In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozháysk.
 


 
 By the time they got near Mozháysk 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
 Kirílych—isn’t it?”
 


 
 “Good-by, Peter Kirílych!” 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 to 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 Dólokhov.” And the memory of the dinner at the
 English Club when he had challenged Dólokhov flashed through Pierre’s
 mind, and then he remembered his benefactor at Torzhók. 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, Dólokhov, Nesvítski, Denísov, 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 Dólokhov, 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 Mozháysk 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 thirtieth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the gates of
 the city he was met by Count Rostopchín’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 Rostopchín had only that morning returned to town from his summer
 villa at Sokólniki. The anteroom and reception room of his house were full
 of officials who had been summoned or had come for orders. Vasílchikov and
 Plátov 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 Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín’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 Mozháysk 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,
 Vereshchágin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair with the
 proclamation.”
 


 
 “Oh, so that is Vereshchágin!” 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 Ivánovich
 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 Vereshchágin, 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 Klyucharëv? I
 understand!” said Pierre.
 


 
 “Not at all,” rejoined the adjutant in dismay. “Klyucharëv 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 Rostopchín, 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 Rostopchín 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 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. Speránski and
 Magnítski have been deported to their proper place. Mr. Klyucharëv 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 Klyucharëv do wrong, Count?” asked Pierre.
 


 
 “That is for me to know, but not for you to ask,” shouted Rostopchín.
 


 
 “If he is accused of circulating Napoleon’s proclamation it is not proved
 that he did so,” said Pierre without looking at Rostopchín, “and
 Vereshchágin...”
 


 
 “There we are!” Rostopchín shouted at Pierre louder than before, frowning
 suddenly. “Vereshchágin 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
 Klyucharëv. And I will knock the nonsense out of anybody”—but
 probably realizing that he was shouting at Bezúkhov 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 Rostopchín’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 Rostopchín to
 know whether Count Bezúkhov 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
 Bezúkhov’s household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre again
 or knew where he was.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XII
 
 
 The Rostóvs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is, till
 the eve of the enemy’s entry into the city.
 


 
 After Pétya had joined Obolénski’s regiment of Cossacks and left for
 Bélaya Tsérkov 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 Pétya, or to get him an appointment
 somewhere in Petersburg, but neither of these proved possible. Pétya 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 Pétya transferred from
 Obolénski’s regiment to Bezúkhov’s, which was in training near Moscow.
 Though Pétya 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 Pétya 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
 Pétya 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 Pétya
 to return, the more uneasy grew the countess. She began to think she would
 never live to see such happiness. The presence of Sónya, of her beloved
 Natásha, or even of her husband irritated her. “What do I want with them?
 I want no one but Pétya,” she thought.
 


 
 At the end of August the Rostóvs received another letter from Nicholas. He
 wrote from the province of Vorónezh 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 Pétya.
 


 
 Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostóvs’ acquaintances
 had left Moscow, and though everybody tried to persuade the countess to
 get away as quickly as possible, she would not hear of leaving before her
 treasure, her adored Pétya, 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, Pétya 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
 Natásha 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 Ryazán 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 Borodinó were brought
 in by the Dorogomílov 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 Rostopchín’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 Borodinó at which the French had been routed,
 while others on the contrary reported that the Russian army had 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 Filí, 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 Rostóv
 family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the family, Count
 Ilyá Rostóv, 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 Pétya who was always running away
 from her, and was jealous of Natásha with whom he spent all his time.
 Sónya alone directed the practical side of matters by getting things
 packed. But of late Sónya 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 Bolkónski’s engagement to Natásha,” 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!”
 


 
 Sónya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of retrieving the
 Rostóvs’ 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. Pétya and Natásha 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. Pétya 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 Bélaya Tsérkov 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 Natásha, whose lead he always
 followed, was in high spirits. Natásha 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 Pétya 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 Rostóvs’ 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 had 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. Pétya 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. Sónya was in the ballroom
 looking after the packing of the glass and china. Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Sónya
 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.
 


 
 “Dunyásha, you pack! You will, won’t you, dear?” And when Dunyásha
 willingly promised to do it all for her, Natásha 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. Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha, 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 Mávra Kuzmínichna, 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. Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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, Natásha stepped back quickly to
 Mávra Kuzmínichna, who stood talking compassionately to the officer.
 


 
 “They may. He says they may!” whispered Natásha.
 


 
 The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostóvs’ 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
 Povarskáya Street. Natásha was evidently pleased to be dealing with new
 people outside the ordinary routine of her life. She and Mávra Kuzmínichna
 tried to get as many of the wounded as possible into their yard.
 


 
 “Your Papa must be told, though,” said Mávra Kuzmínichna.
 


 
 “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.”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha, 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! Mávra Kuzmínichna 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.
 


 
 Natásha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.
 


 
 “I knew you’d give permission... so I’ll tell them,” and, having kissed
 her mother, Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “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 Pétya having returned home told them the news he had heard. He
 said the people had been getting arms in the Krémlin, and that though
 Rostopchín’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 Pétya 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 Myasnítski 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 Rostóv 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. Pétya directed things in the yard. Sónya, 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. Natásha, 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 Natásha 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.
 


 
 “Sónya, wait a bit—we’ll pack everything into these,” said Natásha.
 


 
 “You can’t, Miss, we have tried to,” said the butler’s assistant.
 


 
 “No, wait a minute, please.”
 


 
 And Natásha 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 Natásha 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, Natásha! Leave it alone! We’ll get it all packed,” urged Sónya
 reproachfully.
 


 
 “What a young lady she is!” remarked the major-domo.
 


 
 But Natásha 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 Natásha insisted on having her own way. She packed,
 repacked, pressed, made the butler’s assistant and Pétya—whom she
 had drawn into the business of packing—press on the lid, and made
 desperate efforts herself.
 


 
 “That’s enough, Natásha,” said Sónya. “I see you were right, but just take
 out the top one.”
 


 
 “I won’t!” cried Natásha, with one hand holding back the hair that hung
 over her perspiring face, while with the other she pressed down the
 carpets. “Now press, Pétya! Press, Vasílich, press hard!” she cried.
 


 
 The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natásha, 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 Natásha
 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 Natásha’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.
 


 
 Sónya and Natásha slept in the sitting room without undressing.
 


 
 That night another wounded man was driven down the Povarskáya, and Mávra
 Kuzmínichna, who was standing at the gate, had him brought into the
 Rostóvs’ yard. Mávra Kuzmínichna concluded that he was a very important
 man. He was being conveyed in a calèche 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 Mávra Kuzmínichna. “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 calèche , looked into it, shook his head
 disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and stopped beside
 Mávra Kuzmínichna.
 


 
 “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 Bolkónski.
 


 
 
 
 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 Rostopchín 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 Rostóvs’ 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 Rostóvs’ and wounded men dragged themselves there from the
 Rostóvs’ 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 Ilyá Rostóv 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, Vasílich, 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. Vasílich, 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 Matrëna Timoféevna, 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 Lopukhíns 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 Natásha, who had followed him
 into her mother’s room.
 


 
 “Nothing! What business is it of yours?” muttered the count angrily.
 


 
 “But I heard,” said Natásha. “Why does Mamma object?”
 


 
 “What business is it of yours?” cried the count.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Rostóvs’ son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the orders of
 Vladímir 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 Natásha and
 Sónya, 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. Natásha 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 Natásha,
 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 Mítenka 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 Yusúpov’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 Véra 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
 Véra 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 Véra’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.
 


 
 Natásha left the room with her father and, as if finding it difficult to
 reach some decision, first followed him and then ran downstairs.
 


 
 Pétya 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?” Pétya asked Natásha.
 


 
 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
 Pétya. “Vasílich told me. I consider...”
 


 
 “I consider,” Natásha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry face to
 Pétya, “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 Natásha, 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 Natásha. “We will still
 take all the most necessary things.”
 


 
 The count nodded affirmatively, and Natásha, 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 Natásha, 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
 Rostóvs’ 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. “Dunyásha 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. Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “The count’s books.”
 


 
 “Leave it, Vasílich 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, Pétya?” cried Natásha.
 


 
 Sónya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was quite
 different from Natásha’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 Rostóvs’ 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 calèche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sónya’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 calèche 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 Bolkónski himself! They say he is
 dying,” replied the maid with a sigh.
 


 
 Sónya 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. Natásha was not in
 the room.
 


 
 “Mamma,” said Sónya, “Prince Andrew is here, mortally wounded. He is going
 with us.”
 


 
 The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sónya’s arm, glanced
 around.
 


 
 “Natásha?” she murmured.
 


 
 At that moment this news had only one significance for both of them. They
 knew their Natásha, and alarm as to what would happen if she heard this
 news stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked.
 


 
 “Natásha does not know yet, but he is going with us,” said Sónya.
 


 
 “You say he is dying?”
 


 
 Sónya nodded.
 


 
 The countess put her arms around Sónya 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 Natásha, 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. Sónya
 embraced Natásha and kissed her.
 


 
 Natásha looked at her inquiringly.
 


 
 “What is it? What has happened?”
 


 
 “Nothing... No...”
 


 
 “Is it something very bad for me? What is it?” persisted Natásha with her
 quick intuition.
 


 
 Sónya sighed and made no reply. The count, Pétya, Madame Schoss, Mávra
 Kuzmínichna, and Vasílich 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
 Mávra Kuzmínichna and Vasílich, 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 Sónya 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 Pétya 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 calèche , the phaeton, and back again.
 


 
 “They always will forget everything!” said the countess. “Don’t you know I
 can’t sit like that?”
 


 
 And Dunyásha, 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.
 


 
 Efím, 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 Efím
 deliberately doffed his hat and began crossing himself. The postilion and
 all the other servants did the same. “Off, in God’s name!” said Efím,
 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 calèche , 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 Natásha 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 calèche . She did not know who was in it,
 but each time she looked at the procession her eyes sought that calèche .
 She knew it was right in front.
 


 
 In Kúdrino, from the Nikítski, Présnya, and Podnovínsk Streets came
 several other trains of vehicles similar to the Rostóvs’, and as they
 passed along the Sadóvaya Street the carriages and carts formed two rows
 abreast.
 


 
 As they were going round the Súkharev water tower Natásha, who was
 inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the people driving or walking past,
 suddenly cried out in joyful surprise:
 


 
 “Dear me! Mamma, Sónya, look, it’s he!”
 


 
 “Who? Who?”
 


 
 “Look! Yes, on my word, it’s Bezúkhov!” said Natásha, 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 Súkharev tower
 accompanied by a small, sallow-faced, beardless old man in a frieze coat.
 


 
 “Yes, it really is Bezúkhov in a coachman’s coat, with a queer-looking old
 boy. Really,” said Natásha, “look, look!”
 


 
 “No, it’s not he. How can you talk such nonsense?”
 


 
 “Mamma,” screamed Natásha, “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 Meshchánski Street came more
 carts and carriages, and the Rostóvs were being shouted at to move on and
 not block the way.
 


 
 In fact, however, though now much farther off than before, the Rostóvs 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 Natásha, 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.
 


 
 Natásha’s face, leaning out of the window, beamed with quizzical
 kindliness.
 


 
 “Peter Kirílovich, 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 Natásha
 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. Good-by!”
 


 
 “Ah, if only I were a man! I’d certainly stay with you. How splendid!”
 said Natásha. “Mamma, if you’ll let me, I’ll stay!”
 


 
 Pierre glanced absently at Natásha 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 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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, Bazdéev. This is how it
 happened.
 


 
 When he woke up on the morning after his return to Moscow and his
 interview with Count Rostopchín, 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 Hélène, 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 Bazdéev’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
 Bazdéev’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 Bazdéev’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 Krémlin 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 Bazdéevs’ house,
 where he had not been for a long time past. He went up to the gate.
 Gerásim, that sallow beardless old man Pierre had seen at Torzhók five
 years before with Joseph Bazdéev, came out in answer to his knock.
 


 
 “At home?” asked Pierre.
 


 
 “Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danílovna has gone to the
 Torzhók 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. Makár Alexéevich, 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 Makár Alexéevich was Joseph Bazdéev’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 Gerásim. “Will you step into the study?” Pierre nodded. “As it
 was sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia Danílovna 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 Bazdéev was now even gloomier.
 


 
 Gerásim 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
 Bazdéev’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.
 


 
 Gerásim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw Pierre
 always sitting in the same attitude.
 


 
 More than two hours passed and Gerásim 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 Gerásim 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 Gerásim. “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 Gerásim after thinking for a moment.
 


 
 All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor’s study, and
 Gerásim 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.
 


 
 Gerásim, 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. Makár Alexéevich 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 Gerásim had procured for
 him and had disinfected by steam) was on his way with the old man to buy
 the pistol at the Súkharev market that he met the Rostóvs.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIX
 
 
 Kutúzov’s order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazán 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 Dorogomílov 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. Kutúzov 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 Dorogomílov 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 Poklónny 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 Borodinó 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 Poklónny
 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 Poklónny 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 églises, Moscou la sainte. La
 voilà donc enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il était 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 Túchkov at Smolénsk). 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 Krémlin—yes, there is the Krémlin, 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’amène 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 Poklónny 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
 chère, ma tendre, ma pauvre mère * —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 Mère , *(2) 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.”
 


 
 * (2) “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 the Tver,
 Kalúga, and Dorogomílov 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 Dorogomílov gate, but there again stopped and, dismounting from his
 horse, paced for a long time by the Kámmer-Kollézski 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 Kámmer-Kollézski 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 Dorogomílov
 suburb.
 


 
 The coup de théâtre 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, Moskvá, and Yaúza bridges.
 


 
 While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around the Krémlin,
 were thronging the Moskvá 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 Vasíli the
 Beatified and under the Borovítski 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
 of 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 Ilyínka 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, Iván Sidórych, 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 Moskvá 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 Vasíli 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 Ermólov,
 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 Povarskáya was
 quite still and deserted. The huge courtyard of the Rostóvs’ 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 Ignát, and the page boy Míshka, Vasílich’s grandson who had stayed
 in Moscow with his grandfather. Míshka 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 Ignát?” said the boy, suddenly beginning to
 strike the keyboard with both hands.
 


 
 “Only fancy!” answered Ignát, surprised at the broadening grin on his face
 in the mirror.
 


 
 “Impudence! Impudence!” they heard behind them the voice of Mávra
 Kuzmínichna 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 Vasílich
 is worn out. Just you wait a bit!”
 


 
 Ignát 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 Mávra Kuzmínichna,
 raising her arm threateningly. “Go and get the samovar to boil for your
 grandfather.”
 


 
 Mávra Kuzmínichna 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 Vasílich, 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.
 Mávra Kuzmínichna went to the gate.
 


 
 “Who do you want?”
 


 
 “The count—Count Ilyá Andréevich Rostóv.”
 


 
 “And who are you?”
 


 
 “An officer, I have to see him,” came the reply in a pleasant, well-bred
 Russian voice.
 


 
 Mávra Kuzmínichna opened the gate and an officer of eighteen, with the
 round face of a Rostóv, entered the yard.
 


 
 “They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at vespertime,” said Mávra
 Kuzmínichna 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, Mávra Kuzmínichna was attentively and sympathetically examining
 the familiar Rostóv 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...”
 


 
 Mávra Kuzmínichna 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 Mávra Kuzmínichna 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 Rogózhski gate?” thought
 he. Just then Mávra Kuzmínichna 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...”
 


 
 Mávra Kuzmínichna grew abashed and confused. The officer did not decline,
 but took the note quietly and thanked her.
 


 
 “If the count had been at home...” Mávra Kuzmínichna 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 Yaúza bridge to
 overtake his regiment.
 


 
 But Mávra Kuzmínichna 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 Varvárka, 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
 nowadays!” 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 Moroséyka, 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 ukáse, they are reading an ukáse! Reading an ukáse!” 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 ukáse 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 gone that morning by Count
 Rostopchín’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 Lubyánka 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
 Kutúzov, Count Rostopchín had returned to Moscow mortified and offended
 because he had not been invited to attend the council of war, and because
 Kutúzov 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, Rostopchín 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
 Kutúzov. This letter requested the count to send police officers to guide
 the troops through the town, as the army was retreating to the Ryazán road
 beyond Moscow. This was not news to Rostopchín. He had known that Moscow
 would be abandoned not merely since his interview the previous day with
 Kutúzov on the Poklónny Hill but ever since the battle of Borodinó, 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 Rostopchín’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 Kutúzov, and received at night,
 breaking in on his beauty sleep.
 


 
 When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchín 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
 Rostopchín’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 preserve the tranquillity of the
 city,” explains Count Rostopchín. “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 Rostopchín. 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 Rostopchín’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 Borodinó, when the surrender of Moscow became certain or at least
 probable, Rostopchín 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.
 


 
 Rostopchín, 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 Smolénsk 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. Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín 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
 Kutúzov, 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 Rostopchín 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 Vladímir, 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 Rostopchín
 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, Meshkóv,
 Vereshchágin...”
 


 
 “Vereshchágin! Hasn’t he been hanged yet?” shouted Rostopchín. “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 Sokólniki, 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.
 


 
 Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín, stepping back from the window.
 


 
 “It is, your excellency,” replied the adjutant.
 


 
 Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín
 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 Vereshchágin? He is
 waiting at the porch,” said the adjutant.
 


 
 “Ah!” exclaimed Rostopchín, 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. Rostopchín, 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 Rostopchín, 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 Rostopchín
 stood frowning and rubbing his face with his hand.
 


 
 “Lads!” said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. “This man,
 Vereshchágin, 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 Rostopchín 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 has gone over to Bonaparte.
 He alone of all the Russians has disgraced the Russian name, he has caused
 Moscow to perish,” said Rostopchín in a sharp, even voice, but suddenly he
 glanced down at Vereshchágin 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 Rostopchín. “Cut him down. I command it.”
 


 
 Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchín’s voice, the
 crowd moaned and heaved forward, but again paused.
 


 
 “Count!” exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of Vereshchágin 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 Rostopchín, suddenly growing pale
 like Vereshchágin.
 


 
 “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 Vereshchágin.
 


 
 “Saber him!” the dragoon officer almost whispered.
 


 
 And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury, struck
 Vereshchágin on the head with the blunt side of his saber.
 


 
 “Ah!” cried Vereshchágin 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 Vereshchágin
 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. Vereshchágin 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 Vereshchágin, 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 Vereshchágin 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 Vereshchágin fell and the crowd closed in with savage
 yells and swayed about him, Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went in the
 direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his calèche . 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 Sokólniki.
 


 
 When they reached the Myasnítski 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!”—Vereshchágin’s words suddenly
 recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this was
 only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchín 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 Vasílyevich
 Rostopchín (he fancied that Theodore Vasílyevich Rostopchín was
 sacrificing himself for the public good) but himself as governor, the
 representative of authority and of the Tsar. “Had I been simply Theodore
 Vasílyevich 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, Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín 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
 Rostopchín 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.
 


 
 “Vereshchágin was tried and condemned to death,” thought Rostopchín
 (though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchágin 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
 Sokólniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred but considering
 what was to come. He was driving to the Yaúza bridge where he had heard
 that Kutúzov was. Count Rostopchín was mentally preparing the angry and
 stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutúzov 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 Rostopchín regarded it) would fall upon his doting old head.
 Planning beforehand what he would say to Kutúzov, Rostopchín turned
 angrily in his calèche and gazed sternly from side to side.
 


 
 The Sokólniki 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 Rostopchín’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
 Rostopchín, 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 calèche 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 Rostopchín suddenly grew pale as he had done when the crowd closed
 in on Vereshchágin. He turned away. “Go fas... faster!” he cried in a
 trembling voice to his coachman. The calèche flew over the ground as fast
 as the horses could draw it, but for a long time Count Rostopchín 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, Rostopchín 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 Yaúza bridge. It was hot. Kutúzov,
 dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his whip
 in the sand when a calèche dashed up noisily. A man in a general’s uniform
 with plumes in his hat went up to Kutúzov and said something in French. It
 was Count Rostopchín. He told Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov looked at Rostopchín 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. Rostopchín grew confused and became silent.
 Kutúzov slightly shook his head and not taking his penetrating gaze from
 Rostopchín’s face muttered softly:
 


 
 “No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!”
 


 
 Whether Kutúzov was thinking of something entirely different when he spoke
 those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be meaningless, at
 any rate Rostopchín made no reply and hastily left him. And strange to
 say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count Rostopchín, 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 Württemberg hussars and behind them rode the
 King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.
 


 
 About the middle of the Arbát 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 Krémlin. 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 Arbát. When they reached the end of the Vozdvízhenka Street they
 halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers superintended the
 placing of the guns and looked at the Krémlin through field glasses.
 


 
 The bells in the Krémlin 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 Kutáfyev 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 Vozdvízhenka, Mokhaváya, or Kutáfyev
 Street, nor the Tróitsa 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 Krémlin 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 was 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 Známenka.
 


 
 “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 Krémlin 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 Krémlin and encamped along the
 Moroséyka, the Lubyánka, and Pokróvka Streets. Others quartered themselves
 along the Vozdvízhenka, the Nikólski, and the Tverskóy 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 Krémlin 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 calèches 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 féroce de
 Rostopchíne , * 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 féroce de Rostopchíne” 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 Rostopchín’s ferocious patriotism.



 
 However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchín’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 Alexéevich’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 Alexéevich 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 Alexéevich’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 Borodinó
 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 Gerásim 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 Gerásim to get him a
 peasant’s coat and a pistol, confiding to him his intentions of remaining
 in Joseph Alexéevich’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 Rostóvs and
 Natásha 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
 Mozháysk 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 Gerásim. 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 Slobóda 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 of 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 Slobóda 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 Rostóvs 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 Makár Alexéevich, 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.
 


 
 Gerásim and the porter, who had followed Makár Alexéevich, 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. Makár Alexéevich, 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 Gerásim, trying carefully to steer
 Makár Alexéevich by the elbows back to the door.
 


 
 “Who are you? Bonaparte!...” shouted Makár Alexéevich.
 


 
 “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 Makár
 Alexéevich, brandishing the pistol. “Board them!”
 


 
 “Catch hold!” whispered Gerásim to the porter.
 


 
 They seized Makár Alexéevich 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.
 


 
 Gerásim and the porter let Makár Alexéevich 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 êtes le bourgeois?” * the officer asked Gerásim.
 


 
 * “Are you the master here?”
 


 
 Gerásim 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 français sont
 de bons enfants. Que diable! Voyons! Ne nous fâchons pas, mon vieux!” *
 added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerásim 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 Gerásim and asked him to show him the rooms in
 the house.
 


 
 “Master, not here—don’t understand... me, you...” said Gerásim,
 trying to render his words more comprehensible by contorting them.
 


 
 Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before Gerásim’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 Makár Alexéevich
 appearing at the open kitchen door with the pistol in his hand. With a
 madman’s cunning, Makár Alexéevich 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 Makár Alexéevich 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 Makár Alexéevich and took him by the collar.
 


 
 Makár Alexéevich 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 Makár
 Alexéevich 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
 Smolénsk”—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. Sacré 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 naïvely 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
 Duchénois, 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 Württemberg 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
 Württemberg 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 Württembergers 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 naïve 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 mère” 
 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 Natásha.
 (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 cœur ) 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 Natásha
 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 Súkharev 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 Kirílovich, 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 woman 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.
 


 
 “Platónic 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, Natásha’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 Pokróvka 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 Gerásim, 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 Rostóv party spent the night at Mytíshchi, 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 Mytíshchi.
 At ten o’clock that evening the Rostóv family and the wounded traveling
 with them were all distributed in the yards and huts of that large
 village. The Rostóvs’ 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 Raévski’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 Rostóvs. The countess said she had
 been unable to close her eyes on account of his moaning, and at Mytíshchi
 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
 Mytíshchi burning—set on fire by Mamónov’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 Mytíshchi had been set on fire by Mamónov’s
 Cossacks.”
 


 
 “But that’s not Mytíshchi, 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 Mytíshchi 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 Sushchévski or the Rogózhski 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 Teréntich, the count’s valet (as he was called), came up to the
 group and shouted at Míshka.
 


 
 “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 Míshka.
 


 
 “But what do you think, Daniel Teréntich? Doesn’t it look as if that glow
 were in Moscow?” remarked one of the footmen.
 


 
 Daniel Teréntich made no reply, and again for a long time they were all
 silent. The glow spread, rising and falling, 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 Teréntich, 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. Sónya
 and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out with him. Only
 Natásha and the countess remained in the room. Pétya was no longer with
 the family, he had gone on with his regiment which was making for Tróitsa.
 


 
 The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry. Natásha,
 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 Sónya returning from the yard chilled and
 frightened. “I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there’s an awful
 glow! Natásha, do look! You can see it from the window,” she said to her
 cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind.
 


 
 But Natásha 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 Sónya, to the surprise and
 annoyance of the countess, had for some unaccountable reason found it
 necessary to tell Natásha 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 Sónya. Sónya had cried and begged to be forgiven and now, as if
 trying to atone for her fault, paid unceasing attention to her cousin.
 


 
 “Look, Natásha, how dreadfully it is burning!” said she.
 


 
 “What’s burning?” asked Natásha. “Oh, yes, Moscow.”
 


 
 And as if in order not to offend Sónya 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,” Natásha replied in a voice that pleaded to be left in
 peace.
 


 
 Both the countess and Sónya understood that, naturally, neither Moscow nor
 the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of importance to
 Natásha.
 


 
 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 Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 When Natásha 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.
 


 
 “Natásha, 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,” Natásha 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. Natásha 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 Sónya.
 


 
 “Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet,” said the countess, softly touching
 Natásha’s shoulders. “Come, lie down.”
 


 
 “Oh, yes... I’ll lie down at once,” said Natásha, 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.
 


 
 “Natásha, you’d better lie in the middle,” said Sónya.
 


 
 “I’ll stay here,” muttered Natásha. “Do lie down,” she added crossly, and
 buried her face in the pillow.
 


 
 The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sónya 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 Mytíshchi a mile and
 a half away, and through the night came the noise of people shouting at a
 tavern Mamónov’s Cossacks had set up across the street, and the adjutant’s
 unceasing moans could still be heard.
 


 
 For a long time Natásha 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 Sónya’s gentle breathing. Then
 the countess called to Natásha. Natásha did not answer.
 


 
 “I think she’s asleep, Mamma,” said Sónya softly.
 


 
 After a short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one
 replied.
 


 
 Soon after that Natásha heard her mother’s even breathing. Natásha 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. Natásha sat up.
 


 
 “Sónya, are you asleep? Mamma?” she whispered.
 


 
 No one replied. Natásha 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 morning of Prince Andrew’s wound
 and his presence there, Natásha 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—Timókhin—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. Timókhin, 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 Natásha 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 Borodinó. 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 calèche ,
 but at Mytíshchi 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. Timókhin,
 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 Borodinó. They were accompanied by a doctor, Prince Andrew’s
 valet, his coachman, 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 Timókhin here?” he asked.
 


 
 Timókhin 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 calèche had stopped at Mytíshchi. 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 semidarkness 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha 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 to 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,
 Natásha, that same living Natásha 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 Natásha, and
 he was not surprised but quietly happy. Natásha, 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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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. Natásha’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. Timókhin,
 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 Natásha went out of the room
 and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.
 


 
 From that time, during all the rest of the Rostóvs’ journey, at every
 halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natásha never left the
 wounded Bolkónski, 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
 Natásha. Though with the intimacy now established between the wounded man
 and Natásha the thought occurred that should he recover their former
 engagement would be renewed, no one—least of all Natásha and Prince
 Andrew—spoke of this: the unsettled question of life and death,
 which hung not only over Bolkónski 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 Gerásim 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, the 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 Súkharev 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 Povarskóy, as well as the barges on the Moskvá River and
 the timber yards by the Dorogomílov Bridge, were all ablaze.
 


 
 Pierre’s way led through side streets to the Povarskóy and from there to
 the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbát, where he had long before decided
 that the deed 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 Arbát more than four hours previously on his
 way from the Dorogomílov suburb to the Krémlin, and was now sitting in a
 very gloomy frame of mind in a royal study in the Krémlin, 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 Povarskóy.
 


 
 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 footpath across a wide-open space adjoining
 the Povarskóy on one side and the gardens of Prince Gruzínski’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 Nikoláevna!” 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.... Aníska, 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 Povarskóy. 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 Nikúlins’!”
 


 
 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 Aníska, 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, Aníska, 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 Gruzínski garden at the corner of the Povarskóy.
 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 Anférovs,” said an old deacon, addressing a
 pockmarked peasant woman. “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!” he added in
 his customary bass.
 


 
 “The Anférovs? No,” said the woman. “They left in the morning. That must
 be either Mary Nikoláevna’s or the Ivánovs’!”
 


 
 “He says ‘a woman,’ and Mary Nikoláevna is a lady,” remarked a house serf.
 


 
 “Do you know her? She’s thin, with long teeth,” said Pierre.
 


 
 “That’s Mary Nikoláevna! 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 bêtises!” * 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 Zúbov 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
 Rumyántsev, the French, Márya Fëdorovna, the Tsarévich, 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 Márya, concerned for the welfare of the charitable and
 educational institutions under her patronage, had given directions that
 they should all be removed to Kazán, 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 Pávlovna’s on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of the
 battle of Borodinó, 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 Vasíli 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 Pávlovna’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 Pávlovna, 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 Bezúkhova.
 She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously, had missed several
 gatherings of which she was usually the 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 Pávlovna’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 Pávlovna, 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 Pávlovna.
 


 
 Supposing that by these words Anna Pávlovna 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 may be better than mine,” Anna Pávlovna 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 Pávlovna turned to another
 group where Bilíbin 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 Pávlovna, securing silence for the mot,
 which she had heard before.
 


 
 And Bilíbin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic dispatch, which he
 had himself composed.
 


 
 “The Emperor returns these Austrian banners,” said Bilíbin, “friendly
 banners gone astray and found on a wrong path,” and his brow became smooth
 again.
 


 
 “Charming, charming!” observed Prince Vasíli.
 


 
 “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 Pávlovna had been waiting for and wished to convert, and she, smiling
 and shaking a finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince Vasíli to the table and
 bringing him two candles and the manuscript begged him to begin. Everyone
 became silent.
 


 
 “Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor!” Prince Vasíli 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 Vasíli pronounced these last words in a tearful voice.
 


 
 Bilíbin attentively examined his nails, and many of those present appeared
 intimidated, as if asking in what they were to blame. Anna Pávlovna
 whispered the next words in advance, like an old woman muttering the
 prayer at Communion: “Let the bold and insolent Goliath...” she whispered.
 


 
 Prince Vasíli 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 bloodthirsty
 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 Pávlovna’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 Pávlovna, “that tomorrow, on the Emperor’s
 birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!”
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER II
 
 
 Anna Pávlovna’s presentiment was in fact fulfilled. Next day during the
 service at the palace church in honor of the Emperor’s birthday, Prince
 Volkónski was called out of the church and received a dispatch from Prince
 Kutúzov. It was Kutúzov’s report, written from Tatárinova on the day of
 the battle. Kutúzov 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 Pávlovna’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 Kutúzov’s report of the Russian losses, among which
 figured the names of Túchkov, Bagratión, and Kutáysov. In the Petersburg
 world this sad side of the affair again involuntarily centered round a
 single incident: Kutáysov’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
 Kutáysov is! How sorry I am!”
 


 
 “What did I tell about Kutúzov?” Prince Vasíli 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
 Kutúzov as they had done the day before, they condemned him as the cause
 of the Emperor’s anxiety. That day Prince Vasíli no longer boasted of his
 protégé Kutúzov, 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 Hélène Bezúkhova had suddenly died of that terrible malady it had
 been so agreeable to mention. Officially, at large gatherings, everyone
 said that Countess Bezúkhova 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 Hélène, 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 Vasíli 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 Kutáysov, and the death of Hélène.
 


 
 On the third day after Kutúzov’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! Kutúzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasíli during the visits of
 condolence paid to him on the occasion of his daughter’s death said of
 Kutúzov, 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
 Rostopchín:
 


 
 Prince Kutúzov’s adjutant has brought me a letter in which he demands
 police officers to guide the army to the Ryazán road. He writes that he is
 regretfully abandoning Moscow. Sire! Kutúzov’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 Volkónski to Kutúzov
 with the following rescript:
 


 
 Prince Michael Ilariónovich! 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 Yaroslávl, 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
 Volkónski, 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 Kutúzov
 reached Petersburg with the official announcement of that event. This
 messenger was Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know Russian, but who was
 quoique étranger, russe de cœur et d’âme, * 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 très gracieux souverain * with the news of the
 burning of Moscow, dont les flammes éclairaient sa route . *(2)
 


 
 * Our most gracious sovereign.
 


 
 * (2) 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 Kutúzov 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 étranger, russe de cœur et
 d’âme, —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 fleeing 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
 Mamónov’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 Matrëshka the
 vivandière, and like matters.
 


 
 As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostóv 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 Kutúzov 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 Vorónezh 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 Borodinó, Nicholas received the necessary
 money and warrants, and having sent some hussars on in advance, he set out
 with post horses for Vorónezh.
 


 
 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 Vorónezh,
 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 Ilyá Rostóv’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 Vorónezh 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 Petróvna would play valses and the écossaise 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 Vorónezh.
 


 
 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
 Rostóv. 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 Rostóv as a near relative and called him “Nicholas.”
 


 
 Catherine Petróvna did actually play valses and the écossaise , 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 naïve
 conviction of young men in a merry mood that other men’s wives were
 created for them, Rostóv 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 Rostóv. But the latter’s good-natured naïveté 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 Vorónezh.
 


 
 “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, Nikíta Iványch!” cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if wishing
 Nikíta Iványch 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 Ignátyevna wants to see you, Nicholas,” said she, pronouncing the
 name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna Ignátyevna was a very
 important person. “Come, Nicholas! You know you let me call you so?”
 


 
 “Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?”
 


 
 “Anna Ignátyevna Malvíntseva. 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 Bolkónskaya. She is here in Vorónezh 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 Malvíntseva, Princess Mary’s
 aunt on her mother’s side, a rich, childless widow who always lived in
 Vorónezh. When Rostóv 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
 Malvíntseva 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 Malvíntseva 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 Petróvna 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 Sónya...?” 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 Bolkónskaya—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 Natásha 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 Natásha’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 Sónya, 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 Sónya 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 Sónya—if she’s a girl with a heart? Your mother in
 despair, and you all ruined.... No, my dear, you and Sónya 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 Rostóv, 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 Malvíntseva at Vorónezh. That
 feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her during her father’s
 illness, since his death, and especially since her meeting with Rostóv 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 Rostóv.
 


 
 The day after her party the governor’s wife came to see Malvíntseva 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. Malvíntseva expressed approval, and the governor’s
 wife began to speak of Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv—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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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.
 


 
 Rostóv 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 Rostóv told the governor’s wife that he would not make any
 declaration to Princess Mary, he promised to go.
 


 
 As at Tilsit Rostóv 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 Sónya 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 Sónya. 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 Borodinó, of our losses in killed and
 wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow reached
 Vorónezh 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 Borodinó and the abandonment of
 Moscow, Rostóv was not seized with despair, anger, the desire for
 vengeance, or any feeling of that kind, but everything in Vorónezh
 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 Rostóv. “It is
 that if your brother, Prince Andrew Nikoláevich, 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 Smolénsk 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 Vorónezh 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 Rostóv 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 Sónya?” 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
 Sónya, and that was all clear and simple just because it had all been
 thought out and he knew all there was in Sónya, but it was impossible to
 picture a future with Princess Mary, because he did not understand her but
 simply loved her.
 


 
 Reveries about Sónya 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 Sónya... She was
 right,” he thought, remembering what the governor’s wife had said:
 “Nothing but misfortune can come of marrying Sónya. 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 Natásha 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
 Lavrúshka came in with some papers.
 


 
 “Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?” cried Nicholas,
 quickly changing his attitude.
 


 
 “From the governor,” said Lavrúshka 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 Sónya. He recognized them by the handwriting and opened Sónya’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
 Sónya 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 Rostóvs’ Moscow property—and the
 countess’ repeatedly expressed wish that Nicholas should marry Princess
 Bolkónskaya, 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 Sónya
 


 
 Both letters were written from Tróitsa. 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.
 Sónya and Natásha 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 “Natásha 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 Yaroslávl,
 and a few days later left to rejoin his regiment.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII
 
 
 Sónya’s letter written from Tróitsa, 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 Sónya was the chief obstacle to this happening, and Sónya’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 Boguchárovo. The countess let no occasion slip of making
 humiliating or cruel allusions to Sónya.
 


 
 But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all that was
 going on, she called Sónya 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.”
 


 
 Sónya 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 Sónya’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 Natásha 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 Sónya 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 Sónya, 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 Rostóvs’ last days in Moscow stifled the
 gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sónya. 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 Natásha, she was
 seized by a joyful and superstitious feeling that God did not intend her
 to be separated from Nicholas. She knew that Natásha 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 Sónya.
 


 
 At the Tróitsa monastery the Rostóvs 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 Natásha 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. Sónya was there
 too, tormented by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew and Natásha were
 talking about. She heard the sound of their voices through the door. That
 door opened and Natásha 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 Sónya and took her hand.
 


 
 “Natásha, what are you about? Come here!” said the countess.
 


 
 Natásha went up to the monk for his blessing, and he advised her to pray
 for aid to God and His saint.
 


 
 As soon as the prior withdrew, Natásha took her friend by the hand and
 went with her into the unoccupied room.
 


 
 “Sónya, will he live?” she asked. “Sónya, how happy I am, and how
 unhappy!... Sónya, dovey, everything is as it used to be. If only he
 lives! He cannot... because... because... of...” and Natásha burst into
 tears.
 


 
 “Yes! I knew it! Thank God!” murmured Sónya. “He will live.”
 


 
 Sónya 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 Natásha. “If only he lives!” she thought. Having
 wept, talked, and wiped away their tears, the two friends went together to
 Prince Andrew’s door. Natásha opened it cautiously and glanced into the
 room, Sónya 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, Natásha!” Sónya suddenly almost screamed, catching her companion’s arm
 and stepping back from the door.
 


 
 “What? What is it?” asked Natásha.
 


 
 “It’s that, that...” said Sónya, with a white face and trembling lips.
 


 
 Natásha softly closed the door and went with Sónya to the window, not yet
 understanding what the latter was telling her.
 


 
 “You remember,” said Sónya with a solemn and frightened expression. “You
 remember when I looked in the mirror for you... at Otrádnoe at Christmas?
 Do you remember what I saw?”
 


 
 “Yes, yes!” cried Natásha opening her eyes wide, and vaguely recalling
 that Sónya had told her something about Prince Andrew whom she had seen
 lying down.
 


 
 “You remember?” Sónya went on. “I saw it then and told everybody, you and
 Dunyásha. 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 Natásha, 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 Sónya, clutching at her
 head.
 


 
 A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natásha went to him, but Sónya,
 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.
 


 
 “Sónya!” said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as her niece
 passed, “Sónya, won’t you write to Nicholas?” She spoke in a soft,
 tremulous voice, and in the weary eyes that looked over her spectacles
 Sónya 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.
 


 
 Sónya went up to the countess and, kneeling down, kissed her hand.
 


 
 “Yes, Mamma, I will write,” said she.
 


 
 Sónya 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 Natásha’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 Zúbovski 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 Zúbovski
 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 Krémlin, which was not destroyed,
 gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the belfry of Iván 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 Shcherbátov’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 Eckmühl (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.
 


 
 “Bezúkhov.”
 


 
 “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 Shcherbátov’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 Ápsheron 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 Platón, and the surname is
 Karatáev,” 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 Karatáev. “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 Karatáev, “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 Platón Karatáev 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 Platón 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 Platón 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 Platón, 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 Platón 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 Karatáev, 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
 Platón 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 Platón Karatáev, 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: Platón’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.
 


 
 Platón Karatáev 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 Karatáev’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.
 Karatáev 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
 Karatáev’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
 Karatáev.
 


 
 To all the other prisoners Platón Karatáev seemed a most ordinary soldier.
 They called him “little falcon” or “Platósha,” 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.
 


 
 Platón Karatáev 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 Platón 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
 Rostóvs at Yaroslávl 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 to 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 Vorónezh, a semiopen trap,
 and a baggage cart. With her traveled Mademoiselle Bourienne, little
 Nicholas and his tutor, her old nurse, three maids, Tíkhon, 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 Lípetsk, Ryazán, Vladímir,
 and Shúya was very long and, as post horses were not everywhere
 obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazán 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 Yaroslávl by the end of the
 second week.
 


 
 The last days of her stay in Vorónezh had been the happiest of her life.
 Her love for Rostóv 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 Rostóvs. Not by a
 single word had Nicholas alluded to the fact that Prince Andrew’s
 relations with Natásha 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 Vorónezh 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 Yaroslávl 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 Rostóvs
 were staying in Yaroslávl, 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 Rostóvs are staying at
 the merchant Brónnikov’s house, in the Square not far from here, right
 above the Vólga,” 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 Sónya.)
 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 Sónya 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 Sónya—“You don’t
 know her, Princess?”
 


 
 Princess Mary turned to Sónya 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. Natásha is with him,” answered Sónya, 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 Natásha coming in, almost running—that
 Natásha whom she had liked so little at their meeting in Moscow long
 since.
 


 
 But hardly had the princess looked at Natásha’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 Natásha, 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 Natásha’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 Natásha’s face, and wept on her shoulder with sorrowful
 pleasure.
 


 
 “Come, come to him, Mary,” said Natásha, leading her into the other room.
 


 
 Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and turned to Natásha. 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. Natásha’s
 face and eyes would have to tell her all more clearly and profoundly.
 


 
 Natásha 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, Natásha’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 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha told her that at first there had been danger from his feverish
 condition and the pain he suffered, but at Tróitsa that had passed and the
 doctor had only been afraid of gangrene. That danger had also passed. When
 they reached Yaroslávl the wound had begun to fester (Natásha 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 gaze that seemed to look not outwards but inwards there was an
 almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded his sister and Natásha.
 


 
 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, chère amie, d’être 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 Natásha. “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 Ryazán,” said Natásha.
 


 
 Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary , and only
 after calling her so in his presence did Natásha notice it herself.
 


 
 “Really?” he asked.
 


 
 “They told her that all Moscow has been burned down, and that...”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 Natásha, 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 Natásha, than he had then. He understood it completely,
 and, leaving the room without crying, went silently up to Natásha 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 Natásha 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
 Natásha’s face had told her. She did not speak any more to Natásha 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 Mytíshchi 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 Kurágin, he could not now regain the
 feeling he then had, but was tormented by the question whether Kurágin was
 alive. And he dared not inquire.
 


 
 His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what Natásha 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 Natásha, 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. Sónya 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 Sónya’s place sat Natásha 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 Tróitsa 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 Natásha 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.”
 


 
 Natásha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.
 


 
 “Natásha, 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!” Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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, Natásha 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 Natásha,
 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 Natásha, 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
 Natásha 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 Natásha were present.
 


 
 “Is it over?” said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes lain
 motionless, growing cold before them. Natásha 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 Sónya cried from pity for Natásha and because he was no
 more. The old count cried because he felt that before long, he, too, must
 take the same terrible step.
 


 
 Natásha 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 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 Borodinó 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 Ryazána to the Kalúga road and to the Tarútino camp—the
 so-called flank march across the Krásnaya Pakhrá 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 Kalúga 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 Krásnaya Pakhrá had given battle as Bennigsen and
 Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French attacked the
 Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhrá? What would have
 happened if on approaching Tarútino, Napoleon had attacked the Russians
 with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when he attacked them at
 Smolénsk? 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 Filí, 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 Filí the prevailing thought in the minds of the Russian
 commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely, a direct
 retreat by the Nízhni 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 Lanskóy, who was in charge of the commissariat department.
 Lanskóy informed the commander in chief that the army supplies were for
 the most part stored along the Oká in the Túla and Ryazán provinces, and
 that if they retreated on Nízhni the army would be separated from its
 supplies by the broad river Oká, 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
 Nízhni-Nóvgorod. The army turned more to the south, along the Ryazán road
 and nearer to its supplies. Subsequently the inactivity of the French (who
 even lost sight of the Russian army), concern for the safety of the
 arsenal at Túla, and especially the advantages of drawing nearer to its
 supplies caused the army to turn still further south to the Túla road.
 Having crossed over, by a forced march, to the Túla road beyond the
 Pakhrá, the Russian commanders intended to remain at Podólsk and had no
 thought of the Tarútino 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 Kalúga province, obliged our army to turn still more to the
 south and to cross from the Túla to the Kalúga road and go to Tarútino,
 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
 Tarútino. 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 Nízhni to the Ryazán, Túla, and Kalúga roads was so
 natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that direction, and
 demands were sent from Petersburg for Kutúzov to take his army that way.
 At Tarútino Kutúzov received what was almost a reprimand from the Emperor
 for having moved his army along the Ryazán road, and the Emperor’s letter
 indicated to him the very position he had already occupied near Kalúga.
 


 
 Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by the
 whole campaign and by the battle of Borodinó, the Russian army—when
 the strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push was received—assumed
 the position natural to it.
 


 
 Kutúzov’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 Borodinó 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 Borodinó 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 Kutúzov’s camp with
 overtures for peace.
 


 
 Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head was
 right, wrote to Kutúzov 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
 


 





 
 Kutúzov 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 Tarútino, 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 Tarútino; 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 Tarútino; 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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. Kutúzov 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
 Kutúzov’s actions and report upon them.
 


 
 Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now reorganized. The
 posts left vacant by Bagratión, 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 Kutúzov 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 Ilariónovich! (wrote the Emperor on the second of October
 in a letter that reached Kutúzov after the battle at Tarútino) 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. Sérpukhov is already occupied by an enemy detachment and Túla
 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 Dmítrov. A third has advanced along the Vladímir road,
 and a fourth, rather considerable detachment is stationed between Rúza and
 Mozháysk. 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 Túla 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, Kutúzov
 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, Shapoválov, 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. Ermólov 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,
 Kutúzov—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 Kutúzov signed the dispositions.
 Toll read them to Ermólov, asking him to attend to the further
 arrangements.
 


 
 “All right—all right. I haven’t time just now,” replied Ermólov, 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 Ermólov to deal with.
 A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutúzov’s orderly, pleased at the
 importance of the mission entrusted to him, went to Ermólov’s quarters.
 


 
 “Gone away,” said Ermólov’s orderly.
 


 
 The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom Ermólov 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 Ermólov 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. Ermólov 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 Milorádovich.
 Milorádovich too was away, but here he was told that he had gone to a ball
 at General Kíkin’s and that Ermólov was probably there too.
 


 
 “But where is it?”
 


 
 “Why, there, over at Échkino,” 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 Échkino. 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 Ermólov’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
 trepák with much spirit and agility.
 


 
 “Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Iványch! 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
 Ermólov.
 


 
 Ermólov 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
 Ermólov. “It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get Konovnítsyn into
 trouble. You’ll see what a mess there’ll be tomorrow.”
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER V
 
 
 Next day the decrepit Kutúzov, 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 calèche and drove
 from Letashóvka (a village three and a half miles from Tarútino) to the
 place where the attacking columns were to meet. He sat in the calèche ,
 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
 Tarútino Kutúzov noticed cavalrymen leading their horses to water across
 the road along which he was driving. Kutúzov 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...” Kutúzov began, but checked himself immediately and sent
 for a senior officer. Getting out of his calèche , he waited with drooping
 head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down. When Eýkhen, the
 officer of the general staff whom he had summoned, appeared, Kutúzov 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 Eýkhen,
 threatening him with his hands, shouting and loading him with gross abuse.
 Another man, Captain Brózin, 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 Kutúzov 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
 calèche and drove back in silence.
 


 
 His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he listened
 to excuses and self-justifications (Ermólov did not come to see him till
 the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen, Konovnítsyn, and Toll
 that the movement that had miscarried should be executed next day. And
 once more Kutúzov 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 Orlóv-Denísov 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 Stromílova to Dmítrovsk.
 


 
 Toward dawn, Count Orlóv-Denísov, 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 Orlóv-Denísov 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 Grékov with two Cossack regiments decided to go with the
 Polish sergeant.
 


 
 “Now, remember,” said Count Orlóv-Denísov 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 Grékov whose men had quickly assembled. They disappeared into the
 forest, and Count Orlóv-Denísov, having seen Grékov 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 Orlóv, 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
 Orlóv 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 Orlóv with sudden
 determination, looking at his watch. “It will be too late. It is quite
 light.”
 


 
 And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grékov. When Grékov
 returned, Count Orlóv-Denísov, 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 fighting among 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. Orlóv-Denísov, 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 Bagovút’s corps in a wood when it was
 already broad daylight, though the corps should long before have joined
 Orlóv-Denísov. 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 Bagovút, 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 Kutúzov 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
 Milorádovich 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 Kutúzov 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 Ermólov 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.”
 


 
 Ermólov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these words. He
 understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that Kutúzov would
 content himself with that hint.
 


 
 “He’s having a little fun at my expense,” said Ermólov softly, nudging
 with his knee Raévski who was at his side.
 


 
 Soon after this, Ermólov moved up to Kutúzov 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.”
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Orlóv-Denísov’s Cossacks had done: the
 rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.
 


 
 In consequence of this battle Kutúzov 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 Tarútino 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—Tarútino, Borodinó, 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 Tarútino 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 Orlóv-Denísov 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 Tarútino, 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 Smolénsk or Vílna; 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 Nízhni-Nóvgorod, or retiring by a more northerly or
 more southerly route (say by the road Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov without joining battle, turned to the right and
 reached Málo-Yaroslávets, again without attempting to break through and
 take the road Kutúzov took, but retiring instead to Mozháysk along the
 devastated Smolénsk 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 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 Kutúzov. Then he gave careful directions about the
 fortification of the Krémlin, and drew up a brilliant plan for a future
 campaign over the whole map of Russia.
 


 
 With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain Yákovlev,
 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 Rostopchín
 had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he dispatched Yákovlev to Petersburg.
 


 
 Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to Tutólmin, 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 Rostopchín 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 your 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 à 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 Mokhováya 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 Mère 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 Tutólmin. 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 Krémlin, for which la Mosquée (as Napoleon
 termed the church of Basil the Beatified) was to have been razed to the
 ground, proved quite useless. The mining of the Krémlin 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 Tutólmin and to Yákovlev (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 Krémlin
 and in Posnyákov’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 Krémlin. 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 Smolénsk road, and by the battle of
 Tarútino. The news of that battle of Tarútino, 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 trésor , 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 calèches 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 Tarútino
 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 Karatáev 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 Femgálka;
 Karatáev 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 Karatáev’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 of 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. Sokolóv, 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 Karatáev, coming out with a neatly
 folded shirt.
 


 
 Karatáev, 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 Platón, 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!” Platón 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 Platón 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 Karatáev, 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 Karatáev. “But give me the pieces that are over.”
 


 
 Pierre saw that Platón did not want to understand what the Frenchman was
 saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karatáev 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 Karatáev. “They’d make fine leg
 bands for us. Well, never mind.”
 


 
 And Karatáev, 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 Karatáev 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 Karatáev, 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.”
 


 
 Karatáev 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 Borodinó. 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
 Natásha; 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 Karatáev.
 


 
 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 Karatáev’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
 Bezúkhov?
 


 
 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, Sokolóv, 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 Karatáev 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, Sokolóv, 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 Kazán dressing gown
 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 Zúbova, and in the Krémlin.... 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 Khamóvniki (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 Khamóvniki 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 Kalúga road turns near
 Neskúchny, 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 Kalúga road. But
 the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais’ train
 had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kalúga road when the
 vanguard of Ney’s army was already emerging from the Great Ordýnka 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 Kalúga road, taking more than an hour
 to do so, and came out upon the square where the streets of the
 Transmoskvá ward and the Kalúga 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 Khamóvniki, 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 Kalúga 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 he 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 Kutúzov with a letter
 from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow, though
 Napoleon was already not far from Kutúzov on the old Kalúga road. Kutúzov
 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 Dórokhov’s guerrilla detachment
 operating to the left of Tarútino that troops of Broussier’s division had
 been seen at Formínsk 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 Tarútino, urged Kutúzov to carry out Dórokhov’s suggestion.
 Kutúzov did not consider any offensive necessary. The result was a
 compromise which was inevitable: a small detachment was sent to Formínsk
 to attack Broussier.
 


 
 By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most
 difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhtúrov—that same
 modest little Dokhtúrov 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 Smolénsk with twenty thousand men to defend the town
 against Napoleon’s whole army. In Smolénsk, at the Malákhov Gate, he had
 hardly dozed off in a paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by the
 bombardment of the town—and Smolénsk held out all day long. At the
 battle of Borodinó, when Bagratión 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 Dokhtúrov—Kutúzov hastening to rectify a mistake he
 had made by sending someone else there first. And the quiet little
 Dokhtúrov rode thither, and Borodinó became the greatest glory of the
 Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us in verse and prose,
 but of Dokhtúrov scarcely a word has been said.
 


 
 It was Dokhtúrov again whom they sent to Formínsk and from there to
 Málo-Yaroslávets, 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 Dokhtúrov nothing or very little is said and that dubiously. And
 this silence about Dokhtúrov 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 Dokhtúrov had gone halfway to Formínsk and
 stopped at the village of Aristóvo, 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 Kalúga road and
 began to enter Formínsk, where only Broussier had been till then. At that
 time Dokhtúrov had under his command, besides Dórokhov’s detachment, the
 two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and Seslávin.
 


 
 On the evening of October 11 Seslávin came to the Aristóvo headquarters
 with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner said that the troops
 that had entered Formínsk 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 Bórovsk said
 he had seen an immense army entering the town. Some Cossacks of
 Dokhtúrov’s detachment reported having sighted the French Guards marching
 along the road to Bórovsk. 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 Kalúga road. Dokhtúrov 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 Formínsk. But only Broussier had been there at that time and now
 the whole French army was there. Ermólov wished to act on his own
 judgment, but Dokhtúrov insisted that he must have Kutúzov’s instructions.
 So it was decided to send a dispatch to the staff.
 


 
 For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovítinov, was chosen, who was to
 explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering a written
 report. Toward midnight Bolkhovítinov, 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, Bolkhovítinov reached Litashëvka 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 Dokhtúrov,” said Bolkhovítinov,
 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 Dokhtúrov and from Alexéy Petróvich. Napoleon is at Formínsk,” said
 Bolkhovítinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but guessing by
 the voice that it was not Konovnítsyn.
 


 
 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 Bolkhovítinov. “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 Shcherbínin, Konovnítsyn’s adjutant.) “I’ve found
 it, I’ve found it!” he added.
 


 
 The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbínin was fumbling for
 something on the candlestick.
 


 
 “Oh, the nasty beasts!” said he with disgust.
 


 
 By the light of the sparks Bolkhovítinov saw Shcherbínin’s youthful face
 as he held the candle, and the face of another man who was still asleep.
 This was Konovnítsyn.
 


 
 When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned up,
 first blue and then red, Shcherbínin lit the tallow candle, from the
 candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were running
 away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovítinov was bespattered all over
 with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it with his sleeve.
 


 
 “Who gave the report?” inquired Shcherbínin, taking the envelope.
 


 
 “The news is reliable,” said Bolkhovítinov. “Prisoners, Cossacks,
 and the scouts all say the same thing.”
 


 
 “There’s nothing to be done, we’ll have to wake him,” said Shcherbínin,
 rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay covered by a
 greatcoat. “Peter Petróvich!” said he. (Konovnítsyn 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 Konovnítsyn’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 Konovnítsyn 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.”
 


 
 Konovnítsyn 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 Petróvich Konovnítsyn, like Dokhtúrov, seems to have been included
 merely for propriety’s sake in the list of the so-called heroes of 1812—the
 Barclays, Raévskis, Ermólovs, Plátovs, and Milorádoviches. Like Dokhtúrov
 he had the reputation of being a man of very limited capacity and
 information, and like Dokhtúrov 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 Kutúzov reproved him for it and feared to send
 him to the front, and like Dokhtúrov 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 Konovnítsyn 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
 Tarútino had been at daggers drawn with Kutúzov; 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
 Konovnítsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded him that they must go
 to see his Highness.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII
 
 
 Kutúzov 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, Kutúzov 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 Tarútino battle
 and of the day before it, which Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov. 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
 Barthélemi having been sent, and by the reports of the guerrillas, Kutúzov
 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 Borodinó was
 mortal or not had hung over Kutúzov’s head for a whole month. On the one
 hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutúzov 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. Kutúzov even
 imagined that Napoleon’s army might turn back through Medýn and Yukhnóv,
 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 Kutúzov had not yet
 even dared to think of—the complete extermination of the French.
 Dórokhov’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 Kutúzov. 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
 Tarútino to Madame de Staël, 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,
 Konovnítsyn, and Bolkhovítinov.
 


 
 “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 Kutúzov 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.”
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Bolkhovítinov 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?”
 


 
 Bolkhovítinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he had
 been told to report.
 


 
 “Speak quicker, quicker! Don’t torture me!” Kutúzov interrupted him.
 


 
 Bolkhovítinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting
 instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutúzov 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
 Kutúzov’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. Dokhtúrov went to Málo-Yaroslávets,
 but Kutúzov lingered with the main army and gave orders for the evacuation
 of Kalúga—a retreat beyond which town seemed to him quite possible.
 


 
 Everywhere Kutúzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for his
 retreat fled in the opposite direction.
 


 
 Napoleon’s historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at Tarútino and
 Málo-Yaroslávets, 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 Smolénsk had
 looted provisions instead of storing them—how could that army
 recuperate in Kalúga 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 Borodinó 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 Málo-Yaroslávets, 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 Málo-Yaroslávets 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 Tarútino 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 Smolénsk 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 Mozháysk (that is, the
 Smolénsk) 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 Smolénsk road, the final goal—their
 native land—was too remote, and their immediate goal was Smolénsk,
 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 Smolénsk, 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
 Smolénsk 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 Smolénsk, 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 Kutúzov alone understood this. When the flight
 of the French army along the Smolénsk road became well defined, what
 Konovnítsyn 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Vyázma 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.
 


 
 Ermólov, Milorádovich, Plátov, and others in proximity to the French near
 Vyázma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up two French
 corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutúzov they sent him a
 blank sheet of paper in an envelope.
 


 
 And try as Kutúzov 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 Smolénsk.
 


 
 
 
 BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812
 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER I
 
 
 The Battle of Borodinó, 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 Auerstädt 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 Borodinó 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 Borodinó 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 Borodinó 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 Smolénsk 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 Borodinó 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 Kutúzov 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 4 x = 15 y . 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
 Smolénsk.
 


 
 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. Denís Davýdov, 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 Davýdov’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 Smolénsk, 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
 Vasílisa, 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, Denísov (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 Smolénsk. Besides Denísov and Dólokhov (who also led a small
 party and moved in Denísov’s vicinity), the commanders of some large
 divisions with staffs also knew of this convoy and, as Denísov 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
 Denísov almost simultaneously, requesting him to join up with their
 divisions to attack the convoy.
 


 
 “No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself,” said Denísov 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, Denísov and Dólokhov 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 Mikúlino to that of Shámshevo. To the left of the road between Mikúlino
 and Shámshevo 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 Denísov 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 Denísov’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 Mikúlino where the forest ran close to
 the road. Since then, and until evening, the party had watched the
 movements of the French without attacking. It was necessary to let the
 French reach Shámshevo quietly without alarming them and then, after
 joining Dólokhov who was to come that evening to a consultation at a
 watchman’s hut in the forest less than a mile from Shámshevo, 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 Mikúlino 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 Shámshevo, Dólokhov 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. Denísov had two hundred, and
 Dólokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of numbers did not
 deter Denísov. 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.
 


 
 Denísov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear of
 putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tíkhon Shcherbáty, a
 peasant of his party, to Shámshevo 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.
 


 
 Denísov 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 Denísov rode an esaul , * Denísov’s fellow worker, also
 in felt cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.
 


 
 * A captain of Cossacks.



 
 Esaul Lováyski 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 Denísov 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 Kirghíz 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, cut up 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.
 


 
 Denísov’s horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and bumped his
 rider’s knee against a tree.
 


 
 “Oh, the devil!” exclaimed Denísov angrily, and showing his teeth he
 struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and his
 comrades with mud.
 


 
 Denísov 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 Dólokhov 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 Denísov, continually peering forward, hoping to
 see a messenger from Dólokhov.
 


 
 On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to the
 right, Denísov stopped.
 


 
 “There’s someone coming,” said he.
 


 
 The esaul looked in the direction Denísov 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 Denísov and handed him a
 sodden envelope.
 


 
 “From the general,” said the officer. “Please excuse its
 not being quite dry.”
 


 
 Denísov, 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
 Denísov was reading the dispatch. “But Komaróv 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?”
 


 
 “Wostóv! Pétya!” exclaimed Denísov, 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 Pétya Rostóv.
 


 
 All the way Pétya had been preparing himself to behave with Denísov as
 befitted a grown-up man and an officer—without hinting at their
 previous acquaintance. But as soon as Denísov smiled at him Pétya
 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 Vyázma and how a certain hussar had distinguished himself there.
 


 
 “Well, I am glad to see you,” Denísov interrupted him, and his face again
 assumed its anxious expression.
 


 
 “Michael Feoklítych,” said he to the esaul , “this is
 again fwom that German, you know. He”—he indicated
 Pétya—“is serving under him.”
 


 
 And Denísov 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 Denísov was talking to the esaul , Pétya—abashed by Denísov’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 Denísov, 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?” Denísov repeated thoughtfully. “But can you stay till tomowwow?”
 


 
 “Oh, please... May I stay with you?” cried Pétya.
 


 
 “But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?” asked
 Denísov.
 


 
 Pétya blushed.
 


 
 “He gave me no instructions. I think I could?” he returned, inquiringly.
 


 
 “Well, all wight,” said Denísov.
 


 
 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 Kirghíz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant) to go and find
 out where Dólokhov was and whether he would come that evening. Denísov
 himself intended going with the esaul and Pétya to the edge of the forest
 where it reached out to Shámshevo, 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 Shámshevo.”
 


 
 Denísov, Pétya, 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. Denísov, the esaul , and Pétya 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.
 


 
 Denísov and Pétya 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 Denísov in a low voice, not taking his
 eyes off the French.
 


 
 A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to Denísov.
 Pointing to the French troops, Denísov asked him what these and those of
 them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and lifting
 his eyebrows, looked at Denísov in affright, but in spite of an evident
 desire to say all he knew gave confused answers, merely assenting to
 everything Denísov asked him. Denísov turned away from him frowning and
 addressed the esaul , conveying his own conjectures to him.
 


 
 Pétya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now at
 Denísov, now at the esaul , and now at the French in the village and along
 the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.
 


 
 “Whether Dólokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?” said Denísov 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,” Denísov 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 Denísov 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 Tíkhon,” said the esaul .
 


 
 “So it is! It is!”
 


 
 “The wascal!” said Denísov.
 


 
 “He’ll get away!” said the esaul , screwing up his eyes.
 


 
 The man whom they called Tíkhon, 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 Denísov with his former look of vexation. “What has
 he been doing all this time?”
 


 
 “Who is he?” asked Pétya.
 


 
 “He’s our plastún . I sent him to capture a ‘tongue.’”
 


 
 “Oh, yes,” said Pétya, nodding at the first words Denísov uttered as if he
 understood it all, though he really did not understand anything of it.
 


 
 Tíkhon Shcherbáty was one of the most indispensable men in their band. He
 was a peasant from Pokróvsk, near the river Gzhat. When Denísov had come
 to Pokróvsk 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 Denísov 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 Tíkhon Shcherbáty was the only man who
 dealt with such matters. Denísov had Tíkhon 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 Tíkhon, evidently frightened by
 Denísov’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 Denísov had left Pokróvsk, having quite forgotten about this
 peasant, it was reported to him that Tíkhon had attached himself to their
 party and asked to be allowed to remain with it. Denísov gave orders to
 let him do so.
 


 
 Tíkhon, 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. Denísov then relieved him from drudgery and began
 taking him with him when he went out on expeditions and had him enrolled
 among the Cossacks.
 


 
 Tíkhon 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 ease picking fleas out of its fur or crunching thick bones.
 Tíkhon 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
 Denísov’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 Tíkhon.
 


 
 “It won’t hurt that devil—he’s as strong as a horse!” they said of
 him.
 


 
 Once a Frenchman Tíkhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at him and
 shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which Tíkhon treated
 only with internal and external applications of vodka) was the subject of
 the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment—jokes in which Tíkhon
 readily joined.
 


 
 “Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?” the Cossacks would banter
 him. And Tíkhon, 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 Tíkhon 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 Denísov overnight to
 Shámshevo 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
 Denísov 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, Denísov turned his horse and rode back.
 


 
 “Now, my lad, we’ll go and get dwy,” he said to Pétya.
 


 
 As they approached the watchhouse Denísov 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 Kazán hat, was approaching with
 long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his shoulder and an ax stuck in
 his girdle. When he espied Denísov he hastily threw something into the
 bushes, removed his sodden hat by its floppy brim, and approached his
 commander. It was Tíkhon. His wrinkled and pockmarked face and narrow
 little eyes beamed with self-satisfied merriment. He lifted his head high
 and gazed at Denísov as if repressing a laugh.
 


 
 “Well, where did you disappear to?” inquired Denísov.
 


 
 “Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen,” answered Tíkhon
 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 Tíkhon.
 


 
 “Where is he?”
 


 
 “You see, I took him first thing at dawn,” Tíkhon 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 Denísov to
 the esaul . “Why didn’t you bwing that one?”
 


 
 “What was the good of bringing him?” Tíkhon 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,” Tíkhon 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
 Tíkhon, 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.
 


 
 Pétya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained from
 laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tíkhon’s face to the
 esaul’s and Denísov’s, unable to make out what it all meant.
 


 
 “Don’t play the fool!” said Denísov, coughing angrily. “Why didn’t you
 bwing the first one?”
 


 
 Tíkhon 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 Shcherbáty—the
 gap-toothed). Denísov smiled, and Pétya burst into a peal of merry
 laughter in which Tíkhon himself joined.
 


 
 “Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing,” said Tíkhon. “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 Denísov. “I wanted to question...”
 


 
 “But I questioned him,” said Tíkhon. “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,’” Tíkhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into Denísov’s
 eyes.
 


 
 “I’ll give you a hundwed sharp lashes—that’ll teach you to play the
 fool!” said Denísov severely.
 


 
 “But why are you angry?” remonstrated Tíkhon, “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 Denísov, and rode all the way to the watchhouse in
 silence and frowning angrily.
 


 
 Tíkhon followed behind and Pétya 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 Tíkhon’s words and smile
 had passed and Pétya realized for a moment that this Tíkhon 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 Denísov on the way with the
 news that Dólokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.
 


 
 Denísov at once cheered up and, calling Pétya to him, said: “Well, tell me
 about yourself.”
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER VII
 
 
 Pétya, 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 Vyázma, Pétya 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 Denísov’s detachment, Pétya begged so piteously to be sent
 that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he recalled
 Pétya’s mad action at the battle of Vyázma, 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 Denísov’s. That was why Pétya had blushed and grown
 confused when Denísov asked him whether he could stay. Before they had
 ridden to the outskirts of the forest Pétya had considered he must carry
 out his instructions strictly and return at once. But when he saw the
 French and saw Tíkhon 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 Denísov was a hero, the esaul a hero, and
 Tíkhon 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 Denísov, Pétya, 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
 Denísov’s band were converting a door into a tabletop. Pétya 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, Pétya 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, Vasíli Dmítrich?” said he to Denísov. “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...”
 


 
 Pétya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head and
 flourishing his arms.
 


 
 “Into the vewy chief...” Denísov repeated with a smile.
 


 
 “Only, please let me command something, so that I may really command...”
 Pétya 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 Pétya, 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 Pétya 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, Pétya 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?” Pétya 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 Denísov, who evidently saw nothing
 shameful in this reminder. “Call him in. His name is Vincent Bosse. Have
 him fetched.”
 


 
 “I’ll call him,” said Pétya.
 


 
 “Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow,” Denísov repeated.
 


 
 Pétya was standing at the door when Denísov said this. He slipped in
 between the officers, came close to Denísov, and said:
 


 
 “Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!”
 


 
 And having kissed Denísov he ran out of the hut.
 


 
 “Bosse! Vincent!” Pétya cried, stopping outside the door.
 


 
 “Who do you want, sir?” asked a voice in the darkness.
 


 
 Pétya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured that
 day.
 


 
 “Ah, Vesénny?” said a Cossack.
 


 
 Vincent, the boy’s name, had already been changed by the Cossacks into
 Vesénny (vernal) and into Vesénya by the peasants and soldiers. In both
 these adaptations the reference to spring ( vesná ) matched the impression
 made by the young lad.
 


 
 “He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesénya! Vesénya!—Vesénny!”
 laughing voices were heard calling to one another in the darkness.
 


 
 “He’s a smart lad,” said an hussar standing near Pétya. “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 Pétya. “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.” *(2)
 


 
 * “Ah, it’s you! Do you want something to eat? Don’t be
 afraid, they won’t hurt you.”
 


 
 * (2) “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 Pétya 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, Pétya 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 Dólokhov diverted Pétya’s attention from the drummer boy,
 to whom Denísov 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. Pétya had heard in the army many
 stories of Dólokhov’s extraordinary bravery and of his cruelty to the
 French, so from the moment he entered the hut Pétya 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov’s appearance amazed Pétya by its simplicity.
 


 
 Denísov 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 Dólokhov, 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 Denísov and began questioning him about
 the matter in hand. Denísov told him of the designs the large detachments
 had on the transport, of the message Pétya 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
 Dólokhov. “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 Pétya.
 


 
 “There’s no need for you to go at all,” said Denísov, addressing Dólokhov,
 “and as for him, I won’t let him go on any account.”
 


 
 “I like that!” exclaimed Pétya. “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 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “Why not?” Dólokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of the French
 drummer boy. “Have you had that youngster with you long?” he asked
 Denísov.
 


 
 “He was taken today but he knows nothing. I’m keeping him with me.”
 


 
 “Yes, and where do you put the others?” inquired Dólokhov.
 


 
 “Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them,” shouted Denísov,
 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 Dólokhov 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 Pétya shyly.
 


 
 “But for you and me, old fellow, it’s time to drop these amenities,”
 continued Dólokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking of this
 subject which irritated Denísov. “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!”
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Pétya.
 


 
 “I? Yes, yes, certainly!” cried Pétya, blushing almost to tears and
 glancing at Denísov.
 


 
 While Dólokhov had been disputing with Denísov what should be done with
 prisoners, Pétya 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 Denísov 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
 Dólokhov. If he can, so can I!”
 


 
 And to all Denísov’s persuasions, Pétya 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, Pétya and Dólokhov rode to the
 clearing from which Denísov had reconnoitered the French camp, and
 emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended into the hollow.
 On reaching the bottom, Dólokhov told the Cossacks accompanying him to
 await him there and rode on at a quick trot along the road to the bridge.
 Pétya, 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 Dólokhov 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 Pétya’s face and he grasped his pistol.
 


 
 “Lanciers du 6-me,” * replied Dólokhov, 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.”
 


 
 Dólokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.
 


 
 “Dites donc, le colonel Gérard est ici?” * he asked.
 


 
 * “Tell me, is Colonel Gérard 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 Dólokhov 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, Dólokhov rode up the incline at a walk.
 


 
 Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov’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, Dólokhov 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
 Dólokhov’s and Pétya’s steps as they advanced to the fire leading their
 horses.
 


 
 “Bonjour, messieurs!” * said Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov.
 


 
 “Is that you, Clément?” he asked. “Where the devil...?”
 But, noticing his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dólokhov
 as a stranger, asking what he could do for him.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Pétya
 thought the officers were beginning to look at him and Dólokhov 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov and again asked to
 what regiment he belonged. Dólokhov, 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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,” Pétya thought every moment as he stood by the
 campfire listening to the talk.
 


 
 But Dólokhov 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, Dólokhov 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 Pétya thought the French would immediately detect their disguise, and
 involuntarily took a step back from the campfire.
 


 
 No one replied a word to Dólokhov’s laughter, and a French officer whom
 they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and whispered
 something to a companion. Dólokhov got up and called to the soldier who
 was holding their horses.
 


 
 “Will they bring our horses or not?” thought Pétya, instinctively drawing
 nearer to Dólokhov.
 


 
 The horses were brought.
 


 
 “Good evening, gentlemen,” said Dólokhov.
 


 
 Pétya wished to say “Good night” but could not utter a word. The officers
 were whispering together. Dólokhov was a long time mounting his horse
 which would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at a footpace.
 Pétya rode beside him, longing to look round to see whether or not the
 French were running after them, but not daring to.
 


 
 Coming out onto the road Dólokhov did not ride back across the open
 country, but through the village. At one spot he stopped and listened. “Do
 you hear?” he asked. Pétya recognized the sound of Russian voices and saw
 the dark figures of Russian prisoners round their campfires. When they had
 descended to the bridge Pétya and Dólokhov 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 Denísov, ‘at the first shot at daybreak,’” said
 Dólokhov and was about to ride away, but Pétya 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 Dólokhov. But Pétya did not let go of him and
 Dólokhov saw through the gloom that Pétya was bending toward him and
 wanted to kiss him. Dólokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his horse, and
 vanished into the darkness.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER X
 
 
 Having returned to the watchman’s hut, Pétya found Denísov in the passage.
 He was awaiting Pétya’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 Pétya’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 Pétya, “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 Denísov 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.
 


 
 Pétya 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 Pétya recognized his own horse, which he
 called “Karabákh” though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to it.
 


 
 “Well, Karabákh! 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... Likhachëv—isn’t that your name? Do you know I have only
 just come back! We’ve been into the French camp.”
 


 
 And Pétya 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 Pétya. “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
 Pétya.
 


 
 “Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately,” said Pétya.
 “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...” (Pétya feared to tell a lie, and the saber never
 had been sharpened.) “Can you do it?”
 


 
 “Of course I can.”
 


 
 Likhachëv got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Pétya 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 Pétya.
 


 
 “Some are, and some aren’t—like us.”
 


 
 “Well, and that boy?”
 


 
 “Vesénny? Oh, he’s thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast asleep
 after his fright. He was that glad!”
 


 
 After that Pétya 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 Pétya 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.
 


 
 Pétya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denísov’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 Likhachëv 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, Likhachëv, 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 Pétya 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.
 


 
 Pétya’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 Pétya heard an harmonious orchestra playing some unknown, sweetly
 solemn hymn. Pétya was as musical as Natásha 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
 Pétya 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!” Pétya 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 Pétya 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 Pétya. And
 at first from afar he heard men’s voices and then women’s. The voices grew
 in harmonious triumphant strength, and Pétya 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.
 


 
 Pétya 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 Likhachëv’s kindly voice.
 


 
 “It’s ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!”
 


 
 Pétya 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.
 Pétya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket and gave it
 to Likhachëv; 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 Likhachëv.
 


 
 Denísov came out of the watchman’s hut and, having called Pétya, gave
 orders to get ready.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI
 
 
 The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness, tightened
 their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denísov 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. Pétya 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 Denísov. “Bwing the horses.”
 


 
 The horses were brought. Denísov was angry with the Cossack because the
 saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted. Pétya put his
 foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to nip his leg, but
 Pétya 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 Denísov.
 


 
 “Vasíli Dmítrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for God’s
 sake...!” said he.
 


 
 Denísov seemed to have forgotten Pétya’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 Pétya 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. Denísov talked in whispers with the esaul and the Cossacks
 rode past Pétya and Denísov. When they had all ridden by, Denísov touched
 his horse and rode down the hill. Slipping onto their haunches and
 sliding, the horses descended with their riders into the ravine. Pétya
 rode beside Denísov, the pulsation of his body constantly increasing. It
 was getting lighter and lighter, but the mist still hid distant objects.
 Having reached the valley, Denísov 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, Pétya lashed his horse
 and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denísov who shouted
 at him. It seemed to Pétya 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. Pétya 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 Pétya, 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 Pétya galloped up the Frenchman had
 already fallen. “Too late again!” flashed through Pétya’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 Dólokhov. 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, Pétya saw Dólokhov, whose face was of a pale-greenish tint,
 shouting to his men. “Go round! Wait for the infantry!” he exclaimed as
 Pétya rode up to him.
 


 
 “Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!” shouted Pétya, 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 Dólokhov galloped after Pétya 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. Pétya 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 Pétya 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, Dólokhov dismounted and went up to Pétya, who lay motionless
 with outstretched arms.
 


 
 “Done for!” he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet Denísov who
 was riding toward him.
 


 
 “Killed?” cried Denísov, recognizing from a distance the unmistakably
 lifeless attitude—very familiar to him—in which Pétya’s body
 was lying.
 


 
 “Done for!” repeated Dólokhov 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
 Denísov.
 


 
 Denísov did not reply; he rode up to Pétya, 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 Pétya’s words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise at the
 sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denísov turned away, walked to
 the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.
 


 
 Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denísov and Dólokhov was Pierre
 Bezúkhov.
 


 
 
 
 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 Vyázma 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 Dorogobúzh 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 Karatáev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that had chosen
 Karatáev for its master.
 


 
 On the third day after leaving Moscow Karatáev 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 Karatáev 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 Karatáev
 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 Karatáev 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 Karatáev 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 Platón Karatáev 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 Karatáev was usually free of his
 fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the fire and heard
 Platón’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 Platón.
 


 
 “Well, how are you?” he asked.
 


 
 “How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won’t grant us death,” replied
 Platón, 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. Karatáev 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 Karatáev 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 Nízhni 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 Karatáev 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!’”
 


 
 Karatáev 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?” Karatáev 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 Karatáev’s lower jaw trembled, “but God had already forgiven him—he
 was dead! That’s how it was, dear fellows!” Karatáev 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
 Karatáev’s face as he told it, and the mystic significance of that joy.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIV
 
 
 “À 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 Karatáev 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.
 


 
 Karatáev 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. Karatáev 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 Karatáev 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 Smolénsk—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 Karatáev 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 Shámshevo. 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
 Mozháysk after the battle of Borodinó.
 


 
 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 Mozháysk.
 


 
 “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.”
 


 
 “Karatáev!” 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, Karatáev 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 Platón 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
 Karatáev’s absence at this halt—and he was on the point of realizing
 that Karatáev 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.
 


 
 Dólokhov 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 Dólokhov 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
 Dólokhov’s Cossack, counting the prisoners and marking off each hundred
 with a chalk line on the gate.
 


 
 “How many?” Dólokhov asked the Cossack.
 


 
 “The second hundred,” replied the Cossack.
 


 
 “Filez, filez!” * Dólokhov 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!”
 


 
 Denísov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some Cossacks
 who were carrying the body of Pétya Rostóv 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 Vyázma 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 Vyázma, from Vyázma to
 Smolénsk, from Smolénsk to the Berëzina, and from the Berëzina to Vílna—independently
 of the greater or lesser intensity of the cold, the pursuit, the barring
 of the way, or any other particular conditions. Beyond Vyázma 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 Smolénsk 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 Smolénsk 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 these 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 Smolénsk.
 


 





 
 After staggering into Smolénsk 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’Eckmühl, 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
 buff, 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 Kalúga road, Napoleon’s
 armies made their presence known, but later when they reached the Smolénsk
 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 Smolénsk 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
 Krásnoe and Orshá.
 


 
 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 Krásnoe. 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
 Smolénsk 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 Orshá 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 Orshá they fled farther along the road to Vílna, still playing at
 blindman’s buff with the pursuing army. At the Berëzina 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
 Kalúga 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 Málo-Yaroslávets when he had a free road into a
 well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along which
 Kutúzov 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 Smolénsk to Orshá. Then his heroism at Krásnoe 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
 général,” * 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
 Orshá, 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 , *(2) and his soul is tranquil.
 


 
 * “It is great.”
 


 
 * (2) 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! Napoléon 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 Borodinó, 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 Kutúzov and Tormásov and Chichagóv, 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 Kutúzov, Chichagóv, 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 Krásnoe and at the Berëzina (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 Kutúzov hindered an attack) is unfounded, for we know
 that he could not restrain the troops from attacking at Vyázma and
 Tarútino.
 


 
 Why was the Russian army—which with inferior forces had withstood
 the enemy in full strength at Borodinó—defeated at Krásnoe and the
 Berëzina 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 Kutúzov.
 


 
 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 Krásnoe
 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 Chichagóv, Kutúzov, and Wittgenstein
 effecting a junction on time at an appointed place was so remote as to be
 tantamount to impossibility, as in fact thought Kutúzov, 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 Krásnoe and of the Berëzina. 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 Tarútino to Krásnoe 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 Milorádovich should have made a flank march to such
 and such a place, Tormásov to another place, and Chichagóv 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 Milorádovich 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 Natásha 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; Alpátych came to Yaroslávl with reports on the state of
 their affairs and with advice and suggestions that they should return to
 Moscow to the house on the Vozdvízhenka 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 Natásha alone, yet the cares
 of life demanded her attention and she involuntarily yielded to them. She
 went through the accounts with Alpátych, conferred with Dessalles about
 her nephew, and gave orders and made preparations for the journey to
 Moscow.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha 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,” Natásha 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,
 Natásha 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 Natásha, 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 Mytíshchi, at Tróitsa, and at Yaroslávl.
 


 
 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. Natásha 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 Natásha. 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. Natásha 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,” Natásha 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 Natásha 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. Dunyásha, 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 Ilýnich... a letter,” she finished with
 a sob.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER II
 
 
 Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natásha was feeling a
 special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of them—her
 father, mother, and Sónya—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 Dunyásha’s
 words about Peter Ilýnich 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 Natásha.
 


 
 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 Natásha he waved his arms despairingly and burst into
 convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round face.
 


 
 “Pe... Pétya... 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 Natásha’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 Natásha by the arm said something to her. Natásha
 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. Sónya and the maids
 were holding her arms.
 


 
 “Natásha! Natásha!...” cried the countess. “It’s not true... it’s not
 true... He’s lying... Natásha!” she shrieked, pushing those around her
 away. “Go away, all of you; it’s not true! Killed!... ha, ha, ha!... It’s
 not true!”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha 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.
 


 
 “Natásha, you love me?” she said in a soft trustful whisper. “Natásha, you
 would not deceive me? You’ll tell me the whole truth?”
 


 
 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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
 Natásha 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?”
 Natásha 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...”
 


 
 “Natásha, 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. Sónya and the count tried to
 replace Natásha but could not. They saw that she alone was able to
 restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natásha
 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 heal. Pétya’s death had torn from
 her half her life. When the news of Pétya’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 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha’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 Natásha together;
 this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another. Princess Mary
 put off her departure, and for three weeks looked after Natásha as if she
 had been a sick child. The last weeks passed in her mother’s bedroom had
 strained Natásha’s physical strength.
 


 
 One afternoon noticing Natásha shivering with fever, Princess Mary took
 her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned
 Princess Mary’s face.
 


 
 “Is she like him?” thought Natásha. “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 Natásha, 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 Natásha. 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha’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.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Dunyásha her voice trembled, so she called
 again—though she could hear Dunyásha coming—called her in the
 deep chest tones in which she had been wont to 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 Natásha’s going with her to consult the doctors.
 


 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV
 
 
 After the encounter at Vyázma, where Kutúzov 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 Krásnoe 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 Tarútino and less than a
 hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that place a hundred
 thousand strong reached Krásnoe 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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
 Tarútino and Vyázma, 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 Kutúzov. 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 Kutúzov’s activity was directed during
 the whole campaign from Moscow to Vílna—not casually or
 intermittently but so consistently that he never once deviated from it.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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. Kutúzov 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 Krásnoe, where they expected to find one of the three French
 columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen thousand
 men. Despite all Kutúzov’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 Krásnoe 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
 Eugène of Württemberg 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.
 


 
 Milorádovich, 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 Krásnoe 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov and said that from the very beginning of the campaign
 he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought of nothing
 but satisfying his passions and would not advance from the Linen Factories
 because he was comfortable there, that at Krásnoe 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 contemporaries, carried away by their passions, talk in
 this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as grand ,
 while Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov was a cunning court liar,
 frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by his blunders at Krásnoe
 and the Berëzina he deprived the Russian army of the glory of complete
 victory over the French. *
 


 
 * History of the year 1812. The character of Kutúzov and
 reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at
 Krásnoe , by Bogdánovich.



 
 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 Kutúzov—the man who from the beginning
 to the end of his activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or deed
 from Borodinó to Vílna, presented an example exceptional in history of
 self-sacrifice and a present consciousness of the future importance of
 what was happening—Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov’s efforts were directed in 1812.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 pose, 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 Staël, 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
 Rostopchín at the Yaúza bridge galloped up to Kutúzov with personal
 reproaches for having caused the destruction of Moscow, and said: “How was
 it you promised not to abandon Moscow without a battle?” Kutúzov replied:
 “And I shall not abandon Moscow without a battle,” though Moscow was then
 already abandoned. When Arakchéev, coming to him from the Emperor, said
 that Ermólov ought to be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutúzov
 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 Rostopchín
 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 Borodinó, from which time his disagreement with those about him
 began, he alone said that the battle of Borodinó 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 Tarútino, the Vyázma, nor the
 Krásnoe 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 Arakchéev to
 please the Emperor, he alone—incurring thereby the Emperor’s
 displeasure—said in Vílna 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 Kutúzov, whose motto was “Patience and Time,” this
 enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodinó, investing the
 preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutúzov 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 Borodinó 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
 Krásnoe. 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, Kutúzov left Krásnoe and went to Dóbroe whither his headquarters
 had that day been transferred.
 


 
 The day was clear and frosty. Kutúzov rode to Dóbroe 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 Dóbroe 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
 Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov, the soldier with the sores immediately
 turned away and went on with what he was doing.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Preobrazhénsk regiment.
 


 
 “Ah, the standards!” said Kutúzov, 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 Preobrazhénsk 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.
 Kutúzov 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 Preobrazhénsk
 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 Kutúzov 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!”
 


 
 Kutúzov’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
 Kutúzov asking whether he wished his calèche to be sent for, Kutúzov 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 Krásnoe 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 Tarútino 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 and 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, Makéev! 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 Petróv 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 Mozháysk 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 Mozháysk 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 Plátov 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, Kiselëv, 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 à 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!”
 


 
 “Qui eut le triple talent,

 De boire, de battre,

 Et d’être un vert galant.” *



 
 * Who had a triple talent

 For drinking, for fighting,

 And for being a gallant old boy...



 
 “It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletáev!”
 


 
 “Ke...” Zaletáev, 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 Berëzina 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 Berëzina, 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 Berëzina River. Everyone assured himself that all would happen
 according to plan, and therefore insisted that it was just the crossing of
 the Berëzina 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 Krásnoe had been, as the figures show.
 


 
 The sole importance of the crossing of the Berëzina 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 Kutúzov 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 inertiæ —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 Berëzina, 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, who blamed one another and Kutúzov
 most of all. Anticipation that the failure of the Petersburg Berëzina plan
 would be attributed to Kutúzov 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. Kutúzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
 Only once, after the affair of the Berëzina, 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 Kalúga on receipt of this, and there await
 further commands and appointments from His Imperial Majesty.”
 


 
 But after Bennigsen’s departure, the Grand Duke Tsarévich Constantine
 Pávlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the beginning of the
 campaign but had subsequently been removed from the army by Kutúzov. Now
 having come to the army, he informed Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov entered Vílna—his “dear
 Vílna” as he called it. Twice during his career Kutúzov had been governor
 of Vílna. 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.
 


 
 Chichagóv, 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: Chichagóv, noted for the boldness
 with which he spoke to the Emperor, and who considered Kutúzov to be under
 an obligation to him because when he was sent to make peace with Turkey in
 1811 independently of Kutúzov, and found that peace had already been
 concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of securing that
 peace was really Kutúzov’s; this Chichagóv was the first to meet Kutúzov
 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 Kutúzov 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 Chichagóv, who knew of the accusations that were
 being directed against Kutúzov.
 


 
 When speaking to Chichagóv, Kutúzov incidentally mentioned that the
 vehicles packed with china that had been captured from him at Borísov 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 Chichagóv, who tried by every word he spoke to prove his
 own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutúzov to be animated by the same
 desire.
 


 
 Kutúzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle penetrating
 smile: “I meant merely to say what I said.”
 


 
 Contrary to the Emperor’s wish Kutúzov detained the greater part of the
 army at Vílna. 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
 Tolstóy, Prince Volkónski, Arakchéev, and others—the Emperor reached
 Vílna 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 Semënov regiment.
 


 
 A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with three
 foam-flecked horses, shouted “Coming!” and Konovnítsyn rushed into the
 vestibule to inform Kutúzov, 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 flew furiously
 up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh in which the
 figures of the Emperor and Volkónski 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 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov and he gave a sob.
 


 
 The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semënov 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
 Krásnoe and the Berëzina, and informed him of his intentions for a future
 campaign abroad. Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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!”
 


 
 Kutúzov raised his head and looked for a long while into the eyes of Count
 Tolstóy, who stood before him holding a silver salver on which lay a small
 object. Kutúzov 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. Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov, 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 Kutúzov was specially increased at Vílna by
 the fact that Kutúzov 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.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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, Konovnítsyn, and
 Ermólov 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, Kutúzov’s
 place was taken by a new and necessary performer.
 


 
 The war of 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 Kutúzov’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 Kutúzov had been for
 the salvation and glory of Russia.
 


 
 Kutúzov 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 Kutúzov 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 Orël, 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 Pétya Rostóv. That same day he had
 learned that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodinó for
 more than a month had recently died in the Rostóvs’ house at Yaroslávl,
 and Denísov who told him this news also mentioned Hélène’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 Orël he immediately
 fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw in attendance
 on him two of his servants, Terénty and Váska, who had come from Moscow;
 and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had been living on his estate
 at Eléts 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 Karatáev 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 seen 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 Orël—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—Terénty and Váska—in their own way noticed
 the change that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had
 become much “simpler.” Terénty, 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 Terénty wanted a chat, generally kept him there.
 


 
 “Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?” he would ask.
 


 
 And Terénty 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 Orël, 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 Orël 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
 Orël province, and he occupied a temporary post in the commissariat
 department in that town.
 


 
 Hearing that Bezúkhov was in Orël, 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 Orël 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 Orël, 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 Orël 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 Savélich 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
 Vasíli 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 Orël 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 and 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 Krémlin; 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 Rostopchín 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 Rostopchín 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 Rostóvs were at Kostromá but the thought of Natásha
 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 Drubetskóys 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
 Vozdvízhenka 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 Borodinó.
 


 
 “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 Karatáev 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 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 Rostóvs.... 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 Rostóvs, 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, “Natásha!” 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 Natásha 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 Natásha, 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 Natásha 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 Natásha’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 Natásha herself to see a doctor. They insisted on
 her coming with me.”
 


 
 “Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?” said Pierre, addressing
 Natásha. “You know it happened the very day we were rescued. I saw him.
 What a delightful boy he was!”
 


 
 Natásha 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?” Natásha asked, looking attentively into Pierre’s eyes.
 


 
 “How can you ask why?” said Princess Mary. “The thought alone of what
 awaits...”
 


 
 Natásha 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.”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha. 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
 Natásha and looking at her with eyes full of tears.
 


 
 Natásha’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....”
 


 
 Natásha’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 Sónya 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 Yaroslávl.
 


 
 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
 Natásha, and heard for the first time the story of those last days of her
 brother’s and Natásha’s love.
 


 
 Evidently Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 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, Natásha 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 Natásha. Natásha
 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 Natásha 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 Abrámovna
 invited me to her house and kept telling me what had happened, or ought to
 have happened, to me. Stepán Stepánych 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.”
 


 
 Natásha 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. Savélich 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 Orël and you
 cannot imagine how it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple,” he
 added quickly, glancing at Natásha 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 Natásha’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
 Natásha. 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?” Natásha
 asked with a slight smile. “I guessed it then when we met at the Súkharev
 tower, do you remember?”
 


 
 Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by
 Princess Mary’s questions and especially by Natásha’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 Natásha.
 In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his goodness. Natásha,
 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 Natásha and pausing added, “something fine?”
 


 
 Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he wanted to pass over
 the horrible details, but Natásha insisted that he should not omit
 anything.
 


 
 Pierre began to tell about Karatáev, but paused. By this time he had risen
 from the table and was pacing the room, Natásha 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 Natásha. “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 Karatáev’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 Natásha 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.
 Natásha 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 Natásha 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. Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “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 Natásha.
 


 
 “It’s not true, not true!” cried Pierre. “I am not to blame for being
 alive and wishing to live—nor you either.”
 


 
 Suddenly Natásha bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and began
 to cry.
 


 
 “What is it, Natásha?” 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 Natásha 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 Natásha speak of him.
 


 
 “Well, good night, Mary!” said Natásha. “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
 Natásha’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 Natásha. “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...” Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 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 Natásha, 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, Savélich 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
 Savélich’s old face, “and what a pleasant smile he has!”
 


 
 “Well, Savélich, 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 Savélich.
 


 
 “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 Savélich 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?
 Natásha Rostóva!”
 


 
 The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than if he
 had seen Anna Semënovna.
 


 
 “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 Rostóv. It would be a very good thing for the
 Rostóvs, they are said to be utterly ruined.”
 


 
 “No; I mean do you know Natásha Rostóva?”
 


 
 “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 trifles 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 Natásha 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 fiancée. 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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha 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
 Natásha 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. Natásha 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 Hélène.
 


 
 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 Natásha 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 Vasíli, 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 Natásha 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 Natásha’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 Natásha 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 Natásha she was
 not vexed with her and did not reproach her. The reawakened power
 of life that had seized Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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, Natásha 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 Natásha’s face.
 


 
 “I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me.”
 


 
 Understandable and touching as the look with which Natásha 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 Natásha all that Pierre had
 said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 “Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake,” said Princess Mary,
 who because of those tears quite forgave Natásha’s joy.
 


 
 “It won’t be just yet—someday. Think what fun it will be when I am
 his wife and you marry Nicholas!”
 


 
 “Natásha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about you.”
 


 
 They were silent awhile.
 


 
 “But why go to Petersburg?” Natásha 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
 Staël, 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 Arakchéev, favoring
 Golítsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkóv and Photius. He also acted
 badly by concerning himself with the active army and disbanding the
 Semënov 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 was 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 rôle.
 


 
 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
 of 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
 fête the Germans can devise for him is a celebration of Jena and
 Auerstädt. 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 Borodinó 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 rôle 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
 
 
 Natásha’s wedding to Bezúkhov, which took place in 1813, was the last
 happy event in the family of the old Rostóvs. Count Ilyá Rostóv 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, Natásha’s despair, Pétya’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 Natásha’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 Rostóvs. 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 Mítenka 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
 Bezúkhov 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 reluctance 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 Sónya to a small house on the Sívtsev
 Vrazhók.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Sónya, 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 Natásha or Sónya, or for
 Nicholas himself.
 


 
 Sónya 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 Sónya 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 Rostóvs 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 Rostóvs 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 Vorónezh 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 Sónya’s presence,
 evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the princess’ carriage had
 disappeared.
 


 
 “Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?” cried Sónya, 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 Rostóvs 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 Rostóvs 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
 Rostóv. 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 Rostóv 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 Boguchárovo, 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 Sónya.
 


 
 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 Otrádnoe—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 Ermíshin, 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 Boguchárovo, 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 Boguchárovo 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 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
 Laocoön’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 Sónya had lived in his house. Before that,
 Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself and Sónya,
 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 Sónya, felt herself to blame toward her, and imagined that her wealth
 had influenced Nicholas’ choice. She could not find fault with Sónya 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 Natásha about Sónya and about her own
 injustice toward her.
 


 
 “You know,” said Natásha, “you have read the Gospels a great deal—there
 is a passage in them that just fits Sónya.”
 


 
 “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 Natásha that those words in the Gospel must be
 understood differently, yet looking at Sónya she agreed with Natásha’s
 explanation. It really seemed that Sónya 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 Rostóvs’ and Bolkónskis’ 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. Natásha 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 Bezúkhov family, Nicholas’ old friend the retired General
 Vasíli Dmítrich Denísov was staying with the Rostóvs 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
 Ryazán 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 Belóva, his
 wife, their three children with their governess and tutor, his wife’s
 nephew with his tutor, Sónya, Denísov, Natásha, her three children, their
 governess, and old Michael Ivánovich, 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 Denísov 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 Sónya 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—Denísov’s shouting and laughter,
 Natásha’s talk, and especially a quick glance Sónya gave her.
 


 
 Sónya 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 did not notice him.
 


 
 “Mary, dear, I think he is asleep—he was so tired,” said Sónya,
 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
 Sónya 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 Sónya beckoned to Andrew to follow her quietly and went
 to the door. Sónya 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 Natásha, 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.
 


 
 “Natásha, Natásha!” came Countess Mary’s frightened whisper from the door.
 “Papa wants to sleep.”
 


 
 “No, Mamma, he doesn’t want to sleep,” said little Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Malvínas 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 Natásha. “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 Natásha 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
 
 
 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 often 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 Natásha 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 Bezúkhova 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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Natásha’s outbursts had been due to her need of
 children and a husband—as she herself had once exclaimed at Otrádnoe
 not so much in fun as in earnest—and her mother was now surprised at
 the surprise expressed by those who had never understood Natásha, and she
 kept saying that she had always known that Natásha 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.”
 


 
 Natásha 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.
 Natásha 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 delicacy 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 Natásha’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 Natásha, 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. Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the
 society of her relatives—Countess Mary, and her brother, her mother,
 and Sónya. 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 Natásha let herself go that the way she dressed and
 did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy—she was jealous
 of Sónya, 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 Natásha 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 on 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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Natásha tried to guess. Their way of life and
 place of residence, their acquaintances and ties, Natásha’s occupations,
 the children’s upbringing, were all selected not merely with regard to
 Pierre’s expressed wishes, but to what Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Rostóvs 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) Natásha
 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, Natásha had been in a constant state of alarm, depression, and
 irritability.
 


 
 Denísov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied with the
 present state of affairs, had arrived during that fortnight. He looked at
 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her mother,
 her brother, Sónya, 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!” Natásha declared of the very
 affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.
 


 
 And she would go to the nursery to nurse Pétya, 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 Natásha 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?” Natásha 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 Natásha’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, Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.
 


 
 Denísov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with his
 pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natásha. A flood of
 brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face.
 


 
 “He’s come!” she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denísov felt that he too
 was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had returned.
 


 
 On reaching the vestibule Natásha 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.... Pétya 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 Pétya?”
 


 
 “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 Natásha’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 Natásha. “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 to
 attend to the estate, and 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 écossaise (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, Platón Karatáev (of
 whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natásha (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 Natásha and his father, from the emotion with
 which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful, reverent
 tenderness with which Natásha spoke of him, the boy, who was only just
 beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that his father had
 loved Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Belóva, 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 Natásha
 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 Natásha’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.
 


 
 Natásha, 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 Belóva? Excellent!” She felt the quality of the material. “It
 was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?”
 


 
 Pierre told her the price.
 


 
 “Too dear!” Natásha 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.
 


 
 “Adèle tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it,” returned Pierre.
 


 
 “When am I to wear it?” and Natásha stuck it in her coil of hair. “When I
 take little Másha 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 Belóva, playing grand-patience
 as usual, when Pierre and Natásha 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 Belóva’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 Belóva 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 Belóva 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, Natásha, 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
 Sèvres 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 Timoféevna,” she added to her companion, “see what a
 box for cards my son has brought us!”
 


 
 Belóva admired the presents and was delighted with her dress material.
 


 
 Though Pierre, Natásha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denísov 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 Vasíli had
 aged and whether Countess Mary Alexéevna 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 Sónya 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; Mílka, the old gray borzoi bitch (daughter of the
 first Mílka), with a quite gray face and large black eyes that seemed more
 prominent than ever, lay on the armchair beside him; Denísov, 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. Natásha 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. Denísov, 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 Semënovsk regiment, then about Arakchéev, and
 then about the Bible Society. Once or twice Pierre was carried away and
 began to speak of these things, but Nicholas and Natásha always brought
 him back to the health of Prince Iván and Countess Mary Alexéevna.
 


 
 “Well, and all this idiocy—Gossner and Tatáwinova?” Denísov 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 Golítsyn has founded
 a society and in consequence has great influence, they say.”
 


 
 “Arakchéev and Golítsyn,” 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 Antónovna’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 Natásha’s gleeful yell rose above them all.
 


 
 Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natásha he never
 lost sight of) and smiled happily.
 


 
 “That’s delightful music!” said he.
 


 
 “It means that Anna Makárovna 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 Andrúsha’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 Makárovna,” 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 Makárovna 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 Bolkónski 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; Natásha did not
 take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denísov rose, asked for their
 pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from Sónya—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. Denísov,
 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 Tatáwinova
 and Madame Kwüdener, and wead Ecka’tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they
 should let that fine fellow Bonaparte loose—he’d knock all this
 nonsense out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semënov wegiment to
 a fellow like that Schwa’tz!” he cried.
 


 
 Nicholas, though free from Denísov’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 Natásha, 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.
 


 
 Natásha, 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 Bolkónski 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 Denísov.
 


 
 “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—Magnítski, Arakchéev, 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 Pugachëv or other
 from killing my children and yours, and Arakchéev 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.”
 


 
 Natásha, 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 Denísov 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, Natásha 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 Arakchéev 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. Natásha 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 Bolkónski 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. Denísov
 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 Andrúsha (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:
 


 





 
 Mítya 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 Natásha didn’t keep him in hand.... Have you any idea why he
 went to Petersburg? They have formed...”
 


 
 “Yes, I know,” said Countess Mary. “Natásha 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—Denísov
 and Natásha... Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Bolkónski 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
 Arakchéev 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 Mitrofánych” (this was his overseer)
 “came back from the Tambóv 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 Otrádnoe 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
 
 
 Natásha 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. Natásha 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 Natásha 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.
 


 
 Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Natásha’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.”
 


 
 Natásha 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, Mítya was
 naughty...”
 


 
 “How like his father he is,” Pierre interjected.
 


 
 Natásha knew why he mentioned Mítya’s likeness to Nicholas: the
 recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and he
 wanted to know what Natásha 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 Natásha 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 Natásha.
 “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 say 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 Sergéy is a
 fine fellow and clever.”
 


 
 Natásha 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 Platón Karatáev.
 


 
 “Do you know what I am thinking about?” she asked. “About Platón Karatáev.
 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.
 


 
 “Platón Karatáev?” he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely trying
 to imagine Karatáev’s opinion on the subject. “He would not have
 understood... yet perhaps he would.”
 


 
 “I love you awfully!” Natásha 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...” Natásha 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,” Natásha 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!” Natásha 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,” Natásha 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, Natásha 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 Natásha.
 


 
 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 Natásha, smiling still more brightly.
 “I only wanted to tell you about Pétya: 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 Bolkónski’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 Vièrge . 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 Arakchéev 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 Staël, 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 Staël, and the
 others, evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of
 millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That Chateaubriand,
 Madame de Staël, 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 Pugachëv 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 Iván 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 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 Kazán and Siberia
 expressed by details of the morbid character of Iván the Terrible and by
 his correspondence with Kúrbski?
 


 
 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 the event.
 


 
 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, we
 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 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 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 be 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
 malefactors 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
 free will, 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.
 


 
 
 
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